Creating a Texturepack: Part 1, Planks

"Why wouldn't I create a Minecraft texture pack?" I thought, faintly remembering my previous attempt that didn't get farther than cobblestone and planks...

Being in the middle of discovering the many possibilities of Tekkit and dreaming of steampunk I thought I could create a texture pack combining those 2 elements... No idea if I'll ever get this actually going.

In my enthusiasm I almost started changing every texture in the game to my heart's desire, but then I remembered something: it is quite some work.
So I had to make some decisions. First of all I would start with Vanilla Minecraft, changing only the original textures. I would also go for a 32x32 resolution (double the original 16x16) to have a bit more space to mess around with.

For the style I would like to have something steampunkish, but a subtle one. Not just placing a gear on every other block, that would just look stupid.
I also want it to be functional, meaning if you play regular Minecraft you will know what you're looking. I've seen packs that change stuff around (for example wool no longer being wool, but some decorative block) and that's not what I want.
Other than that I want to combine mechanical and magical elements, but not too much.
Once I've finished doing a vanilla pack I'll add Tekkit stuff, starting with Redpower (to have most worldtextures under my control and changing tungsten so I would stop confusing it for coal). So basically my aim is having a texture pack that is made steampunk by using it with Tekkit.

But first vanilla.

Where to start?

I always wanted to change the plank texture, as no plank ever runs on forever and is that straight. So there I have my first block to work on.

Wood planks: normal, pine, jungle and birch planks.

So that's where I started.
I eyedroppered the darkest color on the original planks texture, used that to draw some lines, divided that into planks, placed nails in, played around with the L of the Lab color picker and added a bit more texture.
Further was easy: copy the texture 4 times, use with different Level-layers, make the jungle wood more orange (I hate them being pinkish) and paste them in the terrain.png.

That was easy I thought.
Well, it turns out it's not that easy. I had some alignment issues to fix after the "pasting into terrain.png", because in older versions of this picture I had strips of the old texture running from top to bottom, meaning I had mispasted something. But for some reason I insist on having the entire pack unpacked in a projects folder with some template files sitting a folder above it. So every time I have to change something I have to open both terrain.png as the template files, paste the correct texture into the correct place, save both, zip the pack folder, cut and place the .zip into the correct folder and hope I didn't mess up somewhere.
After having done this a few times I started looking for ways to automate this. I downloaded 7zip for commandline zipping, learned some batch programming syntax, did some test runs, noticed 7zip likes to save a folder in a zip folder, so I have to give it every subfolder and every file one level below the level I want zipped (if you have messed around with it you'll understand) and after some time I came to this code:

  REM delete the original file
DEL %AppData%\.techniclauncher\tekkit\texturepacks\ThORVanilla.zip

  REM run 7zip and pack a new .zip file
C:\7-Zip\7z.exe u "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla.zip" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\achievement" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\armor" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\art" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\environment" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\font" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\gui" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\item" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\misc" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\mob" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\terrain" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\title" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\font.txt" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\pack.png" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\pack.txt" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\particles.png" "H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla\terrain.png"
  
 REM Move the new file to the texturepacks folder
MOVE H:\Projects\Minecraft\TexturePacks\ThORVanilla.zip %AppData%\.techniclauncher\tekkit\texturepacks\ThORVanilla.zip

 REM wait "some time" before closing in case there is an error message
PING -n 9000 ECHO OFF

I know I didn't have to make everything a direct path, but I wanted to be sure it worked. And it does so stfu.
So now I only need to run this .bat file to have my entire folder packed and moved to the correct place.

Next will be stones, but that will be for another time.

-ThOR

PS: if you figure you want to use this code don't forget

Damn you Brent Weeks!

I'm very sorry if the title may provoke, but it's exactly what I thought while reading the Night Angel Trilogy by mentioned author. He has a very interesting imagination, one that sometimes is very close to mine (A black stuff that can adapt to the bearers wishes? An old master training a young fellow? Magic that uses some form of energy and has to be replenished after use? Magical energy that can be stored somewhere for other magicians to use? Get out of my head! (but not really)).

Don't get me started on the characters. A prophet who's losing his mind because of his ability, a dangerous organization that has more power than the king actually has, with a leader no one knows about... it's too much to spoil it all before you read it.
Seriously, read it if you're even slightly into fantasy. Magic, but not too much, fighting, assassins (even if it's wrong to call them that) that (depending on their preferences) leave pools of blood or no trace at all ("That's why assassins have targets. Wetboys have deaders. Why do we call them deaders? Because when we take a contract, the rest of their short lives is a formality." - Durzo Blint), a hated king and a loved successor, a Godking, a godess, conspiracies, magical artifacts some forgot they existed, Night Angels and more to keep you reading to the last letter.

I must say I read it all and absorbed a bit of his ideas (like it happens with most stuff I read) and I'm very glad he left out a part that I would've made important if I would write a similar story: spirituality.

You know what's even better? The writer still lives and still is writing. There may pop up some more books that I'll devour with a lot of joy...

Enjoy reading!

-ThOR

The Hunger Games and more...

We all know those people.

Those people that have bought the all the Lord of the Rings movies from the moment they were to be bought. Not once, but at least twice as the 12 disc special extended edition (with at least 2 hours of extra footage) just HAD to be bought.
The same people that watched all the Twilight movies at least twice in the cinema (waste of money I'd say), that went to the re-screening on the Titanic movie, that have the complete collection of Harry Potter (both movie and books)...

One of those people is a very good friend of mine and is living in the room next to me.
And he bought the "Hunger Games" DVD...

I didn't want to download it and borrowed it from them. I tried downloading it, but there are more fakes and bad cams than there is a good version of it. Easier to borrow it from a friend than to trust Mister Anon to provide something you don't really want all that much.

So I watched it and I must say I'm not impressed. Even reading the book (a few months ago) was kinda m'eh. Actually the book spoiled it for me. If I'd have read the book after the movie the general impression would've been better.
The reason for this is the writing style. It was too easy to read because the book didn't do anything else but telling the story, telling stuff that's important to the story.

Isn't that what a book's supposed to do?
Not really. A book should also create an atmosphere in another way than by the stuff that happens to the main character.
An example: Currently I'm reading "The Dragon Keeper" of the "Rain Wild Chronicles" by Robin Hobb. Between every chapter there's an intermission where you can read the correspondence between 2 pigeon keepers which gives a broader view on the ruined city after the war that ended in one of the previous trilogies. Concerns about released slaves mixing with the uptown Traderfamilies, concerns about inexplicable illnesses that appear and whatnot.
Next to all that you have dragons that have no idea what happened to them, humans that slowly turn into reptile people, a lost civilization no-one really cares about except for the awesome stuff they left behind, pirates, knights in the north, some angry asshole-nation a bit south of that, and a giant world filled with confusion and mishaps...

Really, I'm not all that into "the Hunger Games", obviously. It could've been so much more if it weren't so easy and accessible (the main reason why it caught on and got itself a movie...)

There are so many more books that could be translated to the  Big Screen with ease. The Night Angel trilogy for example (more on that in a later post) or the Left Hand of God. Those are interesting books and may result in some nice series or movies...

But yeah, I've written quite a lot, maybe it's time to call it a day and have you guys read it...

-ThOR