I made a procedurally generated city that can be fully explored
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- čas přidán 17. 11. 2023
- Some details on why and how I made the procedural environment for Vuntra City. Keep in mind that this is all work in progress, and everything you see in the video is subject to change.
Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/28...
Song: Outlandr & Aleya Mae - Falling [Arcade Release] Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds
#vr #cityscape #gamedev #unrealengine #nightcity #openworld #lifesim - Hry
I love this. I particularly like your point around the fact that creating procedural content is an artform in its own. The planning, consideration and implementation of well thought out procedural assets that work well with each other takes almost more time, effort and skill to creating a single bespoke environment.
Ever since I was a kid, I was fantasizing this exact thing, cities, malls, supermarkets etc. That's a great concept, thank you so much.
i always like looking at those giant glass skyscrapers irl and thinking how crazy it is how many rooms and floors there are, getting to explore them to my hearts content, even virtually, sounds awesome
I was gonna say "time to port this to vr!"
...
Then i realized it WAS vr, and i was SO EXCITED
You're on to something here. You're doing beautifully. I only warn that you don't overexpose too soon, or attempt to do too much too fast. That has killed other games that had great promise. You're doing great so far. It seems like a good framework. Remember to keep sight of your end vision, and don't get too hung up on details at this stage. Right now, your focus is to work out the bigger aspects. Details can be fine tuned later on, especially with updates, should you decide to do that. Additionally, you might want to consider making some kind of low resource "memory" for any characters or objects a user interacts with to prevent becoming too liminal. That may be a few steps ahead of where you are, but it is something to keep in mind. Additionally, don't forget your target audience. keep in mind what hardware limitations they may have as you continue to construct the software. You'll want to balance functionality with appearance, as both are necessary for quality. Lastly, I don't know exactly where you are going with this in the end, but if you want it to take off, you'll need a core point. The world generation is a great core mechanic, but without any purpose to go with it, it will get old fast. There needs to be an incentive to cause people to continually explore. This comes from someone who used to play Minecraft. Eventually even random generation gets repetitive, so there has to be something else for the player to chew on, whether it be social interaction on multiplayer, some kind of "where's waldo" thing, or full character immersion. I love what you have here, you just need to make sure you either have a plot, interaction, rewards, or something similar to keep the player going. Novelty is a tough thing to simulate, let alone make authentically. I wish you the best of luck!"
Well said. I see my family playing a lot on our Quest VR headsets. But the kids are always falling back to Gorilla Tag and Rec Room not because if the great graphics or storyline but because of the peers in those games. And so do I when playing mostly Eleven Table Tennis with other players.
I am a programmer with a background in civil engineering and building design and I am absolutely loving the attention to details you manage to show here. For architectural inputs, I would recommend watch a few videos from The Aesthetic City, Strongtown, Not Just Bike and DamiLee youtube channels. I think you will figure out the codes, it's the foundation understanding of what makes aesthetically pleasing living spaces that should be more difficult to grasp and present as you develop further.
I am a big fan of the architecture/urban planning youtube channels you mentioned! Of course I can't always follow their advice for my city due to the limitations of what I can generate, but I try when I can.
This city is Beautiful!
The color palate generation you mentioned makes A huge difference in making it look unique. The general reason for this Ive heard from other procgen talks is that the association of things when scattered in the real world are both naturally hierarchical and ordered by scale meaning that smaller local changes are highly effected by the larger macro changes being overlapped but not so much the other way around.
Procedural noise has great examples of this in how the methods used to calculate the most lifelike noises all rely on this kind of layering in the form of octaves.
I have plans for making large procedural spaces for my own games as well, but this reminds me of an idea I had for A large collaborative city as A publicly reproducible meeting space.
The idea being that instead of using the classic approach of A metaverse that uses the ability for anyone to make things as A competitive system akin to the incentive structures in social media, naturally pulling people apart and isolating them where their least likely to change.
Instead we collaboratively build one big space that's interesting to explore because it reflects the ideas of so many coming together to create A place that wants to bring people together.
Like A park.
But right now all my efforts are in designing tooling to make building participation in large community gamedev projects like this easier, because its what I want to focus on most.
Thank you for showing this!
I find it really inspiring.
This as a concept is truly incredible. The applications are pretty limitless and could make many games thought impossible, fully realized. I think using AI to create interactable NPCs in the environment could be a good addition.
Thank you! I don't think I'll use AI for the NPCs as I don't really like the quality of AI generated dialog though.
