Comments on: The Necessary Fantasy Logic

By: Babs

Babs — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:54:41 +0000

Subversion seems like more than a hacking game to me. From the dev log it’s clear that he;’s attempting to construct all the moving elements of the world out of smaller components. ei a lift has an actual computer system driving it with motors etc.

My guess is that the game will revolve in some way around ‘subverting’ the machinery of the city to achieve your goals, whatever they may be. Very exciting IMO.

By: eyemessiah

eyemessiah — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:14:31 +0000

Sentinel is tres awesome. Have you played Zenith?

http://johnvalentine.co.uk/zenith.php

By: Dave L.

Dave L. — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:59:58 +0000

A lot of for hire level design work, it looks like. They were working on a top-secret project for EA that may have been System Shock 3, but it fell through.

By: toro

toro — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:01:51 +0000

What’s happening with Arkane?

By: Jahkaivah

Jahkaivah — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:01:23 +0000

@Shadders

If you take a look at the past articles, you will see that we love Love.

By: Dave L.

Dave L. — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 06:20:15 +0000

@Theory: That’s the last thing I’d heard about The Crossing, too. Arkane seems to have pulled all mention of it from their site (other than an art shot in the Jobs page), but since it’s one they were doing independently an outright cancellation seems like it’d be crazy. Unless they decided the whole ‘crossplay’ thing was unworkable.

By: jalf

jalf — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:16:43 +0000

@Kadayi: The article sounded like at least some of them tried to take that into account and build the city gradually, over time.

By: Jambe

Jambe — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:23:02 +0000

I’m a conceptual artist myself, and environments are my favorite things to work on. What I find most interesting about the notion of procedural building generation is the question, “How will it interact with natural features?”

Say you’ve got the landscape already — a river twisting and turning through low, rolling hills — and you want to generate a believable city centered around one of these bends (as in the second-from-top screenshot in Jim’s article).

How will the generator decide which buildings to place right along the waterline? Will it construct bridges? Of what type, and in what locations? Piers and docks, perhaps? What about long, winding avenues of fancy-schmancy private residences? There seems to be much focus on cities in this article — who’s to say you can’t generate a suburban or, hell, even rural sort of community?

This is all very, very interesting to me.

By: Jacques

Jacques — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:22:39 +0000

I think Kadayi may be referring to Milton Keynes.

By: Kadayi

Kadayi — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:41:12 +0000

As someone in the architectural/urban design profession the downfall I see to procedural design is that, Cities don’t appear overnight, they evolve from earlier settlements and its generally the case that short of massive degrees of deliberate restructuring (as in the case with Paris under Baron Haussmann), they will generally retain a degree of character from these earlier times that the more modern aspects of the City will build around. It is rare if ever that the past is totally swept away, esp when it comes to historically important buildings where the wheels of bureaucracy never cease to turn. It is only in Post Industrial Cities that uniformity of development is generally found.

By: LionsPhil

LionsPhil — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:33:32 +0000

I really wish they’d rename that. Don’t they know that there is already a major piece of software called Subversion?

What’s more worrying is that it might mean they’ve never heard of version control, yet develop software in a team. Shudder, etc.

By: underproseductor

underproseductor — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:21:09 +0000

Procedural generation is a great way to reduce both making time and expenses, but there’s still a need for artists and designers to do some final touches, put in unique content and change some things. Still, it can save you the dirty and boring work.