Experimenting with wooden stairs
Royal Scribe
🖼️ 384 images Mapmaker
I am experimenting with different ways of doing wooden stairs.
This is for the interior of a building where the exterior is from a town created with Darklands City, and I want a compatible interior style. I have found that DD3 works better with Darklands City than Mike Schley's stuff.
Unfortunately, the wooden stairs that come with DD3 all have arrows (the bottom two from this example) which I am not fond of, so I am experimenting with other options.
For non-DD3 symbols, I'm trying to limit it to the same annual that has Darklands City. Unfortunately, the only other annual from that year that has stairs is Marine Dungeons -- one of my favorites, but the stairs are all stone. Beautiful, but not quite right for this building. I know Dundjinni Archives has wooden steps, which I have used before, but I'm hesitant to use them.
The upper left draws steps using a wooden fill from Annual Ship Deckplans, which is the same year as Darklands City. Advantages: It offers a wide range of wooden fill options (pine, oak, cherry -- with lighter and darker versions), and by putting each step on its own sheet, I can use sheet effects to make lower steps darker (in addition to the glows and wall shadows to make each step rise higher). Disadvantages: the planks all line up the same for each step (they're in shadow but you can see on the planks heading north).
The two in the upper right is from Mike Schley's SS4. I'm not a fan of the jagged edge, though covering with walls (or carpets, as Ricko cleverly does) may work. But unfortunately, I'm not sure it's particularly compatible.
The middle two actually fudge by using DD3's tables as steps. I think it looks nice, and I can do a tiny bit of variety by flipping the table 180 degrees, but it doesn't give me the any flexibility with different types of wood. I'd be limited to that reddish wood which is lovely, but not quite the rustic pine or oak that works best with the floors. So I'm torn.
Anyone have thoughts or preferences here?
Comments
Have you tried CA209 Stairs and Steps? That has some wooden steps and some more generic "brown" steps that will work as wood or stone. If you need some plank lines in places, just draw some on afterwards. Even some of the worn, brown stone steps will work as wood - again add a few plank lines if you wish to fool the eye a little more. Old wooden steps will wear away just as the stone ones do, after all, and might be patched with different colour wood scraps. You could also "carpet" them to hide that middle worn section.
Symbol Set 2, Bitmap A, has some complete wooden stairs, darker though not reddened wood, some of which come without arrows.
With DD3, you might try mixing things up with other wooden furniture - the bench, pew, the sideboard, chests, crates (which latter two both have paler wood colours), and the planks in the Debris catalogue (though those would probably only work with difficulty). You may need to hide the edges or sides with some of the furniture and containers, but they could give alternate options for landings, say, apart from steps.
It'd probably be worth hunting around in a few more catalogues as well, as you never know what else wooden might seem suitable!
Good ideas. I keep forgetting about SS2. I thought about CA209, but wasn't sure the brown ones looked wooden enough.
Drawing them would allow me to use the same wood grain as the floor. I guess my subconscious brain was ruminating on this while I slept, because I woke up with the idea of changing the direction of the draw fill for every other step by doing the "Angle by Edge" function on the opposite edge, and then removing the angle by changing to a Shade Only Copy. And it works! You still get the plank divider lined up every other step, but that's not so bad.