Plank revamp discussion

[Oddface]

Planks are sorta weird right now. They're inconsistent and it damages the cohesiveness of the pack. I think we need to decide on one style of doing the planks and stick with it. For a while now it's been the oak texture from the original John Smith, but personally I don't really like it. It's great as one of the 6 types of wood in vanilla Legacy, but as a base for every plank texture in modded Minecraft, I just think it's a little too stylized, too grimy. I think @Satellence is onto something with his work on Chisel in the 1.6 repo. They're a little smoother and more stylistically flexible while still keeping with the John Smith style.

This is the blinds variation, which would be my choice for a new standard.

Those are just my two cents. This would obviously be a sweeping, somewhat controversial change for the pack, so I think it's important that we talk about it. What do you guys think? How do you like your planks?

[goldbattle]

I think that it is good to have some variance in the pack. It allows for breakup when building with JSTR. Mods such as forestry that add 20+ woods, can get really repetitive when you just have recolors of the same type of wood. It is the same deal with ores, recolors just make everything very consistent, but at the same time repetitive. I think it is good to have some variance in the planks and ores, as it does provided breakup.

For example in vanilla minecraft, for both soartex fanver and invictus, all 4 different colored planks are of different design. This is by choice! As it adds to the variation, and not only allows for people to pick from the color of the wood, but also the design on it.

Let me know if I am missing something.

On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 7:26 AM, Oddface notifications@github.com wrote:

Planks are sorta weird right now. They're inconsistent and it damages the cohesiveness of the pack. I think we need to decide on one style of doing the planks and stick with it. For a while now it's been the oak texture from the original John Smith, but personally I don't really like it. It's great as one of the 6 types of wood in vanilla Legacy, but as a base for every plank texture in modded Minecraft, I just think it's a little too stylized, too grimy. I think @Satellence https://github.com/Satellence is onto something with his work on Chisel in the 1.6 repo. They're a little smoother and more stylistically flexible while still keeping with the John Smith style.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/John-Smith-Modded/JSTR-1.6.x/master/Chisel/assets/chisel/textures/blocks/planks-oak/blinds.png This is the blinds variation, which would be my choice for a new standard.

Those are just my two cents. This would obviously be a sweeping, somewhat controversial change for the pack, so I think it's important that we talk about it. What do you guys think? How do you like your planks?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/John-Smith-Modded/JSTR-1.7.x/issues/24.

[Oddface]

Having a varied mix of plank designs can be great too. Here's the thing though, Soartex has a very clear, simple style that is consistent across all the different plank designs. No matter what plank you choose you still get that smooth, modern Soartex look. You can't really say the same for JSTR at the moment. There's the rugged oak planks, the two-toned birch planks, the smooth jungle planks. There are huge differences between how these look. How do you decide which plank type goes with which texture? Right now the style is split between different mods, which feels very inconsistent to me.

[lesdmark]

I think as long as they all fit the john smith style then it's fine if their a bit different. That being said I think the blinds variation is a bit too clean. it needs just a touch of "imperfection" to look more JSTR like.

[damonmensch]

Personally I feel we should have a different style in for each of the vanilla planks, then have the mods ones be variations of those.

Example have Ebony from forestry match the style of jungle, but magic from BoP match birch, and maybe cherry from BoP be like spruce.

[lesdmark]

The biggest problem I see with having a bunch of different ones is lets say you make cherry look like birch but the person wants cherry to look like oak. I think a unified type for all the woods might be best and then for variety people can use chisel 2 to change it up.

[damonmensch]

In that case what I could recommend is to maybe have the mod ones done in alt styles so people can have overwrites if they prefer one over the other

[Greenhawk837]

The only thing is the average user of this pack isn't going to be using overwrites. I also agree that a unified setup is both easier and better

[Greenhawk837]

I'm just wondering why does the colour of the oak planks now mimic default Minecraft? personally I find they look so out of place in JS. I've just never noticed because I've always used my own vanilla pack.

