Block Change Request: Improving Plaster Palettes

[Emoticone11]

Request: Improving Plaster Palettes

Request Type: General Addition

Try to describe all workarounds and associated issues that make it necessary to add this block in your eyes.
Building all-plaster houses (I'd also include the various "light stone" blocks in this) is very difficult with our current resource pack; such houses usually end up being very plain and featureless. This hasn't really been much of an issue for us because we haven't recently tackled any towns/cities where all-plaster houses make sense (White Harbor uses whitewash, but that works well enough with the white brick palette). However, Ryamsport is now WIP and suffers a bit from the lack of options (though people were able to find some nice workarounds), and Gulltown and Lannisport are both looming in the future and will likely be plaster-heavy in some areas. I think it's time to revisit this issue.

In the past, we used CTM keystone variants to help make plaster facades interesting, but my sense is that this is now considered outdated. The CTM is way too finicky and difficult to make work.

I can think of a few options at the moment:
1. Add slab, stair, wall, window(?) variants for each of the main plaster types.
2. Add random CTM to existing plaster and light stone blocks with subtle imperfections or discolorations, possibly revamping the texture as well.
3. Add new blocks to complement each of the main plaster types (e.g., a cracked plaster block and/or a slightly similar color for creating gradients).

My thoughts are that we would either want to do (2) or (3) but not both, but (1) is compatible with both. The main advantage of (2) is that it avoids the block explosion from adding 1/2 new blocks per each plaster, which might then need the variants as well. The advantage of (3) is that it allows people more control than a random CTM would.

What implications would this have with regards to possibly outdating projects? I think the impacts would be fairly limited due to the fact that plaster isn't used as a predominant style element in any project except for Ryamsport, and Lannisport is old and slated for eventual redo. But I can forsee a couple possible things:

* Some projects use plaster for interior walls (e.g. Highgarden), and use stairs/slabs of some other block for doorways. If we add the variants in option (1), we'd probably have to update some of these interiors. I don't expect this will be too difficult, but we'd need a group effort to find projects that use plaster in this way and to update them.

* Making plaster palettes more feasible may result in experimentation in adding plaster to projects outside of the towns/cities where plaster is currently designated. I think we'd just need to discuss upfront where it makes sense for different types of plaster blocks to be used as a major stylistic element, in the same way that we did with the timber frame blocks.

* Any new CTM plaster blocks (e.g. cracked plaster) we add could end up being used in stone brick gradients, which may not be a huge issue, or it may contribute to changing the way people do gradients and result in inconsistencies between builds before & after the update. This would be less of a problem if we go with option (2), since it would retroactively apply to light stone and plaster blocks already used in gradients.

Anyways, that's all the thoughts I have on this. I'm hoping this thread can be used for community brainstorming and discussion.

 

[Scubooty]

There are those Brick with plaster infill blocks already in game maybe adding a CTM to them where when next to plaster they react so you can have small patches of brick within the plaster as opposed to the plaster within the brick.

 

[EStoop]

I would prefer option 1 & 2 and have some of that Thamus wizardry with the block merging in addition. That way you wouldn't need plaster keystone blocktypes but you could have the same result with any type of stone without having to make more blocks for it.

Adding plaster windows would be a mistake imo, I'd find much greater use for more stone or wood type of windows which were also common in fully plastered walls.

That said I think random CTM in all of our blocks would be a great step forwards.

 

[AerioOndos]

In regards to cracks and whatnot, there is a practice beginning to be used of having terrainset to represent cracking plaster. Is this something to be endorsed or an alternative created?

It is usually used as a lighter, more weathered/cracking form of the plaster around.
Perhaps there could be a plaster block created to fill this particular use, and CTM variations being a reasonably minor blemishes/missing material etc

 

[SseriousBusiness]

I think options 1 and 2 are great, I've always been in favor of having most of our blocks have random ctm, discoloration and some other color variations, very tiny green bits, very small cracks, different shapes in the texture, etc (this began with the river cobble muddy ctm that was added). In terms of adding more plaster blocks for smoother gradients, I think we can gather all of plaster gradients we have right now and see if there are some transitions that are too sudden and could use an extra block, so there wouldn't be a need to create too many more block sets but we could close the gap of 1 or 2 transitions that currently are too drastic. The best option would be for all plasters to merge together and blend like Tham has in some of the plasters in his TP.

 

[Emoticone11]

In regards to cracks and whatnot, there is a practice beginning to be used of having terrainset to represent cracking plaster. Is this something to be endorsed or an alternative created?

