I think you've already hit that it looks too "square" still. My first thought is that it looks like it's still divided into "sections" that use about the same cross section. See the colors on the image below as these sections. Also, the areas between sections are too tall - see the black circled areas in the picture.
Annotations on image:
However, you've already got the basic idea needed to fix this! That framing you have in the back, that's just a single block wide in the shape? That's the key. Put up that framing, then do each single block cross section individually. That will fix your colored sections. Then, for the tall steps between sections, don't fill in corners (do the analog of the right side A).
Then you got it! It already looks pretty good, but small change's'll help out.
It really varies heavily person to person. The way you describe yourself as already knowing the basics of Minecraft from console, as well as greatly enjoying Starbound and Terraria's large amount of content, you would likely enjoy modding straight away. No sense in replaying what you've already done on console when there's always more to explore!
The other thing to consider, instead of playing a heavily modded Minecraft, is to play with others on a multiplayer server that's something more than simple vanilla. You get more content than vanilla, certainly, but it's a different type of content than you'd see from mods. Personally, I enjoy this much more than mods (similarly to you, I feel like vanilla doesn't offer enough, although in my case it's from almost 5 and a half years of playing Minecraft).
But, again, it's all up to the person. You could always just do both! Nobody's stopping you!
So far we are taking heavy inspiration from earth and its formations. You'll see that at the blog and the second entry. But we use that for more of a set of rules and then we be creative within those boundaries. We know how rivers work so we create a river that makes the most sense but it isn't an actual river that we recreated. So basically, we do what would actually happen or do what we think would happen
That's what I gathered from reading it earlier. It's the same method I'd take to this sort of project.
It'll affect the climate of certain areas. Although it wasn't necessary, we do like our detail. And possibly man made structures that have to take into account of wind
That is most excellent.
Looking at the map, it appears strongly influenced by Earth's geography (which I believe y'all mention at one point). Is terrain going to follow similarly to Earth, with mountain ranges, rivers, etc, or will it be placed with artistic creativity?
I apologize for all the seeming interrogation, I'm just very curious about this project!
I'm also curious what exactly y'all plan to use the wind chart for. Will it be manifest in the actual map itself (tree angles, etc), or is it just for some detail outside the actual game? It's a nice touch either way, but actually factoring it into the map would be truly something.
I remember seeing this yesterday, then today saw that y'all were on a Kotaku article. Nice.
I'm really impressed not by the building, but the dedication. This has been in progress for... a long, long time. That's the true hallmark of this project! Good luck to y'all, I'll be watching.
EDIT: I'd also love a tour at some point (which I hope y'all have some willingness to do). Will check back with y'all in a few weeks when I have internet that can support a multiplayer connection to, well, anything.
Yes, Foundation universe is far from Utopia. So what? Utopias are boring. Every civilization has its ups and downs and so does the Galactic Empire. A thousand years of struggle and then prosperity again. That's the price I'd be willing to pay.
You consider the Senate in the SW a good form of government?
True, true. I admit I fail to see the appeal of the Foundation universe, even though the books were fantastic. When I think of a sci-fi universe that would be exciting to live in, I definitely gravitate to the more "space opera"-esq science fiction, rather than the thought provoking stuff (of which Foundation is a prime example).
Theoretically, it should have been, but Palpatine played them all so hard that he single handedly removed any semblance of goodness and strength it had. 1000 years of hiding and plotting since Ruusan put the Sith into the position where he really could just take over without drawing significant attention to himself.
Also, back to the original topic: the more I think about it, I also think the Zoids planet would be pretty fantastic.
Oh boy, the people saying Foundation scare me a little. A universe that's in a huge period of intellectual drought and disorganization (minus the one holdout world, Foundation), partially run by an almost hidden cultist group in the Second Foundation? Not my goal, that's for sure. (Although, consider that this is a really, really oversimplified description of that universe.)
It's hard to argue against good old Star Wars. It's remarkably well fleshed out due to the sheer amount of literature available on it, although I will say it's slightly less exciting when you consider it's set "a long time ago."
