Laputa, Castle in the Sky / Wizard's Citadel

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Finished.

WIP shot of the basic structure.

An in-progress shot of the interior root systems being joined up to the base of the center tree. I've turned a lot of stone and other materials into glass and fence while I work on it, so that I have light and can easily see the roots from the inside

The thing's underside. Will probably be draped in more vines later.

A look at the in-progress interior. It's dark as hell in here with the roof on, so I've temporarily put torches all over the roots while I work.

Library below the center crystal, still a WIP.

A look at the tree (still a WIP) with all of the building stripped away. All the roots in the place connect back up to the tree. No half-assing it here, damnit!

One of the stairwells that connects the library levels together.

Crystal with more vines in place. Vines are still covered will a billion torches so I can see while I work in here. Curse you, darkness!

Lower library level looking up - still a WIP here.

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jamsessionein
Level 51 : Grandmaster Blacksmith
Posted 05/02/11 12:40:23 pm , last updated: 08/07/11 11:04:06 am
05/02/11

On my SMP server, the admins are basically members of the Mage's guild; they're 'wizards' in the roleplaying setting, and they farm out their abilities to players as needed. You want a river there? You solicit a mage, and he charges you iConomy to do his thing.

Rather than making us totally accessible 24/7, too, I wanted to keep players 'in' the game world a bit by making them trek to the Mage's guild if they needed something like that. I was playing around with a couple of ideas, but the one that stuck with me the most was some sort of flying lair far above the world.

I made a couple flying islands, and immediately realized that whatever In wanted to build would need the full 128 height... so what I decided to do is to make the mage's guild fly over the void and put it outside the map borders that the players are restricted to. I was thinking I'd probably add some big goddamn chains to the underside of whatever I made, and trail them down from the guild structure to the void below... and then make matching ones on the main world, that anchor into the terrain and climb up all the way into the skybox. While not a primary way for players to reach the Mage's guild, they could conceivably start climbing the chains up - and once they hit the 127 mark, I'd set up an invisible portal to teleport them to the corresponding 'chain' above the void below the guild building. With a little sleight of hand like that, you can fake having the guild flying at a height in excess of 128 over the world.

Anyway, I started working on this thing, and I played with a couple ideas, but one of the images I came across really stuck with me - Laputa, from an anime of the same name.

I've started making a scaled version of this thing that'll fit in 128 height. I've never seen the movie, so I don't know exactly what the inside looks like, or how faithful I'm being to it, but I sort've don't care. I'm gonna do my own thing with it, I think; just using the idea as a base. After making the base structure, I started making these giant root systems from the tree up top - they extend throughout the interior of the structure, and all of the roots link back up to the main tree. The building's interior will basically be designed entirely around these tree roots.

It's a little slow-going because I'm mostly doing this by myself, but I'll try and keep this updated.

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Progress:	100
Tags:	Laputa, Flying, Citadel, Wizard, Guild, Castle, Clouds, Air Structure

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Update #3 : 08/07/2011 11:04:06 am8/07/11

Released a world save for you guys.

Keep in mind that this is not really meant to be explicitly Laputa at this point. It was built to fill a role as a Mage's Guild on my server, which is why the interior of the primary structure's been turned into a library.

Enjoy.

Update #2 : 05/06/2011 12:36:24 am5/06/11

So the past two days have been full of me swearing. A lot. The structure was cool and easy to design from the outside, but holy hell is the inside a lot harder to work out - particularly, the ways up and down between levels. My first impulse was just to whack a spiral staircase down in the middle of this thing... it worked, and was reasonably functional, but also a bit of an eyesore, even with a nice, gradual curve and 3-wide stairs. Instead, I resolved to put the stairways entirely behind the bookcases, which was certainly one hell of a challenge. I think when you guys see what I've managed to pull off with the stair layout, though, you'll be pleasantly surprised - they're a very effective use of the space, and the 'dead' space in the walls underneath them has been converted over into additional rooms for arcane study. :)

I've also added a metric ton of roots to the tree system. Uploaded a shot of the castle right now that is just the tree, so you guys can get a sense of it; every root is connected back up into that damned tree one way or the other.

A lot of what I'm doing now is furnishing the interior, adding still more roots, and trying to figure lighting out. Lighting remains one of my biggest obstacles in here - the place is so big, and my only options are darkness or a billion torches. I still have to build the interior of the 'top' level - those weird rotunda buidings that are directly below the tree's foliage.

Update #1 : 05/03/2011 12:09:33 pm5/03/11

So, neat little thing I discovered: You can put portal blocks behind ice, and they're invisible behind there, but their particle and lighting effect will extend through. What does that mean? Sweet-ass crystal that starts emitting particle effects when you get close enough! It's kinda hard to get an idea of the effect from a static image, so here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G5AlGdVIHg

I wish we had, like... spotlight blocks. Something that actually projected light a little farther. It's impossible to light the inside of a space this big without resorting to a billion torches. My placeholder solution is just to cover the roots up with torches for now, but I wish it was just much brighter in here.

Anyway, since the crystal's now emitting purple energy particle effects, I figured I'd tuck some portals under the walkways to it, too, so that it looks like maybe energy's being transmitted outward and away from it. There's a library section right below the crystal, which represents the vast tomes of magical knowledge that a group of wizards would naturally keep. Paintings / ladders will help break up the regularity of it later

I'm going to drape a bunch more vines down the inside interior, and use them to help obscure some of the bookcases, I think.

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