Base8 Question and Answer Thread

[Heir of Black Falcon]

How do you decide if it is low or high tide....

I think it is amazing how much thought and detail go into this. Some of the displays I have seen in the past look fantastic and now I can see how these groups can really do it this way.

In the older write up it mentions the medieval market set up but the link was dead. What was that all about? Was it basically the same as the CC standard?

Sorry for the questions but I actually find this quite interesting. Doubt there is a group close to me but you never know someday there maybe.

R

[Tedward]

In the older write up it mentions the medieval market set up but the link was dead. What was that all about? Was it basically the same as the CC standard?

Short answer, no. Longer answer go to: BrickWiki: Medieval Marketplace

[Heir of Black Falcon]

Tedward,

Thanks for the information.

Seems like a decent method of organisation. Is the Medieval Market system still in use? Seems like it would be compatible with many systems as 16x16 is fairly small dimension so it’d fit into the larger ones.

R

[Tedward]

Seems like a decent method of organisation. Is the Medieval Market system still in use? Seems like it would be compatible with many systems as 16x16 is fairly small dimension so it’d fit into the larger ones.

No it is no longer in use. It has been superseded by the CCC standard which accomplishes the same thing but allows for more freedom and includes city walls. The Base8 standard is based on 8cres which are multiples of 8x8 so even more compatible with everything.

Basically you can build MM buildings but build them on a plate(s) rather than a baseplate. See the CCC Standardand scroll down to "The Village" (odd section title but it deals with the buildings within the city walls.)

[wunztwice]

One thing I like about a +1 hill tier town is that buildings can have basements.
Frank

Nice idea, That might work well around an edge where the house/cellar would be basically a cross section, and visible to audiences.

Yeah, I vote for baseplates in regards to large bodies of water. I will be doing SNOT water and I imagined a transition somewhat along the lines of what you built. Thanks for doing that, btw. I hadn't built a test piece yet and was wondering if it would turn out okay.

Josh

I was also thinking about that. I think this will work nicely!

[BreadMan]

...(which, thinking about it, actually needs to be +9 over a baseplate because a hill tier is 8 an 8 brick rise - is that correct?).

Correct.

How about this: we compromise and make the standard 4 bricks high (5 with BpB). It allows for bigger and smaller ships, and remember the actual docks and piers can be higher or lower with steps/ramps leading up/down to them. In fact, I could see multiple wharf heights working - like different parts of the wharf were built at different times as the town grew and expanded. Just bring some 2x# brown plates to use as plank ramps between them. This would way Frank wouldn't need to change his existing wharf and it would still fit in. I think the most important part really is that they be a uniform color and occupy the same edge 8cre, and even that could overlap some. Also the nice thing about having it in an 8cre is you could just mesh it up with a seashore 8cre without having to build a transition.

Actually, now that I think about it I think I was unconsciously picturing Eric Druon's modular Puerto Brico pirate harbor. I think something along these lines could work really well.

[ffilz]

I've been playing with river base plates and Base8.

So far, the Pirate theme baseplates will work real nice. You have to lay out long grey plates at the edges since the 2 studs of grey isn't studded on those baseplates, but otherwise those rivers work perfect for Base8, they are correctly centered and about the right width. It's easy to make a transition from the 2 studs of grey to preserve most of the shore detail. The raised baseplate even isn't very brick intensive to get up to BPB height (and it doesn't look too bad, though I am building a small watchtower in the far corner to avoid a big flat expanse).

The straight river section from 6552 Rocky River Retreat will also work pretty well. I plan to make a 2 plate section since this river plate meshes well when butted up against each other but flipped.

The tan Wild West river section is more troublesome. I ended up putting those base plates aside for now. I will need to look at them again and figure the best way to make a river with them.

I have not yet checked out how the raised base plate from 6584 Extreme Team Challenge will work. I suspect it will work well since the river slot in the raised base plate is pretty confined. It should end up working the same as the Pirate raised river base plate.

The raised base plate from 5986 Amazon Ancient Ruins will also work just fine though there is just a single row of studs to create a transition, but the river is pretty much the right width.

Frank

[BreadMan]

Allright, so I needed a break from building tonight and finally sat down and started typing up a rough outline of the changes that I want to make. One thing I want to change for the overall article is to make the standard a little more universal, so "castle specific" things like dirt roads and CCC walls are going into their own section. Here's the breakdown.