This is really impressive. Congratulations!
thank you. 🙂
💯💯💯Spectacular job! I'm impressed with the stylistic and mood differences you've managed to generate. Keep it going!💓💓💓
absolutely insane, very excited to see this develop and I’ll definitely be sticking around :D
This is absolutely BRILLIANT!!! It's genius. It takes the open world concept to a whole new level. I think you've figured out the next generation in gaming and even archviz. This kind of generative design is exactly what I've been looking to do as an Indie VR developer...a way to develop unique but persistent environments that can be revisited and infinitely explored, inside and out, without having to plan every single room in every building in advance, or having it look "cartoony".
One question: Have you explored ways to integrate NPC's (non-playable characters) into the environment on the fly without killing performance? The biggest challenge to environments with this level of realism is that such vast spaces are never empty. It needs people, animals, birds, etc. But NPC's would need to both look realistic and behave normally for the environment to feel truly real. Have you figured out how to make them generative too? Maybe triggered by entering the building or crossing some kind of boundary?
Hehe, thanks! This stuff has limitations, so the procedural generation is not a replacement for manual level design. But yeah I have an NPC system in mind that will not only spawn procedural NPCs, but will also let them have rudimentary routines, so you'll be able to find the same character either at home or at work (or commuting) at different times of day. I haven't started implementing it yet though.
@@VuntraCity Amazing! You've officially blown my mind. I can't wait to see what you do with this. SO PROUD OF YOU!!! You're pushing VR to all new heights and I'm dying to see what you do with this. I hope for your next trick, you design a generative city builder game. You'd destroy Cities Skylines with something like this. Build your city and then take a two-hour drive in it, visiting museums, taking walks in the parks...maybe visit the avatars of your friends and hang out with them at a nightclub. How cool would THAT be?!!
I'm teaching 3D and VFX to little girls in summer camp to try to get them to go into game development because there aren't nearly enough female engineers. If you don't mind, I intend to show off your channel to them. I want them to see that not every game has to be a shooter. This is truly groundbreaking and blows what we know as open world out of the water. Liked and definitely subbed!
Looks great! Appreciate your goal of creating a space for certain activities. Driving through a city is something I’ve been doing a lot in games. It’s has a special feeling to it.
This looks amazing! I'm fascinated by procedural generation, as it's about designing what is in effect a system of physical laws that govern the construction/evolution of a pocket universe. What you've built seems like a fantastic foundation for all kinds of emergent gameplay. It sounds like you plan to add conversational NPCs - it would be interesting to procedurally generate little lives for them (defining where they live, where they work, their relationships, interests, histories, etc.) You could generate all of this contextual information for each character, then use that in a prompt for a large language model so that it's all reflected in their conversations with the player. So many possibilities! I'll be watching with great interest.
Yes, my goal is to create procedural NPCs with backstories similar to Shadows of Doubt.
This looks amazing. Just from the video the game looks like it has a really great sense of scale. I'm looking forward to future updates.
Spectacular job! I'm impressed with the stylistic and mood differences you've managed to generate. Keep it going!
I love the vibe of this - even as-is, just being able to walk endlessly or drive would make an great experience. I've spent way longer in "Aircar" (on steam) than some actual games and would love to see something along the same lines where you can just enjoy the scenery. Please keep working on it!
This is all I've ever wanted in video games. It looks amazing already and I'm so excited to see what's next, no matter what it is!
Nah bruh, I was never frustrated to NOT have to visit a million buildings that have nothing to do with the story...
That's very very cool. I know you have a lot to do on this, but I eally would love to see this in my Quest 3 soon. :)
Extremely well done and would love to see even part of it, if it can be uploaded into VRchat, I'd be happy to test it out for you.
I think nobody has achieved that before. It completely relieves the frustration of partially explorable cities. It can be interesting for any kind of game that features cities. If games like elite dangerous had your engine, they would have a future again. Congratulations ! You're doing great.
I JUST started working on procedural tech for a CZcams Short series I have planned for a while. I am using Blender for my asset generation, getting everything into UE5 for final renders, and to utilize the game engine AI to help generate crowds, sounds, and weather.
This project that you are working on BLOWS MY MIND!!! This was WAY beyond anything that I thought a single dev could do. Do you have a discord?
What we need is procedurally-generated vehicle makes and model lists (model years, special editions snd collabs) and to bring back combat racing games.
Amazing work. I hope you can commercialize this and make it "moddable" so people could add their own assets. I make Cyberpunk cities in Blender + Cities:Skylines and I'd jump at the chance to build procedurally.
Are you talking to Lamina1? They really need this.