It is usually used as a lighter, more weathered/cracking form of the plaster around.
Perhaps there could be a plaster block created to fill this particular use, and CTM variations being a reasonably minor blemishes/missing material etc

It's definitely not something to be endorsed; I've been trying to actively discourage people from using terrainsets that way due to a couple reasons:

1. The terrainset textures are still open to future improvements that Tham and I were experimenting with; these would potentially mess up any uses of the block outside of natural/carved stone. See here for a breakdown of short-term/middle-term/long-term changes to the block (currently we've done most of the "middle-term" stuff).

2. I suspect that it's one of those short-lived trends that spreads quickly because it's innovative, but ages terribly because it doesn't look all that great. The hues and grittier textures of the terrainsets don't blend very well with the manmade brick blocks and it just looks messy.

Seeing this trend is partially what got me thinking about giving light stone blocks a better texture and random CTM, to make them a bit more of a robust block (I'm picturing something like weathered stone brick, which is basically what the terrainsets were being used to represent). Hopefully this can be done in a way that retroactively improves existing uses.

 

[ContraBlonde]

I’d like to suggest the borders get removed from the Mud Plasters so they blend better with other blocks

 

[SseriousBusiness]

I’d like to suggest the borders get removed from the Mud Plasters so they blend better with other blocks

I think that the border works great with stone blocks, it gives a nice transition/detail like here, specially with window blocks:



The only blocks I'd say to remove that border would be with other plaster/smooth blocks, since it doesn't make sense to have it like that.

 

[SseriousBusiness]

I was watching the Timeline series on the Guedelon castle and in this video

(I really recommend watching it) it shows the process of rendering, lime washing and painting of castle walls, and while watching it I thought of this thread emot created for the updating of our plaster options.

In the the minute 10:00 they describe the method of rendering the walls with a rough one coat layer of the covering material, in the minute 34:39 you can see the way it becomes when it's whitewashed, you can very very slightly see the stonework beneath the white layer.

One of the biggest reasons people don't use plasters and whitewash all that often in our server is because the texture itself is very boring and doesn't offer many variations or gradient possibilities like our stone blocks do, so they create rather flat, sterile and almost modern looking surfaces. I thought of experimenting and coming up with these 3 textures:



These 3 blocks are based on these 3 textures and this plaster texture:



(I realise now I should've used this texture for the middle one instead: but oh well)

Forgive me I'm an amateur at creating textures, but besides the fact the color and lighting should be tweaked and maybe the amount of plaster coverage too, the idea would be to be able to have a Cobblestone-Medium brick-Small brick gradient in stone walls that have been plastered. This wouldn't be used in wooden walls but I think it could be a nice addition so people start whitewashing more their castle's interiors.

In a perfect world we'd have blocks that could be used to create something like this:




But I understand that would literally outdate every castle in the server so it wouldn't be a good addition. But I feel like the stone covered lime wash 3 set of blocks while outdating some projects they would be an amazing addition to our blocks, and any castle that has a whitewash would easily be updated with these set of blocks. The white plaster blocks (should still be updated in some way) they would remain as is and these would be used for rougher plaster works in stone walls and for transitions between stone blocks and white plaster blocks to make cracks and areas with weathered plaster smoother.

I'm not sure if this is feasible though, in my head it's an addition that wouldn't cause many issues, the only short side I see is the fact that this 3 block set would only work with 1 type of white wash plaster, so other blocks like the white daub or the brownish plaster wouldn't match this set. But I don't know, it's just an idea I had and could potentially bring more ideas as to how we can improve our plaster blocks.

 

[Emoticone11]

Thanks for the well-documented suggestion Seri. Just to clarify, it sounds like you’re proposing a set of blocks that are essentially brick-plaster composites, to help transition the two and also add details like weathering in gradients?

Once I get an update out with the higher priority items I’ll have some time to experiment with this a bit more.

 

[SseriousBusiness]

Thanks for the well-documented suggestion Seri. Just to clarify, it sounds like you’re proposing a set of blocks that are essentially brick-plaster composites, to help transition the two and also add details like weathering in gradients?

Once I get an update out with the higher priority items I’ll have some time to experiment with this a bit more.

Yes that's basically it! They could be used as stand-alone blocks for a gradient wall using those only (meaning no plaster blocks used just those stone-plaster composite ones), like in a kitchen where the plaster work isn't as precise or a guard tower interior, but the main objective would be to help transition from stone textures to plaster textures and to add detailing bits of less pristine plaster work in full plaster surfaces.