Block Change Request: Borderless diagonal timber beams

[eag_inc]

Request: Borderless diagonal timber beams

Request Type: General Addition

Try to describe all workarounds and associated issues that make it necessary to add this block in your eyes.
Currently there is no particularly nice way to represent diagonal timber bracings. To make diagonal bracings on the sides of a building for example, you have to use the bordered left/right hatch blocks, all of which will have horizontal pieces cutting through each block line if you use them in conjunction with other frames. Otherwise if you use the hatches alone with plaster, you have a box around the diagonal bracings which looks pretty bad. For this reason I don't think many people use diagonal bracings and opt instead for other designs.
Regarding the question of if this may outdate other builds, personally I don't think so. To me this seems like it could work as an additional method for existing half timber designs we use on the server, and older techniques still look fine for their intended purposes.

Below is what I propose could be implemented:

Diagonal bracing (left/right): Using an overlay CTM to bleed into adjacent plaster blocks.


Example used in a Vale-esq house. The diagonal bracing allow for accurate German half-timbering.


Types of evidence to support your request: Historical

Historical Evidence
There's a large historical precedent for including these borderless diagonal bracings. Using them on the corners of a wall was incredibly common in almost every part of Europe.

File(s) attached

 

[Azulejo]

We could kill two birds with one stone and make it with a vertical CTM so we can have more steep diagonal beams, a feature very common in many many timber patterns.

 

[eag_inc]

I think it'd be a good idea to add a variant like that as well. But unfortunately (to my knowledge) there's no way to combine it into the existing block. You could of course do it generically, but because the overlay CTM adds the corner bits to the texture to connect them properly with adjacent diagonal blocks, it would conflict.

Would work well as a second addition though, using the same overlay CTM to connect the corners.

 

[Telcontar]

I like the original idea of a borderless diagonal timber frame variant a lot, especially since it could encourage a mix of daub/plaster and timber frame blocks (which can be hard to do currently), but I'm not so sold on the steep diagonal CTM. I think I'm just wary of things straying too far from the minecraft asethetic/feel, but maybe I'm old fashioned?

 

[Emoticone11]

Regarding the 2-tall diagonal timber frame variant - I drew a line in the sand back during the vertical timber frame CTM update between that and more complicated patterns, since there's easily a slippery slope to fall into that would only result in outdating most of the builds on the server. I'm not inclined to budge on this position, since I think that adding 2-tall diagonal beams would greatly impact how we make standard timber-framed buildings, and I don't really see the energy to go back and update/redo projects with new timber patterns when there's so much on the horizon.

Now, the request for borderless diagonal beams is an interesting one that I think could complement existing timber pattern options in particular locations, rather than strictly outdating them. It could possibly also fit with the plaster revamp to make plaster palettes more viable, which will be relevant for places like Gulltown. So I'm a bit warmer to this request, though I think it will still need some experimentation to assess what exactly the impact of it would be.

One thing I'm a bit worried about is relying on overlay CTM to make this work, just because we're no longer using Optifine as of the 1.15 migration. I'd want to make sure that it's still possible with the new ConnectedTexturesMod that we're using.

 

[EStoop]

I personally dislike combinations with borderless beams or plasters purely because the timber frame blocks rely on adjacent timber frame blocks to have the proper thickness of the timber frames. In the example with the borderless diagonal beam the diagonal beam is twice as thick as the beams upholding it.

If CTM for the current blocks is not an option I'd rather have no options at all than introducing new blocks that do not work flawlessly with the timber frames we already have.

 

[DutchGuard]

I personally dislike combinations with borderless beams or plasters purely because the timber frame blocks rely on adjacent timber frame blocks to have the proper thickness of the timber frames. In the example with the borderless diagonal beam the diagonal beam is twice as thick as the beams upholding it.

If CTM for the current blocks is not an option I'd rather have no options at all than introducing new blocks that do not work flawlessly with the timber frames we already have.

Could make them as thin as the adjacent?