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MCAlagaesia
Re-creating Paolini's world of Alagaesia in Minecraft.
MMO-Style
Complete with all towns and cities, with extra features including Magic and Dragons.
There are a few reasons I'd like to become a builder. Reason number one being I really enjoy building. Secondly, I see so much potential for Minecraft maps in the future. With the growth in popularity of VR I think exploring Alagaesia in VR with shaders would be like a dream come true for me. This leads me into my third reason. I've loved the Inheritance Cycle since I first finished the series when I was 11. Being able to help build the world I have fantasized about would be an amazing opportunity.
However, I have no experience being a part of a build team, and I'm willing to admit I likely need to improve. Thank you for your time and I look forward to your replies!
Hey! I love your enthusiasm and VR Alagaesia does sound really cool but I don't know how complicated that would be to set up. Either way onto your plot!
I'll say this up front, since I'm only a terraformer, I'm not the most qualified to talk about building, if a builder reviews this plot, then listen to them, but I still wanted to point out a few areas that I think could use some improvement!
So firstly, the ground. I know the grass blocks are covered in tall grasses, which is a good start, but there needs to be more. Maybe pick 3-4 flowers and place them around the plot in little clumps. Also maybe try adding a little more elevation change in the plot. Nothing major, just something more than 1 tiny hill in a corner of the plot. Try setting the town on a slope or something.
Secondly, the walls. The Walls have good detail: the missing bricks, and cracked stone and mossy stone and stuff, thats all a good start and variety is an important part of building things like walls or mountains or farms or anything really. On the downside, there is no variation in the wall. Its just flat. In real walls there are turrets, guard towers, etc. Speaking of which, there is no way for guards to get onto the wall. Maybe add a staircase or ladders or something I don't know.
On a related note to the walls, your city is REALLY small to have such a gigantic stone wall. A plot is only a snippet of a larger setting so maybe don't build all of the city, have the walls and buildings and roads and stuff extend on past the plot borders like they would be more city there. On the other hand, if you wanted to make something "plot-contained" try a small fishing village or something, most of the time those sized-towns don't have any walls at all. or if they do, its a little wooden stake fence thing, just enough to keep wild animals out.
Thirdly, I won't talk much about the architecture of your buildings, cause I'm not great at that either. I will say though the roofs are too flat. Try looking at some of the houses and stuff in the plots that are near spawn. There is some great inspiration there to help you be a better builder--- but onto the thing I know more about, interiors. Interiors can be really tricky to nail down, I know, but yours are too empty. Remember people, often whole families, live in these houses and they need more than a firepit and a bed. Most houses that have windows and wooden roofs and doors and stuff, also have furnishing like tables, bedstands, kitchens, wardrobes, shelves, cabinets, etc. So even if the house is just one big room, there still needs to be accommodations for people to live in them. Also try using beds instead of just the carpet "mats". Speaking of carpets, a great way to make your house feel more- home-y, is to place scattered carpet (or full rugs) on the floor. It helps break up the monotonous floor, and provides subtle flavor to the house.
Some Misc. Extra Tips:
- For the houses is don't make the floor the same material as the walls and same for the roof.
- Try spicing up the tents a bit more than the standard "Pyramid-y shape". The Internet has some great-looking tent tutorials that you might could look into.
- The people in the tents would not each have their own campfire. you can fit like 4-6 tents around 1 large firepit so try that instead.
-The torches on gate look a bit weird try using lanterns instead and put my closer to the ground.
- Maybe instead of banners make like, 1 wool wide 3/4 wool long banners of just solid red or whatever color, idk experiment.
So that may seem like a lot of negatives, but I hope I didn't come off too harsh! Your plot is definitely a good start, and you have potential to be good you just gotta work at it some!
If you have any further questions you can message me on the website or on discord~
Good Luck!
~Zebra
"Have you seen it on the map? It looks amazing on the map! See it on the map." ~99
Hey hijackjon2! Thanks for your plot submission and sorry for the delay in the review.
Firstly, concerning VR Minecraft, since there's no official way to do it in the original Java edition, it's not currently on our roadmap. A discussion about this should have its own thread though, rather than as an afterthought in a plot review.
Let's continue on to the review!
The first thing we see, and also the biggest element on the plot, is your huge stone wall. It certainly strikes an imposing figure, however is lacking a bit of detail. As you can see in the screenshots below, it has large areas with no depth:
To fix this, you could try adding supporting pillars in a contrasting material.
In any case, it seems better suited for a huge city than a "little town" due to its massive height, width, and the type of material used - so another, and perhaps better, option would be to replace it with a smaller wall using simpler materials (such as wood), which would make it more suitable for your build. Yet another option is to just build a section of the wall, as Shameful_Zebra recommended.
Let's move into the town to continue the review!
The feature in the middle of the town is a well-done custom tree, with a full canopy and extensive root system:
I still think there is a bit of room for improvement though - Check out "/warp t4" for the tree tutorial, especially the steps for leaf placement. If you avoid placing leaves on the bottom of the logs in your skeleton, it usually makes for a better looking canopy.
On to the buildings now. Before I review a few individually, I'd like to say that overall it's a good idea to keep using the same style and materials within a single build rather than switching it up. In the pictures below we can see three rather distinctive styles. It's generally a good to keep things in the same location cohesive.
Out of the styles you've demonstrated, my opinion is that you should focus on the one used in these two buildings (wood walls, stone accents/pillars). It's a style we don't often see, so you could create a very unique plot with those ideas.
Again, that's just my opinion - if you think you'll have more fun focusing on another style, by all means, go for it!
We've covered the exteriors, so let's move on to interiors:
As these screenshots should make clear, I think the interiors are a bit sparse.
If interiors aren't really your thing, that's alright. We do have positions on the team just for creating beautiful interiors, so not everyone needs to worry about that - however a bit of effort does go a long way to making your plot feel more alive. The good news is that there are some excellent interior design ideas at "/warp t3" (the interior design tutorial), so I'm sure you'll find some great ideas there!
I hope this is enough to go on for your next submission. I can't wait to see what you build next!
