Townscaper – A building game inspired by the design of Scandinavian cities | Hacker News Reader

Townscaper – A building game inspired by the design of Scandinavian cities

bloomberg.com

386 pointsbschne52 comments

The most interesting part of this is how it works, which this article is kinda light on.

It uses the "wave function collapse" procedural generation technique (has been on the frontpage before if I recall correctly) to select fitting tiles when the player clicks on the map to build something.

https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse

In the section about notable forks, ports and spin-offs there are some links to Oskar Stalsberg's twitter showing various points along the development of this digital toy.

https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse#notable-ports-...

I've been following this for years and it is really inspiring to see this be so successful.

I have the feeling that digital toys will become more common when gamedevs get access to things like GTP-3 seens like a really natural fit to me, supporting the creativity of the player by filling in blanks in a sufficiently advanced way.

"Wave function collapse", aka constraint satisfaction

Not sure what of this was actually used in townscaper, but someone in another discussion of the game (can't remember where unfortunately) referred to these two sources:

- Oskar Stålberg's 2018 Talk "Wave Function Collapse in Bad North" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bcZb-SsnrA)

- Müller et al, 2006 - "Procedural Modeling of Buildings" (https://doi.org/10.1145/1141911.1141931)

The name "wave function collapse" is such a overcomplicated academic term.

In reality this algorith is very simple:

1) try to randomly place a part at X if it fits

2) try to pick the random part in such a way that once it will be placed we will maximize that probability that we will be able to build further on (so you just pick the part that reduces the chance of blocking the build in the next step in case nothing can fit anymore).

Then you just have to provide all combination of possible connection in terms of 2d/3d graphics.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." I think your version would run into dead ends very soon. You need to keep track for all grid positions what are remaining possible blocks (this is 'superposition') and eliminate them as you place blocks ('collapsing'). You also need a good strategy in which order to place blocks, and also how to backtrack if you run out of options.

The Townscaper seems to be using non-rectangular grid, so it's maybe more like a 2D graph of distributed nodes, with perhaps Voronoi algorithm to assign 2D geometry to each node. You make it sound trivial, it's a lot of work to make it work (and probably quite a few discarded prototypes along the way).

Oskar gave a technical talk about how he implements the grid and other interesting bits in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hqt8JkYRdI

Thanks for the link. The grid generation is so much more complicated than I assumed.

I just read the wiki on wave function collapse

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function_collapse

I actually found it a simpler and more elegant algorithm than what you describe and not hard to understand at all.

As someone who did a PhD in particle physics, this is very hard to understand (and not just apply math)

This is actually just one of the interpretations, there are more and some are gaining traction (see for instance https://youtu.be/5hVmeOCJjOU, S Caroll is a great speaker but you need to stay concentrated :)

I first came across this concept here on HN[1][2], I recall thinking at the time that it’d be incredible implemented in a full game.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18443311

[2]: https://marian42.itch.io/wfc

I remember seeing this on r/proceeduralgeneration a while back - it's hard to forget an art style as distinct as that. I'm really glad he did end up putting it on steam, because it does look like a really interesting toy, even if there's not much game to it yet.

People often forget the first versions of Minecraft weren't much more than a toy either, and look at it now.

Minecraft (before survival mode was added) was a free game though to be fair

IIRC minecraft was only free for a very short while (a few weeks into development)?

Creative mode, where you have infinite blocks and just build stuff, was free to play online through the Java applet. That was I think until beta came out.

They brought it back last year. It's now at https://classic.minecraft.net/

I recently purchased Islanders [0] which is a similar incremental building game. Really peaceful to play and just zen out for a bit. Might grab Townscaper too, looks nice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islanders_(video_game)

I was just looking at that. How do you like it? I am always interested in games I can pickup and put down for quick sessions during my lunch break.

That’s the perfect timespan and context for it, I think you’d love it

I can second Islanders, it's a lovely and relaxing game. After playing a level to completion I'd find myself just gazing at it for half an hour or more just imagining life and society on the island. Any game that can so playfully stimulate my imagination is an instant recommendation.

My only complaint when last I played was that they didn't let you save a previous island after moving on to the next level, which makes progression somewhat bittersweet.

