Need Some Ideas For My Castle!
- Thread starter Sionyn
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In my opinion, the build could use something to make it less "perfectly square, built on perfectly flat ground". It really needs something to make it more dynamic. When people decide to build a castle I always argue for them to do it on "natural" terrain and build the castle to follow the terrain. It works so much better visually and realistically.
If I were to go forward from what you build, I would have to try and build buildings/towers upward in the middle in terraces, to try and give it some indication that it was actually build on a strategically sound position.
If I were to go forward from what you build, I would have to try and build buildings/towers upward in the middle in terraces, to try and give it some indication that it was actually build on a strategically sound position.
Adding turrets (the building kind not the gun kind) helps to add a sense of naturalness to a castle build. Individualizing each side and using stairs, half slabs, and micro parts can help give the build depth and character. On Decorating the inside: again depth is key. Also pick a color scheme and STICK TO IT. For a castle build I'd probably go with grey, red, black, and white. Keep things clean. Use runners on the top or bottom of corridors to help give perspective and help distinguish what area you're in.
Yes and no. This is good advice, but it can be a bit limiting for really large builds. IRL, most things are built on fairly flat ground, or at least have the foundation excavated, which is one reason most cities are built in valleys or on plains. Minecraft plains are more like gently rolling hills than actual plains, and any large hills are super narrow on top, which gets really frustrating. My solution is usually to dig out just the footprint of the building, and let the leftover dirt climb the first story walls a bit.
This is fine(although somewhat lazy aproach IMO) for buildings such as skyscrapers and other modern buildings. This comes from an era where you had the means to excavate large areas to build flat foundations.
But for something that is attempting to mimic a medieval castle, which primary function is strategic defence it just makes me cringe when I see it. First of all you would never place it flat on some plains. It is strategically unsound as anything could ever be.
And tbh in my time of playing MC I have build quite a few castles, and I have never had problems find strategically suitable hills/cliffs/whatever be it in MC/BoP/ExXL etc.
I think you underestimate your ancestors. I've built a number of castles, including a 1:1 scale reproduction of Walmer Castle from England. Walmer was small, as castles go, and it has a massive footprint, with an excavated dry moat twice its size, shored up by a curtain wall whose top was level with the surrounding countryside, containing an enceinte that rose a story above it. There's also no way it would balance on top of teeny tiny MC hills.
Well getting quite a bit off topic, but Walmer Castle was not a midieval castle. It was an artillery fortress built as late as 1540ish(quite modern actually). And the introduction/common use of the cannon dramatically changed the strategies of building castles.
Well said, and it's true that terraces were very common in more ancient castles, such as Dover, but there was still a lot of flattening, ramping, and terraforming that went on. That's why they took decades or centuries to build. However, I still say that if you want a decent and realistically sized hill to put it on, you gotta build it yourself.
As does the OpenBlocks Building Guide, which is what I used to help me build my castle. I built an oval for the main, then I put four circles at each corner.
I did oval shape because I was so sick of building rectangular every time... but as one might imagine, not having flat walls can sometimes be very annoying if you're somewhat of a neat freak like me.
And also, building above ground just causes more problems than it's sometimes worth, hiding conduits and stuff becomes problematic. Another thing I did this time in my Monster world was I decided I wouldn't build underground, so I have no basement. That means I can run some conduit below the floor, but most of my equipment is on the second floor. My TE3 room is in one of the second-floor turrets, another one has all my IC2exp machines. I built a "power dome" (another OpenBlocks Building Guide special!) to house all my TE3 and IC2 power generation.
I enjoy my Monster world and my castle base, but it's not the best base I ever built. I still prefer caves I think, or building into a mountainside.
This makes building castles so much easier and better.
As does the OpenBlocks Building Guide, which is what I used to help me build my castle. I built an oval for the main, then I put four circles at each corner.
I did oval shape because I was so sick of building rectangular every time... but as one might imagine, not having flat walls can sometimes be very annoying if you're somewhat of a neat freak like me.
And also, building above ground just causes more problems than it's sometimes worth, hiding conduits and stuff becomes problematic. Another thing I did this time in my Monster world was I decided I wouldn't build underground, so I have no basement. That means I can run some conduit below the floor, but most of my equipment is on the second floor. My TE3 room is in one of the second-floor turrets, another one has all my IC2exp machines. I built a "power dome" (another OpenBlocks Building Guide special!) to house all my TE3 and IC2 power generation.
I enjoy my Monster world and my castle base, but it's not the best base I ever built. I still prefer caves I think, or building into a mountainside.
I like this because it can generate circles that have equal numbered diameters(OCD with having to have things line up with chunk boundaries):
http://www.minecraft-craftingguide.com/calculator.html
And it can easily generate VERY large circles.
Its odd numbered diameter circles are rather bugged however, as it insists on having 1 single block as the "outer" block. But if I were to ever use odd circles I would just have a CC turtle build them:
Circle:
http://pastebin.com/vjJSNLjU
Sphere/dome:
http://pastebin.com/aLMDhttP
(I didn't write any of those two programs, I found them somewhere which I no longer remember and just stored them on my own pastebin for ease of access.)
"Researched" it all in preparation to build this thing:
But then my OCD kicked in and wouldn't allow me to use odd numbered diameters, so I ended up manually building every single circle with the use of the calculator I linked... /cry
But yeah if all you need is concentric circles on top of each other in creative, just grab a handful of turtles and set them off one after the other one block above each other(bit of a gap between them so they don't put blocks down to interfere with each other. And so you can keep up with resupplying them. Just make sure to chunkload the area should you leave it for some reason.
Dear god... Now that is a base.
And quite a handy tip on the turtles. It's been too long since I've used them. I might mess around with them when I attempt my Diamond Challenge sometime this week.
And quite a handy tip on the turtles. It's been too long since I've used them. I might mess around with them when I attempt my Diamond Challenge sometime this week.
Hiding pipes & wires is always a problem with mod play. Mainly because most players only build 1 block thick walls. Building structures with 2 or 3 block thick walls solves this problem and opens room to really give texture to a build.
Or it becomes a great challenge for your microblock/Facade/whatever skills
But yeah since some wires/cables are not compatible with neither microblocks or facades, I do employ 2-3 block thing floors/ceilings in many places.