Procedural world generation: C++11 library with highly customizable API | Hacker News Reader

Procedural world generation: C++11 library with highly customizable API

github.com

62 pointseiskalt10 comments

I predict that with the success of Pokemon Go, there's going to be a gazillion "real world" and augmented reality games and apps over the next couple of years. Pokemon Go is the very low-hanging fruit; it's a map with artificial points of interest laid on top, with a snapshot of the real thing. So, a "welcome to Springfield" sign becomes a Pokestop, but the game doesn't really know what is there, it just has a picture of it and knowledge that there's some kind of landmark there. This is cool in and of itself, but if the game actually had more awareness of the world, it'd be even cooler to have real buildings and terrain represented in-game.

Pokemon Go is kinda the Pong (or maybe Donkey Kong) of augmented reality gaming. It's so novel that people forgive that it's extremely limited (and there's a regular non-augmented reality game underneath to keep it interesting and make it more interesting...it's kinda like the old board games that shipped with a VHS tape of scenes or whatever or the video games that came with a bunch of cool ancillary materials like operations manuals and such).

In short: I think tools like this are mandatory for augmented reality to become a really good medium for telling stories. It's extremely basic, still, but given the improvements in public data sets (I remember reading that there's POI data sets coming along now, including information about the size and shapes of buildings and such, too) and frameworks for turning it into a game world, I think it'll get better fast.

If someone wanted to be at the forefront of some area of the future of gaming, I think this would be one of those areas. It's not getting as much attention as VR, but I think it's got every bit as much potential to change the world and to change gaming.

I don't think this is true. There's nothing new or interesting about Pokemon Go that we haven't had for years. The only new thing is the branding.

The lesson is more that to get mass appeal, it's the story that counts, not the technology. Technology is just a method to connect the story to people. Pokemon Go is popular because it is 'real world Pokemon' and lets you catch 'real world Pokemon'. Without that story, the game simply doesn't work. It's the user filling in the lack of an actual game with their own imagination.

Which part are you disagreeing with? The fact that Pokémon Go is not that interesting technically is exactly that person's point. And yes, I too suspect that there will be hundreds of me-too AR games now that Pokémon is such a phenomenon.

Thanks. Agree that it would be more interesting if game could detect collision with specific objects, e.g. roads, buildings, etc. Then, you have more flexibility in game logic design/programming.

So far, I spent 2.5 years developing this from scratch (including predecessor of this project - ActionStreetMap) and still believe in this idea :)

Looks very useful. But it's not really procedural world generation, right? I'd call this geographical data visualisation instead. Generation would be creating new worlds with just a seed and an RNG. Was kind of hoping to see that because that was actually an idea I had for my graduation project. I eventually killed that idea because I just couldn't get a good design of how such a library would work (that would be useful in real games). It's a funny coincidence that I also wanted to make the library with a C++ core and a Unity interface.

Yes, this library does not generate random shaped buildings or terrain regions. Instead, it generates them from real geographical data and allows you specify some noise parameters, e.g. :

canvas|z16 {

    grid-cell-size: 5%; /* affects triangulation*/

    max-area: 0.05%; /* affects triangulation refinement */

    color-noise-freq: 100000; /* color of each vertex will use this noise value */

    ele-noise-freq: 100000; /* height of each vertex will use this noise value*/

    color: gradient(#dcdcdc 0%, #c0c0c0 10%, #a9a9a9 50%, #808080); /* color gradient*/

}

Also, some objects can be randomly generated for specific place, e.g. trees in forest. I found this idea where you have real geodata as input for randomization more interesting than having yet another planet generator with manual setting of various parameters.

How is it generating the 3D Building objects (like the cathedral)? Does it just pull from a object library tied to that geo like google maps?

No, all 3D buildings data is provided by OpenStreetMap. This wiki page describes the model:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Simple_3D_buildings

In short, all complex buildings are defined via multiple simple polygons with height, height under ground, colors, etc.

For example, you can check how Saint Basils Cathedral is defined (take a look at Members list):

https://openstreetmap.org/relation/3224486

I think this is the relevant section of the docs.

https://github.com/reinterpretcat/utymap/wiki/How-To#customi...

Customize POI

By default, Place of Interest data is rendered as textured cube by demo app. If you want to customize this, check poi builder in demo app. You may replace default implementation with more complex. In future, there are plans to start adding specific builders for specific poi (e.g. builder for cache machine, street lights, etc.)

slick!

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