Uldirone Builder Application

[Uldirone]

eighteen


France


I heard about WesterosCraft by myself a few years ago when I got connected for the first time...However, as my English was really poor, I quit a few minutes after as I didn't understand the signs and as I didn't want to get ban.


I would say Lord of the Rings but Game of Thrones is just after, haha..



Game of Thrones



All of the above


My favorite ASOIAF character is definitely Jaime Lannister, first of all, I've always supported his family and I feel like Jaime is the most controversial person of it. He is gentle and nice to his brother, he is the only one to though... And at the same time he is imprisoned by his love with Cersei which maintains it on two behaviors.


In the server, I am sure I could help in all the Westerland villages that have to be built. I am no really good with roofs but I think I am not bad at choosing where to place the Church, or the Market, etc...


I would like to build on this server for many reasons.
First, I need to improve my building skills because I've always loved build on Minecraft.
Then Game of Thrones is part of my favorite seasons and I'm really hyped by Season 8 these days so it boosted me to check how was WesterosCraft doing.
Finally, I see a grand potential in this server, 'specially with the fact that the MMORPG was planned out and announced, I'm a big fan of MMO's and I'm already imagining how it could be amazing when everything will be built, how magic it will be. Living in Lannisport or even Casterly Rock is my dream!

https://imgur.com/a/MiV5CSD

YOU KNOW NOTHING, JOHN SNOW

 

[Enah]

Hi uldirone, would you post a link to the album containing your images? It takes me to the home page instead of your profile

 

[Uldirone]

Hey Enah, it has been a while I haven't heard from you on the forum, thus I got time to build a house inspired from White Harbor's houses, I just didn't find a good "fall" or "autumn" biome so I did like it was after Winter came I hope you will enjoy it and make a feedback on it too

https://imgur.com/a/4EFxnlk

Thanks,

Uldirone.

 

[Augurex]

At first, Uldirone, I thought you were referring to some house from the Arbor, kind of like the Red/Green Apple Fossoways, maybe there was a White/Red Arbor difference. That obviously made no sense, especially since the vintages from the Arbor are referred to as gold/red, not white/red, and then I saw the snow and realized you meant White Harbor. Ironically, WH has no snow.

Anyway, I’ve untangled my mind from your simple mistake and am laughing about it now.

I’m curious, maybe the White Arbor thing is a French pronunciation?

 

[Uldirone]

At first, Uldirone, I thought you were referring to some house from the Arbor, kind of like the Red/Green Apple Fossoways, maybe there was a White/Red Arbor difference. That obviously made no sense, especially since the vintages from the Arbor are referred to as gold/red, not white/red, and then I saw the snow and realized you meant White Harbor. Ironically, WH has no snow.

Anyway, I’ve untangled my mind from your simple mistake and am laughing about it now.

I’m curious, maybe the White Arbor thing is a French pronunciation?

Ow no sorry, that was a mistake I made, I'ma' correct it right now and thanks for your remark

Uldirone

 

[thecoddfish]

Hey Uldirone, sorry for the long wait! I hope you're still interested in continuing your application.

Things I like:
- Nice and sensibly low class interiors
- Great attic sleeping area

Things that need improvement:
- Exteriors of the house are good, but a little plain - they don't show off the more advanced building skills
- Maybe put some ash or stone in the fireplace instead of just dirt surrounding the fire
- Vines inside the house seem kind of weird

Overall I think that was a really good house with no major mistakes - I just need to see you make some slightly more advanced stuff to see how you cope with that. For your challenge, I'd like you to make a house in the style of /warp Fairmarket. My advice is to find 5 houses you like in Fairmarket and take photos of them, then go into singleplayer and use them as a reference to make one of your own. Focus on making a nice staircase (this is the first part of the build I plan, along with the fireplace), thinking about how the house would fit in with the road and houses around it, and making a nice veggie garden that would fit into the town.

Good luck!

 

[Uldirone]

Hi!

I know this has been a long time since I first came and did my application.


I saw some of you today in game and here is what you asked me @thecoddfish. I hope you will enjoy it and make a nice feedback!

https://imgur.com/gallery/U879qfc (and this one https://imgur.com/gallery/vWbNn0T [important because shows the fireplace.](Hope it will work this time. Also for you Enah )

I know it is not perfect but I did my best and in a quick time as I want to show you my efficiency.

Kind regards,

Uldirone.

 

[Uldirone]

Hi!

I hope you are all doing good! I am personally fine, in a week I had time to explore all of The Reach, the Westerlands, the Stormlands and the Crownlands. I'm still pretty amazed by everything that I see everyday and here is just a message(after having asked if I could do it) to ask you if my application has been accidentally forgotten or not.