One thing you can do is perform more extensive planning of builds before placing the blocks out. What was it you liked about the old spawn? Was it the size? Create a frame of similar size to the old one, and mold the new spawn around it. Was it the color/block palette? Put down ~10 maximum blocks in the center at the start and don't stray outside of those. Was it the shapes? Go to Paint (or similar program), and draw a few sketches, or, do it with pencil and paper.
If you have skilled people who make excellent things, but these things aren't necessarily what you expected, it's on YOU to give them good direction! Not harsh judgement, but a bit of pre-planning like outlined above can greatly help someone else understand what you want to do. Also, make sure you're helping to some extent. It can honestly be as simple as being around watching and offering comments as things get made. It's much easier to change something that was *just* added than to try to go back and change things after the build is done.
A couple years back, I taught myself the functional basics from zero experience over the course of an afternoon using the Eclipse video tutorials. They were extremely helpful. Note that they inherently teach the Eclipse IDE at the same time (but that's just fine in my view).
I'm gonna come here also to mention that I distinctly remember when JTE's custom server, that very first one, was being worked on. In fact, I recall being there day 1 or so when first testing it publicly. If I recall, I was one of the first people on it, and was apparently (by some lunacy) able to convince JTE to let me have an op/admin role for a bit to test somethings out (AKA have fun). In my younger and childish ways, I made him angry by continuously spamming golden block pyramids, and he revoked the rank. That was my experience with JTE. (Remember me at all? I'd expect not.)
The entire experience was significantly different in those days. I remember when the server I played on was up continuously for a few days, all those free players he mentioned would constantly join since it was the top of the list. You'd have to disable the heartbeat somehow or just restart the server to make it even remotely playable again.
Forums here were significantly more of a community. You knew a bunch of people by name. JTE, remember when Zuriki put up that small server and only sent invites to well known people? To get access, you had to be vouched by someone. You very well might not due to the disagreement between y'all (which Zuriki was always doing... dude had some people relations issues I'd say). I remember getting on that thing and building a submarine. I remember talking to Notch on some random server I went on once. I remember meeting people in game and being like "Hey, I know you from the forums! Seen my name before?", and a not insignificant amount of time, the answer was yes.
Oh, good times. Thanks for the reminder of those good old days, JTE.
EDIT: For example... reading through all the responses, I recognize LG_Legacy's name there. Hi!
Friends, thank you for all the kind words. I admit that life had taken hold of my time, and this never really got done (such is Minecraft for me).
That said, seeing that people were still interested, I looked through my resources and found that the floor plans website I had seen earlier has been updated with nearly complete plans, including room names and ceiling heights! See http://biltmore-floor-plan.org/. This is obviously very cool, and very scary at the same time. It means I need to go back and verify heights on everything... And by verify, rebuild. I had been simply eyeing pictures as best I could. Obviously a daunting task.
To make matters worse, when I moved to a Tekkit server, I stopped adding updates to the regular map. Then, Tekkit did a several month hiatus before coming back in a very different format, invalidating my old world and thus erasing my progress. So, I'm back to a state where there's no interior finished at all, which is a shame as the indoor garden was perhaps some of the most beautiful work I've done in Minecraft. In addition, the block palate back then was far inferior to what we have now. As such, I have a significant amount of work to do in replacing stuff with blocks that make more sense. And that's on top of the huge floor plan overhaul I speak of above.
I'm honestly a bit scared about trying to get back to work on this. It's such a large time investment, and I'm trying to finish up my last semester of my degree. Wisdom says to not even get back to this, but I feel guilty every time I think about not finishing it. This truly was going to be my magnum opus of sorts, so it's very hard to turn away. We'll see what time brings!
Also, because I'm good, have a old backup of the map. This is what I'm working from... I no longer have the texture pack to make this work anymore, but it'll still look decent. Also, forgive all the tunnels; was teaching a few friends how to play Minecraft while working on this! https://dl.dropboxus...BiltmoreMap.zip
TL;DR: I'm back! Kinda. Busy. Tons and tons of updating/rebuilding to do. Will it get done? No idea!
