Opening statement
Almost half a year it has been since I started the revamp of the Gondor pack... I can only hardly believe it myself. At this point I'd like to thank everyone who has made contributions to it and I even dare naming names: @Eriol_Eandur, @Eaglz24, @_Luk, @Fireinferno13, @Ma5terMinD and @Beathaven. I hope I didn't forget someone! We're still not quite done with the technical stuff, but the end is nigh! And now have fun browsing the new blocks below, and all the other things that happened in the past two weeks!
Project Progress
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Andrast (In Progress) - Lead: @jacenpeter
and
Dol Amroth (In Progress) - Lead: @Eaglz24
Texture DevelopmentJacen has now really moved into detail work in northern Andrast. The terrain shapes are already impressive on their own, but with this intricate material pattern they get truly awe-inspiring! Also he never seems to get bored of trying out new things, just check out the really intrigueing snow crest in the images above!
Belfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @Thijs1801
and
Dol Amroth (In Progress) - Lead: @Eaglz24
So last week I had fuss' trial job in Belfalas. Turns out I misunderstood Eaglz's instruction "place flowers in patches" as "place leaves in patches". Turns out the entire area was supposed to be forested and not just open-air vegetation. Welp, that's how planning goes sometimes 
Anyway, the new Foremen are now going strong in continueing to apply the very beautiful style of the Belfalas region, hopefully this time to the right areas!
Lamedon (In Progress) - Lead: @_LukAnyway, the new Foremen are now going strong in continueing to apply the very beautiful style of the Belfalas region, hopefully this time to the right areas!
No changes in the last two weeks.
Mordor Terrain (In Progress) - Lead: @Tyranystrasz
No recent news.
Moria (In Progress) - Lead: @Despot666
From Moria Reporter @SmaugJuice
During the past two weeks, an excellent amount of progress has been made. The prism logs for placing blocks in Moria, over the last 7 days, is exceeding the maximum amount of block places you can see! There are several halls that are nearly complete; the royal kitchen only needs some furniture and small ruining, wodleth's hall now needs to be ruined, and in Ivan's hall there are very few small rooms and some ruining left to do (warp m5). Thijs has still not finished the ruining of the 2nd hall yet... however it is almost complete! As for the other WIP halls, work resumes as normal.
In addition, I have heard that Beathaven has been making excellent work in the Chamber of Light. On the northern side, there is a new conveyer belt, cargo depots and a crane on the way to an active mine. Almost all of the roads have been laid and there are only 3 houses remaining!
There have been a number of trial jobs for our Foremen in Moria, mainly ruining the King's Way. Now Foremen are able to start jobs, it is very likely that there will be many more jobs in Moria, from building to ruining, over the weeks to come.
Tolfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @TyranystraszDuring the past two weeks, an excellent amount of progress has been made. The prism logs for placing blocks in Moria, over the last 7 days, is exceeding the maximum amount of block places you can see! There are several halls that are nearly complete; the royal kitchen only needs some furniture and small ruining, wodleth's hall now needs to be ruined, and in Ivan's hall there are very few small rooms and some ruining left to do (warp m5). Thijs has still not finished the ruining of the 2nd hall yet... however it is almost complete! As for the other WIP halls, work resumes as normal.
In addition, I have heard that Beathaven has been making excellent work in the Chamber of Light. On the northern side, there is a new conveyer belt, cargo depots and a crane on the way to an active mine. Almost all of the roads have been laid and there are only 3 houses remaining!
There have been a number of trial jobs for our Foremen in Moria, mainly ruining the King's Way. Now Foremen are able to start jobs, it is very likely that there will be many more jobs in Moria, from building to ruining, over the weeks to come.
No changes in the last two weeks.
Valley of Erui (In Progress) - Lead: @Mandos
No changes in the last two weeks.
This weekend I was finally able to add all the textures and model files to the new Gondor 2.0 pack! For this occasion I compiled a display for all regular blocks (i.e. no itemblocks yet) along with some notes...