Anyway, I have been asking builders if they could give me non-official challenges as I am waiting for an answer here and Alex(you know who Alex is, right) asked me to build a farmstead in the style of Gaunt. I will show it to you when done.

In spite of that, I have been having a really good time since I came back and I can't wait to see what is next! Thanks for this project and I hope I could have my part to play in the Game of Thrones aswell.

See you soon, in game or on the forum,

Uldirone.

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey Uldirone,

Sorry about the delay in response! I think Dr. Codd is a bit busy out there in the front lines right now. I can pick up your app for the time being.

I took a look at your Fairmarket house. Overall it looks great! You seem to have gotten a good sense of the FM style, so I'm gonna be a bit more picky with my feedback:

1. The mixture of spruce wood and oak wood right next to each other is a bit jarring. Usually there's no need to randomly mix wood types at all (just pick one wood and stick with it). If you do mix wood types, for example to show decay, or for variety in interiors, you should pick ones that go well next to each other and don't contrast too much. So Oak+Jungle, Oak+Birch, Jungle+Spruce, etc. but never Oak+Spruce.

2. Instead of having the stone blocks in the base randomly mixed, you should try to do a gradient. Start with one block at the bottom, transition to the next block, and then transition to the third block. Better yet, make the foundation using some primary block, and then use other blocks to show corrosion or weathering. There's a good tutorial for this at /warp gradient. If you do this right, it can also help make the base seem a bit less plain, and more visually interesting.

3. Try to avoid overly messy thatch rooves, like the shed in the yard here.

4. I'm unsure about the use of space in the interiors. For instance, the ground-level floor feels like it has way too much empty vertical space. Part of this can be fixed by adding another layer of rafters (e.g. using wood slabs or wood wall blocks across the room), but also, 7 blocks high is just super high for a ceiling in an ordinary house. On the other hand, this room is the opposite, the low ceiling (just 3 blocks tall) given how wide the room is makes it feel very cramped. Also, I feel like the house can be made just 1 or 2 blocks lower overall.

5. Same thing with the room here, the low flat ceiling makes it seem very cramped. Which can be fine for a storage attic, but it looks like this room is used for more than that, with the furnace and everything. A couple more things I want to point out in that room: the cobblestone pillar in the staircase is a bit weird, you should replace that with some type of wood. I would try to cover up the slate blocks on the inside a bit better, for instance using half doors. The bookshelf blocks feel out of place, even for a wealthier household - remember just how low literacy rates would have been during medieval times.

6. When you use workbenches, cabinets, etc. make sure to cover up all sides except one, since it doesn't make sense for a cabinet to open on multiple sides. It's usually easy to do this with half door blocks. For instance, the cabinet in the back right of this picture needs to be covered.

7. You shouldn't have grass blocks in house yards, since they'd be used and trampled a lot. Although I'm assuming those were dirt blocks, and they turned into grass blocks automatically? I think there's a command to disable that, but I don't remember off the top of my head. You can try googling it. Otherwise, I'd try your best to turn them back into dirt blocks right before taking the screenshots.

Please let me know if any of the points above were unclear! I can help explain it a bit better (or try to show you in-game) if you didn't understand.

For the next challenge build, I think a farmstead in the style of Gaunt sounds like a great idea. Once you finish that I can take a look at it.

Best,
Emote

 

[Uldirone]

Hey everyone who sees this post!


First of all, thanks a lot Emote for your critique, it was really explicit and professional. I tried to take care of all the remarks you told me.

I went to warp gradient and tried to respect the method, it was well explained and for the ints( I know I'm not the best at it) I tried to maintain a good amount of space between to floor and the ceiling like you told me to.


I must admit I had a hard time when I first started it(I remember myself going from my single world to the server checking out the palettes and blocks that would've been useful), I had to //cut five times what I first did but then, after a night of sleeping, I started over and it worked pretty well. I asked Alex on the server what he thought of it when I had done like 50/60% of it and he gave me nice advice, on the chimney and some other details but overall, I found myself proud of what I did and I hope you are going to enjoy it as well!

So here is the link to the Farmstead in the style of Gaunt as demanded https://imgur.com/gallery/7goUifr

Anyway, I have had a really good time doing this challenge and I hope that the others will be as "joy-bringer" as this one was!


See you soon, in game or on the forum,

Uldirone.

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey Uldirone,

This turned out great! Feels very quaint, and I could see it fitting right in at Gaunt. Don't be afraid to start something over if you don't like how it's going, a lot of the time we do better on our second (or third) attempts, like you seem to have done here. Anyways, I don't have as much feedback this time, the buildings themselves are very nicely done. Here's what I do have:

- The cobble walls feel a bit messy. Usually on the server we avoid what are called "bubble walls", where the walls form a sort of shapeless "bubble" around the house. It's better to stick with straight lines for the most part (these can be diagonal ofc), and create shapes which align with the buildings in a way which makes sense and looks good. I recommend keeping an eye out for this especially when exploring newer projects (like norridge for instance). Also, the walls can be a bit flatter and less bumpy (unless you're trying to show ruin or decay or something like that), since cobblestone walls were actually fairly precise things to make, and were not usually haphazard.

