Circling Around, Feeling Blue (Stones)

The reconstruction phase is nearing completion. I managed to fill the lintel gaps on top of the outer wall and erect the inner concentric circle of stones known as Bluestones.

There are lots of history lessons regarding the Bluestones but I'll be brief. Firstly they are called Bluestones because they turn bluish when rained on. I doubt the intensity of the hue is strong but I've never seen it so I don't actually know. The archaeologists say the Bluestones are actually part of an earlier Stonehenge version where they played a similar roll as the current much larger stones. Apparently the Stones have been removed and returned more than once over the millennia. There are also more than a few ideas as to how many there actually were. I've read documents that put the concentric circle at 30, 40 and 60 stones. I really doubt the 40 number because it just doesn't fit with the symmetry of 30 orthostats. I measured the number of existing stones in a section of the circle and if you calculate what could have been there, you get more than 30. 60 seems just right to me. Since the existing stones are scattered around a bit with many fallen or missing I couldn't see an obvious pattern in the design. So I scaled the radius which turned out to be exactly three times the height of the wall and placed them in every 6 degrees. Each lines up quite nicely with the outer edge of an orthostat. There is also an a group of Bluestones inside the Trilithon horseshoe. I'll save that for the next Blog.

Putting in these representative objects for Bluestones can be very time consuming and mind numbingly tedious. I had to rotate the respawn area 6 degrees for each opposing pair to be placed. Using "edit coordinates" for each Bluestone (medium railing) object I would set the Z height to 10, rotate Z axis 90 degrees and rotate the X axis to match the last stone put in then add or subtract 6 degrees to match the new location. Lastly, each object was eyeballed into position using the respawn area as a guide. It was important to do each step exactly the same. Some Forge objects don't maintain their final angles when the map is saved. Being consistent generally gives a better result. The thing with numerous features like this is to make them all the same or all different. You don't want one item in twenty looking odd or out of place.

Each object was placed to look exactly like this.

I used a circular respawn area to check for final consistency. If any Bluestone were out of position, it would show as brighter, darker, taller or shorter. I only had to move a couple a very tiny amount.

Oh yeah, I am excited by some of the team base ideas I have come up with.