[Oddface]

The changes to the vanilla planks are due to the Chisel support, which pretty much switches up how everything looks. The oak and birch are brand new and look more vanilla like, and the jungle planks look pretty much like oak used to look. The spruce mostly looks like it used to, only a little brighter. I'm making some tweaks to the Chisel stuff right now, and considering some more drastic changes. Staying completely true to the original John Smith planks doesn't really make sense because they all have very similar colors, but I don't really love how it looks now either. Any thoughts on this?

[Greenhawk837]

these are the original JSTR planks

[Oddface]

Right. I was talking about the Legacy style planks that were used in JSTR 1.6 and 1.7. This is how they were done in 1.4 and 1.5, for the record.

[Satellence]

(Sorry for my English) To make difference between chiseled wooden planks, i make a new texture in 1.6.4 Chisel mod. I prefer more clearly and contrast textures. So, my variant is best for me. Maybe, it will be better as default in texture pack.

[ScottKillen]

@Satellence These are nice.

[Oddface]

Here's what I'm working on. It's kind of a remix of the Chisel stuff Satellence made with acacia and dark oak added. I tried to be faithful to both the Legacy planks and older JSTR stuff, as well as the default look. I'm showcasing the blinds variations here, but I've done all the Chisel stuff (with some other tweaks).

oak birch spruce jungle acacia dark oak

[lesdmark]

So the planks greenhawk has are the way I would say they should all look. and then the ones oddface is adding for chisel look like they work together. It keeps everything simple and unified and makes adding new wood planks easier.

[Oddface]

Hm, I don't think the original JSTR planks really fit in well with the new chisel ones. They look very "soft" by comparison. It's just a different style, from a way older version of the pack. It's pretty obvious that John Smith means very different things to different people since it changed so much over the years. We're not all going to be 100% happy no matter what we choose, but we need to pick a direction and stick with it.

[lesdmark]

So would the replacement for the main ones look like the ones you have above with the lines in them like the old ones? I would like to see that. I admit I just loaded up the ones you have the blinds variety and i like them, could we see them with the lines like the originals? The ones Satellence has just look too modern to me. JSTR to me has a feel somewhere between Medieval and Victorian with a bit of Steampunk Kind of a classic JRPG feel.

[Greenhawk837]

Yeah I agree that the blinds variety looks really nice, but I do find that the oak planks are still a touch to light IMO

[Oddface]

Yeah, the blinds variety is what I'm thinking for default. It's nice and simple and works for all types of builds while still looking like John Smith. I'll try to tweak the oak a bit.

[damonmensch]

I like the new blinds it's a cruise between the old classic oak, and a newer design. Should we get a couple variations for mcpatcher support like the original oak planks has?

[Satellence]

Screenshots for comparison

[Oddface]

The oak and old oak are incorrect in the screenshot for my version.

[Satellence]

I'm sorry. Fixed.

[Oddface]

Alright. I've made the oak a bit darker, pretty close to the Legacy version. I also tweaked the acacia color a little bit. I've included the "short" and "chaotic variations as well, which could be used when making mod planks for a little bit of variety.

oak

birch

spruce

jungle

acacia

dark oak

[ScottKillen]

These are very nice, Odd.

[ScottKillen]

I am looking closely at the resolution to this discussion so I can do textures for my Ancient Trees mod.

[ScottKillen]

@Satellence what are those giant stone blocks in the images? retextured stone?

[lesdmark]

Those are I think pretty close to perfect and a good match for the pack. I think those should be what we go with. The add just that bit of visual breakup that still makes it very JSTR. I like very much! I don't care at all for the new legacy planks they look too muted and the same.

[Satellence]

@ScottKillen there in default JSL pack for 1.8.1

[ScottKillen]

Thanks!

[Oddface]

So... do we have an agreement here? I've made a couple more minor tweaks and I think it's good to go. Changed a few pixels on the acacia and birch to look a bit smoother. Made the gaps in the jungle wood a tiny bit brighter.