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Read on to find out what's still due to do until the pack will be ready for release!
Animation Plugin (Testing in progress) - Dev: @Ivan1pl
Rank UpdatesIvan has released a new in progress version of the animation plugin to the devserver, adding a couple new functions, such as that it is now possible to edit a frame, without having to recreate and replace it, which is very helpful and time-saving to fine-tune each animation frame.
Custom inventories / itemblocks (In progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur
So while all textures have now been added to the new Gondor RP, there's still one big step to take. And that is preparing the new custom inventories! Because currently the RP has two big flaws: First, many blocks are not accessible through the creative inventory, such as double slabs, stage 1 to 15 cactus and many more. To fix that we need the custom inventory, where we can add whichever blockstate we like! Secondly all the itemblocks are still defunct. To be able to bring them into the game we also need the help of Eriol's custom inventory!
We planned a quick meeting this Wednesday to talk about what we need to do next. As soon as the inventory configuration is done, the pack will be released unofficially so that the Dol Amroth team can start making house concepts on the plotworld. On the main map there will still be a lot of blocks to switch though, which will be a project for itself...
Block analyse / replace / switch Plugin (In progress) - Dev: @Eriol_EandurWe planned a quick meeting this Wednesday to talk about what we need to do next. As soon as the inventory configuration is done, the pack will be released unofficially so that the Dol Amroth team can start making house concepts on the plotworld. On the main map there will still be a lot of blocks to switch though, which will be a project for itself...
Eriol has made great progress, but he says that it "was quite hard", which I think means it really was a lot more complicated than expected, given all the awesome innovations he already came up with...
He made it possible to only replace the blocks in a certain Resource Region and added a way that jobs get stored so that they can continue after a server restart.
He made it possible to only replace the blocks in a certain Resource Region and added a way that jobs get stored so that they can continue after a server restart.
With this edition I can proudly announce a wholesome of three new Foremen, which means that we got a total of four Foremen serving already!
A big congratulations goes to:
Media of the week
*speechless*
I thought I was crazy when I made 4K screenshots, but these here are 8K! More here: barteldvn's screenies
WANTED: Moria Reporters!
At this point I'd like to thank Smaug a whole lot for speaking up as a helping hand when it comes to remaining on track with Moria progress! I still want to shout out to everyone of you reading these lines: I still would be incredibly glad if you would be interested in joining Smaug on this task! There's always something the other one won't notice...
SirEonwe's Trial Tour
@SirEonwe is an aspiring Guide, and currently his trial tour is being planned. The date and especially the time is not yet set in stone, but for now reserve yourself the upcoming Friday at around 14:30 GMT!
Themed Build
The *new* Audiobook
The Audiobook, hosted by @TI_020601 is taking place regularily on saturday evenings, 8pm GMT, unless announced otherwise in this thread: The New Audio Book
Minecraft News
There's no actual news this week, but I am curious whether you prefer the new launcher, which recently got implemented, or whether you preferred the old one! Vote in the poll above if you have not already!
Also I wanted to clear up why it is very interesting that Minecraft 1.12 will add at least 96 new blockstates, while we have access to infinite blocks with itemblocks. The main downside of the itemblocks is, that they will not function with Voxel or WorldEdit. Means if you copy a house with itemblocks used in it, the itemblocks won't be copied. Other downsides are potential performance hits, even though Eriol did a stress that with armorstands, but I am still careful about that.
For those reasons only less often used decoration items are realised as itemblocks, no blocks that are used often in buildings or terrain.
Closing statementAlso I wanted to clear up why it is very interesting that Minecraft 1.12 will add at least 96 new blockstates, while we have access to infinite blocks with itemblocks. The main downside of the itemblocks is, that they will not function with Voxel or WorldEdit. Means if you copy a house with itemblocks used in it, the itemblocks won't be copied. Other downsides are potential performance hits, even though Eriol did a stress that with armorstands, but I am still careful about that.
For those reasons only less often used decoration items are realised as itemblocks, no blocks that are used often in buildings or terrain.
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