A while back something caught my eye on twitter and it was a positive thing! The user @OskSta seemed to be creating a simple game that allowed the user to create cute townscapes. It caught my eye as ‘procedural’ generation was mentioned and anyone who reads this blog knows my favourite procedural modeller is ArcGIS CityEngine, so you know I had to see this.
Well he’s now released the ‘game’ if you can call it that as it is purely a creation tool with no goal in mind which is fine by me because I am quite bad at games 🙂
I’ve played it a love it, cute noises as you build and you can create little settlements as you go. I love the seagulls that flutter around and how the buildings pop in to place. It is a work in progress and I’m sure he will add a few bits more to this. I like that you can share the ‘code’ (or is it a seed value like you have on minecraft?) so others can use your work. I might share code here shortly so you can load my creations.
If you’re interested in the technical details he did a presentation on it, below.
Watching how he made the assets I wonder if CityEngine could actually help produce those (I’m thinking how I could code for those assets)…. I’d love a couple of export functions say to a 3D model and and built-in camera function so we do screenshots as well. But overall well worth the price, I thoroughly recommend you buying it.