- The dirt ditch with halfslabs in the middle of the farmstead also makes it seem a bit messy. It's fine to have uneven land within a yard/garden/etc., but you usually want to make it very gradual. You usually would only do this when the build is on a slope as well. In this case, the people who build the farmstead would probably smooth out the dirt before creating a foundation, because the depression that you have would flood during a rainstorm. Lastly, if you do have a build on a slope, sometimes you might want to consider making a little retaining wall or terraces to deal with the uneven ground, rather than just a bunch of half slabs.

For a tentative final challenge build, I want to see how you would do with a new town location that just opened: please make a middle-class house in the style of /warp weepingtown. Make sure to study the marked example houses there closely before building. Good luck!

 

[Uldirone]

Hi Emotione,

I am back and took notice of your advice which I try to respect as much as possible!

I took my time to analyse Weeping town houses and even the style guide that Howy did and here is what came out of my fingers! I tried for this one to increase the diagonal aspect and I hope you will appreciate it!

The style reminded me a lot of the Fairmarket's one and in my opinion it is not an easy one (especially after the gaunt farmstead) but it was really nice to work on it!

Anyway, I won't let you wait more and here is the link! Enjoy these 34 pictures: https://imgur.com/gallery/Z7YDhv4 !

See you soon, in game or on the forum,

Uldirone.


PS : Here is a better view of the chimney interior on the ground floor https://imgur.com/eKXLTee.

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey Uldirone,

Great work on this house! I gave you a tricky style, and you didn't disappoint at all. I'd say you're ready to be promoted. I do have some (mostly picky) final feedback I want to give on this house though, so you can keep it in mind going forward:

- I love the experimentation that you did with the layout & style of the house. That said, the plotting of the house does feel like it has a bit too much going on. From some of the views, like here or here, the house kind of looks like it lacks shape a bit. As you start making more complicated layouts, you want to remember that houses should still generally fall along some sort of shape (like a rectangle or T-shape), since that would be the most structurally sound and least expensive way to build them. So when making diagonal plots, I generally still try to think about them as fundamentally just a rotated rectangular or T-shaped house, and then think of what architectural details I could plausibly add to this base.

- I would usually try to avoid the long horizontal rows of the open (no crosshatches) daub & wattle block, like you have in this image here. It just doesn't look great IMO.

- Don't use the full door blocks for the chair backs here. Use oak half door blocks instead. IIRC there are also immobile versions of the doors that you can use for things like that in the custom block inventory.

- I'm not sure about the dip in the floor here; I feel like that's another thing where it could be a bit more gradual/subtle. If you're trying to portray a house on uneven ground, or with a damaged floor, you could maybe try to use slabs for the whole for in that section. It makes the furniture a bit more difficult, of course, but it's a fun challenge...

- Try to cover the slate here.

- Overall, the thatch on the floors feels slightly messy, and can probably be toned down a little. Especially here, notice how there's a lot of singleton thatch blocks which only touch on the corners. You want to avoid that. If you have thatch, it should just be in one continuous "rug" covering parts of the floor which might otherwise feel empty.

- A lot of builders tend to develop bad habits when it comes to "clutter", and furnishing things like attics or warehouses. You want to make sure that the stuff you put up there still makes sense and has some form of organization, rather than (as what's more common) putting piles of crates/basket blocks in corners which seem empty. For an example of this, you have a few crates/baskets of apples in the attic. However, that doesn't really make sense - why would they store apples in an area separate from all the other food, where they'd probably just be forgotten and go bad? Typically houses would have sort of pantry, or at least a localized area where they would keep types of food. In general, I try to go for more "tasteful emptiness" for attics, i.e. you usually don't want it to be cluttered, but you also don't want it to seem empty/unfurnished. It's a bit tricky to get it right, and takes a bit of experience. One thing that helps is thinking of what kinds of things a house might realistically put in an attic - perhaps things like unused bedframes, old baby cribs, etc. In poorer houses, the attic would likely be a shared living space for members of the family. Currently, it also doesn't make sense that the attic has a fireplace, seeing as there's nothing but crates and baskets around there.

Feel free to ask me if you have any questions on the above, and we can talk about it (here or in-game). 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. Weeping Town, as I’m sure you saw, is pretty hot right now. You should be able to find some active stuff around Wyndhall, Sarsfield, or Parren. 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!