#i dont think it looks BAD. i just think that odd number of pillars causes problems and maybe it doesnt stick out to other people as much

[mightaswelljxmp]

hm ok so interestingly, bdubs’s courthouse is built on an odd number of blocks. note the roof of the facade coming to a point, but more importantly, the nine pillars….

you don’t use an odd number of pillars. like ever.

let me get this out of the way first: i get why you’d build with odd numbers in minecraft. i usually do it myself, to not run into problems like double doors or two-wide pointed roofs or frustrating spacing/symmetry between decorative elements. however. to not even out the design of something so unequivocally done in every other example of columns and pillars…. fascinating implications…

every other example guys. every other building with columns like this has an even number of them.

doing so sets the line of symmetry at an invisible point between two pillars, an even number on each side. but an odd total number of pillars makes the central pillar itself the line of symmetry. this does a couple things.

one, it upends the sense of community and equality. which i know sounds crazy, but really, a group of columns are all put there to hold up a structure. there’s no focus on one because they are all are working as supports.

symbolically, at least when first used in ancient greece, pillars represented people. and it makes sense for courthouses, especially, to want to show an even, fair, equal number of people on each side. no focus on any one, no inherent bias right off the bat just looking at it.

with an odd number of pillars, though, one will always be placed front and center.

and THEN. and then you walk in the courtroom itself (also odd-numbered blocks) and you are immediately opposite the judge, bdubs, located exactly centrally. and true, courtrooms are often set up like this anyway. but bdubs ups the ante and reaffirms that no, focus is on him by staging it all as a daytime court show, boom mic just over his head, cameras pointed in, spotlights on him.

literally by design, it was not built for justice. it’s built for show, for entertainment. and just look at the credits to know exactly what sort of message you’re supposed to be getting from this show.

the biblical story he used, with king solomon. it’s about king solomon. isn’t really about the trial itself, or the babies, or the women. it’s about showing (off) how wise and just he is. that’s the point. hm. interesting.

now, getting to the second point that etho also picked up on: it feels like a prison.

it’s not just the color palette. when your eyes naturally draw to the center point, you aren’t seeing an open space. instead of feeling like an arch or gateway or otherwise some kind of opening, the pillar there makes it feel closed off. the overall effect is that of prison bars. not pillars lining the entrance to a place of order or a temple. bars of a cage, a cell.

imagine the lincoln memorial were set up with 11 or 13 pillars. he’d look so much more trapped in there.

having a central pillar blocks the entrance. it’s not welcoming. you have to go around it; it’s immediately inconveniencing you. and when you go to leave, it’s there blocking you again.

this courthouse was not designed and built to be fair, nor accomodating, nor equitable, on any terms. even if unintentional, i wouldn’t call it so much coincidental as i would… subconscious.

after all, y’know. form follows function.

[isaacathom]

i finally got worldedit to work, turns out rc-1 was missing the file, so i downloaded rc-2 (after redownloading both minecraft and forge to make sure i have a completely clean slate with no interference from a previously-installed optifine) and it worked! only downside is that my comp runs like SHIT and its really hard to get the chunk to have the look i want it to with the rather limited natural world gen customisation, cause the buffet world type is kinda. boring as fuck. also 100x100 isnt really that big, so i think while the chunk still should be ~around~ 100 blocks high, give or take, it needs to be bigger in w/l. its not meant to be exact, of course. thats the downside with minecraft - i am, indeed, Limited by Things. especially worldheight since i definitely conceptualise the Chunk as being taller than it is wide? maybe to demonstrate that it should be 50x50x100, since its more a proof of concept.

i think im gonna have to do math to figure out what stairs arrangement i need to make that work. there are so many types of stairs. i think the regular stair blocks would definitely like, Fit the Brief, but i didnt want them to be on a 45, so it needs to be some thing else. theres the full + slab, or theres like, the three block set up of full + slab + stair, which is the mpst gradual one i can think of which duplicates, ie full+full+slab+slab. id think that the 2x or 3x would work fine proportionally? for the demonstration of the idea, at least. but math? does it math? i dont know. i havent done actual fucking trigonometry since i was 15, man, im too old for this. uhh. 100 blocks down x2 or x3 is, naturally, just 200 or 300, BUT that discounts the fact that the corner breaches plateau out a little bit to be a flat space for people to access and rest. bc its a top down build its not exact in that (vs bottom up which would be able to shave material off to level a surface, the top-down cannot add material back in a way which guarantees its safety and security, even with magic, i think)

but yknow. i guess it is just 200x300. 200 on a 50x50 works perfectly for nabbing the two corners, so i guess i’ll just do that? keep it simple :P 300 is probably tooo graduaaaall wait. i said the angle was 30/60 right? wait. the wiki can help me with this. uno momento. shit they dont have 30/60 angle triangles on the wiki, i have been Betrayed. gimme the goods google. also i keep saying 30/60, its because im marginally Bad at Trig, its 30 angle between the horizontal and the diagonal, thats the Important part, i Believe. whatever.

eeeh. 20-25 is probably the closest, which is the 2 stair set up with the full and slab. 30 would probably be closer to 2.5 per 1 block in height. which is....... i guess the 3 block set up, huh. hm. hmmmmmmmmm. i think i would need to do tests on  a flat world, like have it be that i start at X and have to get to 10 blocks high, try the different stair angles, see which one i like. i actually spent some time last night while trying to sleep imagining how the interior might lmao, haha! most of all i was trying to figure out where the dug out windows would go, and i settled on wanting them to appear at odd numbers so that i could place supports evenly between them. i think 7 was the number i set on in my head, but it might end up longer than that and perhaps have two support pillars between each one? again, we’ll see :D It’ll be really fun to experiment.

also you bet your ass im putting way more effort into the Corrupted Chunk of Thesk than any of my school work ;)