Messages

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Gallery / Re: TITANIC ( Read the F.A.Q.!)

« on: August 11, 2013, 10:51:10 PM »

Time for an RMS update!

My biggest accomplishment today was correcting the height and front-to-back length of the second funnel. A special thanks goes to Dimitry for making the height-altering process more efficient (as I duplicated and lowered parts of the funnel, Dimitry inserted new bricks at the bottom of the funnel piece so that I could directly place it in the new location):

When the server next goes up, I will replace the brick ladder seen here with the custom ladders that Demian made for this build.

The four funnels on this build were originally of identical heights and all significantly taller than they should be. The second funnel has been cured of this problem, but there are still three more to go. The first funnel was demolished so that the second funnel can be used as a template for it (albeit lowered, but more on that once all of the funnels have been fixed), but the last two funnels are both still too tall.

The state of the funnels brings us to the current overall progress image of the build so far (notice that the first funnel has begun its improvement):

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Suggestions & Requests / Titanic Project Request: Two-Sided Walls Need to be One Plate Thick

« on: August 11, 2013, 02:41:50 AM »

The Titanic build requires a modification to the vertical plates add-on, so consider this a CQD message from the Blockland Titanic team.

Here is a one-image summary of our problem here:



The blue is where we anticipate that a wall will be located, while the vertical plates are where they will end up unless a change is made. Notice how the white ghost brick is outside of the line. Making the walls 2 units thick will make the rooms significantly more cramped, so we need a set of vertical plates which can be placed back-to-back within the width of a single stud so that both sides able to be painted (or at least planted in) different colors.

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Gallery / Re: TITANIC ( Read the F.A.Q.!)

« on: August 09, 2013, 02:19:20 PM »

dining hall

Dammit, people, it's the first class lounge! They don't serve food there! We haven't even marked where the first class dining saloon will be yet, but you'll be able to tell the latter when you see it because it's the single largest room on the entire ship.

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 07, 2013, 12:16:25 AM »

Overall I mainly acted as a supervisor of the work on C-deck, so for now I'll just post this image of the work on A-36, including the redefined walls, the start of decorating the bedroom walls, and the furniture markings:



I explained last night why I idolize the man who lived in this cabin (which was on Titanic but not, at the time, Olympic, because they later realized that the comparatively empty space could be used to get more money. This won't be the last time you'll be hearing about additional rooms being added on Titanic compared to Olympic.) Instead, I'll just say for now that the area on C-deck that we are currently working on was exclusively a first class area (with the exception of a surgery room), though you can expect some more information in the future, when the deck has more work done on it (particularly on that surgery room!).


By the way, Hugums, no one has waited on Mister Master Major Archibald Mark-Stevens yet because he is in a lounge, not a restaurant. Yes, the lounge serves after-supper tea and after-dinner coffee, but the lounge is open for ladies and gentlemen alike. If he wants a stiff drink and some more suitable company, I recommend he waits in the first class smoking room (it's essentially a gentleman's haven!). From there, he can inform a steward that he wants a drink and that steward will head into the smoking room's bar (not a bar in the modern sense) and mix up whatever drink he ordered, and then bring it back to him in the smoking room.

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 06, 2013, 08:14:23 PM »

Didn't you guys scale the buildings based on blockheads to humans sizes?

The build is based on the height of a blockhead, while the length and width retain their real-life proportions to that height. What we did then was skinny up the blockhead to 2 studs instead of 3.

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 06, 2013, 10:15:26 AM »

Did you just type all that from memory/yourself or copy it from somewhere?

The former: I turned to a few sources to verify some of that information, but I typed every word myself.

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 06, 2013, 12:46:40 AM »

It's-a-me! RMS!


Starting off the update is Hugums' mirroring work on the aft side of A deck and the front of B-deck, which, combined with NASABoy3000's mirroring work at the front of A deck, have greatly improved the first class promenade!


This is my first draft of this group of telephones in the back of the ship's wheelhouse. Among other locations, one of these phones was linked with the crow's nest, and it was through that phone line that the words, "Iceberg, right ahead!" had been uttered.


Thirdly, Demian gave us a single-brick set of support for the ship's compass platform, and I added a set of poles to the platform on which an awning can be mounted. The compass platform was designed to be a place where an officer could come and track the ship's bearing according to the stars, with the aid of the most accurate compass on the ship. Because as little metal as possible was used in the construction of the compass platform, there would be very little interference for the compass located here, which is why it should theoretically be the ship's most accurate compass.