I've wanted a game like this for a quarter century now - at least as far back as dreaming big while playing the original Grand Theft Auto and Half-Life. Introversion Software's Subversion sounded very promising but abandoned for Prison Architect. Watch Dogs and some of the Elder Scrolls games hinted at greatness and Shadows of Doubt comes damn close, but the NPCs still feel shallow / inconsequential. From what I can tell, the holy grail is a game that can seamlessly transition between liminality and consequence and back again. "Oh shit - I negatively impacted that NPC and its social connections long term. Thankfully they are but one / a few in an infinite sea of faces to play with" but also "I would like to engage with them again to affirm the consequence of my interactions and either to repair the harm or torment them - the choice of which I am yet undecided"
This looks relaxing and chill. +1 Great work!
Amazing job and best of luck finding collabs and resources to further elevate your dream! I always had the same frustration of non-enterable buildings and undetailed interiors while looking through windows. I will follow your progress with great interest!!! Tell us non-developers how we can support you!
Another comment:
Please please please please, dont let this be another indie project that never releases, and gets abandoned. I see this as the next biggest vr game.
Fantastic work! Huge fan of this approach. Keep it up :)
Just gained yourself a follower, can’t wait to see what this turns into
THAT'S SO SICK WTF
I'm on board. That city looked realistic and to think it can go on forever. And the only game close to a good driving around the city game is gta 5 however none of the buildings are explorable like the city you created. I think it would be exciting to see some AI npc's like chatgpt in the simulation. Maybe making this like a city survival game where you start with nothing and have to work your way up to get a car and an apartment that you rent or purchase real estate that you can rent out. If you give the npc's details about their lives and work schedules you could even work as a private investigator to solve crimes in the city. I think the reward for adding content and systems to the game would be worth it for how much play time you could have with it. Anyways I could talk about this all day so I'll leave it at that.
Thanks for the suggestions! I didn't get to the NPCs yet but what you've described is pretty much what I have planned. Except chatGPT, I'm not sold on AI dialog so I'll try to make it scripted manually. I do plan to add some procedural variation to the dialog, but I'm not sure I'll be using AI for it.
I feel this is the future way more then backgrounds with invisible walls to restrict the player because they are essentially flat and/or only to be viewed single perspective.
It's not tagged as VR on the Steam listing, but I see the VR tag in the description for this video, so I hope that's correct. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. I'm a big fan of casual exploration games. Already added to my wishlist.
I'm primarily developing it for VR but there will be a flat screen version as well, that's why I didn't tag it VR only. Not sure yet if they'll come out at the same time though. I will tag it correctly closer to the release date.
Feel like walking around in matrix online
Someone get this person a grant
This looks amazing. Keep it up!
Reddit brought me here. This is wholesome, could never imagine this diverse environments can be procedurally generated! Next step - adding some characters with local LLM?
Thats really impressive, it looks way cleaner than most procedural generation I've seen
Thank you for your work
Looks very cool! Keep up the good work friend
Looks amazing! Well done 👏😃
omg i love your work!
I think adding some stalls (like street food stall cars), parked vehicles and on the streets as particles will actually give it more life in the outside. Little things like that makes it feel more lived in
You're right, there's a lot of detail to add still.
You just made your own GTA 6 Bro.
This is great.
this is so underrated!
Wow amazing work!
Really cool idea. Subbed.
WOW, amazing!
Looks great! I'm hooked
I absolutely love this, and I would love to give it an independent look and feedback. The work you've done here is stellar, and I like the approach you took to have seed based implementation. Not sure how much I can add to the development side, but as a VR user with an index, I would love to help test and again provide feedback if I can. I also have a small gaming/computer channel and would like to talk about it when the time comes. Let me know how I can help!
Thank you!
Clean!, Youre doing it well mate :)
Now add a Slender Man who can spook you around any corner.
Amazing work :)
Really cool stuff! I particularly like the vibe each lighting gives the room. Definitely feels classy or moody. Are the lights also procedurally generated? So perhaps I can stumble into a office that is having a rave?
Thanks! Yes, offices can have raves too, or different color lighting.
Please add Futuristic cyberpunk City enviroment. I would love to explore or tour future city in VR
Cool! I am making a city generator myself with completely different aesthetics and criteria, focusing on non-linear street patterns and public transit, with no building interiors.
Turn this into a vr social game and it would blow up
This is epic 📈
this is so cool. i was working on something like this on my own but 2d and wanted tomake it 3d eventually. i really want to be able to get on a train and go around places. i don't know what engine you're using but i would be interested in collaborating, i've done some unity and my project was in javascript
in cities skylines i always wanted to be able to go on the ground level and walk around the city i built and go underground on subways and stuff
😱Increíble tu trabajo muy hermoso y me encantaron los detalles se ve muy bien 😀😀 pero solo tengo una pregunta para cuando sale al menos una Beta?😃
This looks insanely promising. Incredible work! What language/engine are you using? I’d be interested in talking with you - I work in AI and feel like that could be useful for adding even more variety to your system.
