Westeroscraft Texture Pack Megathread

I stumbled upon a melon argument in OT about clothesline and fences and it got me thinking. It's pretty unrealistic to have floating ropes on top of fenceposts, but on the other hand it is pretty unrealistic for a clothesline to have a wooden carpet on top. I think a reasonable solution would be to have bark fenceposts with rope texture wrapped around them like the rope logs. Not only is that exactly how clotheslines work in real life it would also have a bunch of other applications in the server and would add nice flavor. Unfortunately the introduction of such a change would also cause most houses with yards to be instantly dated and I think that they would have to manually fixed. I'm mostly daydreaming here and I think that rope fences are a low priority, just something to consider.
 

AerioOndos

Donkey Lord
Staff member
Pronouns
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It sounds good. Iirc we have two fences, one in Westeroscraft and the other normal but iirc there’s a reason for that. Maybe one could be changed to have rope topping?
 

Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
Hey everyone, there's been a block update on the main server! Mostly some significant bug fixes, and a couple nice changes/additions as well.

Changelog:
-Added stairs/slabs/walls for river cobble & small smooth stone brick
-Added arbor small brick
-Added normal & ornate arrow slits for small orange brick
-Added snowy spruce leaves block
-Changed terrainset textures
-Changed ocean pebble texture to match new terrainset
-Changed arbor brick to have less contrast and no border
-Fixed leaves biome shading by adding custom betterfoliage effect
-Fixed stair textures bug
-Fixed discoloured snow tile
-Fixed bed bottom textures

Regarding the snowy spruce leaves block: I request that people refrain from immediately updating their personal Northern builds with it - ideally I'd like to figure out a way to systematically and efficiently do this with WE, so that we can avoid turning our North into a mess with some areas using it and some not.

EDIT: also, there seems to be a problem with leaf blocks in Fast Graphics mode due to transparency not getting rendered properly, which I didn't realize when testing. For now, you'll have to use Fancy Graphics to get them to work properly. I'm looking into how to fix this issue.
 
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Margaery_Tyrell

The Dark Lord Sauron
Mkay im gonna be that asshole to ask for shit after an update

Can we possibly have OT-colored faith star brick for septs in Westerlands/Dorne/Southern Reach?

The white and stone colored ones are really really useful for details in pious castles and septs, and a OT-colored one could be used universally between all three regions where previously a block wouldnt fit there
 
2020-05-20-08-35-37.png


I noticed some textures of the texture pack look really monotone and clash with other textures much more then before
in instances like this (waterfall). They hardly blend like before.

I thought there was a consensus to put Tham's terrain set texture in a second pack until something more communally agreeable was made.
I have no problem with changing the old one but this is not fully developed for a release.

I don't like what the new Westernlands texture pack did to Silverhill and Banefort, two projects I worked hard on. The Westernlands texture is the most undefined and it almost looks like the castle is sitting on clay. Some terrain sets do a better job then others.

I hope this can be fixed with a reversal until improvements are made.

I hope this isn't taken in the wrong way. For instance I like the Iron Islands retexture (North being a close second). If something simillar (texture variance and more harmony with the main building blocks of the region) would be implemented for other areas I think it could work.
 
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Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
Hi Nuggs,

I take your point, but with respect to the monotonicity of areas like the Giant's Lance, my view is that this is a problem with the underlying terraforming being monotonous in the first place, and hence relying on the old terrainsets adding superficial detail via random noise - it's much the same thing that we did in our old building style that we've since moved past.

Here are some before/after pics of the cliff you posted above. You can open them both in a browser and quickly switch between them to compare.

Before - After

After having spent the last few months using the new terrainsets, I don't think that the "Before" picture looks better in any way, and I think you'd agree once you spend a little bit getting used to the new textures. What's happening is that, without the random noise of the terrainset overloading the eye, the monotonicity of the underlying terraforming has become even more apparent. However, I'd much rather have areas like this seem more monotonous than having stone textures which are completely unrealistic and rely on random noise, and I haven't yet seen any high-effort terraforms which the terrainsets have made worse.

Here's some more before/after pics of Banefort:

Before - After

Switching between these, I don't really think that it makes a big difference. At worst, I'm just indifferent between the two.

Keep in mind that there are also trade-offs we need to make due to CTM limitations. Any attempt to create a more realistic and consistent natural rock texture will appear more monotonous because it means we can no longer just throw a bunch of random textures and hues together. More complicated ways of adding variation, like using repeat textures, will invariably lead to obvious tiling in blocks like terrainsets which are used in large quantities.

