Westeroscraft texture pack discussion (2023 edition)

[EStoop]

Hey all,

Since it lately seems most block requests result in discussion regarding the texture pack as a whole, of which part of the fault lies with me, I figured it might be a good idea to start a thread specifically meant to discuss the texture pack in order to keep some oversight of the ideas presented and to focus the discussion on the texture pack itself rather than the requested block.

Our texture pack has gradually grown over the years, new blocks and textures have been added over time and sometimes existing ones have been changed to suit or needs. Additionally, not only has our style of building changed, but also how we approach stylistic differences between kingdoms, regions and climates. As a result, we have a broad selection of blocks which seem to focus on areas we are and have been active in relatively recently. The resulting texture pack is adequate if not a bit messy; there are gaps of desired but missing blocks, there is overlap of possibly redundant blocks, there are blocks that do not match well with the rest of the texture pack and there are blocks that do not quite represent something as they are supposed to. In short; there is room for improvement and this is the thread to discuss that in.

Feel free to share ideas, concepts and examples of your desires and expectations of the Westeroscraft texture pack.

 

[EStoop]

I'd like to start the discussion with something that has been on my mind for a long time now, and since it's the latest hot topic I'll use our stone selection as the primary example.

A quick explanation of how I refer to the texture pack
The way I see our texture pack is as follows: The pack is divided between collections, which consists of sets and groups. For example, we have a collection of stone, which has several sets of differently coloured stone such as the Reach or Oldtown stone. Overlapping these sets are groups of blocks, such as Arrowslits or Cobblestone. If you'd make a chart of, for example, all our stone blocks, the chart would represent the collection, while the sets and groups would be the X and Y axis (if that makes sense).

To summarise how I refer to aspects of our texture pack:

• Collection: Blocks in a specific theme, such as stone, wood or plants.
• Set: Blocks in a matching colour, such as Grey Stone, Reach Pink or Oldtown stone.
• Group: Blocks in a specific shape or texture, such as Arrow Slits, Cobblestone or Carved Stone.

Texture availability within sets
Currently sets differ from eachother, with some having a full range of textures and shapes while others have a more limited selection, such as sandstone blocks having only 1 variant while a full range exists for grey stone.
I think it's important for every set within a collection to be equal to eachother, with each having a full range of available textures and shapes.

Colour matching
Ideally the colour range of our sets would be set up as a circle so that every set would somewhat match in colour with at least two other sets. This is something we already have with a number of our blocks such as the sets we have for the Reach. To make things a bit more complicated, we could also play around with vibrant and dull colours within the colour wheel. See the image below for what I mean with the wheel.

Obviously we're not making a cyan stone set, but a wheel like this could work within a limited range of colours as well. The point is that a gradient should be possible from a yellow to red to black and back to yellow.

Texture variety and behaviour
An important aspect of our texture pack is block variety within sets. We often use this to make a gradient or a mix in order to liven up a facade or floor.
Rather than relying on this manual type of mixing I'd like to suggest block variety within groups. We already have this for a number of blocks, such as mud, barrels and our terrainsets, but I think this should be introduced to all our blocks. A while ago Thamus_Knoward made a test for pink stone with such a concept in mind, and it looked absolutely amazing. I think the image has expired by now, since I can no longer find it.

Here's another image of block variety within a large stone group instead, also by Thamus:

And another with small stone and large stone:

Also note the quoins as a result of how specific types of blocks behave next to eachother. Wizardry like this can be used to create details that are currently impossible or too clunky to make, such as the aforementioned quoins, but also lintels, sills, bands and possibly more by using a combination of different textures or blockstates such as double slabs and regular blocks.

Conclusion
There are many ways to improve our texture pack, not only in the textures we have but also in the ways they behave and how they are used. The examples I made are not only limited to our collection of stone, but could also be applied to timber, plaster and other collections as well.

 

[Batelgause]

cries in orange bricks.