This is worth actually reading (not just skimming the pictures). After all it explains how my old boss
George Lucas personally influenced this model...
OK. So I have a tower mostly complete, and a first floor with some walls, but I'm not happy with those walls.
Problem 1: Unlike many of my previous builds with interiors, I could count on the structure of the "box walls" to hold them in place because of the rigid floor. Here's a simple example:
That solution is not going to work for this model, as the walls don't go all the way around. It's flimsy at the roof line.
Problem 2: This second floor is split and has a "mezzanine"-like structure.
Take a look at this image and notice where the two balcony doors exit - one is 1/2 floor higher than the other.
I'd noticed this when I built the model. I carefully placed the upper story exit from the tower to land near the higher floor.
Honestly, this funkiness it was one of the reasons I chose the model. Clearly the building had some "history" hiding in it's design that might not be obvious to those who just assemble as supplied.
I was eagerly awaiting for the release of the compatible Battlemat to see how the designer had planned the flooring - I wanted to follow his vision...
Problem 3: But the 2nd floor Battlemat has the stairs in the
wrong place...
If you look closely, the stairs/mezzanine in this fuzzed-out-lowres copy of the upper floor battlemat are in the wrong place. As supplied, it puts both doors/balconies on the same floor. Oops!
Though, if players were using these maps without actually playing inside something like this mega-kitbash, I bet they'd never have noticed!
I did have the tower exit in the right place, but only if the lower map section is the upper floor (including one balcony) and the other balcony (furthest from the tower exit) was on the lower mezzanine.
Though I was inspired by the image of the staircase, I'd have to throw this map out and use another copy of the main floor instead - not a big problem, so mark
this problem solved.
Problem 4: I have many ideas how to support the floor, all of them complicated.
The lack of a solid side wall structure was bothering me a lot. Not only did I need 2nd floor/mezzanine support, I still had the removable roof to deal with.
I decided to work on building the upper floor model without a solution in mind. I'd worked with many different systems over the last two years and hoped that one of them would provide the structure I needed, so I set this problem aside.
Problem 5: Building working (playable) stairs that weren't a nightmare to fit to the tower were going to take some original engineering...
It was easy enough to cut the upper floors into two pieces, but I needed something to work as both a staircase and a structural element to keep the split floors together.
After fiddling with some of the existing model designs, I decided to try designing something from scratch given these custom requirements. There were a few paper prototypes that lead to this design:
And here it what I came up with for the upper floors...
Adventurers' Guild by
Oracle Omega, on Flickr
Of course, I put ceilings in everywhere - it provided an extra layer of strength and would allow viewing from any angle.
But I was back at the "How do I support this thing" question...
I kept thinking "What an odd little building, with so many odd little sections - a tower entrance? A mezzanine with TWO balconies? Certainly no one would have built this building this way all at once...
Then I had the epiphany that put all the rest of it together... They didn't build it all at once!
Metaphor to the rescue! The Story of Skywalker Ranch
I was fortunate enough to work for George Lucas's Games Group for a few years, and on top of that to
actually work at Skywalker Ranch, which he had 100% custom built from the ground up based on a story...
Excerpted from
Droidmaker by Michael RubinAt "the ranch" we worked at buildings that were modeled to be old buildings: A winery, a carriage house, a gatehouse, and the main house, which had several sections that were of differing periods.
I knew people who worked on that house. They were told to frame out sections, and then tear them down as if the house went through remodeling in the past. In the winery (offices for Skywalker Sound) there were "bricked in" archways were wine was supposed to have been stored in the past.
Thinking about that (along with all the remodeling of 100-year old Craftsman houses I'd been looking at for that same 8 weeks) got me where I needed to be.
"How would a second story get added to the original one-story single-room building?" Well at first the attic would have a floor added - so support beams would need to go up on the ceiling. Then we could have the first (lower) balcony.
The merchants guild then bought the building with plans for a grand expansion, Attached to the rear of the original one-room-with-attic structure.
They added more floor space, the tower, and higher second floor.
There was much patching to get the old attic connected to the new one. More support beams, please! After all, who wants to tear down perfectly good walls and foundation?
Here they are all in place (I added them one or two at a time until I thought the second floor was strong enough to hold lots of metal minis.
A
huge benefit of the beams is the fact they hold the previously flimsy walls in place firmly! Not only do I have a place for the floors, I can imagine the walls working and the tower sitting in place.
Now the floor is in place, resting cleanly between the walls...
The merchants hired the adventurers, who made them a king's ransom, in exchange they received the building, which they have customized over recent years...
Next time - Roofing and final details.