Completing the east side of the plaza

Finished up with the east side of the plaza today. There is still some tweaking to do to the paths and steps up to the structures, but it is really starting to look like a village now that there are several blocks completed. I didn't think that I was going to have to rebuild the church, but my my building style has changed so much, you can really see that the church sticks out like a sore thumb, so I am adding it to the rebuild list.

This building experience has me convinced that it easier to make nice neat square structures. Any kind of decay or ruin is more difficult to create. I am trying to use as few alpha channels as possible because of the weird effect you sometimes get when they conflict with each other, but as far as I can tell, alpha channels are the only way to realistically represent ruins and crumbling walls.

My next step is to continue laying out all of the structures, beginning with the north side of the plaza, which is where one of the dendrochronology sites is located. I currently have my avatar's sight preferences set to eagle eye, so in the photos below you can see past the field school island into our neighbors' islands. So if you notice the Old Main building from the Texas State campus, that is not a mistake, you are just seeing BobCat Village, our virtual campus, off in the distance. Hopefully, my scenery "flats" will eventually take care of that.