Annúminas

Wouldn’t it be a good ieda to add some houses remnants on the other side of the walls (like we have in Dale), as the city seem to have never been truly threatened by war and wasn’t described as very fortress-like / militaristic like Minas Tirith or Fornost Erain?

On the other hand, I don’t know if we can place a period of growth in Annúminas history (other than the initial settling obviously), so that it could have extended beyond its original borders … It depends if you consider Arnor had an initial prosperity period (like by example the first 400 years of united Arnor) or if it immediately started dwindling after the War of the Last Alliance …

I’ll leave it as a suggestion.

1 Like

Annúminas slowely declined over time. I think that there should be almost no ruins outside of the walls, except for the ruined estates and stuff.

The answer to that question is dependent upon your answer to another, do you want to help build them? Other than that, I agree with Guan to a good extent.

1 Like

Well, I wouldn’t mind helping with that (although some exemple builds would be helpful as I don’t feel that easy with ruins).

@Guan: Absolutely, but that doesn’t exclude a possible period of relative prosperity before that; Arnor had, after all, +/- 800 years of peace as a united kingdom, which is a lot of time. I just found out, however, that Tolkien Gateway says that Arnor never fully recovered of the Disaster of the Gladden Fields, though, which would plaid in favor of immediate decline, and Tolkiendil too (main and best French Tolkien encyclopedia) but the Encyclopedia of Arda doesn’t. It seems rather strange to me that a single battle would affect the population of a kingdom to that point, but everything isn’t always 100 % logic or scientific in Tolkien’s books, so, if it’s a lore fact, it would solve the question. Do you know where that comes from (I already checked the appendixes, and didn’t found it)?

What i meant is that the more the city declined, the more the buildings outside the walls would be ruined way earlier. I think the buildings outside of the city would simply be too old to even have ruins of.

1 Like

It’s also possible that houses outside the walls were made of wood or other degradable materials (poorer people).

3 Likes

I think that only the foundations of estates will exist in the final layout. Right now, I think it’s quite good to stumble upon the city walls suddenly rising up from the terrain, then descending into the ruins of the city. Having more of the same outside the walls would (ruin) the specialness. And to justify my view on that, I’ll use Fornad’ s reasoning on the outside homes being made of inferior materials.

2 Likes

I regretfully didn’t announce Oriol as the Co-lead for Annuminas. After the walls are finished, he will be assisting me in layouts and leadership of the project. I am very excited to have Oriol working on Annuminas!

14 Likes

Maybe a stupid question, but i’m genuinely curious. How would enough soil accumulate on the roof of the palace for grass to be able to grow?

1 Like

@Glov Soil like that is produced by the decomposition of other plants that may have been able to grow on the rocks like lichens and mosses. Over time, these plants grow and decompose, continually adding to the soil until the conditions are good enough for other plants to grow (like grass).

Technical term for it is ecological succession.

7 Likes

3 Likes

Project update: I’m slow.

1 Like

Real update: I will be on tomorrow to finish laying out the first section of ruins I plan to open up for this week. A big thanks is in order to Ori for his work already! The palace has seen some revision and is being worked on right now.

5 Likes

The first section of Annuminas has been planned out!

This section will be marked inside the orange wool.
Make sure you take a look at the Arnor build guide at /warp arnorguide. Also take a look at /warp Arnortown5, it very much appeals to how I want Annuminas to look. Best of luck to everyone, I will be turning my attention to some larger builds in the city. I will be keeping an eye on builds to make sure they are up to standard.

8 Likes

Annuminas is looking amazing, especially the palace. Came across some cool inspiration so just gonna leave it here. Sorta looks like what we already have to be fair.

Timgad

Also thought it would be interesting to have a few other “mansions” around Annuminas which were more intact. I would assume there were some very rich people in the capital of Arnor, and so it wouldn’t only be the palace that was left standing. Maybe have some stuff looking like this?

Leptis Magna

5 Likes

Liking the progress we’ve had in the past few weeks. Apologies for not being there much to help/lead but I’ve had a busier schedule than I anticipated.

Just wanted to make a few points to save work in the future and to make sure the project continues to run smoothly.

  1. Could we ensure that ALL planning blocks are left above builds. A fairly large area of the ruins is missing all of its planning blocks. I want to keep these so that if any minor changes are made to the style in the future then we can easily call upon people to update/fix their builds without any problems.

  2. Please, when building ruins (not just Annuminas) make sure not to leave grass blocks underneath stone or similar blocks (see below).


    Not only is this unrealistic but it also looks pretty crap so please make an effort to check you are not doing this.

  3. On some ruin plans you can see small wool pillars or circles of different colours.
    Orange wool: Courtyard
    Magenta wool: Tower
    Green wool: Trees
    The point of these is to give a bit of variety to the ruins. In courtyards you’d expect more vegetation so feel free to add bushes, even the odd tree. With towers, its pretty obvious but just make them a bit higher than the rest of the walls.

  4. Sometimes it can be hard but please try to have some noticeable variation in the walls of houses whether it be height, materials or how intact it is. I only say this because some houses are looking almost like the white wool plan has just been converted into mossy cobblestone. Get creative with it; don’t be scared to have gaps where there is nothing but grass; have some parts of the walls that are a few blocks higher than other parts; add in some walls that are completely covered in grass and just look like a mound. Just don’t go too crazy and try to make it fit with your neighbours’ style.

That’s all for now so keep up the work in section 1 with these points in mind. Thanks

11 Likes

As Hearth is leaving for 3 months, @YouJusGotSarged is now leading this project. Athradamen has been merged into an overall Evendim project.

8 Likes

As the build day is this Sunday this post shall be detailing what is to be completed. Now, I’m much more particular than Hearth is, thus I have strict requirements for what my ruins must look like.

Firstly, what I want done is below:

What is surrounded by the ORANGE line must be heavily edited, perhaps even redone. I’m not going to faff around with placing ‘not approved’ blocks over all the ‘completed’ ruins. They ALL must be redone.

What is encircled in RED is what must be started and subsequently finished.

My specifications can be seen below:

http://imgur.com/a/ugU9Z

As you can see, there is a large amount of grass layer blocks of various heights littered around the ruin. The largest concentration of these layers is located by the walls, with layers gradually getting taller the closer they are to the wall. Furthermore, these ruins aren’t simply outlines of the buildings. There are walls INSIDE the ruins, indicating rooms. None of the ruins in Annuminas, at present, have this feature which is unrealistic and makes the ruins look, quite frankly, boring and way too bare.

Furthermore, grass layers should be on top of every block you place in these ruins. The height should be the lowest possible, meaning one click, unless these ruins are up against a wall.

Please, if you need further clarification, go to Athradamen, my utopia of perfect ruin work, to observe which ruins I’ve done and take note of what is required to make them. However, no one is to do any work on Athradamen at ANY time without my permission, which means basically never.

I will be on at numerous points during the build day, to assist and take your questions, should there be any.

Finally, I should direct you to the ruins guide I created, for any significant questions.

6 Likes
4 Likes

Turn on your CTM’s!