
Pixel City – Procedurally generated city (2009) [video] - jdmoreira
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d2-PtK4F6Y
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striking
Shamus Young's stuff is pretty incredible. Not the programs themselves,
because it's "been done before." Rather, it's his writing skill that really
shines. He has a true talent for describing and illustrating difficult or
complex programming, and then showing it in action in a nicely-wrapped binary
executable. You can see all of his wonderful series here:
[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?page_id=16458](http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?page_id=16458)

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geon
If you like scifi, go read his System Shock fanfiction novel. It's great.

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ersii
Would that be his book "Free radical"? He mentions System Shock in the
Forewords at:
[http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/](http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/)

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geon
Yes.

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userbinator
A little surprised that this doesn't seem to be a demoscene production,
because it has all the characteristics of one. I was even expecting greets in
the endscroller.

If he could get the contents of this video down to a single 64k or 4k binary
(including the music), it would make a great demo. Cityscapes are pretty
common and definitely doable in 4k or 64k; here are two examples of winning
demos containing similar scenes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UgbKQKD9I4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UgbKQKD9I4)
4k

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaNYOzwlVC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaNYOzwlVC8)
64k

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david-given
Polygons are for the weak.

[https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XsBSRG](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XsBSRG)

(There are several awesome-looking procedural cities on ShaderToy. Here's
another nice one:
[https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdXGW2](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdXGW2))

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daviding
I really enjoy these, and had this bookmarked. A nice example here:

[http://alteredqualia.com/three/examples/webgl_city.html](http://alteredqualia.com/three/examples/webgl_city.html)

Holds up very well and looks very impressive (plus the source is uncompressed
and interesting).

~~~
daviding
Plus if you ever need to warm up your hands on your old laptop, this is
another very good example from the same author:

[http://alteredqualia.com/xg/examples/animation_physics_vehic...](http://alteredqualia.com/xg/examples/animation_physics_vehicles.html)

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cpayne
_Step 7: Release it as a... Damn. I actually have no idea what this thing is
for_

Summarizes my development career to date. Still awesome to watch...

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andrewfelix
I would love this as a screen saver.

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Ologn
It exists as one for many platforms

[http://rss-glx.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml](http://rss-
glx.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml)

I ported some of the RSS-GLX screensavers to Android, but never tried this
one.

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adamrezich
This was from the scrapped game project that Introversion Software ended up
not finishing in lieu of making Prison Architect:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J30i0gABfS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J30i0gABfS8)

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dsrw
What makes you say that? I'm fairly certain the two projects are unrelated.

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adamrezich
I'm sorry, I was in a rush to write that comment and didn't make myself clear.
I was bringing up a similar, related thing, and did not mean to conflate the
two.

I like the Introversion one better because it builds the city organically out
of roads, personally.

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Wingman4l7
Introversion, the indie game dev, also different-but-equally-amazing
procedural city generator, for their now-cancelled game Subversion. It was
actually bundled in the Hunble Introversion Bundle, and you could play with
the parameters and make your own city. You can see a demo here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pR8jpK4ETk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pR8jpK4ETk)

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birger
10/10 would buy it as a screensaver! It has been years since I saw a cool
screensaver that is just fun to watch when I am not doing stuff.

[edit] There is a screensaver and it works!
[http://code.google.com/p/pixelcity/](http://code.google.com/p/pixelcity/)

~~~
skeuomorf
I generally use videos as a screensaver, it allows me to have pretty cool
screensavers fast. I use xsecurelock [0] with the saver_mplayer backend, which
means that when I lock the screen, xsecurelock runs the videos in my ~/Videos
directory on repeat.

I couple that with something like the Iron Man schematics videos made by
Territory Studio [1] and I've got myself a pretty rad looking screensaver
(with minimal effort).

[0]
[https://github.com/google/xsecurelock](https://github.com/google/xsecurelock)

[1] [https://www.behance.net/gallery/26009421/AVENGERS-Age-of-
Ult...](https://www.behance.net/gallery/26009421/AVENGERS-Age-of-Ultron-UI-
Screen-Graphics)

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martin-adams
I used to be into modo as a hobbyist and this reminds me of the Telematics
City showreel which for me was a true work of art (also from 2009).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PodUqc4B5Fc&list=PL4DFBA006A...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PodUqc4B5Fc&list=PL4DFBA006A47E6420)

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m_eiman
I ported this screensaver to OSX way back when, and I think it still works:
[http://emage-software.com/](http://emage-software.com/)

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mcphage
It does! Awesome, thanks :-)

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djent
Seems like it would make an amazing GPL Mirror's Edge clone.

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felhr
The whole shamus projects, from books (I read his autobiography) to
programming posts are awesome. His game "Good Robot" was greenlighted recently
so we are going to see his first released game soon, which is pretty
interesting coming from a guy who talked so openly about it
[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=20638](http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=20638)

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FraKtus
ArtMatic Voyager has amazing procedurally generated cities and landscapes:
[http://uisoftware.com/Voyager/index18.html](http://uisoftware.com/Voyager/index18.html)
It's based on a powerful texture engine to generate colors and height maps and
the model is ray traced...

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bipin_nag
I have one question, are the buildings generated randomly or is there any
algorithm that generates which building goes where. The generation is like the
urban version of "No man's Sky".

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jdmoreira
[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940](http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940)

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lamuerteflaca
Funny, I was just looking at this yesterday night to get some ideas on
building design.

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iamcreasy
The best part was when he added the yellow red lights. The swing of mood was
stunning.

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stretchwithme
Makes me appreciate the Chrysler build all the more.

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pavel_lishin
I would love to have this as a screensaver.

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opless
Also add [2009] to title.

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dang
Thanks, done.