EDIT: Oh goodness, what have I done? The floor plans website just went down in the past few days because the Biltmore asked them to remove the pictures. I'm scared since this happened within a week of my posting here after they'd been up for months.
So, slight update in plans on this build. I know it's been awhile, but the fact that it has no interior has been nagging at the back of my head for a few months. So, I'm going to give it a shot.
Here's the twist. The house itself, in real life, is perhaps the most opulent and beautiful place I've ever found myself walking in. Using meter blocks would simply be an insult to the Biltmore, much more so than using mini-blocks is an insult to Minecraft. So, I've moved this over to a Tekkit server and will be using all the crazy eighth, quarter, 2/3, third, hollow, rail, and all the other crazy blocks for detailing. I'm fairly excited about this endeavor, but since none of these blocks work with WorldEdit, it's going to go slowly.
I'll likely be talking to some friends to come join me in helping, so if you're interested in helping, can provide pictures to show your building skill, and are willing to use the Tekkit client, send me a PM or something. Or, better, find me on steam: "kaiser_czar". I'll likely only take the very best, though.
Might I ask how you determined it's the "most accurate" build ever? Do you have the exact floor plans to the entire ship?
It does look very good. I honestly think that your slightly customized texture packs is one of the better build-specific packs I've seen in awhile; those halls are legit.
0
I think you've already hit that it looks too "square" still. My first thought is that it looks like it's still divided into "sections" that use about the same cross section. See the colors on the image below as these sections. Also, the areas between sections are too tall - see the black circled areas in the picture.
Annotations on image:
However, you've already got the basic idea needed to fix this! That framing you have in the back, that's just a single block wide in the shape? That's the key. Put up that framing, then do each single block cross section individually. That will fix your colored sections. Then, for the tall steps between sections, don't fill in corners (do the analog of the right side A).
Then you got it! It already looks pretty good, but small change's'll help out.
1
The other thing to consider, instead of playing a heavily modded Minecraft, is to play with others on a multiplayer server that's something more than simple vanilla. You get more content than vanilla, certainly, but it's a different type of content than you'd see from mods. Personally, I enjoy this much more than mods (similarly to you, I feel like vanilla doesn't offer enough, although in my case it's from almost 5 and a half years of playing Minecraft).
But, again, it's all up to the person. You could always just do both! Nobody's stopping you!
0
That's what I gathered from reading it earlier. It's the same method I'd take to this sort of project.
0
That is most excellent.
Looking at the map, it appears strongly influenced by Earth's geography (which I believe y'all mention at one point). Is terrain going to follow similarly to Earth, with mountain ranges, rivers, etc, or will it be placed with artistic creativity?
I apologize for all the seeming interrogation, I'm just very curious about this project!
0
0
I'm really impressed not by the building, but the dedication. This has been in progress for... a long, long time. That's the true hallmark of this project! Good luck to y'all, I'll be watching.
EDIT: I'd also love a tour at some point (which I hope y'all have some willingness to do). Will check back with y'all in a few weeks when I have internet that can support a multiplayer connection to, well, anything.
0
True, true. I admit I fail to see the appeal of the Foundation universe, even though the books were fantastic. When I think of a sci-fi universe that would be exciting to live in, I definitely gravitate to the more "space opera"-esq science fiction, rather than the thought provoking stuff (of which Foundation is a prime example).
Theoretically, it should have been, but Palpatine played them all so hard that he single handedly removed any semblance of goodness and strength it had. 1000 years of hiding and plotting since Ruusan put the Sith into the position where he really could just take over without drawing significant attention to himself.
Also, back to the original topic: the more I think about it, I also think the Zoids planet would be pretty fantastic.
0
It's hard to argue against good old Star Wars. It's remarkably well fleshed out due to the sheer amount of literature available on it, although I will say it's slightly less exciting when you consider it's set "a long time ago."
