Yhudo Builder Application

[Yhudo]

21


United Kingdom


I recall it being a few years back when several screenshots of the progress made on the original server were posted to Reddit, where I happened across them.


Tolkein's legendarium, The Witcher series, The Cat Returns (and Whisper of the Heart, if it counts as fantasy), Treasure Island is an immortal classic, Arthurian legends



All of the above



All of the above


Sandor Clegane. Ever since I read the first book and subsequently watched the first season of the show I was fascinated by his brooding mystique and startling appearance. There was history to this character and I was eager to know more; more about his past and more about his person. As he developed throughout the course of my engagement with ASOIAF I found myself growing more and more attached to him as a character he displayed striking but understandable complex emotion, especially during his lengthy travels with Arya.
"Dying is thirsty work."

(lets not talk about him in season 7, or any other character for that matter......)


I've been playing Minecraft since 2009, although on and off recently, and I would like to believe I have picked up a knack for making interesting structures. I've always had a strong desire to learn new tricks and techniques to make more interesting builds in the future, and I believe Westeroscraft is the environment that would facilitate this desire to further thrive creatively. One can never stop learning.


The achievements accomplished by this server and the community therein are remarkable and renowned. It would serve as a great honour to be able to be a part of this community and leave my mark on the server, in a fantasy universe I have grown to adore.

https://imgur.com/a/YatZSTQ

You know nothing, Jon Snow.

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey Yhudo,

Thanks for your application! Sorry for taking a little while to get to this, had a pretty busy week.

Your house is a pretty good start, it would fit super well in Hornwood. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that Hornwood is an older build on our server, so it has a few outdated techniques which you should take note of:

- The most general thing is that our style has had a trend towards less "messiness", i.e. detail for the sake of detail rather than fulfilling some realistic or architectural purpose. Some examples of this are the buttons on the end of logs, some of the carved wood in random spots, rope/chain in random spots, etc.

- Overall, we also barely use log blocks in houses anymore (unless it's an actual log cabin, like at /warp wintertown), because they seem very clunky. Ditto with the thin log supports here (except for some rare occasions, and even then they go all the way to the ground rather than being "pointy").

Make sure to check out /warp furnish and /warp gradient on our server before continuing, both are helpful tutorials/resources. Also, check out /warp klsprawl and try to study the houses there in detail (exteriors and interiors).

I think it'll become more clear as I give some specific more recent styles to work on. So for a first challenge build, please make a middle-class house in the style of /warp sweetport (middle-class are the ones with white daub&wattle and black slate). Good luck!

-Emote

 

[Yhudo]

hello! thank you so much for the feedback. a few days after posting this i was reading a thread that said that buildings look less messy and overly-decorated these days, so my bad.

im in the process of moving house, so i'll be unable to complete the challenge for a couple of days. after i'm settled i'll get right on it!

 

[Yhudo]

just letting you know that i am settled in my new house and i am currently working on the sweetport challenge. should be ready by tomorrow.

 

[Yhudo]

Here it is, finally. Sorry for the delays! I'm to have this finally done, however I'm not too sure that it's the best thing I've made. I do believe, though, that it would fit in nicely in Sweetport Sound.

https://imgur.com/a/CffCAi7

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey Waltorn,

Thanks for the update! Your house looks pretty good, I agree that it'd fit pretty well in Sweetport. The feedback I have is mostly picky stuff:

- The stone gradient on the bottom needs a little work. Typically, instead of randomly mixing stone, you want to go smoothly from one block to another. There's a really helpful tutorial on our server at /warp gradient, check it out.

- When you have a roof overhang on the gables, make sure to put upside-down stairs under as well so it doesn't make those hard 90-degree angles.

- I recommend working a little bit more on room layout, so you don't just have one big open space with everything in it (as in the 2nd floor).

- When using thatch carpets, never use them in a patchy way (i.e. randomized). Try to do them in continuous "blobs". Also, if you're using spruce as the dominant wood type I'd probably go with dark thatch carpets, the light one can clash a bit with spruce.

