SRD's HD Hand Painted Minecraft Texture Pack (16 x 16, 32 x 32, 64 x 64)
You know what would potentially be quite awesome? Hand painted texture packs. I've reviewed a rather good one called Ovo's Rustic Pack in the past, but this is another one – an entirely separate one and it's going to get its own review. SRD's HD Hand Painted Texture Pack is rather a hit and miss texture pack. The hits will blow your mind with their originality, the misses will make you screw up your face in a way that is frankly quite dangerous. If the wind changes, all our careers as international supermodels are over.
Because it is so very busy, I doubted for a moment or three as to whether or not I acutally liked this texture pack. Then I laid eyes on the beds and nothing, absolutely nothing was the same. This is the first texture pack I've seen in which the, frankly inspired artistic decision was made not to have the bed tucked in all neatly, but to have the duvet (or perhaps comforter, or maybe just plain old sheet, draped over the top of the bed in a way that really made the world take on an additional level of reality. And that, my dear friends, is what I think alternative texture packs can be about – not just messing with the aesthetics, but deepening the player's sense of immersion.
Now there are a few issues with this pack too. For one, smoothstone doesn't exactly tile correctly. Wild grass also has remnants of yellow lines sticking up above it, which shows a certain lack of polish. Even grass and water, yes water stubbornly refuse to tile correctly and if one goes swimming, one does so in a grid. Mossy cobblestone and cobblestone have similar issues. Mossy cobblestone seems to have very little to do with cobblestone at all in fact, so if you've built a part mossy, part normal cobblestone wall in the hope that it looks sort of aged, you're going to feel quite silly, or quite annoyed, depending on whether you tend to channel aggression and disappointment outwards or inwards.
On a positive note, the mossy cobblestone does tile perfectly upon itself if it is used in column form, in which case, the 'moss' winds around the column like a creeper. Rather nice.
Obsidian, is, for reasons best known to the creator, and perhaps itself, is slashed about with colors on a dark surface. It seems rather slap-dash to be honest.
The brick texture is amazing and I've quite fallen in love with it. It's completely original – and also done in such a way that the fact that it doesn't tile at all is actually an asset. That's some clever design work there.
This is very much a work in progress, but a work in progress worth keeping an eye on. What's been done well in this texture pack has been done very well indeed and once the creator knuckles down to making things tile properly and bringing all the textures up to a similarly high standard, its going to be a very special pack indeed.
