TheGoatLord Builder Application

[TheGoatLord]

18

The United Kingdom (England)

It was a while ago, but I think I searched 'Westeros Minecraft' on Youtube and a build on the server was one of the first results.

I love the LotR trilogy. I'm currently reading Don Quixote if you could call that 'fantasy', it's a similar setting to a lot of fantasy novels I suppose.

(DID NOT ANSWER QUESTION)

Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4, Season 5, Season 6, Season 7

Theon Greyjoy. Upon watching the show, I found myself becoming highly invested in his character development from season 4 onward. He's conflicted between a being a Stark or Greyjoy, deep down he knows he can never be either of them, all he wants is to be 'the right kind of person' but that doesn't look like an option either. He betrays the Starks to appease Balon, gets captured by Ramsay, endures hell and realises it's not too late to make up for his wrongs and become the right kind of person. He pays back his debt to the Starks fully when he sacrifices himself to save Bran, neatly ending his story. I plan on reading the books once they are all released. So I'm eagerly anticipating reading GRRM's ending for Theon. I also plan on reading the adventures of Dunk and Egg after Don Quixote.

Also:

- He's one of the few characters to be given a satisfying conclusion.
- Alfie Allen's performance was incredible.
- I think the Greyjoys have the best sigil.

I have a rather extensive knowledge of locations within Westeros and its kingdoms due to Youtube vidoes about GRRM's world. I am also familiar with World Edit.

I joined the server in September last year, and found myself walking from one notable location to another, mainly to fill in the Journey Map. Life has been somewhat rough since around November 2019 and the server was a great place to forget about it all. Walking from Storms End to Casterly Rock, or from Highgarden to the Eyrie and visiting as many villages or smaller castles as I could along the way was something I would always look forward to during my day at college. Even though I couldn't build anything myself, seeing what the builders have done with the server was enough to amaze me more so than before with every visit.

I love GRRM's world, and your depiction of it - I believe - is consistently true to his own. I would be honoured to be given the opportunity to contribute to it, not only to join the workforce of builders but also to give something back to Westeroscraft in return for the solace with which it has provided me these past few months.

I had been considering applying to be a builder for a while and decided that now (given that I am no longer allowed to leave my house) was the perfect time to do so. I would happily only contribute to the smaller builds if my building prowess is inadequate to warrant participation in the more significant ones.

https://imgur.com/a/yOMa8Hu apologies if the link doesn't work, It's my first time using Imgur in this way, I can Email the pictures if not.

YOU KNOW NOTHING, JON SNOW

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey GoatLord,

Sorry about the delay in response! I'm glad to see your interest in our server.

Overall, it looks like you're off to a good start - you have a good sense of the different things that are needed to make a realistic house, and have an eye for detail (like the animal pens outside). However, there are some stylistic elements that don't really fit on our server, and some things that need a bit of work. I'll start by giving some general feedback on the main things I noticed, and then start you off with some 'challenge' builds in various styles to help you learn our server's building style.

- We tend to use much more simplistic facades for houses/castles, and avoid adding details for the sake of detail. By "detail for the sake of detail", I mean things like the fence blocks on the facade, the indented windows, etc. which don't really seem to serve a realistic purpose. Also, we pretty much always avoid log blocks in builds now (unless it's an actual log cabin or something), since they just look rather clunky. You'll mostly only see "log framing" in much older builds on our server, more recent builds will just have a fully stone foundation (or whichever other material).

- It doesn't make much sense realistically to have half of the foundation plaster and the other half daub & wattle - remember that it's a whole process to make daub & wattle, and to make stone walls, and to make plaster/whitewash. They wouldn't usually mix these different methods haphazardly in the same house, but rather would just have a stone foundation with daub & wattle (or whitewash, plaster, wood, etc.) built above it.

- Never use torches in ordinary houses; these are usually for castle interiors, or possibly for streets in towns/cities. Instead, people in ordinary houses would use candles for light, or possibly a lantern (but usually no more than one). Make sure to place the candles vertically on a surface, and don't stick them on walls (since it makes it seem like the candles would melt and fall off - although it's possible we'll update the pack to have candle holders for horizontally placed candles in the future).

- Avoid flat ceilings, since realistically they would have to have some sort of support, and it also doesn't look great. You want to make rafters using upside-down stair blocks, slab blocks, and/or wall blocks. If you look at houses in recent town/city builds on our server (e.g. Fairmarket, Duskendale, White Harbor, etc.) you'll see rafters of all kinds.

- Never use bookshelves in ordinary houses, since the literacy rate in IRL medieval times (which we're generally basing our project on) was extremely low.