For the next challenge build, please make a middle-class house in the style of /warp woodwright. Feel free to ask if you have any questions, good luck!

 

[Yhudo]

I enjoyed this one! Nice and simple. I do think the weak point is that main living space but I was struggling with fitting anything in.

https://imgur.com/a/yVYqPXE

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey Waltorn,

Great work on this house! You pretty much nailed the Woodwright style, though I do have a couple points of feedback still:

- For rural challenges such as Woodwright, you should make sure to include the garden (and more generally, misc decorations outside the house) as well, as it's an important aspect of most of the types of houses we build. To elaborate even more, for any house, you want to consider not only the house itself but also how it integrates with the houses around it. One problem people have at first when building plots is that they think only of their own plot, which sometimes leads to buildings which fit in awkwardly (even if the house in and of itself is perfect). And always make sure to make your plot of land seem realistic and lived in.

- Don't have bookshelves/studies in houses like this. In real life medieval times, an extremely small percent of the population was even literate, and many nobles weren't even literate (they mostly just needed to use stamps for formal contracts). So you should never have bookshelves/paper except for in the wealthiest of households, or in special cases (such as scribes, bookbinders, maesters, septons, etc.).

For the next challenge, please make a middle-class house in the style of /warp whiteharbor. Good luck!

 

[Yhudo]

Do the middle class ones look like this?

 

[Emoticone11]

Yup! Most of the ones in the southwest portion of the city are middle-class.

 

[Yhudo]

About time I finished this bloody house, so here it is, my White Harbour Inn. I'm particularly proud of this one, however there's a couple of things I feel I should explain.

Firstly, I couldn't notice a particular stone gradient on the buildings I used as models in White Harbour proper. Instead, to me, the building materials seemed to resemble cracks and general weathering, so I tried to emulate that.

Secondly, I really tried to control the growth of vines by timing my screenshots well, but they were finicky buggers. So excuse the overgrowth, it wasn't meant to be quite as bad as it is.

Lastly, the exterior paving sucks. I couldn't get it to look like how it looks in White Harbour, as hard as I tried.

Either way, I really am proud of this build and I hope you approve also!

https://imgur.com/a/L5Hofi4

 

[Emoticone11]

Hey Waltorn,

I agree that you did a great job on this house! Regarding the things you brought up, I'll just respond to those along with the feedback:

- Good observation that the houses don't have a typical vertical gradient. The white houses in WH are meant to be stone which was whitewashed with lime, so the gradient corresponds to areas where the whitewash is fading and weathering, as you said. At /warp gradient, there's a tutorial on the right-hand side which shows the weathering-style gradient, which is becoming increasingly commonly used for all applications (since it's a more realistic way to think about it).

- The exterior paving looks bad because you're not in the extreme_hills biome, which is the one we use for the North. Stone colors are a little darker in that biome.

- Tone down the windows a bit; keep in mind that WH is up in the North, so in the winter all those windows would be a major detriment for trying to stay warm. Especially the 2-wide ones with no shutters.

- Make sure to have upside-down stairs under the roof here so you don't get those jagged edges.

- The interiors are mostly good, though I think the bottom floor (the tavern part) could use a little work. A combination of things like the roof being really tall and the room being pretty long, the open floorplan, etc. make it seem a bit box-y. When I do taverns, I typically go for a more cramped, cozy feel (though not to the point of it being messy) and will divide it up into rooms if I can. I can point you to some good tavern examples in WH if you want.

- Stone kitchen tables are a pet peeve of mine, especially with the butcher's knife in it. I'd just stick with wood.

Lovely work otherwise! The exteriors were really nice. For a (tentative) final challenge build, please make a middle-class house in the style of /warp fairmarket. Keep in mind the style there is a bit more complex, so take your time. I'm sure you'll do fine with it though. Good luck!

 

[Yhudo]

Hey! I'm still around. I've had an insanely busy past couple of weeks. I plan on getting to work on this properly soon.

 

[Emoticone11]

No worries, I'm really busy now too so probably for the best Thanks for the update!