I'd be happy to! You can email me at vuntra.city56@gmail.com
amazing
Love it! Would love to collab!
Holy cow! When do you plan to release this?
im trying to be able to do this as well! amazing work! im new to design and im stuck on a dumb part, to resize something i try to alt+click and its creating duplicates instead of dragging and resizing, am i doing something wrong?
Beautiful work. Just wondering what's the genre of the game? What's the main gameloop? Life sim? GTA-clone? Walking simulator?
The gameplay is in pretty early stages right now, so it might change, but so far it's looking more like a life sim than anything else.
@@VuntraCity I had a game idea, where you play as a ghost, and you have to walk around and do good deeds for people to release the weight on your soul. You can only walk at first, because of the weight on your soul, but by the time you've leveled up your karma enough, you're flying around. You could create procedural quests for the spirit to do, come up with some cool emergent story-telling through the gameplay.
Just a thought. Seems like this might be the perfect setting for something like that.
Hah that's pretty creative!
So it does sounds very intetesting and like an amazing piece of art, but what is the gameplay going to be like?
Imagine if it was populated by gpt powered npcs!
I found a place where I want to live... don't keep me waiting :)
Nice
How neat! I'm guessing you're using PCG? I'd be curious to hear how you managed interiors! Are they fully proc, or do you have some authoring? I'm planning a more authored approach per building, using grid ranges to dictate "rooms" where subgraphs generate those interior spaces. I've only just started though. BTW, I saw on discord that big changes are coming in 5.4, namely "5.4 will have re-entering pins for subgraphs, so you get the result of the previous iteration, it is not possible with 5.3"
I tried PCG but ultimately it didn't work for me, so I wrote my own algorithms for object placement. The interiors are entirely procedural. I will make another video to explain how things work :)
@@VuntraCityAwesome! I look forward to hearing your thought process. It's awesome how innovative people can be, I love seeing clever programming especially!
PCG is definitely limited in some regards, particularly being such a young feature
Amazing work! What engine did you use?
Thanks! I'm using the latest Unreal Engine.
Can you add a few much taller buildings as viewpoints?
There are tall buildings and towers, not sure I showed them in the video though. Although the current limit is 50 floors.
One day, when I learn what's necessary to collaborate, I will. 😅 I have a dream more or less related to that.
Cool! Start working on your dream! I'm learning as I go as well, I think it's the best way.
I wish I could also do that, could do guide me, I'm just started learning game dev
Damn thats some backrooms type shi
i would love to join you and i would help with designing buildings but also i would give ideas for public transport - for example i would explore and get myself ideas in game
but designing buildings - i would design the building with 50 floors with express elevator and local elevators serving certain floors with basements and linkways to other buidlings
Thanks for the offer, but the procedural nature of the city means I don't get to design the buildings. I only design the algorithms that generate them ;)
@@VuntraCity no worries but you can have me because i am very skilled in beta testing plus ideas with things and such
hi there, do you use an engine for this?
I'm using Unreal Engine 5
Make the project available? I would like to collab.
Why is this branded as a Second Life video ? Is this UE5 or not
Yes it's UE5. But it has nothing to do with Second Life.
@@VuntraCity when you say it's hard for you to deal with rounded shape. Could you not create squared boundaries, just like drawing a circle on a grid
@@2slick4u.The problem is the interior. I would need to fit all the interior furniture into that circle, which is a lot harder than into a square. Not impossible of course, so it might still happen ;)
propose your project to ubisoft, they love open worlds without gameplay😀
When is the release date ?
The gameplay is still missing, so probably not anytime soon, sorry!
only 2k likes?
Meanwhile In Starfield........
Please teach me
Who the hell hates procedural generation!? It saves time, money, and labour-!!
Because of thinking about it beyond your own shoes, it has its drawbacks, and consumers dont care about what makes it easier for developers. They just want a good game thats not behind the times
that's all fine and good, but once it starts to reduce quality that's when I'm gonna complain. I don't want a game that feels empty.
starfield
It sure looks good at first glance but after an hour of two... Even with more budget, procedural cities will always become boring again after some time.
Do you have a discord?
Not yet but I will be making one soon as I start to playtest. I will announce it.
This looks really great. Out of curiosity, are interiors pre-designed as templates that the algorithm randomly chooses? Or is all the furniture procedurally placed by a set of rules?
I'm currently brain storming a cyberpunk game and I'm contemplating procedural generation for the city as well. But, it seems a lot tougher than procedural dungeons and minecraft worlds
The furniture is placed by a set of rules, like you said. Which creates some very weird interiors occasionally, but I'm ok with that ;) But there are no templates.
@@VuntraCity That's the nature of proc gen lol. I'm impressed by what you've done. It's crazy that it's been such a long project for ya.