Alec_Sander Builder Application

[Alec_Sander]

What is your age?
17-20

What country are you from?
United Kingdom

Where did you first hear about WesterosCraft?
Reddit

What do you like the most about GoT/ASoIaF?
'Battle of the Bastards' from the show, The sheer amount of lore especially the amount of houses and how fleshed out they are. HOT PIE.

What is your favorite build on our server?
'Storms End' for the size and shape of the walls, and 'Grandview' for the shape and style.

Why do you want to join our server?
I have a real love for realistic fantasy designs and how they can be integrated into the world of asoiaf immersively. Such as where do the people of 'Sunspear' get their water from? Build a well but it has to be a deep one due to the desert. Or how does this low class house make any income? Do they hunt or are they farmers? If they're farmers then they'll need lands/fields and hunters places to cure meats/hang kills.




Did you follow the application rules?
You know nothing, Jon Snow

 

[CashBanks]

Hey Alec
Thanks for your interest in the server and patience while we reviewed it, glad to see you're a fan of the Game of Thrones series and the fantasy genre.
Nice work with this northern style house and the extra touches like the snow layers, I can see you've put thought into it explored the server for inspiration and there's a lot of nice ideas and elements.

I've just got a handful of suggested improvements that'll help with your future builds.
The shape and overall style of the house is close to some of houses you might see around Winterfell or the mountain clains, so you've done well to emulate that style. The stone mix looks like a good combo of cobblestone, dark cobble and northern cobble and you've shown some nice restraint with the choice of interior block details.

Only main note with the layout is the back corner - we generally aim to avoid that style of rounded corner, instead just continuing the through-line of one of the wings of the house all the way to the end, then joining the other wing into it. Hopefully this diagram shows what I mean!


Otherwise you're off to a good start,
For your first challenge build, please make a Low Class Farmer's house in the style of /warp hawthornetown and share screenshots of it in this thread. Take note of commonalities between the houses (block mix, shape of roof, size of house, interior blocks, attic spaces, mezzanine platforms) and make a house that would fit into the Hawthorne town.

Also, if you haven't already, take a look a the Basic Building Guide for some more tips, examples and Do's and Don'ts that will help on future builds.

Please take your time to study the style in detail, and make sure to ask if you have any questions on the above feedback or the hawthornetown style.

Good luck!

 

[Alec_Sander]

Decided to go for a grain farmer who grows herbs on the side. Unsure if its a little too big, but I guess the excuse for that would be a large family. I found the living areas in this style harder to furnish compared to the northern style which can be made less bare with more firewood without it feeling unnimersive.
Hope you like it!

 

[DutchGuard]

Only main note with the layout is the back corner - we generally aim to avoid that style of rounded corner, instead just continuing the through-line of one of the wings of the house all the way to the end, then joining the other wing into it. Hopefully this diagram shows what I mean!

CashBanks in case it's helpful: what you are describing is a preference for cross-gables and an aversion of cross-hips.

 

[Alec_Sander]

CashBanks in case it's helpful: what you are describing is a preference for cross-gables and an aversion of cross-hips.

Yeh I think I managed to correct that in my next build, the area style it was taken from did help me figure it out. cheers!

 

[Alec_Sander]

Got bored during lockdown so decided to have a go at a few builds. One is a Dornish low class baker, another a Crannogman village house and the other is a Fairmarket middle class wine merchant.
I Added some olives and spices around for the baker to flavour his bread and had a go at terrain with a stream. I had a go at some terrain with the Crannogman house and a flatter roof like the style used on the server. The wine merchant also has a small pantry with grapes as I thought he could be trying his hand at making his own wine. The wine merchant build also has some basic outline of other buildings to help with context for the build.
Let me know what you think!

Dornish baker : imgur.com/a/DvAD4b9
Crannogman house : imgur.com/a/SLUHsEj
Wine merchant :

https://imgur.com/a/XDtVUV6

 

[CashBanks]

Hey Alec,
Thanks for putting these houses together and good initiative with the variety. You've done a great job with reproducing the hawthorne/fairmarket/crannog/dornish styles.

Have only got a few small notes on each:
Hawthorne: Really nice, good use of low class blocks and interior/exterior details. When plotting out the yards, it's good to keep the yard wall shape a little more square/parallel with the house and nearby roads. We try to discourage the rounder style of "bubble" yards.

Fairmarket: Well done, looks great, I think you'll just find that houses in Fairmarket use Black slate tiles rather than the Blue slate which you've used here (they look very similar so it's an easy mixup).

Dornish: Dorne can be a tricky style so nice work with keeping this fairly modest and not too elaborate. I like all the small details you've added, with the roof area, we usually suggest not to add any large heavy blocks like pots/sacs to areas that can only be accessible via ladder. It's a small point and might be harder to follow in more compact houses like this Dornish one but just something to keep in mind.

Crannog: Great details and exploration of our custom blocks, the crannog style is one of our older ones that has slipped behind our current standards in some respect, but I won't hold it against you here since you've done a great job with capturing it. Just for future projects I'd suggest adding 1 or 2 cross creams to the roof to add some support for that thatch blocks.

I think at this point you'll learn more from being an actual builder, so consider yourself approved!

Please make sure to read the New Builder guide here: http://westeroscraft.wikia.com/wiki/Newbie_guide
We're also working on an updated version here.

The next step is to make a probation thread in the Probation Forum. You can start building at any open locations on the server - you can find a list of these at /warp build, although it's sometimes outdated, so I would also recommend just asking people in-game and checking the forums for recent project happenings.

A probie leader should post on your thread within a week or so and continue to give you constructive feedback on your houses for the next month (and help be your entrypoint into the server community in general), although as sometimes the probie leaders are busy IRL you may need to be patient while they find the time to respond to you. But message me again if a probie leader hasn't contacted you within two weeks, or if they're taking a while to respond. I would also encourage you to seek feedback from project leaders and other builders/mods. At the end, you'll be made full builder assuming everything goes smoothly.

I'd suggest you also start thinking about what projects you might like to work on, we encourage new builders to first work on "mini-projects" which are small one off areas of other projects, e.g. a hamlet, mill, quarry, and flagged as open for mini-apps by the project leader. Once you've done a few of these you'll be able to apply for a full project.

Make sure to stay in touch and let us know if there's any way we can keep you busy.

Welcome aboard and I'll see you in Westeros!

 

[Alec_Sander]

Thanks! Fully understand all the feedback. I have read about the servers disliking for overuse of logs however I just went off what was done on the server, and that was the build I spent the least time on. I do think I need to do a bit more work on my furnishing and integrating things houses into larger builds but I guess that's a little hard when you're building without server context.
Thanks again!