Oh I find that lovely actually, that bittersweetness is one of my favorite parts of the game. It makes me imagine god was a painter, moving from one piece to the next. Each creation perfect to its time and place, but evaporated along the temporal axis as well.

My friend gifted me this and I really struggled to get it. My conclusion was that it was solely about finding the right spot to place things, given the constraints of the tile and the world.

Is that right?

Mostly, yes. It's a simple but neat game.

There is however some strategy involved in planning ahead. In the early game you might want to place buildings less optimally, to leave room for later game buildings that are worth more points, or set up large bonuses from other buildings.

Related discussion the other day on his webgl toy Brick Block

https://oskarstalberg.com/game/house/index.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23904991

Unfortunately less and less of Scandinavia and all of Europe is looking like this. It's a shame what has happened to architecture in my opinion.

Perhaps architect schools could use this to inspire the students.

First thing I thought when I discovered this was "looks like Sim City if it had been designed by Jane Jacobs"

I live in Scandinavia. Doesn't look anything like what style we have or had to me at all. Looks more like something from Germany or Austria.

For anyone on Mac who is keen to try it out, there is a public Beta available.

How to play the beta: 1. Buy the game on Steam 2. Once the game is in your Steam library, right-click on it and select 'properties' 3. Click the 'BETAS' tab and select the beta from the dropdown list 4. Install the game 5. Enjoy :)

This looks awesome!

Heads up that it's only available for Windows at the moment.

You can opt into the Mac beta. Apparently it works fine but has some dpi issues

Platinum on ProtonDB as well.

Works fine on Linux with proton 4.11 or 5.09 but you do have to add the WINE D3D env variable in launch options otherwise it keeps locking up every few seconds

Thank you so much, can confirm to works great. In case anyone looking for how to, follow the instructions on https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton#runtime-config-optio..., uncomment the PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 line.

This looks super neat! Love the animation styles, just looks so satisfying!

While reading I though this would be perfect for the Japanese market if he included an art style for the country - and then the author mentioned it himself.

Looks awesome. Would be fun to play it now as I actually live in Stockholm from last year.

I wonder would it be possible to extend the game with more city types. Cyberpunk-city builder would quite interesting.

Oskar Stålberg makes some great games. Dude did Bad North before this one.

Great, well designed little game.

What engine is this made with, if any?

Almost certainly Unity3d, the developers previous games and toys are made with Unity3d, and use the same technique of wave function collapse, I can't imagine he changed engine since since.

It's Unity; I just checked my local copy.

I picked this up on Steam as well. Definitely a fun way to relax and spend a few minutes. Really well designed and implemented!

My fourth grade son loves this game. As do I. It’s like meditation

Wow, this looks great!

I picked this up on Steam and its quite fun for a while, I just hope it continues to see development

Is this a game or a "video toy"? A game should have a goal and maybe a win/lose condition. I saw a streamer playing this a couple weeks ago and it seemed that the only thing you can/have to do is to build random towns.

EDIT: Nevermind, it is mentioned in the first paragraph:

> When Oskar Stalberg announced the release of Townscaper a few weeks ago, he made a point of calling it a “toy” rather than a video game — because it has no goal apart from the sheer enjoyment and satisfaction you get from seeing a pretty town rising from the sea as you click.

Personally I prefer “toys” to real video games. I’m not very good at video games that have a win/lose condition, and when I lose I get upset because I’m just trying to have fun. My favorite games are actually toys, like BeamNG Drive, Euro Truck Simulator, Cities Skylines, etc. Games where I can create my own win/lose conditions and maybe even create my own narratives.

I’ve gotten more enjoyment from GTA V and Red Dead 2 from just random playing after I had already finished the story missions, because there was no stress to be good and no punishment if you make a mistake. You can just be, rather than having to be perfect.

> You can just be, rather than having to be perfect.

Shorter existentialism: life is a massive multiplayer open world game.

You have a ridiculously complicated name. Can I just call you 'numbers'?

By all means. Pleased to meet you.

> A game should have a goal and maybe a win/lose condition.

No, that's not a requirement.

Well, that's also what the author himself said.

The goal is what turns game into work :).

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/10/dont-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com