Terra scindenda, latin for "the cutting of earth," is a project I've been working on for the last two weeks. If any of you remember, back in the v30 era of megathreads, I had created a project dubbed MineCraft Nations; it was meant to be a nation-scale project. Well, I ended up killing the project because of the rapidity of notch's updates, along with the premise that biomes were coming out "soon." Biomes ended up taking two more months to be introduced, and even more months to be refined.
Well, two weeks ago I finally felt like I had the time needed to commit to the project, and also felt that notch wouldn't add any mind-blowing changes to the world gen any time soon. Thus, I started my project. Sadly, MCN was taken by another individual/group, so I've had to drop that name. But, I figured a new name was needed anyways, so I hit up the latin. I'm also hoping to write a story about it, too. I've posted some updates in the "what are you working on" thread, but I feel that the first town on the long road my project offers is finished, and so I've decided to switch over to a thread, so that I can just update one post continuously with updates for the various FPers I know.
First I had to pick a location. I ended up with what you see above, which probably doesn't look like much. I might go to my copy of the original and take a few screenies, but basically its a U shaped mountain with one end of the U being a mountain-sized pillar and the other end curving back around to form a bowl, which I made into a lake. The middle of the U itself is a valley which continues to decrease in height as one heads away from the U until it levels off around 300 blocks away.
Here is the progress I made from near-start to near-finish.
As one can see, my progress starts with a simple fort, expanding into a fort with a moat. But, I then expand to the right, adding the first two of the cities buildings: a post office and mayoral residence. I then add the temporary quarter and greater market place. I then complete the walls, add the church and other residential quarters of the town, along with three more guard posts and the courthouse.
That is the completed city itself. As stated earlier, its taken two weeks with me devoting an hour here and there, with more time given on the weekends. It isn't meant to be spectacularly detailed; it is meant to be slightly cramped streets in a city on the outer rims of a nation, with everything a city needs to survive and function, minus a food source; that will be located to the north in the form of a series of villages and large swaths of farm land.
The first is an arena, which is located past the gate horizontal from the mayor's residence. The second picture is the lake, located behind the fort.
The end carto of the town.
The thing I'd like most is for criticism/suggestions of what I can do better on for the next town, which will be similar to this, in that it'll be on the outer rim of the same nation, bordering the same nation this one does. The three main things I'm aware people would like changed are: a bigger castle, a better texture pack, and less cobble. I'm trying to keep this as realistic building materials as possible, which in my mind so far has been cobble: stone and mortar. I just don't see many pictures where they've smoothed the stone on castles or city walls. But I'm always open to suggestions. And sorry about the texture pack; it looks nice up close and that is why I've kept it.
Warning: big image
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25877217/1.png/1.png
An older carto.
Thanks for checking out my work so far.