Finally, I leave you fine folks tonight with this in-progress shot:

I use various colors for the cabin's inside walls and floors. I find working on this specific cabin quite sobering, and here's why: there's a man I encourage you to do a bit of research on, named Thomas Andrews. He is widely credited as Titanic's shipwright, which means he designed the ship. No one on the ship, or perhaps even no one in history, knew that ship as well as he did. He worked at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, overseeing construction of the Titanic. He was eventually a part of a group of the yard's hardest workers, known as the "Guarantee Group," who joined Titanic on her maiden voyage to make sure that the ship ran smoothly. As a part of the guarantee group, Thomas Andrews had a first class room, A-36, seen in the early phase of construction above.

When Titanic sank, it is said that Thomas Andrews was so focused on poring over blueprints and drawings of the ship that he didn't even notice the ship's collision with the iceberg, and remained unaware of it until the captain summoned him to the bridge. He could tell that the ship was doomed from early into the sinking simply by hearing about the damage and from his knowledge of the ship's design, so he spent the ship's final hours telling passengers to get their lifejackets and head to the lifeboats. Whenever he was last seen, by whom, and doing what, vary, but it is often agreed upon that less than an hour before the ship was completely submerged, Thomas Andrews was seen, possibly for the last time, staring into space in front of a painting over the fireplace in the first class smoke room, his lifejacket disregarded on a nearby table. One source even reports having seen him later on deck throwing deckchairs overboard to let people in the water use them as flotation devices! Thomas Andrews, however, did not survive the sinking, and, based on the eyewitness reports, likely even try to.

It would later turn out that Titanic actually remained afloat for almost an hour longer than even her shipwright had anticipated. The ship was so incredibly well-designed that when Deltamarin reviewed the plans in preparation for designing Titanic II, they were surprised by how excellently designed for her time the ship was. It's the work of a man who proved to be an excellent, selfless human being, and it's humbling and sobering to be replicating his cabin, on his ship and final resting place.

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 05, 2013, 12:56:31 PM »

I hope you're also being just as delicate with the use of lights, so the creation is functional in the night.

I support this notion entirely, though Bones typically wants to add the lights "later."

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 04, 2013, 09:21:04 PM »

Time for my update report:


Addditional supports have been added to the docking bridge, including some truly functional ones. For example, the vertical support in the center of the image above connects the steering wheel above to the steering engines below. (Titanic was so large that she needed a dedicated steering engine to move her 101¼-ton rudder. She needed two so that they had a reserve in case one of them failed, and even then there was a way to rig up the compartment to be able to more manually steer the ship in case both steering engines failed.) This connection is much more direct than the connection between the wheels in the bridge to the steering machinery, and as such it could be used in an emergency to steer the ship. In fact, one of the telegraphs in the ship's bridge could be used to relay steering commands to the docking bridge in this situation!


This is a telephone box. If you have a sharp eye, you might be able to make out another, mostly obfuscated one which was added on the docking bridge in the image above. There was a series of phones in the wheelhouse which were connected to to the crow's nest, this one, and the one on the docking bridge for the crow's nest to report sightings or to hand out docking orders to the folks on the front or back of the ship. There was also a network of phones connected to various crew quarters, restaurants, and so on. It should act as a small indicator of the scale of this vessel that crewmen would be so far away from one another that they had to use these comparatively early telephones to communicate between various positions.

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 04, 2013, 02:24:14 AM »

It's time for my update for the night!

Let me start off small with this overhang:



Titanic was not symmetrical from port to starboard, and in fact on the port side of the ship, the second funnel gets really close to the edge of its deckhouse (a deckhouse is a building-like structure that sits on what would otherwise be the uppermost deck of the ship, as my best way to describe it in my own words). So close, in fact, that platform that the funnel sits on ends up needing to overhang some!

Some things that still need to be done are visible in this picture: we will likely ask Demian to make benches to replace the ones similar to the ones in this image. There is also a light that will eventually be installed on this wall, and the red tower thing in the background is a reminder I've made to mark what will need to be the height of the third funnel (the other three funnels have similar markings to their starboard sides, as each funnel has a different height).


