Hello! I'm N8thanH, and welcome back to Across the Map. Sorry for not posting the past few weeks! I'll have two posts coming this week, so keep an eye out this Thursday. Tuesday and Thursday are the two days I try to post; mostly since I tend to procrastinate too long to post on Tuesday, Wednesday isn't convenient, and I consider Friday too late.

Anyways, the first post this week will be a little update on what I've been up to with my texture pack, Cloud 16. I've been working on changing some of the textures that I wasn't happy with. Some of them were done when I wasn't as good at texturing, or just done hastily. I just thought I'd show you guys what I've been working on. Anyways, here's what I've been up to. I figure I'll go in the sequence of the Skislands.

So, first of all, I've changed a bunch of textures on Lightly Forested Forest; the first Skisland on my little texturing map. This is the first Skisland, and a lot of the textures on it are commonly seen as you play. In the photo below, you can see that I did new grass and fern textures, and also Coarse Dirt and Spruce Wood.

It's easier to notice in some biomes, but the grass and fern textures actually have non-grayscale pixels, so they don't change with the colors of the biome they're in.

If anyone remembers my old texture pack, FreshCraft, then you'd remember the... Distinct style I had. I tended to be rather predictable, and I always did this patchy kind of style with my wood, with a hard border. At the time I was working on the woods, I didn't really have a developed style as far as texturing went. So, now that I do have a more developed style, I've decided to go back and edit it. As opposed to having the texture being based from the foreground bark, this texture was built from the background portion.

As for the Gravel and Coarse Dirt, they were just cheap recolors of the dirt texture I had at the time. I decided to go back to them, and use a proper texture. I really don't enjoy doing the earlier textues in the game. It's the man-made blocks I enjoy doing. But, for the most part, in early worlds, these textures are all you really see.

Anyways, I also tweaked my Stone texture and the stone portion of all the ores, some were also tweaked in the appearance of the "ore patches," and I did a new and unique Gravel texture. It turned out pretty well, but my perfectionism and trained eye drove me to work on it for several hours. It's the sole reason why I didn't post last week. I still see little patterns, but I don't think it can be improved any more.

I can still distinguish block boundaries, but this texture will have to do for the time being.

The Coal Ore got a complete makeover, and the Iron Ore is now a more distinct color.

The Lapis Lazuli may need work. Ah, well. Another time.

Gravel. The most annoying texture in the game. Behold it in all its glory.

Anyways, moving along, I was pretty unhappy with how my 1.8 polished Stupid Stones turned out, so I redid those. The Diorite was the base for the other two. It was a decent texture; it wasn't drastically changed. These ones aren't necessarily up to my standard of having no visible repeating patterns, but I thought the clustered pattern looked kind of neat. I'll see if it bothers me enough. Right now, it doesn't. 

One thought I had was to fill in the space between the protruding parts of the Stupid Stones with the regular stone coloring. I just don't want to make any builds look messed up. Heh. As if anyone would use them in a build.

I'm going to move on before my impulse to fix textures kicks in. If that happens, there won't be any posts this week.

Next up, in the Magnificent Meadow, I did moderate-to-minor improvements to three of the double-tall flowers. The petals of the rose and peony got retextured, but I think they may need more contrast. Also, I slightly changed the color of the pink tulip to make it look more different from the white ones. It may not be enough, though. If I make any more changes, I'll to a follow-up next Skisland Project post.



This peony is just messed up.


Anyways, I decided to clean up the hide patterns on the cow and mooshroom textures. They felt too busy to me. Both cows have the same patterns, just different colors.


Last, I have a new little Skisland. The only reason it exists is because I forgot to implement a few blocks on the previous Skislands, and they had to be done at some point. However, I didn't feel like any of the prior Skislands needed a pond. So, here is as good as any place.

I didn't have any inspiration for the vines. Look for them in my follow-up next time.

Want to know where it is? I don't feel like doing a guided tour, so here is a bird's-eye view. It'll have to do for you guys. :t


Well, as far as my texture pack goes, this is all I've been up to. So, that's it for today. I'm going to go get outside before sunset. Keep an eye out for another post some time tomorrow! I have a simple little redstone doohickey to show you guys. Why not?

Thanks for reading! I'll see you all next post. Until then!

Hello, I'm N8thanH, and welcome back to Across the Map!

In today's post, I am proud to reveal two projects of mine, which are currently being worked on simultaneously.

The first is something I had started a long time ago, and kind of forgot about: a texture pack creation world. It was originally just going to be a demo world, so I could get into texture pack reviews on YouTube, since I was inspired by a YouTuber named CocoSmackdown, who had an interesting showcase series.

Since I rediscovered this map, its purpose has kind of changed to a world that you can download, and go about completing textures in. (Sorry, I don't have a download yet; the map isn't nearly complete.)

My second new project is, well, my own texture pack, called Cloud 16. It's more-or-less a 16-bit-style texture pack, which I will show off in a bit. It's the reason map development hasn't gone faster, but I have been enjoying the experience. Just bug me in the comments if you want me to pick up the slack. I'll take any attention I'm given. XD

Back in the day of 16-bit game consoles, they didn't have it easy. They didn't have every color in the world, and at least in the case of the Super NES, could usually only display 128 different colors at a time, out of a pallet of 13,768, or, if an extra bit is given to a color, then about 16 thousand. It sounds like a lot, but on the Red/Green/Blue (RBG) color channels, you can use only every 8th level on typical channels, which can do 0-255 on each color.

