TerrainSet Stair/Slab/Wall/Fence Variants

Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
Hey everyone,

An update just went onto the Production server adding the promised stair/slab/wall/fence variants for terrainsets. :D Something I definitely should have done a long time ago.

Since this is a fairly substantial addition, I want to set up some ground rules for updates and create a new thread to allow specific communication of any issues that arise.

First, I do not expect nor condone the use of these variants as a "general substitute" for the full blocks in terraforming. That is, using the variants as some sort of "micro-block" for creating entirely higher resolution mountains in MC. There are a couple reasons for this, one practical and one stylistic. The practical reason is that, from the testing I've done so far, it's incredibly tedious to try to WorldEdit the variants like this in such a way that looks good, even using fancy techniques like adjacency mask. Unless someone manages to create fancy scripts that give good results, I expect it will remain tedious to the point where most will not even attempt it (I know I won't bother in my own builds). The stylistic reason is that it would seem incredibly weird to have these higher resolution mountains in one area, and then full block mountains when you walk to the next project over. Some degree of consistency is desired. And again, unless an easily automated script is devised for updating large chunks of existing land, updating existing land to that higher resolution is pretty much a non-starter. Even the slippery slope of re-painting the map fails, since WorldPainter cannot support this level of block placement.

It's helpful to look at what Conquest-based servers have done, since they've had far more stone variants available for years. Even at major builds on a server like Ardacraft, terraforms predominantly use the full block stone blocks, and only use the variants for accents and details that appear to be manually edited. Here's an example from near Arda's Helm's Deep build. Note that the only use of these variants are the slab blocks towards the center and the wall blocks towards the top right, and to rather good effect.

Second, these blocks should obviously be used to replace the existing uses of cobble stairs/slabs/etc. mixed in with terrainset. This is especially common in cave-like builds with stalactites, such as /warp mistcave, as well as forests which used the rock schemsets, so these will all need to be thoroughly updated (plus the schemsets themselves). Here are some rules to follow in updating these:

  • Older builds: Editors+ are free to replace obviously dated mixes of cobble slab/stair/etc. details with the terrainset equivalents on sight. For adding terrainset slabs/stairs/etc. to an area which lacks any sort of slab/stair/etc. details (e.g. sprucing up an old cliff face with nice-looking striations using the slabs), Editors should first ask permission from a mod (sort of like a small unofficial terra project).
  • Active builds (& builds previously lead by a currently active builder): Editors+ should ask permission from the project lead. For instance, since @jmcmarq is still an active builder with us, he should have first call on how he wants /warp mistcave to be updated. When in doubt, ask around. The project lead can obviously ask an Editor+ for help replacing these blocks in their projects.
As far as how the updating should actually be done: in most areas, it should generally be pretty straightforward. For instance, in a cave system with cobble walls used as stalagtites, you can just use a simple replace as long as you're careful to draw your selection around only the cave system, and no man-made builds. Updating the placed rock schematics might be a little trickier, since it requires selecting large areas which may contain legitimate uses of cobble blocks. However, I think a script can be created for updating these by only replacing cobble variants which are adjacent to terrainset blocks. Then you just have to be careful not to select any houses which might have cobble blocks adjacent to terrainset. In the meantime, just be careful with any replaces you do in forests with these rock schematics.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions about the above. I'll update this post if I think of anything I forgot.
 

Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
I played around with using the different karst-based terrainsets for stalagtites/stalagmites and it looked super fine, but if you want to try your hand at a specific texture for those go for it!
 

Kulmen

Herald
I've been meaning to bring this up for a while and I think now's a good time to address it.

Considering the new terrainsets represents types of rock and are now pretty homogenous (ie each terrainset represents a different rock type) it would be better for the server to just bite the bullet and abandon using terrainsets as region wide rock placeholders and instead dedicate each terrainset as a different rock type that can be used in conjunction with the others.

