Hermit's House

[Venetia]

I actually rather like it as it is. Finding perfectly-hollowed caves suitable for living in isn't precisely easy. Especially ones with door-sized holes.

A good outdoorsman will find a slanted outcropping of rock and build a tent beneath it. It makes perfect sense to build a wall for a house into it. I mean, then you only have to build one wall and a roof portion instead of four walls and an entire roof, right? Certain Native American tribes would build homes into cliffsides to enjoy the benefits of living within the rock. The fourth walls would usually be made of clay or adobe, but wood could work as well (even though they didn't use it).

When one lives "in" the Earth, the home is climate controlled because the ground beneath the surface generally stays the same temperature, which is cooler than the outdoors in summer and warmer than the outdoors in the winter. Rock is resistant to wind, rain, snow, sleet, hail, and primitive war weaponry, so it makes a lot of sense to build under the outcropping of a mountain.

Anyway I'm just justifying what you've done here and I think your revised version looks good enough to me for you to move on to the next thing. Nice job.

 

[Tassadar]

Thanks for the support Venetia I'll update the first post to everyone can use the tileset.

 

[Tassadar]

Ratty, please, don't curse in my topic.

It might look bare to you (and it is, true), but that's because so far I've only been focussing on the house itself, instead of looking at decorations for it. Of course I intend to add some more to it, but only after some people have given ideas for it.

 

[Venetia]

I agree that there could be more, but anyone could say that about any tileset. If you make any further edits to this, Tassadar, I'd recommend Ratty's idea of recessing the wall. It could be done by eliminating the horizontal wood trim going across the top of the wall and add a shadow, to signify the appearance of rock hanging slightly over the wall. This would most likely be an addition, not a revision, since the trimmed wall can still be useful for multiple stories or versions with roofs.

I don't dislike the one with the roof. What if one wanted to make a home into a rockface and the niche they had to work with wasn't quite large enough?

I know those open-roof home tiles in yesterday's post was done by Mack but I don't quite like the look of it. Unless all homes are done this way it's not easy to wrap your head around it until you realize that the roof is a "cut away". If you like your game without a lot of interior maps, consider a version of the map with the roof and one with the cutaway, so that it makes sense to the player as to why they can see into these peoples' homes.

Finally if you want to make a mountain-dweller's town and not just a hermit's shack, consider adding things like (as Ratty said) decks and various town sundries like barrels, lanterns, rustic benches, etc. Limespots and age spots, as well as cracks or broken planks, would be a welcome addition as well, since rustic towns made of wood generally don't stay in tip-top shape for long ;').

And last but not least, I don't know what's up between Ratty and Prexus, but can't we all just get along? And if not, aren't PM's the best media for flame wars and not poor Tassadar's C&C topic? Sorry, I'm not butting in, I just like to see friendliness is all.

 

[Tassadar]

Those are some good ideas Venetia, and somehow I understand more from what you said, compared to what Ratty said. Maybe that's just because he's using really long sentences :P

I'll work on the roof first, so you can choose if you want it to be open or not. After that I'll work on the trimmed wall, and when that's finished, I'll start making some other items. I'll post the additions as soon as possible, but I do have a social life (sigh). My roof has a leak, so I'll have to fix that problem first.

Please continue to C&C the Hermit's house people

 

[landofshadows]

http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/1223 ... se6ex7.png[/IMG]

I am well impressed how you have taken onboard Constructive Crit !!!... And it looks far better !!!

OK... now you have variaty... and many options, and its starting to look pretty nice... As it is it works... But now you have to try and get what you have to sit correctly with whats in the tile set.

What I mean, is what others have said is ture, the house still doesn't marry up with the Rock front...

But that's a simple fix...

The one that looks the best with the rock front is indeed as Ratty said the one without a roof...

You have to think if you lived in a house inbeded into rocks why would you need a roof ?...

The house with a roof looks great away from the rocks, but the roof doesn't cover the whole of the building, you can see inside, and that kind of defeats the point of having a roof at all...

My suggestions

1. Make a Full roof for the buildings for people to place away from the mountains

2. Work on the version with out the roof, to the side edges and top as you have the bottom, try and make the front look like it's Embeded into the rocks... Just add some shading and extra bits... A bit like the below mock up
http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w267 ... mple-3.png[/IMG]


3. Make other entrence's into the rocks similar to another users suggestion:-

http://z.about.com/d/gocalifornia/1/0/Z ... fhouse.jpg[/IMG]

4. The Chimeny looks a little large and out of place... A sort of bent iron one would look cool, like pipe like one...

Again I would keep every thing you have done, and just add my suggestions and others as extra options, if you have the time.

 

[Tassadar]

Those are some great ideas. I'll put them on my list of things to do. The additional entrances will be last to do, though, simply because the other things have higher priority. Again, great ideas, and keep 'em coming.

 

[landofshadows]

I have tried to make it look like the front is inset into the rock face... Like a bunker type set up rather than being square to the front, having a instep... I did this as a quick mock up... But even the quick mock up looks more in keeping.... Don't you think ?

 

[Tassadar]

Yep you're right. I'll use it as a reference picture when I start working on it.