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Limestone Lament

Happy Halloween, everyone! =)

From the Build & Share:

Gothic was all about space (mostly vertical), light, & color. It came on the coattails of some seriously cramped architectural styles so most surviving gothic architecture still has some very cramped spaces. So I built UP! Every story is between 10-15 blocks vertically. For color & light I have rose windows & roof dormers. All non-tower ceilings have rib vaults. Everything has corners or is at least octagonal, very few round things. Spikes & gargoyles everywhere! Especially the spikes. Everything gothic I could think of, I included.

I assumed with a gothic challenge EVERYONE would have flying buttresses. I try to avoid the things that EVERYONE will be doing, but I couldn't pass up the flying buttresses. They're in most cardinal directions. The whole invention of the flying buttress was just so awesome. <3

Finally, statuary. Most gothic structures were religious. Religion was pretty much the center of life purpose at the time. Few people were literate, almost none could read the Bible. Statues played out biblical stories & lessons for the illiterate masses. The Grand Place in Brussels is inundated with so many statues, how 100 artisans could have crafted them all in a single lifetime is beyond me. Creativerse doesn't have statuary, unless it's huge or it's Blocky the Snowman. I made it with arc signs but I didn't want it to steal the show. They're as low profile as I could make them. Very low resolution, very basic color, & all statues are the same. They're basically placeholders. If you want to use your imagination, great. If not, enjoy the build & ignore the "statues", they aren't there to steal any thunder from the build.

Post-contest stuff:

A gothic contest in September is too perfect. This was going to be my Halloween build. Finished the final tower, furnished the house lightly, but not enough to give it a "lived-in" feel. Less Addam's Family, more Castle Dracula basically. No plants, vines, no growing things. Artwork which isn't out of place in a domicile but certainly not happy, though the lighter stuff is by the entry & it gets more disturbing the deeper you get into the building. I wanted a user-friendly build so no complex machinery, no sequence circuits, and ABSOLUTELY NO flashing lights or 2-frame animations. I started in a pretty fresh area with minimal load distance settings & the build is big enough to lag that fresh area considerably, but this was before I added a single arc sign & the signs make no difference. (10 machine blocks vs. 100 arc signs, the machines will always lag more.)

Finally, I haunted the ballroom. Arc signs are light so they prefer lighter colors. With the ladies in white & the gentlemen in black it was tough to find a balance where all would appear ghostly. As it is the men are a little difficult to see while the ladies are a bit too opaque, which is more of a problem at night. But at least I have dancing ghosts floating in a ballroom.

** NOTE on creature spawns: This was built on a hostile world. While it makes heavy use of raw materials, these are always topped by crafted or non-spawning blocks. The odd spawn occasionally bugs up from below the build but it's 95% safe. Except that dark Pigsy that's stalking you, waiting for the lights to go out...