Final stages of housing

Ok, as we all know, the housing district for our city, the atrium, is coming along nicely, but we have arrived at a standstill. So I figured since we're getting that little bit more activity here, that we actually get a thread started for the completion of the area.

So far we have 16 apartments completely built. These are split into two apartments per quadrant, over the bottom two floors. We then have a third floor. It had been mentioned before, and I was thinking it was definitely a possibility, if we use the top floor as our "penthouse suites", or royalty rooms. Instead of having them, as with the others, at 8 apartments a floor, instead we make it only 4, each having an entire quarter of the level for the apartment. This would make for a very large area as rooms.

The other option is to allow for extra players to come along and make it still 8 on that floor, giving us a total of 24 personal apartments. We have currently 12 players, with a couple of applicants awaiting approval and tour, so we still have plenty of room for expansion. The problem with this is that each floor is slightly smaller than the last, which means compensation will have to be made in the upper apartments if we're having 8 a floor. This won't be too difficult if we choose to do that.

So, two options for what we do in terms of apartments, and this is a poll, so when we get a decent number of votes that will give a final decision.

Since I'm writing, I'll include the rest of the atrium and the plans. I believe it is the plan to make the bottom completely lava, as of course, we all love This will require caution moving around (duh) and it also means we won't have access to the workroom (which was temporary anyway), so everything in there will need to be relocated back to the storeroom. All the doors in the walls of the pit need to be removed too, leaving us with just a flush stone finish.

What we're doing about the middle section I don't know. Do we keep the lava/waterfalls in there? Do we remove them, put up railings, and leave it as a hole? There was a suggestion about making it a tower in the middle, rising up to perhaps a viewing platform way above the housing? Is that a viable option?

General decoration about the place... We need to make it aesthetically pleasing, but try not to go over the top with wall decorations.

Another thing is the apartment claiming. Every player will have his/her (don't know if we have any females amongst us) own apartment, and it's pretty much a case of claim which one you want. The problem will arise if we have 4 large apartments on the top floor. Then 4 players will have a much bigger personal apartment than the rest of us, and it could potentially lead to arguments if there are more than 4 of us wanting the big ones. If you want to claim one of the current apartments, place a sign up on the doorway with your name. If you want to wait for an upper floor one possibly later, you can wait.

There are basic rules when it comes to the personalising of apartments. This is the place where you can put stuff, and decorate to your own liking, without having to consult others, or even conform to the general feel of the city. Of course, there are limitations. The main one is that you cannot expand your apartment any further. All current walls must stay in the same place. You can change the materials, as long as it is not visible from anywhere else outside.
The floors and roof can be changed, as there is a large enough gap so it wont influence the neighbouring apartments.
You can remove inside walls and staircases as you please, as long as it isn't enlarging the bounardies of the apartment.
Be thoughtful with the materials you use... If you want to put any quantity of valuable materials in your apartment, make sure you contribute in gathering some of it first. Dont just randomly take 20 diamond blocks from store room.
You can have chests of stuff in there, but they are open to anyone to take stuff from


So, a quick checklist of what I've been over:

• Decide whether 4 or 8 apartments on top floor
  
• Decide on centre column
  
• Aesthetics
  
• Lava at the bottom
  
• Removal of workroom
  
• Apartment Claiming

I'll cross these things off the list once done

I hadn't thought of having a tower in the middle but now that it's been mentioned I absolutely love it. I think we should make it out of materials we haven't used as much, my first thought was obsidian, but there are plenty of other things we could use too, we could angle the top so that the rising sun/moon shines through a hole, but otherwise keep the lighting to the minimum necessary to stop mob spawns.

I think the top apartments should be penthouse ones, either players could claim them of if it causes too much argument we could have them as showrooms, I personally want a small one, I quite like small houses. I'm going to log on now and look at the dimensions of the tower, and claim myself an apartment.

I think having 4 penthouse ones is the best decision even if nobody ends up living in them.

I voted for four penthouse suites mainly because it makes sense to have in our city. In real cities there are the nice homes for the wealthy and the more modest homes for lower income families, so I thought that it would fit nicely. When it comes to who is occupying them, I really couldn't care either way. I think it makes the most sense for our moderators and possibly donors to get those apartments, but I personally would be perfectly happy with a standard apartment.

When it comes to decoration, I think we should let the architecture of the room stand out instead of the pretty materials used. What I mean by this is that we should decorate the walls with a simple material pattern, but then we make sure that the structures and archways look nice in shape and style. I'm not particularly good at this but between the 12 of us we should be able to make this place look awesome.

When it comes to the central pillar we have a variety of options. Two of these options stick out to me as the best ideas.
1) We take the water out of the central fountain as it does not fit very well. We then have one or more lava pillars that flow directly into the pool below. Hopefully this could give the housing a nice warm feel, like we created our homes into the warm rock of a volcano.
2) We could go with that tower Idea I originally suggested. The tower could serve as vertical transportation and could still have a lava flow going down the center.
Again, these are just my ideas, I sure there are other viable options out there.