- While the animal pens in the yard are a good start, make sure to also include all the other details necessary to show signs of life. For example, the yard would probably be trampled by the animals, so it would be mostly dirt/mud. They would also probably have veggie gardens (in the yard space in back of the house, for instance, which would be fenced off from the animals), and possibly other things like a line for drying clothes.

Before moving on, I recommend you do a couple things on the server: 1. Check out /warp gradient and /warp furnish, both helpful tutorials for building. 2. Take a look at the recent town/city builds on our server (/warp whiteharbor, /warp duskendale, /warp fairmarket, /warp klsprawl, etc.), and study some of the individual houses closely. Try to pick up on some of the things people do, think of why & when they do those things, and incorporate them into your houses.

Once you're ready, for a first challenge build, please make a medium-sized house in the style of /warp woodwright. Please let me know if you have any questions about the feedback I gave above, or the challenge style. Good luck!

-Emote

 

[TheGoatLord]

Hi Emote,

Many thanks for the input, I took it into account and produced a Blacksmith's house. I had trouble deciding whether or not to let a specific part of the roof overhang; on the server it doesn't fully overhang but I'm not sure if this is always true or just sometimes, anyway this is highlighted in the album. I do seem to have added quite a few windows, but these were necessary for lighting internally, however my house dose seem a little brighter on the inside than a lot of the houses on the server so I may have overdone it.

Here it is: https://imgur.com/a/1L5aBbB

Looking forward to hearing from you!

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey GoatLord,

Great work on this house! It seems like a huge improvement over the first one, and you got most of the important elements of the Woodwright style. I'll jump right into some of the feedback I have:

- I agree with your comment about the roof corner. Usually we avoid those and go for either rectangular or T-shaped houses for that reason.

- The main piece of feedback that I have is that the daub & wattle still needs a bit of work. Having the big "gaps" in the timber (especially on this facade) makes it seem a bit incomplete & messy. You should think about the daub & wattle being the main material of the house, and forming some sort of structure/pattern with it. There are common techniques here, like framing windows and the like, though it's a bit hard to explain and you'd probably be better off studying houses which use it a bit more - I can try to give some good examples next time I log in, if you want. Once the base daub & wattle pattern is made, you'll often see people use plaster or plain daub blocks in small amounts (completely framed by the daub & wattle) to decrease the business of the facade a bit. I think the key point is that you want things to be somewhat grid-aligned (since the timbers/wattles are essentially just support beams).

- The yard feels a bit small; given that Woodwright is a fairly rural town, you should probably give it more space than that. One important thing to keep in mind with yards, though, is to avoid "bubble yards", where the borders of the yard follow an arbitrary blob-like shape. Instead, you should use straight lines for the borders of the yard (these can be diagonal) which align with features of the house, any surrounding houses, or any surrounding roads or fields in a way which is realistic and aesthetic. Keep an eye out for this when exploring modern builds on the server, and see how fields and house yards are laid out.

For the next challenge, please build a middle-class house in the style of /warp whiteharbor. You can generally find the middle-class houses in the southwest area of the city. Feel free to ask if you have any questions. Good luck!

 

[TheGoatLord]

Hi! Apologies for the delay.

White Harbour style middle class house.

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There it is. I wasn't sure exactly how to implement a garden into the build since most houses in White Harbour either have no garden or a communal one. I gave it a shot anyway and I was satisfied with the result. I also included some oak leaves as bushes on the facade, which would obviously look more autumnal in the actual White Harbour on the server.

Thanks,

TGL

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey GoatLord,

Sorry for the delay on my end as well! Been a busy last few days.

Again, great work on this house! It seems like another improvement to me, which is a good sign. Being a bit pickier with my feedback this time:

- When you have an overhang on the roof, and you're also jettying the second story of the house, you want to be careful not to have the roof start on the same level as the second story overhang. That is, you want the second story to be a bit higher (or don't jetty the second story at all). The reason for this is that if you do have both, from the side it looks like the roof has a double-overhang, which looks strange and very top-heavy.

- The side I linked in the above image feels a little plain in general; if it's facing a street, you probably want to think of ways to spice it up a little (either in terms of architectural elements, or immersive details that might be up against the side of a house on a busy medieval city street - but still make sure to avoid detail for the sake of detail, like crate clutter - you still want it to have a realistic basis). As an exercise, I recommend finding some streets in White Harbor you really like and seeing the details houses use (especially sideways facades) to avoid that problem.

- I generally always avoid 1x2 (horizontal) windows, since they just have weird proportions most of the time IMO. It's better to use 1x1 windows or 2x1 (vertical) windows. Also, I have a somewhat strong dislike of fence windows (although they are fairly common on our server, somewhat less so recently), and would suggest just making open windows, i.e. without anything in them except for the shutter.

