Architectural pictures

[MephistosChan]

In addition to the normal vanilla picture system, a system where details, such as lintels, mantels, arrow slits and other surface features would be added.

These might be in thematically linked groups and would alter if they were placed next to each other just as computercraft monitors adjust when placed side by side. So a single tile might have a quatrafoil window (looks a little like four holes overlapping), 1 block on top of an other would give an arrow slit, 2 blocks side by side might make a cannon emplacement and 2X2 might make a large circular window.

If it was possible to add a number of these basic tiles and they were editable through a standard texture pack editor (I use gimp) tit would add to the aethetics of minecraft without having to invent whole new blocks and such.

[jakj]

Possible to do by grabbing Kaevator's code (released to the wild when he gave up modding) with a heavy and complex custom renderer. Same as the idea for arbitrary 3D models as blocks, you would store the model data as world-saved-data, and each block would store its state as NBT in the title entity, and you would have your mod cache the tile-entity state data in memory (periodically unloading anything older than X minutes) so it doesn't have to load the NBT during every render pass.

[MephistosChan]

Just wondering how the tiling is carried out in redpower and alternatively how the details like placeable seashells are done in tropicraft.

[jakj]

Redpower does it by a custom renderer (if you're referring to microblocks) because only one block (and things like snow plates, torches, water, and so forth, all count as blocks) can exist in a spot at a time.

[MephistosChan]

The red alloy wiring must be done in a different way then, that can be placed on more than 1 face of a void.

[jakj]

The wiring would be done in the same way. You can store 4 bits of metadata in a block directly (quick access), and an almost-infinite amount of information in a tile entity's NBT compound (slow access), so Redpower just uses that information to render it.