1. New Intro, more noob friendly
2. BpB: Think I'm going with Ted's suggestion and making it non-optional.
3. Basic landscape features (common features?):

a. Cliffs: Maybe good starting place because they're almost always used, but might be overly complex and overwhelm a first time reader. Maybe have rivers first? Will of course be fixed for 8 bricks height.
b. Hills: Good follow up to cliffs, 4 brick height fixed.
c. Streams: No change.
d. Rivers: Ditch the 2 studs of green and have grey banks be the edge of the 8cre. This way they match up with streams better and are simpler.
e. Seashore: Ditch the 2 studs of green, make it 8 studs of tan? Again for simplicity.
f. Transitions to other colors: Just a little note about transitioning to other colors like white for snow, grey for rocky areas etc. Simple 4 studs of each (split the 8cre down the middle).

4. Advanced landscape features:

a. Studless water, as described earlier in this thread.

5. Castle specific features:

a. Roads: no change, except maybe loosen the color restrictions to allow for cobblestones, muddy tracks, etc. Maybe as subsections to roads.
b. Walls: Ditch the whole "move to an 8cre" idea and just leave them centered. Made planning confusing and they fit along the edges of all 8cre types so why bother?
c. Wharfs: As per discussion I decided on 4 bricks tall (5 from water level) plus one plate for the surface. Matches with other height-related standards for simplicity. Examples will be given for making taller wharfs backed by raised terrain.

6, 7, 8, etc. Features for other themes?
9. General landscaping tips
10. NWMap overview

All thoughts and feedback appreciated. Oh, and none of these changes will be made official til after BrickCon so stick with the old article for anything you're building for this year's display.

[ffilz]

Sounds good. I'm glad there is a +4 bricks hill standard, my display will include some +4 brick hill, though it's all part of some modules that pretty much have to go together.

On rivers, why not allow for basically 3 widths, original stream, original river, wide river. Some of the river baseplates turn out to work real nice with original river, some will work well with wide river (I will actually have some wide river interfaces if I'm remembering right - they are all internal though so no issues with standard).

Using the raised river baseplates, it turns out I think there will be a need for a deep river channel which is baseplate height water running in at hill height.

Oops, my hill height right now is BPB+3 not BPB+4 oops... I'll have to look at it, I might just stick with what I have internally.

The deep river chanel could be BPB+4 height ok, that winds up being 2 bricks on top of the 3 high edges of the raised base plates.

On roads, since we are migrating to BPB requirement, I think it would be good if the road surface was BPB not BPB+1 plate, but that isn't too big an issue, 1 plate difference is fine for such interfaces.

Frank


Frank

[BreadMan]

Frank can you post / send some pics of your river baseplate experiments? I have none of the ones you've mentioned so I can't check them out myself. Or I guess I can see them at BrickCon.

Regarding the +plate for roads, the reason is so that you can build a road across a baseplate with plates and then add a BpB base underneath.

[ffilz]

I may have a chance to post pictures of the rivers, otherwise you can see at NWBrickCon.

Good point on roads. I like the look of the BPB road surface rather than BPB+1 plate, but as I said, the two mesh up just fine so I don't think it's a real issue (a footnote might mention some people like BPB road surface and that it is ok, especially if there is a good sized length of road at BPB height (BPB+1 plate for 8 studs then BPB for 8 studs then BPB + 1 plate for 8 studs would look terrible, but BPB+1 plate for 96 studs, then BPB for 96 studs, then BPB+1 plate for 96 studs will look just fine).

Frank

[ffilz]

The Rocky River Retreat baseplates will work nicely with the wider river. The pirate river plates will not work well with the wider river. The Extreme Team Challenge baseplate would work well with wide river on one side, original river width on the other (which could work fine).

I suspect the wild west river plate will work with some combination of river positions but will need to confirm at some point.

So I think essentially having three river widths may be worthwhile. If push comes to shove, connecting original river width with wide river width won't look horrible (and the interface could be cleaned up with a few grey, tan, and/or green plates).

Frank

[Tedward]

... none of these changes will be made official til after BrickCon so stick with the old article for anything you're building for this year's display.

So, are you gonna update the article or what?

[ffilz]

Hmm, since I didn't make it to BrickCon, I need to take some pictures of the various river plates and what I've done (or not done in the case of the tan Wild West curved river plate for one) with them.

Frank

[ffilz]

I'd also like to discuss a 16 brick high cliff at some point. My vision is this cliff would start at the edge of an 8cre and have 2 studs of grey or green at the top. But it may make sense to have 1 or 2 studs of green. I haven't tried out such a double high cliff yet.

Also a sea cliff standard would be nice, it should come in two varieties. The first would basically be a normal cliff, but one brick higher directly on a blue baseplate. The other should be the same cliff but with a beach strip to match the beach standard (even though a seacliff 8cre could not directly abut a beach 8cre in a running line).

Frank