Fractal generated cityscapes

[Boff'in]

I keep thinking that as well, I desperately want to walk around my ships, and get out of them.

But back to cities and "tools", in the above post, there is Houdini and unreal generating a circular city.

LIKE THE ONES WE HAVE IN ELITE DANGEROUS

AND BEFORE YOU COUNTER WITH A BUT

We have a background sim, driving the types and sizes of bases we have.
From small terriatial outposts to massive cities.
The layouts may be modular and repetitive, sure, but the positioning is different due to the BGS need of that facility.
Thermal viens are required to vent heat, cargo facilities, sensor arrays.
This is David Braben's game of course, there is a thought process behind the ins and outs and the whys of the layout of these facilities.


BUT I can't walk around, no but you can drive around.

And if you counter with But there is nothing to do there, I'm not having fun.

This is my point,
you can have "systems".
You can have "tools"
You can have "ASSETS"

But that doesn't mean to say you have enjoyable game.

Stop daydreaming over the what if's of presentations, and concentrate on gameplay at our fingertips.

 

[Cosmo]

The Surface Ports are cool, but they look similar and aren't procedurally generated.

They need to make it feel alive by adding NPC vehicles on the surface.

The point is to be immersed in the game. I want to fly across cityscapes that are 10 to 1000 times the size of that.

 

[ironhammer500]

CIG show a lot of stuff, most of it never make it into the "game".

Tech like this has been around for years, but until now no one needed it in games.

So why do we not have atmosphere planets or city planets a year on from when FD brought out the Planets?

 

[krylite]

The layouts may be modular and repetitive, sure, but the positioning is different due to the BGS need of that facility.
Thermal viens are required to vent heat, cargo facilities, sensor arrays.
...
Stop daydreaming over the what if's of presentations, and concentrate on gameplay at our fingertips.

Is it true the layouts of these port cities are due to the BGS? I like the buildings on them but never knew what they all meant or what purpose they serve. Is there a structure lore guide to these buildings from the devs or elsewhere?
These structures and buildings are massive. Taller or bigger than much of what we have in the real world seemingly. The usual problem is not being able to sense the scale or be as immersed especially in my case with no VR. Yes, I would like to "walk around" and sense the scaled size with npc vehicles or even people around.

 

[Chaparral]

So can someone tell me why contact portraits aren't holo-me puppets, with the tiny background window being a tiny procedural city or space station scape? Just a tiny bit of life in those portraits would be appreciated. I mean Bard's Tale had spot animation on portraits in the late 80's.

 

[uliando]

Try doing that in real time, on their engine. My fps drops like hell when i'm close to big ships in ED, this would kill the game.

 

[Jack Schitt]

So can someone tell me why contact portraits aren't holo-me puppets, with the tiny background window being a tiny procedural city or space station scape? Just a tiny bit of life in those portraits would be appreciated. I mean Bard's Tale had spot animation on portraits in the late 80's.

Personally I'd love to see this, because I've no doubt the engine could support it. The problem may be that the more realistic the contact graphics are, the bigger the risk of a disconnect between them and the block of text through which they communicate. Currently the misison board acts more like e-mail; text with a Gravatar-style image. If that image was walking around their office while you read the text it might get a bit weird. Maybe if they just sat there and scratched their nose or flicked their hair or something, as though they were waiting for you to finish reading...

Dunno, hard one to call. I'd love it, because the whole simulation/illusion aspect fascinates me even when it doesn't quite work the way it was planned. But it would be awkward if FD put the effort in to doing something like that and the majority of players found it uncomfortable or annoying.

Slightly OT, but one thing I wish FD could do would be to have some of the window lights on space stations and starports wink off and on occasionally, as a quick way of suggesting activity. Or, on the larger tower structures of planetary bases, have one light move up and down to suggest an elevator in use. Something to give a visual nudge to convince your brain that there are people in these things.

But I'm guessing those textures, despite their relative detail if you fly up close to them, are static once loaded. Something as simple as turning a light on or off might be beyond the game's capabilities, at least insofar as the current way it renders these objects. Some of the stations have flickering external lighting, but I'm guessing that's being handled by a different part of the code.

 

[lysan]

So why do we not have atmosphere planets or city planets a year on from when FD brought out the Planets?

I don't know the reason, however it's not because it's impossible to do.

My guess is that they want to make planets with a lot of vegetation, maybe even add lifeforms. A desert planet with some cool city's would be fine by me, but again I don't know the reason

 

[IndigoWyrd]

RSI has announced procedurally generated cities in Star Citizen in the 3.0 patch which will probably be released to "backer" community in the next few weeks. Not perfect, but very impressive.

There are two videos. The first is the "showcase" of procedurally generated cities which starts around the 4 minute 15 seconds mark and goes for about 8 minutes. The second is a short video which talks about the software tools used to do the procedural generation of cities (and effects with examples).

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/b9RUWxsVmws?t=4m15s

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/_3ax4gu---Y

CORRECTION: Apology to all, it has been pointed out to me that procedurally generated cities will NOT be part of the 3.0 patch, but are intended to be added later. No release date has been given as yet. The videos do however show how procedural generation is being used to create cities in SC ATM.

Like all things SC... their failed-to-deliver record strongly hints that this will end up cancelled before it ever actually makes it to beta, and makes Sean Murry look like Saint Murry by comparison.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

...

CORRECTION: Apology to all, it has been pointed out to me that procedurally generated cities will NOT be part of the 3.0 patch, but are intended to be added later. No release date has been given as yet. The videos do however show how procedural generation is being used to create cities in SC ATM.

Concept art. That's all it is.