[ScottKillen]

I like these. :+1:

On Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 4:07 PM Oddface notifications@github.com wrote:

So... do we have an agreement here? I've made a couple more minor tweaks and I think it's good to go. Changed a few pixels on the acacia and birch to look a bit smoother. [image: blinds] https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/7591428/5965865/c2533d4c-a7ff-11e4-95d4-42f66e5bb7fb.png [image: blinds] https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/7591428/5965940/62e3053a-a800-11e4-8a5f-09a1fe15fb32.png Made the gaps in the jungle wood a tiny bit brighter. [image: blinds] https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/7591428/5965897/1347ae40-a800-11e4-9ad5-73dc34fd4b21.png

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/John-Smith-Modded/JSTR-1.7.x/issues/24#issuecomment-72101428 .

[lesdmark]

I second that :+1:

[Greenhawk837]

Looks good to me!

[lesdmark]

I guess we can do the BoP , Thaumcraft, Forestry, Binne's mods now. More wood yeah!

[Oddface]

Alright the Chisel update is committed! Now for the mod planks, I did some stuff for BoP in this style a while back. I'll look over it and see what's worth posting. I'm sorta planked out at the moment, so if some other people could do the heavy lifting with the mod stuff, that would be great :+1:

[lesdmark]

I can work on them once you post what you have, and just making sure I understand the blinds ones are now the default JSTR plank textures correct?

[Oddface]

Yes, but I also think you can throw in a "short" variation here and there, maybe "chaotic" too? We haven't really discussed the "rules" so to speak. I think for a normal plank block the planks need to be straight, horizontally oriented and have a vertical element, either short planks, blinds or both. Exceptions can be made if the default texture calls for it (the vertical BoP palm planks for example). Anyone else have thoughts on this?

[lesdmark]

That's exactly what I was thinking of doing. mixing up between them for a bit of variety.

[Oddface]

It's pretty much how they do it on the Soartex pack. There's the standard texture that's used more than the others, but there's still room for some variation.

[Oddface]

I've posted my BoP stuff now.

[damonmensch]

Aren't some of the regular (default) planks vertical? Perhaps those should be vertical here as well

[Oddface]

I did mention that there are exceptions. When the default texture is different from the vanilla minecraft planks, our textures should have the same kind of difference, like the vertical palm tree and the uneven redwood from BoP and the two-toned redwood from natura.

[Oddface]

If you're working on something for this overhaul, post about it here so there's no duplicate work going on. I'm currently working on Natura.

[damonmensch]

I'm working on BoP, also I'm gunna work on Thaumcraft. I got an idea for the greatwood and silverwood planks that won't make them clash like the circles in the current versions.

[damonmensch]

I based the BoP I did off of the color scheme on the originals in the mod.

Ethereal Fir Hell Bark Jacaranda Magic Mahogany Palm Pine Sacred Oak Willow

From what I can tell Hell Park appears to be nothing more than a version of Birch that has reddish undertones mixed in, basically birch with just a noise filter on it. And Sacred Oak was a wide plnak version of normal oak.

There's also an inconsistency with Magic Wood. The log shows the heart as a magenta hue, yet it's planks are a light blue/teal hue. That's how it's been for a long time. Mimicking default magic planks are an indigo/light blue.

Also looking into the mod, Holy no longer appears to exist, so that should probably be committed out.

[Oddface]

These look good, but you don't need to stick so strictly to the default colors. John Smith planks are generally a little more subdued and darker than default. If the default color works, then that's fine, but don't be afraid to experiment with saturation, hues and brightness to find something that could fit the pack better.

[damonmensch]

Only one of those I feel doesn't fit properly would be magic, I'll play with that one a bit more and see what I come up with. The others are all similar to the original but not exact. Personally I love how the fir came out. Think I'll play with hell bark a bit more as well.

[Oddface]

Here's an idea how you can do the hell bark a little more subtly. It's sometimes good to look at other texture packs for inspiration, not just the default textures.

[damonmensch]

Ok since I personally liked the colors found in our previous version of Magic Planks I brought them back, only a touch darker and more subtle between the blue and green, in my opinion, and I also made hell bark more reddish in tone and more subtle in the changes within it. Also I feel the conrast in it works better now.