The Neck Re-Terraform

[carci]

Howdy!

Starting this thread to have one single location for all Neck re-terra related news and discussion. Let me start by presenting my overall plan and then go further into details of each zone with some screenies of the tests. Note: the map below is very rough and approximate, and not to be taken as a 100% accurate plan.


So, The Neck will be divided into multiple distinct areas/zones, each of which will have some internal variation.

Mixed and conifer forests don't need any explanation, you all know what they are.

Salt marshes: these are the areas closest to the sea. Pretty barren, sparsely vegetated, mostly just tall grasses. Here's a couple of biome variants:




Further inland, as water starts to turn brackish, we get some more vegetation:



Wet marshes: these are a sort of an transition zone between salt marshes and bogs, more lush and drier than salt marshes, but not as diverse as bogs. These will have a few biome/vegetation variants to keep things interesting.










The further inland we go, the vegetation will start to grow more substantial: first we get small bushes, then bigger ones, after that small clusters of trees and finally larger forested areas.

Bog: still quite wet, with scattered pools and streams everywhere, but very few larger bodies of water. Note: the tests below are not finished, I'll make the vegetation more varied by adding cranberries, some suitable flowers and such.




There are no tests of the actual swampy part of The Neck yet, those will come after we get an update with some Neck-specific blocks. We'll also most likely need some new tree schems before proper testing on the swamps can start.

You can find all the tests at /warp necktest, I'll be adding more soon and post screenies of them here too. Comments, feedback, ideas and suggestions are more than welcome!

Ps: All of the above tests are made with scripts with no or very little manual labour, if there's interest I can make a post detailing the actual scripts too.

 

[DutchGuard]

Amazing stuff Carc!
On the note of adding more flora to your scripts, here is what I could find in canon:

From A Game of Thrones Sansa I

“When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never saw before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion.”

...

They had been twelve days crossing the Neck, rumbling down a crooked causeway through an endless black bog, and
she had hated every moment of it. The air had been damp and clammy, the causeway so narrow they could not even make proper camp at
night, they had to stop right on the kingsroad. Dense thickets of half-drowned trees pressed close around them, branches dripping with
curtains of pale fungus. Huge flowers bloomed in the mud and floated on pools of stagnant water, but if you were stupid enough to leave the
causeway to pluck them, there were quicksands waiting to suck you down, and snakes watching from the trees, and lizard-lions floating half submerged
in the water, like black logs with eyes and teeth.

...

None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her horsey grin, her hair all tangled and her clothes covered in
mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for Father... Then it turned out the purple flowers were called poison kisses, and Arya got a rash on her arms.

From A Game of Thrones Catelyn VIII

The bogs here are impenetrable, full of quicksands and suckholes and teeming with snakes. To assault any of the towers, an army would need to wade through waist-deep black muck...

From A Dance With Dragons Reek II

To assault any of the three towers, an attacker must expose his back to arrows from the other two, whilst climbing damp stone walls festooned with streamers of slimy white ghostskin. The swampy ground beyond the causeway was impassable, an endless morass of suckholes, quicksands, and glistening green swards that looked solid to the unwary eye but turned to water the instant you trod upon them, the whole of it infested with venomous serpents and poisonous flowers and monstrous lizard lions with teeth like daggers.

From World of Ice and Fire The North

South of the Neck, the riverfolk whose lands adjoin their own say that the crannogmen breathe water, have webbed hands and feet like frogs, and use poisons on their frog spears and their arrows. That last, it must be said, is true enough; many a merchant has brought rare herbs and plants with many queer properties to the Citadel, for the maesters seek such things out to better understand their properties and their value.

To summarize:
- Many species of flowers unique to the area, including especially large variants and those that float on water.
- Species identified by name are the purple poison kisses (possibly inspired by the genus Delphinium) and a pale fungus called ghostskin which I imagine is a kind of lace lichen.
- Swards (areas of short grass) which disguise deep water.

I think it might be interesting to have some custom flowers made for the Neck (or make some biome dependent CTM?) and come up with something that might imitate lace lichen (vines?) but wondered if carci or anyone had any thoughts on the matter before I submitted a formal block request.

