I immediately identified some hurdles that would make it quite difficult to come to a realistic environment.
First of all, the city of Antwerp is concentric, which is something quite common for cities with a long history. This however leads to streets and buildings that have a degree on the map other than 0, 90, 180 or 270. And that is somewhat impossible with straight lined cubes ... (see 1, car exit of parking lot underneath Groenplaats)
A second problem is size and scale. A block is supposed to be 1 meter, which is something I can live with. The thing is: Steve is smaller than a regular human. Therefore, if I draw everything to scale, everything looks a lot bigger. On the other hand, the bigger you go on your scale, the more detail you can add, so I can live with that. A remaining issue with this however is walls. Walls are ALWAYS 1m thick. and that's a thing you lose a lot of space with, especially with smaller constructions, like the entrance of a parking lot that contains an elevator, a staircase and an ATM. (see 2, pedestrian entrance building for parking lot underneath Groenplaats)
This screenshot shows you what I used in order to get a good layout:
Like you see, I'm using Google Maps to get the right measurements. I started with this square, the Groenplaats, since it has an easy layout, and because of the underground facilities (parking lot, subway entrance, underground doorway to nearby shopping mall).
Another thing is the bending of the rails you see in the top right and left corner. There's no way to have rails bend like that in MineCraft, so I will have to lay them straight, with sharp 90 degree curves.
A final thing that makes life a bit harder is glass panes. Some constructions in the street use glass panes. The offset of a glass pane in MineCraft is, understandably, the middle of a block. Regular constructions however use the outsides of a block to put the pane, as shown here:
I used slabs to cover this glass pane construction, but the thing that bothers me is that you can NEVER use panes to outline a solid construction, hence you always lose half a block (or you go half a block over limit). Remember: half a block means 50 cm, on both sides this makes 1 meter...
So again, I started with the Groenplaats for some obvious reasons. As I already stated: the cool underground facilities. This is more important than you can imagine, because I used a regular map, not a superflat one. The reason is simple: I want a whole system of caverns and underground canyons, because they make it so much more fun. The map I chose for instance, has a big underground canyon on the top right corner of the Groenplaats. The canyon is a bit deeper than the parking lot (which is at Y=61), but I intend to make a "secret entrance" through a "billboard" (painting) somewhere in the pedestrian entrance building there.
I chose Antwerp for various reasons. First and most important: I love that city! :-)
It has a river, with three tunnels right near the center of the city (although 2 are interesting to start with, the third one is already quite some distance outside the center), it has a lot of underground stuff (parking lots, subway, the Reien, ...), it has a tram, which makes an excuse for minecarts, and it has a lot of different buildings in all sorts of styles (the Gothic Cathedral, the Boerentoren, the MAS, ...).
So, conclusion on this start: I chose Antwerp because of its structural and architectural diversity, I chose the Groenplaats to start with because of its easy layout, and I already know my expectations are way too high, so I'll have to make a lot of compromises. In my next post I will show you what I already have in MineCraft so far (the upper level of the Groenplaats, with trees, and half of the parking lot underneath the Groenplaats).
No comments:
Post a Comment