0
If you have skilled people who make excellent things, but these things aren't necessarily what you expected, it's on YOU to give them good direction! Not harsh judgement, but a bit of pre-planning like outlined above can greatly help someone else understand what you want to do. Also, make sure you're helping to some extent. It can honestly be as simple as being around watching and offering comments as things get made. It's much easier to change something that was *just* added than to try to go back and change things after the build is done.
You've got this!
0
Find them here: http://eclipsetutorial.sourceforge.net/totalbeginner.html
1
The entire experience was significantly different in those days. I remember when the server I played on was up continuously for a few days, all those free players he mentioned would constantly join since it was the top of the list. You'd have to disable the heartbeat somehow or just restart the server to make it even remotely playable again.
Forums here were significantly more of a community. You knew a bunch of people by name. JTE, remember when Zuriki put up that small server and only sent invites to well known people? To get access, you had to be vouched by someone. You very well might not due to the disagreement between y'all (which Zuriki was always doing... dude had some people relations issues I'd say). I remember getting on that thing and building a submarine. I remember talking to Notch on some random server I went on once. I remember meeting people in game and being like "Hey, I know you from the forums! Seen my name before?", and a not insignificant amount of time, the answer was yes.
Oh, good times. Thanks for the reminder of those good old days, JTE.
EDIT: For example... reading through all the responses, I recognize LG_Legacy's name there. Hi!
0
That said, seeing that people were still interested, I looked through my resources and found that the floor plans website I had seen earlier has been updated with nearly complete plans, including room names and ceiling heights! See http://biltmore-floor-plan.org/. This is obviously very cool, and very scary at the same time. It means I need to go back and verify heights on everything... And by verify, rebuild. I had been simply eyeing pictures as best I could. Obviously a daunting task.
To make matters worse, when I moved to a Tekkit server, I stopped adding updates to the regular map. Then, Tekkit did a several month hiatus before coming back in a very different format, invalidating my old world and thus erasing my progress. So, I'm back to a state where there's no interior finished at all, which is a shame as the indoor garden was perhaps some of the most beautiful work I've done in Minecraft. In addition, the block palate back then was far inferior to what we have now. As such, I have a significant amount of work to do in replacing stuff with blocks that make more sense. And that's on top of the huge floor plan overhaul I speak of above.
I'm honestly a bit scared about trying to get back to work on this. It's such a large time investment, and I'm trying to finish up my last semester of my degree. Wisdom says to not even get back to this, but I feel guilty every time I think about not finishing it. This truly was going to be my magnum opus of sorts, so it's very hard to turn away. We'll see what time brings!
Also, because I'm good, have a old backup of the map. This is what I'm working from... I no longer have the texture pack to make this work anymore, but it'll still look decent. Also, forgive all the tunnels; was teaching a few friends how to play Minecraft while working on this! https://dl.dropboxus...BiltmoreMap.zip
TL;DR: I'm back! Kinda. Busy. Tons and tons of updating/rebuilding to do. Will it get done? No idea!
EDIT: Oh goodness, what have I done? The floor plans website just went down in the past few days because the Biltmore asked them to remove the pictures. I'm scared since this happened within a week of my posting here after they'd been up for months.
0
0
Here's the twist. The house itself, in real life, is perhaps the most opulent and beautiful place I've ever found myself walking in. Using meter blocks would simply be an insult to the Biltmore, much more so than using mini-blocks is an insult to Minecraft. So, I've moved this over to a Tekkit server and will be using all the crazy eighth, quarter, 2/3, third, hollow, rail, and all the other crazy blocks for detailing. I'm fairly excited about this endeavor, but since none of these blocks work with WorldEdit, it's going to go slowly.
I'll likely be talking to some friends to come join me in helping, so if you're interested in helping, can provide pictures to show your building skill, and are willing to use the Tekkit client, send me a PM or something. Or, better, find me on steam: "kaiser_czar". I'll likely only take the very best, though.
Teaser pic: (funky lion out front)
0
It does look very good. I honestly think that your slightly customized texture packs is one of the better build-specific packs I've seen in awhile; those halls are legit.