Progress Report #1 - Downtown

Well, I probably should've started this blog a lot earlier, considering I'm practically done with building Downtown already. I do have a couple screenshots to throw into here, though, so that's always nice!

 Here we have a nice full view of Downtown, facing south. Some details are still yet to be added at this point, such as light poles, mailboxes, trash cans, etc.

More after the break!

The library interior. I had to kind of... Alter it a bit to actually fit the size of the building itself. 

That's one of the slight problems with building Megaman Legends stuff in a space where everything exists simultaneously. In Megaman Legends, interiors would often not match the exteriors. And you wouldn't believe the wacky space problems that exist in some areas of the ruins. And all that is stuff I need to work around when building it here.

So as far as the library is concerned, I tried to keep about the same general layout, with the section with tables on the one side and the section with shelves on the other, but I also tried to kinda add more details and stuff in to make it feel a lot less empty, and a bit more like an actual functional library. Oh, and lights. That's another difference between MML and Minecraft. MML doesn't have any sort of dynamic-ish lighting system, whereas Minecraft does. On the plus side, all those lightstones above the windows make the library look pretty awesome from the outside at night. Kinda like this:

Now, the part I'm stuck on at the moment: Whether or not to apply Kaevator's Timber Frames to all of the buildings or not. Now, while it has the plus side of looking pretty slick, and adding some further detail to buildings, it also has the downside of severely impacting the framerate with the amount of them I'm using at the moment, and also the fact that they disappear once you get a certain distance away from them. If you're not sure what these timber frames are to begin with, here's some comparison shots:

With frames

Without Frames (except for on the doors, and those are uncolored)

One option would be to reduce the amount of frames used by taking out the horizontal beam sections. Those alone account for the majority of the frames on each house. There's also the option of just having them on the windows and doors, and maybe a scant few details here and there where they'd fit. Of course, there's also the option of NONE AT ALL EVER NOPE. If I can figure out how to, I'll put a poll up. Cause so many people visit this blog so far that it'd actually matter at this point. Haha. Worst case scenario, I leave the houses that have them as is, and don't put any more up until I get a decent amount of votes. Or until I make up my mind myself. The town's not going anywhere, after all.

Except, that is, TO A NEW MAP. Which'll be the next thing I have to do.

You see, I started this as a test, just to see how big one of the houses would be. I just made a new map, and started building a house in the closest clearing. And then I built another. And then another. And then a road. And soon enough, I had the whole damn Downtown. Now, the problem with this is that I have to deal with the already existing natural land forms. And to be quite honest, I don't feel like spending more hours trying to flatten land or anything. So my plan at this point is to use MCEdit (a very nice map editting program for Minecraft, for those that don't know) to import the entire Downtown into a new map, that'll be all water. You know, cause "In a world covered by endless water" and all.

I think that's really all the news I can think of for this first progress report. So yeah, that's all for now. Hopefully the next one will have some news of the new map, and perhaps some new areas in progress. I think I'm gonna go for Apple Market next...

Oh, and I am quite aware of the fact that this blog looks like crap at the moment. I'm still tinkering with things, so hopefully that'll all get worked out nice and well soon enough.