Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Procedural City Generation?  (Read 2059 times)

sweitx

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sun Berry McSunshine
    • View Profile
Procedural City Generation?
« on: August 06, 2010, 02:45:57 pm »

Since Toady is figuring out how to make, cities and towns.  Not sure if he knows about this.

http://citygen.net/

Granted it's about modern city, but maybe this could help?
Logged
One of the toads decided to go for a swim in the moat - presumably because he could path through the moat to my dwarves. He is not charging in, just loitering in the moat.

The toad is having a nice relaxing swim.
The goblin mounted on his back, however, is drowning.

Capntastic

  • Bay Watcher
  • Greetings, mortals!
    • View Profile
    • A review and literature weblog I never update
Re: Procedural City Generation?
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2010, 04:16:16 pm »

Those're just maps, and not actually villages with different buildings holding different tasks, it looks like. 
Logged

hcrof

  • Escaped Lunatic
    • View Profile
Re: Procedural City Generation?
« Reply #2 on: August 06, 2010, 05:11:37 pm »

Something more appropriate might be this:

http://inkwellideas.com/?page_id=334

It does more medieval style towns and villages as well as modern ones. It can even add walls, roads, parks and rivers! Ive run it a couple of times and the results are very believable.

I don't know whether it is useful or not, maybe it could give people some ideas?

While they might 'just' be maps, they might be good for random residential sprawl. At the end of the day, people have to live somewhere and houses in DF are much the same as each other.
Logged

Capntastic

  • Bay Watcher
  • Greetings, mortals!
    • View Profile
    • A review and literature weblog I never update
Re: Procedural City Generation?
« Reply #3 on: August 06, 2010, 05:38:37 pm »

But towns and cities in DF aren't static things; as wars come and conquests go, the cities will have buildings torn down, new ones constructed, etc.  Instead of just generating a single frame of existence, the game has to be able to take "these units moved here and made a settlement" and decide what to do with that, as well as "and then elves came and tore down their temple", etc etc.   It's useful to see how towns should look, but the style of generation those programs do has little in common with what DF will need to do.
Logged

ILikePie

  • Bay Watcher
  • Call me Ron
    • View Profile
Re: Procedural City Generation?
« Reply #4 on: August 06, 2010, 06:09:19 pm »

I've been thinking of a way to generate more convincing towns. What if, instead of putting down square and shoving furniture inside, you would randomly generate a set of modules. These modules would composed of or more rooms with furniture and everything. Split the sleeping quarters from the dining room, shove some furniture into each, and you have a very convincing house. Generate maybe twenty of these modules, and scatter them all around town, maybe make the orientation different too. You do this with each building type, and you get very convincing towns with very little work. They can also be "rebuilt" very easily.
Logged

NW_Kohaku

  • Bay Watcher
  • [ETHIC:SCIENCE_FOR_FUN: REQUIRED]
    • View Profile
Re: Procedural City Generation?
« Reply #5 on: August 06, 2010, 07:30:30 pm »

I've been thinking of a way to generate more convincing towns. What if, instead of putting down square and shoving furniture inside, you would randomly generate a set of modules. These modules would composed of or more rooms with furniture and everything. Split the sleeping quarters from the dining room, shove some furniture into each, and you have a very convincing house. Generate maybe twenty of these modules, and scatter them all around town, maybe make the orientation different too. You do this with each building type, and you get very convincing towns with very little work. They can also be "rebuilt" very easily.

You know, I have this suggestion thread asking for pretty much exactly this...
Logged
Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

Improved Farming
Class Warfare

ILikePie

  • Bay Watcher
  • Call me Ron
    • View Profile
Re: Procedural City Generation?
« Reply #6 on: August 07, 2010, 03:48:35 am »

Oh?
I gave that a read, and they do sound very similar, I apologize. I never read suggestions.
Logged