Now then, the real star of the show tonight is Demian's deck chair. Bones4 showed you these already, but here's a closer look:



Back in the day, the slang term for this sort of chair would be "steamer chair." White Star Line allowed passengers to reserve these lounging chairs before a voyage, or at any point during the voyage via the ship's purser's office (coming eventually to our build) at $1 for the entire voyage. Passengers additionally had an option to purchase a blanket for these chairs, known again in the slang of the day as "steamer rugs," for an additional $1. No, you wouldn't be allowed to just bring the blanket from your bed on the ship up on deck.

Not only did you rent a chair, but you also rented a specific position with it, which brings us to the deck chair battens:



These dark battens in the roof of the A-deck promenade had numbers along their lengths. Each of these numbers corresponded to a number on the back of a deck chair, which made these battens useful in case someone also ordered a steamer rug which might have covered up the number written on their chair when finding his or her steamer chair for the first time on the voyage. Passengers weren't allowed to move these chairs around very much, so it's said that it wasn't uncommon at the time for mothers of single, marriageable daughters to book crossings according to the passenger list, and then bribe crew members to get deck chairs for their daughters to be positioned next to rich bachelors.

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 03, 2013, 04:36:16 PM »

Let's not forget that Bones made a stuffton of the details that are here. Gigantic makes it sound as if he built every detail on the ship, but Bones just prefers to finish the structure of an entire section before added details.

You should ask Gigantic how many times he's had to rebuild or alter details because a section wasn't finished and had to be altered. ;)

Indeed we both step outside of these general themes, but overall we both prefer to work in one respect or the other.

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 03, 2013, 05:34:02 AM »

I vote Bones, because it gives RMS more work to do and therefore we get to see more of his work.

Oh, I have plenty to work off of as is. For a sneak peak of a few things I've marked the locations of but still need additional resources (pictures, resources, possibly manpower, etc.) before building:


Changing the heights of each funnel: Titanic's funnels were not all the same height, but I will save the explanation as to why for when I can provide pictures of this in-game.

Board of Trade markings on the ship's side

Docking lights on the mainmast (the mast at the back of the ship): this will finish up the navigation lights.


I also need to get around to installing lighting, especially on the exterior decks, though Bones seems to get upset whenever I start mentioning light fixtures.



I'll be saving more in-depth explanations of each of these for when these elements can be shown on the build.

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Gallery / Re: Unnamed and unfinished Map - Homage to GSF Ghost

« on: August 03, 2013, 03:39:04 AM »

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 03, 2013, 12:03:44 AM »

I know it's in bad taste to double post, but Bones4 and I are hoping that this will spawn some fun:

Which are you looking forward to more: Bones4 updates or RMS Gigantic updates? Here's how each generally goes:

Bones4 tends to post images of large areas of improvement, such as the hull work these past few days. This gets more of the ship done faster, although he prefers to leave small details for later.

I will post updates centering on small details, which, due to heavy research and calculations, can potentially take a pretty deal of time to finish. When I do finish one of these details, though, I will take a DOF screenshot of it at the end of the day, post the screenshots of each new detail here, and give each detail a description on what its role was historically. Some would say that these small details make the build seem more "real," but with how scattered I can sometimes be in my work I don't cover the vast swaths of areas in my improvements that Bones4 does.

The difference can probably best be demonstrated by my borderline obsession with light fixtures, constantly concerned about when we might get around to placing them and where. Bones4 largely ignores them, so, when you see interior photos from Bones, the lights he shows are often disembodied, inaccurately positioned, and solely for the sake of the image.



TL;DR: Bones4 is comparatively holistic about his updates while I'm more brown townytic. Which do you prefer?

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Gallery / Re: Titanic (continued)

« on: August 02, 2013, 11:34:19 PM »

It's an RMS Special Edition Update! I work around the ship on small details which Bones4 often doesn't show, and many updates to come are not yet ready to be shown. For now, however, I would like to show off these new additions:

Crane doors

The insides of the main cargo cranes could be accessed this way, though I am not fully certain what's inside of them. I know how I might be able to find out, though.

Awning cable

This line of... rope, I guess? traveled across the open section of the A deck promenade. Its purpose was to allow a canvas to be hung from it on particularly bright sunny days, to help shield the eyes of first class passengers. There are pictures of Titanic in Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland where some awnings have been mounted on the forward section of the open part of the promenade. Here is one such picture!