The colors differ quite drastically, so you need to use techniques that you wouldn't normally, such as dithering. Here, I'll post my texture for Dark Oak Wood down here, so you can see what I did, along with FreshCraft, another incomplete pack of mine. I've used it a lot in past posts.



 I think that the Dark Oak still looks good in Cloud 16, but in practice, dithering only looks good from a distance, where the colors blend together. Just trust me; it looks good in-game. You'll see it soon.

Well, I digress. Getting back to the map, so far, I've completed one floating island (or as I like to say, Skisland) so far, and finished all the textures on it in Cloud 16. This is the first one, and it's a small forested island, known as Lightly Forested Forest. (In truth, I think "lightly forested" might be a bit of an understatement... :I)

The purpose of the island is to provide an environment for players to focus on the basic blocks; dirt, grass and other ground covers, tall grass and ferns, snow, stone and the ores are all blocks of note on the Skisland. It's also meant to emulate a small forest, so hopefully the texturer (made up word for the win!) will find it inspiring.

I'm sure you are excited to see it, so let's head into the map, which I have currently named Skylight Texture Packing World. (Anybody have a name suggestion? I'm happy to consider it!)

The map is not a flat world; it's just a typical map for Minecraft 1.7. The terrain is here if people want to see it, but this map is boring.


Generally, Minecraft is only as exciting as you make it. So, I took the initiative, and made the sky interesting.
 

These islands were crafted using MCEdit. I copied a chunk of land out of the ground, and rounded it out. Next, I ran SethBling's Floating Island filter, to make the bottoms more jagged. I cut the craters afterwards. They are done with only one brush-stroke, which can explain the roundness.


Since I had water running off the large Skisland, I decided to flood this crater.

Now, about that Skisland... I made it a long time ago. I was going to build a town on it, but when the purpose of this map shifted, I changed my attention to making a starter Skisland, which was Lightly Forested Forest. I will make some more Skislands, then return to this one when it's time to make it.

Anyways... Right over by the crater of Lightly Forested Forest, I placed a TNT cannon, a variety that I believe is known as an Icarus Cannon; a cannon designed to launch players. On that note, let's launch ourselves.



Skszzzzzz.... POW! (Fun with onomatopoeia. :3)


This is the peak altitude! It's so high, you can't see the Skislands!






We have landed! Sorry for the lack of captions; I wanted Google to make a GIF out of these photos. It made one for me last post... :o

Last post's Auto Awesome. Not bad... I'm looking forward to one today! :D

 So, now that we are up here, let's take a look at the Skisland!


 This seems like a good time to load up Cloud 16. Let's do it.


Yes, I can assure you that this isn't just a shader test effect. I guess my art style is just a lot more vibrant than the default textures. XD

So, starting from this chest, I will give you a tour while you take in my awesome new texture pack. :3


Here's the inside of it, by the way.


The book contains some poetic thoughts, and a list of blocks to texture. Don't worry if the book is inconvenient; I'll include a TXT file with the map, with all the blocks to texture.

"The last snow of the season has passed; it's time to head out and explore the wilderness. A small forest, dotted with light trees and small plants seems perfect. Why not explore, and do something fun? It seems that many people appreciate this place; to each, their own reasons. Time to head out!"

We went  up that little hill seen two screenshots ago. Here, there is a small clearing, with some jungle trees and cocoa beans. Plants won't grow on this map, since I set the Random Update speed to 0 using a gamerule. Gosh, the bean items always look like rabbit droppings to me. >.>


Now, hanging an immediate right will take us to another clearing, with a Dark Oak tree in the middle, surrounded by Podzol, ferns, and saplings of all sorts.

Do you guys think my ferns look okay? I was trying to make them look better this morning. I think they look okay. Not great; just alright.

Also, it's worth noticing these little snowdrift with some snowballs on them. These are supposed to be melting snow forts, as if some children have been playing here.



Heading counter-clockwise around the tree about a quarter of the way and going straight, we reach two things: a pile of logs, which will be in the center of the photo below this text. Slightly in the background, there is a cave. I will show you a better angle in a moment. Er, however fast you can read. No pressure.


Here is the cave! I loaded the walls with ores, and random ore products left behind. Yeah, it sort of goes against the theme of this island. Luckily, it's sort of hidden.



Getting into the details of this tunnel, I decided to be kind of goofy on the signs here. I realized that what I was doing with the signs was sort of counterproductive, so I decided to poke fun at it. :V



Here are the contents of the chest. I named it before I'd place it, so people would get the idea better. :/


The Redstone is animated, by the way. I decided to use a Paint.NET plugin I have to make a GIF to show you guys. Sorry for the poor quality and if it doesn't animate for you on your choice reading device. Such is the nature of GIFs. They only have 8-bit color. You should have an idea of what that means after what we've talked about today. ;D


I believe GIFs have access to 256 colors. Not many at all... 0_0

Anyways, the only area I have left to show you is this little cave. I made this mycelium bed while I was texturing it. Also, this cave has the, ah... exit.  There is also a gravel wall, should you want it.


Well, that's all I have to show for today! As always, your feedback and suggestions are appreciated, and thanks for stopping by my blog! I'll see you all next post. Until then!