Down To The Cellar, And A Very Different Scriptorium

Monthly code has been updated - Details Here

The codes are words now, instead of the string of random numbers they used to be. Much easier to type, and much easier to remember when you're standing at the printer :)

First up - the tavern.

All the current files have been updated and are live on the drive.

Entrance, bar, roof, cellar, cave. In Scriptorium there's a layout that opens the whole thing in one go, so you don't have to assemble it yourself before you can look at it.

There are separate layouts for each level too, if you only want the bar, or only the cellar. Great to see how the parts go together for building.

The way down

This is the bit that took a bit of work to get right. A new hole cutting feature was needed so there was a lot of planning on the best way to make this work with Scriptorium. You can now combine files into Kits that can have a file marked as a cutter that when the kit is packed the negative hole gets cut. It's non-destructive so you can unpack and move or remove the hole as you like. One of the Boulder Risers was the best test piece to build this on, so I've also made a set of Decor Boulders that have flat bases and a set of Parts Boulders for using in builds

This tool allowed the bar floor to have openings cut in it - one down to the cellar, one down into the cave. The tavern now has a way to get to the levels underneath.

The cellar gets a proper working hinged door and frame in the floor, and a new Decor Cellar Stair leading down, so you can actually walk the party down there.

The cave opening is ringed in brick, and the hole can be covered with a grate allowing for a window to the caves below, or a plain wooden floor section hiding the opening. Both parts are removeable so the party can take it out and be lowered down.

Where it all lives

The tavern itself is in - Builds/The Dragons Rest Tavern, a folder per level, with the layouts in Layouts.

The new pieces are spread across the drive by what they are, rather than sitting together in a tavern folder:

• Parts/Cellar Door - the hinged door and its frame

• Parts/Floor Opening Brick Ring - the ring, plus the grate and the wooden cover

• Decor/Cellar - the cellar stair

• Decor/Boulders - the flat-based ones, for dropping straight onto a table

• Parts/Boulder Bits - the ones for building with

• Risers/Boulder and Risers/Boulder Cave - the cave mouth

• Negatives - the cutters

That last folder is new, and it's the one to know about if you want to cut your own. Anything in Negatives is a hole rather than a thing - mark it as the cutter in a kit and it takes a bite out of whatever it's packed with.

Read this bit before you go hunting for anything

The drive looks different...

It used to be sorted by where a piece came from - Dungeon, Docks, Tavern and so on. It's now sorted by what a piece actually is. Floors, walls, risers, decor and parts, with builds, tools and effects sitting alongside them.

The reason is that a stone floor tile isn't a dungeon tile. It's a stone floor tile. It works in a dungeon, a cave, and the cellar under the tavern - but it could only ever live in one folder, so it was findable in one place and invisible in the other two.

Organising by theme meant having to remember where each design lived. Now everything of a kind sits together.

Nothing has been lost. Everything that was on the drive is still on the drive. Anything that hasn't been through the rebuild yet is sitting in the processing folder exactly as it was - docks, dungeon, tokens, underground, village, wilderness. They come out set by set, and I'll flag each one as it lands.

Multi-colour

This is the part of the rebuild I think gets undersold, so - as each set comes out of processing, its colours get separated. The stone is one colour, the ironwork another, the timber another, and so on.

If you've got a multi-colour printer, that means it comes off the plate already looking like something.

And if you haven't - most of us haven't - it's just as useful, because those separations are a paint guide. You can look at the file and see exactly where the stone stops and the ironwork starts before you've picked up a brush, instead of squinting at a grey print trying to work out what's meant to be metal.

Same file either way. It just knows what materials it's made of now :)

That's what I'm on at the moment - the hewn stone walls are going through, and there's a reason they're first. Once they're done the modular board can be built in Scriptorium in full colour. I've made a start on the first couple of rooms already and it's a very different thing to look at.

Next up

There's a big one coming in a couple of days. A few of you have already spotted it and messaged me about it, which I'll take as a good sign - hold that thought and I'll do it properly this week. Work on the external parts of the Tavern is in the modelling queue for this week too

Ian :)