That way we can have more realistic geology represented like striations and banding, and with the new slabs/stairs etc this would effectively be a closed door as there would be no further need to update terrainsets. Ardacraft already represents this pretty well, and it gives us an elegant solution to add detail where we need, while not needing to update where people don't visit for the most part.

In practice, this might look like relabeling Westerlands Terrainset to Limestone Karst or some such, and we then establish usage guidelines based on that Geology of Westeros document that is floating around that in detail explains how geology would work in our world. An added bonus would be that we can better represent universal geology and rock types without raising questions about regional specifics.

Moving forward with an update like this now would be ideal because of the timely discussion around updating terrainsets now, and it would let us firmly resolve the issue.
 

Iwan

Boldtown
I agree with relabeling these blocks to their rock types, and creating 'terrain sets' in form of block/rock types fit for a region. That way we can still create distinguishable and unique landscape for each region, and we give ourselves more a bit more liberty in how these are textured.

About the texturing in general: We're still exploring options to apply improved texturing to our terrains without having to do it ingame with WorldEdit. We've got a few ideas that range from using certain texture features that come with newer versions of minecraft to creating a script that would apply structured texturing to the map, using the current terra set blocks as canvas, so to speak. Imo it's imperative that we develop a good strategy first before jumping to action, to I'd urge any project leader or editor to not go ahead and apply large varieties of terrain set blocks to their terraforming yet.
 

Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
In practice, this might look like relabeling Westerlands Terrainset to Limestone Karst or some such, and we then establish usage guidelines based on that Geology of Westeros document that is floating around that in detail explains how geology would work in our world. An added bonus would be that we can better represent universal geology and rock types without raising questions about regional specifics.

Totally agreed! (actually I mentioned it already in my proposal in the texture pack thread :) )

The only thing I'm debating is whether the region names should be kept for the primary sets (e.g. Westerlands Limestone Karst) to give an indication as to which region that stone type is predominant in.
 

Thamus_Knoward

Shadowbinder
I totally agree! Dutch had a list of common rock types for types which I only partially and broadly cover with the textures I made. To live up to my own expectations I feel I need to rework them to match that list accurately.

Unrelated, but just to clarify Karst is a specific type of limestone landscape, not a rock type, so imo not adequate as a name for the rock itself.

Could we get a geology major in here to draft that list of common rocks and or verify that Dutch‘s list was accurate?

@Kulmen could you post a link to that map?
 

Kulmen

Herald
I totally agree! Dutch had a list of common rock types for types which I only partially and broadly cover with the textures I made. To live up to my own expectations I feel I need to rework them to match that list accurately.

Unrelated, but just to clarify Karst is a specific type of limestone landscape, not a rock type, so imo not adequate as a name for the rock itself.

Could we get a geology major in here to draft that list of common rocks and or verify that Dutch‘s list was accurate?

@Kulmen could you post a link to that map?

Yea! Here it is: http://milestraer.com/the-geology-of-game-of-thrones/
 

DutchGuard

Shadowbinder
Staff member
Pronouns
he/him
@Thamus_Knoward this was my reference.
Bear in mind that it's a map of building stone, but is still representative of the general distribution of stone types.

Note areas around the south-east are left mostly bare, because they don't really have useful building stone (mostly just sand and clay). It stands to reason that there are large areas of Westeros (Blackwater Bay seems a likely candidate if KL = London) that don't have useable building stone near the surface, in which case stone is imported from nearby areas.

Vernacular architecture is a fascinating topic I'd be happy to write at length about, but I'm not sure GRRM cared that much for it.
Beyond the battleground the road ran beside the shore, between the surging grey-green sea and a line of low limestone hills. [...]
An hour farther north, the road divided at a pile of tumbled stones that marked the ruins of a small castle. [...] Part of the main keep still stood, however. Its triple towers were grey granite, like the broken walls, but their merlons were yellow sandstone. (FfC Ch. 9, Brienne)

It isn't unheard of for especially wealthy landowners to import stone from abroad, especially if it was used for decorative purposes, but it would have been stupid to build a granite castle with limestone under your feet.
 