My idea is the lava should flow out of some pipes instead of hovering in mid-air :<

But what if the lava is squirting up from below, forming a vertical pillar, and due to mine craft physics, it looks like its coming out of nowhere?

Ok, now I'm home, a serious reply :p Then back to work for uni...

First up, seems I've been definitely outvoted, and we are having penthouse suites We have two moderators, me and sret, and as far as I am aware, no one has donated towards the server. I don't want a big apartment either, so that leaves 3 apartments free.

I now know who suggested the tower in the middle

and since I'm not thinking, I'll leave it at that :p

btw, I've got a friend joining us on the server for now. He souldn't do anything wrong... Name is maxican301

I think we should have some sort of lava/waterfall in the center, just not the particular design we got now.

Perhaps also we could do a sort of hybrid tower/fountain, a tapered tower in several stages:

Top stage is a 1x1 column of falling lava, with the top constrained by a capstone to keep it from spreading out.
Second stage is a column of glowstone surrounded by four streams of falling water.
Third stage is a 3x3 grid of columns of falling lava.
Fourth stage is a 5x5 square or circle of falling water columns, with a single falling lava column in the center.

At the interface between stages we'd have obsidian structures to maintain the columns.

Hmmm... not sure about that at all... I was more thinking something like a stone brick tower, with a spiral staircase or the like in the middle, perhaps with lava flowing down the centre. perhaps say 20 blocks above thee top floor, the tower could widen a bit into a small viewing platform, maybe with those pipes Dr. Steel was talking about, to make it seem less like lava falling from nowhere

So, with the apartments themselves, feel free to claim one of the lower floor ones if you so wish. Feel free to experiment with one of the "penthouse suites", getting an idea for size and shape too. Even if you just dig out a small bit... eg. I'm going to have a shot at the balcony when I get a chance, like I did with the lower floors, then hopefully someone can come up with something from there...

I'm thinking we can give it a 2 block thick floor between the levels on these apartments, so you can change your own first floor roof without affecting your second floor floor... Which is something the lower levels dont have

Brendanan wrote:Ok, now I'm home, a serious reply :p Then back to work for uni...

First up, seems I've been definitely outvoted, and we are having penthouse suites We have two moderators, me and sret, and as far as I am aware, no one has donated towards the server. I don't want a big apartment either, so that leaves 3 apartments free.

Nobody has donated so that leaves all 4 penthouse suites. I don't like having a lot of space or to be seen as better than anyone else. =P

So I had a look yesterday, it seems a few people have claimed, and I left a smartass sign or two next to a couple from what I remember, me, my friend, snate, and I think it wss arrow have claimed one. My memory is shitty though :p

My Internet was so bad I couldn't even open chests, so I went to my single player world for other ideas... And instead walked over 3000 blocks through a never ending snowstorm to wash up on a beach overlooked by a jungle... Let's just say I didn't get many dwarf ideas

I've claimed one too now, and I think will did aswell.

3000 blocks through a snowstorm? Is that in the new large biome thing? xD

Not really... But it was snowing the entire time... Biggest snow biome I've seen...Made water crossing easier though

So has anyone had a chance to try something? How many rooms do we want in the upper apartments? I haven't had a chance yet (really bloody hope my stepdad can fix the Internet), but I did manage to remove half the workroom

I was working all last night, serving wine for african royalty :O didn't have much time to get on, I'l see what I can do this week, I've got a couple of ideas, I was thinking that the second floor have a mini interior balcony that can look over a 1st floor entrance room maybe?

I like that idea Honestly, I'm no good at designing interiors of houses :p Got some uni work to do then I think I'm free

Well, work has started on the lava pit at the bottom. I haven't removed the water yet, because I use that more than I use the stairs I've copied a design for the entrances to the staircases (you should see what I mean. There's a little hole in all of them, where I'm thinking we plug a block of valuables. I'm not sure what we want to make it though. Do we have a different gem each floor, do we have a different one for upstairs/downstairs/blank wall/way to minecart tracks?

Last time I checked the water was the only way to reach the bottom.

it is :p but i use it for the other levels too :p

Who doesn't?

Well, no one will soon last I checked we were a good way through the pit (takes a shitload of lava)

real men swim up lava

Takes too long going up lava

A few things... First up, i'd just like to know who is waiting out for one of the top floor apartments? If you would like to have one, regardless of other people, just say so. If we have more than 4 people, I will draw names out of a hat to determine who gets the apartments. It's pretty much the only fair way I can think of

Anyway, I've been doing the same as everyone else and procrastinating the designing of the actual upstairs apartment, but instead, I've been working on other areas of the atrium. I have basically completed the lava at the bottom, which should be right until we decide what we are going to do with the centre. I also decided to reshape the bottom of the pit slightly. It's not extremely noticable, but it just makes it that little bit nicer to look at.

I'm going to also propose a change to the coding system of the stairs etc. Diamond for the exit is OK, and gold for the downstairs is alright too. I'm thinking though that we use lapis for upstairs, and iron for dead end paths (the ones without stairs, but still lead into apartments.

So, we still need to finalise a decision for the middle column, as well as get around to designing that last set of apartments... We're getting close