 

[carci]

Emot and I have discussed about new flowers, hanging moss/vines, lilypads and such, dunno if they're in the pipeline already. I'm no texture artist and I have no idea how block models work, but I might actually do some tests myself with flowers and other blocks we already have - you know, small tweaks, colour variants and such.

Regarding swards, something like our duckweed with a bit more dense texture could work, if it's possible to make it non-solid?

Some MC modpacks have quicksand blocks that make the player slowly sink, I have no clue how complicated adding a block with such functionality might be, but it could be something worth checking out. Or maybe just make an extreme version of the mud block we have and crank the slow down effect to 11?

 

[DutchGuard]

Emot and I have discussed about new flowers, hanging moss/vines, lilypads and such, dunno if they're in the pipeline already. I'm no texture artist and I have no idea how block models work, but I might actually do some tests myself with flowers and other blocks we already have - you know, small tweaks, colour variants and such.

Regarding swards, something like our duckweed with a bit more dense texture could work, if it's possible to make it non-solid?

Some MC modpacks have quicksand blocks that make the player slowly sink, I have no clue how complicated adding a block with such functionality might be, but it could be something worth checking out. Or maybe just make an extreme version of the mud block we have and crank the slow down effect to 11?

Oh that's great to hear. What say you Emoticone11 ? Need a formal block request made or is this already in progress?

Also, after a bit more research, I found that two better genera to serve as the inspiration would be Lilium (Lilies) and Crinium (Swamplilies) whose sap can cause skin irritation (i.e. if you pluck them, as Arya does). Unlike Delphinium, many species of Lilium and Crinium grow in swamps and bogs. Most appropriate for our needs are:

Lilium 'Landini'


Crinium 'Menehune'


As for swards, I had originally thought we could just float our normal grass plant blocks over water, which might look good from ground level but otherwise isn't very convincing. I agree a kind of duckweed texture could work well, though it might be too flat. The below image might help with inspiration for that.



Interestingly, also visible in that photo are several carnivorous plants, which are very commonly found in bog/swamp areas, despite not being specifically mentioned in canon, could make for some fun unique textures. Below are some images:

Drosera capensis


Darlingtonia californica


Pinguicula vulgaris

 

[Elduwin]

Carnivorous plants are quite common in bogs, as the soils are usually poor and plants had to adapt. Having a block of carnivorous plants (maybe even different sorts) would be a nice and unique addition as well. Though the textures would probably be tricky to do.

Spoiler: Pics

 

[Thamus_Knoward]

Chiming in from the sidelines, it would be really cool to get a custom water block that we retexture to some kind of bog grass. Not sure if that’s feasible with WesterosBlocks though.

 

[carci]

Made some more tests and variants, a couple nicer oner with flowers and bushes:





To avoid things getting too pleasant, a muddier one:



In addition, saved a ton of new conifer tree schems and made sets NeckConiferThinJ, NeckConiferThinS, NeckConiferThickJ, NeckConiferThickS (medium sized trees, J = jungle bark, S = spruce bark, Thin = fences, Thick = walls) and NeckConiferSapling (young trees a.k.a. smol bois).

 

[Emoticone11]

Yep I've talked with Carc a bit in-game about adding some sort of carnivorous plant for the Neck; probably some sort of sundew as those are one of the more common types in sphagnum bogs. It might also be cool to experiment with larger block models for some exotic-looking venemous flowers. I'm not sure about quicksand; I'm sure it's technically possible to have a block that you can "sink" into (sort of like a cobweb but with a solid block model), but if it requires any changes to the block mod code it'll likely take a while to get done.

I'd appreciate if formal block requests are made, for organizational purposes.

EDIT: also carci , would you mind cross-posting your new schemsets to the Schematic Brush thread?

 

[carci]

EDIT: also @carci , would you mind cross-posting your new schemsets to the Schematic Brush thread?

was just about to do that.