Nonetheless, we're still experimenting with some potential hacks for adding realistic striations to the terrainsets. If possible, this will help reduce the monotonicity. The terrainsets will not be reversed, but they can certainly be improved in the future. If you have any more specific suggestions for how you think the Westerlands terrainset (or others) can be improved, feel free to post them here.
 
Switching between these, I don't really think that it makes a big difference. At worst, I'm just indifferent between the two.

There is quite a difference between the two. You lose a lot of definition and volumetry in the rock. The random noise via the colour difference actually helps to mimic the irregularities and subtle colour differences in natural stone.

I hope you can concede that not everyone approves such a drastic change that alters the appearance of projects so much.
Because of the nature of Westeroscraft, more public consulting should be put in place for a change of this magnitude.

I think there was an oversight of how the rocks look from far away, and I am happy to hear you are looking into improving this.

Making two packs until there is more work on the terrains sets would have been (and still is) a great and easy to implement the change gradually and with a broader imput from evreyone.

This is my last statement on this subject and I don't intend to continue talking about the matter.


I couldn't embed the slide thing so I took a picture:
lFVG3yg.jpg


Difference in natural stone:

mediterranean-cliffs-3.jpg
 
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Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
The random noise via the colour difference shading actually helps to mimic the irregularities and subtle colour differences in natural stone.

I respectfully disagree. The difference between realistic striations & irregularities and the random noise of the old terrainsets is about as large as the difference between a nice smooth gradient and a random mix of stone bricks in a castle. Moreover, some of the textures in the old terrainset don't even make sense, like the ones that are quite clearly unnatural cobblestone bricks.

The change to the new terrainsets seems to be quite consistent with the overall gist of our server's style preferences, namely:

ugly noise < simple but monotonous < tasteful simplicity

The last one is obviously the ideal goal, but it's a bit tricky to get there due to the CTM limitations that I mentioned, which forced a choice between the random terrainsets (which, as mentioned, I find quite ugly) and the simpler ones. It's possible that a _very large_ overlay_repeat CTM could be used to accomplish subtle striations like in the image you linked, but it will take some more thought and work. Different hues could also be randomly applied over the base texture to accomplish something similar to the old terrainsets, but I'm not sure that it will look good.

Making two packs until there is more work on the terrains sets would have been (and still is) a great and easy to implement the change gradually and with a broader imput from evreyone.

If you wish, I can upload an optional pack which uses the old terrainsets.
 
Different hues could also be randomly applied over the base texture to accomplish something similar to the old terrainsets, but I'm not sure that it will look good.
If you wish, I can upload an optional pack which uses the old terrainsets.

If it is possible to try a most subtle hue variations in the ~5% to ~10% range that's not too hard on the eyes like the old test, it may turn out nice. It's worth a try if it doesn't take too much time to make a test.
 
So this happened...
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I have the graphics set to fancy as well as smooth lighting, so if anyone knows how to fiz this I'd apreciate it :D


!!!!!UPDATE!!!!!: I solved the issue, it was in the Video Settings>Details>Trees, I had it on fast. SO if anyone has this problem it's probably that! :D
 
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@Emotione11

I managed to fix it ty!

But I found another thing about the terrainsets. No matter if I like the change or not, one thing that i must point out is that the reach one is really grey and with no saturation. I understand this could be something realistic for some areas of the reach but a whole portion of it has a more warmer hue/weather specially southern Reach like Starpike, Bandallon and projects near OT.

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Here I have the older color and the new color side by side. I'm not saying it should be exactly the same hue as the previous one but atleast a bit warmer than it currently is.

Another thing that was pointed out is that the reach terrainset has an almost textile feel to it, or marble like texture, it was even compared to the mance's blocks and it indeed has some slight similarities.
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I want to make clear that I'm really grateful for Thamus and Emot's work on the textures. I'm just pointing out some possible improvements :D
 
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Emoticone11

The Dark Lord Sauron
Staff member
If it is possible to try a most subtle hue variations in the ~5% to ~10% range that's not too hard on the eyes like the old test, it may turn out nice. It's worth a try if it doesn't take too much time to make a test.

I modified each tile in the new terrainset randomly to match the color of one of the old terrainset tiles.

ca9e67fbdc.png


Like I suspected, it didn't really seem to change much, and also looks rather odd up close. I don't think random hues will work without random textures as well (well, technically the new terrainset still uses random textures, but they're all meant to represent a consistent stone type now).

If there are other things you'd like me to try, let me know.