- A couple pointers with vines: first, you always want to make sure a section of vines connects to the ground somehow (at least if the vines are supposed to be representing something like ivy). Note that they need to be able to get nutrients somehow to survive. Secondly, you want to avoid making your vines too "patchy". The biggest sign that the vines are too patchy is that you have single blocks or "strands" of vines which only touch on the corners, or don't connect at all. Ideally, you want every vine block to have at least one directly adjacent vine block, and the vines can grow in fairly large contiguous areas. Think of how ivy would actually grow on houses.

- You should avoid using log blocks even in the interiors of houses (as you're doing for the rafters). Basically, avoid using them in houses at all, unless you have a very specific use for them in some context. You might see them used for rafters or something occasionally in White Harbor, but it still looks rather clunky and is becoming more and more obsolete in newer builds.

- I would recommend trying to think more about how to split large rooms like this one into smaller rooms. While there's not necessarily a "correct" approach here, I personally find smaller and more cramped rooms (though not cramped in terms of detail/aesthetics; you still want to keep everything fairly simple) a bit easier to make look good, and I think it's also a bit more realistic in a large medieval city like White Harbor. Otherwise, I would still recommend playing around with ways to give the room structure in terms of architectural details, like perhaps support beams (no full log blocks, but thin logs are sometimes very useful here), etc.

Other than those things, I'm pretty happy with your progress so far. For the next challenge, please make a farmstead in the style of /warp gaunt. By farmstead I mean a more rural house with a more sizeable yard with herbs/vegetables (tip: be sure to avoid bubble yards like I mentioned earlier), animal pens, possibly a barn, etc. There's tons of information on google about medieval farmsteads, so I recommend looking it up for inspiration!

 

[TheGoatLord]

Hey Emote,

https://imgur.com/a/hWOHu0G

There you go. This one was tough! But i'm pretty happy with what I produced. Inside the cottage I was short of space, so I used a Furnace block rather than building an actual furnace out of slabs etc. I'm not sure whether or not the furnace blocks are commonly used on the server but I don't remember seeing many at /warp gaunt.

Thanks,

TGL

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey sorry again for the delay! My semester just finished so I should be able to be a bit more on top of it now.

Overall this looks pretty good. You've definitely gotten the more rural style down, and the house has some very nice structural details on the outside like the covered pens. Here's some of my feedback this time:

- The furnace block seems perfectly fine, and looks good. However, one historical realism note, furnaces + chimneys are actually sort of overused on our server. In the real-life medieval analogue, it was common for peasants to not have chimneys, but rather just have ventilation in the roof which smoke from the fire would vent out through.

- The exterior of the small shed building feels a bit too 'vanilla minecraft', particularly with the single row of cobble and the single row of wood. The curved thatch roof on the shed is also a little weird and I'd just do the roof as either straight thatch slabs or straight thatch stairs. Also, while even-width buildings are fine in some circumstances, you should generally avoid doing 2-wide windows in such plots.

- Avoid using the brick slab blocks in the top halves of the windows.

- The daub & wattle is an improvement over the previous houses which used it, though still feels a tad bit jumbled/messy. A few things are contributing to this: first, the horizontal rows of the open daub & wattle block (i.e. the one with just a frame and no diagonal timber) are something I usually avoid except for a handful of specific patterns where it looks good. Secondly, the "busier" daub & wattle textures (e.g. the fully criss-crossed one) are mixed somewhat homogenously with the "simpler" daub & wattle textures. The strategy that works well with daub & wattle patterns is framing the "simpler" textures with the "busier" textures. If this is a bit confusing let me know and I can try to show an example.

- You generally want to avoid putting wood types next to each other which contrast harshly, such as spruce and oak. There's an example of that here with spruce doors that should be replaced with oak. Some acceptable wood plank combinations (usually using one for walls/floors/etc. and another for furniture) are oak/jungle, jungle/spruce, oak/birch, etc.

- The thatch rooves on both buildings should have a little more direct support underneath.

- Although this is largely more of a detail that editors (builders who use WorldEdit) are concerned with, it helps to vary up the crops a little bit by using the different growth levels and/or some other blocks interspersed here and there. I think there's an example of this at /warp crops (?) but I can't double check if that's the right warp right now. Let me know if it doesn't work and I'll check next time I'm in-game.

In a nutshell, I'd say that you're pretty much on point with regards to the planning & plotting aspects of building, but still have a little bit of improvement to go with regards to stylistic execution. So for the next challenge build I'd pay extra attention to that, trying to find some exemplary houses (if you ask builders in-game they'll definitely be able to point you in the right direction too), and really analyzing the choices they make to strike a balance between too busy/messy and too plain/boring.

For the next challenge, I'd like to see a middle-class town build in the style of /warp duskendale, one of the newer towns on the server. As before, feel free to ask if you have any questions. Good luck!