 

[AerioOndos]

Are there going to be any raised bogs? These form over time from a build up of plant matter and could be present further in land. Large enough ones can be colonised by trees and held together. Pines particularly do this iirc

 

[carci]

yep, there'll be some elevation variation further inland. you can sort of see that the on the pic with conifer trees, although that's just a one block raise, on the actual map it'll be more substantial. the tests are flat just for the sake of simplicity (i.e. me being lazy).

 

[Azulejo]

It might also be cool to experiment with larger block models for some exotic-looking venemous flowers

The first that come to my mind are hemlock and belladonna. They are the most used historically, at least the most famous. It's true that they are not very "showy", so it wouldn't hurt to look at, for example, this list, that contains types of poisonous plants. There are a few purple ones, like the poison kisses. That being said, I think we have quite a bit of freedom when it comes to designing poisonous plants. Poisons have a lot of presence in Westeros and Essos, and they exist in many types and without equivalents in the real world, so I don't think it matters too much if we invent our own sources for them.

I'm sure it's technically possible to have a block that you can "sink" into (sort of like a cobweb but with a solid block model), but if it requires any changes to the block mod code it'll likely take a while to get done.

Well, very recently Minecraft has added (will add) a block with the characteristics you describe: powder snow. It'll come on the 1.17 update. The truth is I don't know how difficult it has been to implement, or if it has required any important changes in the code that Westeroscraft, being in 1.12, can't have.

 

[DutchGuard]

Testing some Neck Kingsroad causeway ideas.

Inspired by:

https://imgur.com/a/YBUDrf2

 

[CashBanks]

Dutch? Building? WHAT?!

 

[AerioOndos]

I'd say we want a dirt road rather than a pebbly road. for one part, the pebbles (gravel stand in?) would work best under a layer of packed dirt where they cannot be removed or shifted as easily while also enabling the surface to drain, rather than to become as marshy as the land around it.

 

[DutchGuard]

Had another go, tried having a few areas where the harder rubble is showing underneath, but let me know what you think. Also tried adding halfdoors to the one block high variant, which I personally prefer over just the wattle. Would also like thoughts on the causeway height and width.

 

[AerioOndos]

This dirty test is looking beautiful Dutch! I love it! (might steal the mixture for some roads elsewhere hehe)
I like the raised version most, but also that brings to mind, how are we presenting the causeway? It surely needs to be above the water level. Does that mean its a levy? Should that have sloping dirt sides too? 1 or 2 blocks above the water? and so on.

I'd say it would be good to have a simple earthen levy with some parts grassy and others more like your reinforced wooden section.

 

[DutchGuard]

Looking at how carci has been mapping out the water so far, it appears that the Kingsroad manages to stay on land for most of its route through the Neck, with a few short crossings to the north, which could be traversed with short wooden (or stone?) bridges.

Worked on a larger scale test on my plot at /warp dutch. Thanks carci, Endy, and SchmiedOlaf for helping put it together.

https://imgur.com/a/ciAM7On

 

[DutchGuard]

So I know this has nothing to do with the terra aspect of the neck but last night I was on a vc with some fellow builders and I think ric gave me a idea. Instead of having many projects in the neck it would be better to just have one big neck project that would encompass Greywater watch, most Caitlin, and more. Since the terra for the neck would already be done 95% of the work would be building and plotting. I think if we got a few builders who were interested in doing this, it would be a blast. As many of you know I want to build in the neck and I would be highly interested in working with others the build the neck. Ether way I’m just trying to float some ideas up on how to do the neck.

have a wonderful day

The GWW project encompasses all the crannogmen houses, so there should be a rather large number of minis as part of the project. It might even be considered a megabuild of sorts. Moat Cailin is distinct (in both style and biome) and distant enough from GWW to qualify as a standalone project but an argument could be made to combine them.

That said, Moat Cailin still exists as a completed build. I don't know how the mods feel about reusing it or replacing it, but that should be decided in a separate appeal thread.

 

[Jeffjunior77]

Maybe u can prepare 4-5 spots and every sunday GWW moves to the next Spot so ist Not Thats so mutch work.