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Thamus_Knoward

Shadowbinder
Geology makes my head spin.
For me as a texture artist, I need to know what the object I need to represent looks like both on a macro level (cracks and fissures), micro level (patterning of the rock), and color. Alas, with rocks the color and micro level texture depend on
a) Relative amount and arrangement of Atoms,
b) Composition of minerals or pseudo-Minerals
c) Presence of intrusions and contaminations
d) Influence of geophysical processes (timescale of heating and cooling, tectonics)

The macro level texture depends on
a) Type of erosion (fluvial, wind, wave-action, freezing-thawing, glacial)
b) Solubility of surrounding rock
d) Influence of geophysical processes (timescale of heating and cooling, tectonics)

Since granite can mean a pretty fluid array of colors and textures it's not exactly feasible to just implement everything in this list.

Although sexy figures like this one at least make reading about it fun :O
Intrusive_big.png
 

Thamus_Knoward

Shadowbinder
@Thamus_Knoward this was my reference.
Bear in mind that it's a map of building stone, but is still representative of the general distribution of stone types.

I'll take a closer look at this, and my process will roughly be this:
- Assign the textures I have already made to visually similar rock-types from the map dutch posted
- Make new textures for whatever I have missed, based on pictures of what that rock looks like on the surface in England (and less so somewhere else in the world as all the factors I mentioned above may affect its appreance despite being classified as the same type of rock).
 

Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
Regarding recreating textures for common rock types: for the 11 primary regional terrainset blocks we currently have, IMO our main priority should be substituting them for textures which are as similar as possible to the previous textures in terms of hue/brightness/saturation, while being consistent with sensible real rock types. We can target other real rock types more closely with the variations we plan to add, ideally in a way which lets them serve as muted accents and transitions between the regional terrainsets. Although we said one variant for each terrainset initially, they don't need to be 1:1 necessarily as long as we just make sure to give good coverage in terms of transitions. Though we should reasonably still try to limit it in the ballpark of ~10 variants.
 

Thamus_Knoward

Shadowbinder
ideally in a way which lets them serve as muted accents and transitions between the regional terrainsets. Although we said one variant for each terrainset initially, they don't need to be 1:1 necessarily as long as we just make sure to give good coverage in terms of transitions.

I don’t think adding block to specifically improve transitions isn’t too necessary. The latest batch is designed so that we get the following network of smooth transitions out of the box:
[Westerlands, Reach] > Eyrie > Eastern > Iron > North > Lava

Westerlands > Dorne > Red Mountains

[Eastern, Iron, possibly Eastern(JungleBiome) too]> Stormlands > North

But please do test this in game to determine what works and what doesn’t and to what degree extra transitions would be required.
 

Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
But please do test this in game to determine what works and what doesn’t and to what degree extra transitions would be required.

Are you referring to the versions you uploaded most recently? I left some fb in the texture pack thread a few days ago; not sure if you noticed it because I think it was buried by some other comments.
 
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Margaery_Tyrell

The Dark Lord Sauron
Geology makes my head spin.
For me as a texture artist, I need to know what the object I need to represent looks like both on a macro level (cracks and fissures), micro level (patterning of the rock), and color. Alas, with rocks the color and micro level texture depend on
a) Relative amount and arrangement of Atoms,
b) Composition of minerals or pseudo-Minerals
c) Presence of intrusions and contaminations
d) Influence of geophysical processes (timescale of heating and cooling, tectonics)

The macro level texture depends on
a) Type of erosion (fluvial, wind, wave-action, freezing-thawing, glacial)
b) Solubility of surrounding rock
d) Influence of geophysical processes (timescale of heating and cooling, tectonics)

Since granite can mean a pretty fluid array of colors and textures it's not exactly feasible to just implement everything in this list.

Although sexy figures like this one at least make reading about it fun :O
Intrusive_big.png


I have arrived from the future
 

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