 

[TheGoatLord]

Hey emote, Thanks for the input. I'm currently in the process of building the facade of the house itself. I'm not exactly clear on what you meant in regard to the use of wattle and daub and you mentioned that I should ask you for an example if that was the case, so could I please have an example?

Also I kicked myself when you pointed out that the thatch roof needed support because it's such an obvious thing which escaped my attention o_o won't make that mistake again!

Thanks

 

[Emoticone11]

Sure thing! I tried to re-create the layout of your previous house to give an example of how I would do the daub & wattle, as well as playing around a bit with foliage to spice it up a bit. Here's what I came up with:

Here's what the daub & wattle patterns look like without the foliage:

(the pattern on the other side with the animal pens is the same as the above).

Notice how the patterns are a bit more regular, and I try to use framing to create patterns which strike a balance between too busy and too simple.

Also, one thing I noticed while recreating the house that I didn't notice before is that your diagonal plot is rather irregular, which made it a bit tricky.

The bottom layout is the plot you had from what I can tell; I would recommend doing one of the top two diagonal layouts instead. The roof doesn't need full nested corners, you can just do this:

Hope this helps!

 

[TheGoatLord]

Hey,

Thank you very much for the explanation, I found your input extremely helpful.

Duskendale Style Middle class house

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Here's the album. I feel like in an effort to make the build any other shape than a rectangle I made the house too large by adding the 90 degree bend. So I was left with a lot of space to experiment with wattle & daub patterns and I payed special attention to striking a balance between busy and simple as you mentioned before.

I also struggled to sufficiently occupy all the space in the attic, with the house being so large. Oh, and I included a red keep banner as you'll see, I'm not sure how common the kind of loyalty to the crown that warrants flying its banner in your own home was in the middle ages but I liked the look.. I did see a few banners in homes at Duskendale. I think that's all I have to say on this one.

Thanks,

TGL

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey GoatLord,

Good work on this house! Definitely an improvement. I think your interiors are well done, and the exteriors are almost there. Here's some of the feedback I have this time around:

- I agree that the house plot might be a little bit too large, but I think you did a good job filling the interior space.

- The daub & wattle is better than the previous house, you're getting the hang of it. If I were to nitpick, I think you should use the "plain brown daub" block a little more in place of some of the "daub wattle brown frame" block, and also work on having more regular/neat patterns a little more particularly on this side.

- The stormlands cobble blocks and sandstone blocks in the yard here contrast a bit too much, so I'd probably exchange one of the blocks for something which contrasts less.

- The "northern carvings" block used in the gables doesn't look great, since it contrasts heavily color-wise with the oak wood. That block was really meant to be used in the more nordic-inspired styles in the North.

- Don't use 3-wide windows! Really, you should avoid making horizontal windows altogether, they just don't look great and aren't terribly realistic.

For a (tentative) final challenge build, please make a middle-class house in the style of /warp fairmarket. The style there's a bit more complex but I'm sure you'll have no trouble with it, just keep in mind the "simple vs. busy" balance we talked about. Good luck!

 

[TheGoatLord]

Hey Emote. Thanks again for the feedback.

Fairmarket style Middle-Class House

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I really enjoyed this build.

I didn't include an Image of the opposite side of the house because It's a terrace house, so the wall would be shared with another house. I added the blue slate tips to the roof, I'm not sure if this kind of detailing in common is Fairmarket though, I decided to keep it anyway.

Thanks, TGL.

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey GoatLord,

Awesome work on this house! You've nailed the style on this one and the daub & wattle looks perfect.

My only feedback is that you've used blue slate whereas the Fairmarket style has black slate. It's a common mistake people make to mix them up, because they look sort of similar color-wise, but the blue one seems a lot more vivid and cartoonish. It was mainly intended for some Vale castles like the Eyrie.

Otherwise, consider yourself approved!

The next step is to contact a mod in-game to promote you to New Builder. The New Builder guide can be found here: http://westeroscraft.wikia.com/wiki/Newbie_guide
And also make a probation thread in the probation forum.

You can start building at any open locations on the server - you can find these at /warp build, although it's often rather outdated, so I would also recommend just asking people in-game and checking the forums for recent project happenings. There should still be parts of Duskendale sprawl open for building, and I believe Oxcross/Sarsfield, Parren, Rousemont (/warp romohamlet), and Norrey. You can also build at /warp playground in the Test world if you just wanna experiment with stuff.

A probie leader should post on your thread within a week or so, and help give 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, I would also encourage you to seek feedback from project leaders and other builders/mods). At the end, you'll be made full builder, and then can start applying for projects.

Welcome to the team, I look forward to building with you!

 

[TheGoatLord]

Hey Emote,

I was so eager to start building that I forgot to thank you for overseeing my application and for your very helpful input.

So thank you, and I'll catch you on the server.