City Story: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad Is Charming

We are obviously suckers for city games here at Digital Urban and since the sad decline in the SimCity series there has been a bit of a desert in urban gaming as of late. Until that is City Story came along, free for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad it looks like a thoroughly charming and involving game.

Direct from the marketing - City Story™ is a place where you and your friends can create the world based on your imagination. Build and decorate your own dream city with cafes, boutiques, bakeries, hotels, and landmarks. Watch your population skyrocket as you create the ultimate living, breathing city.

FEATURES:

- Choose from over 50 varieties of buildings, businesses, and parks.
- Design and decorate your city with parks, roads, and rivers.
- Get notifications when your contracts are ready.
- Invite your Facebook friends to be your neighbors.
- Send exclusive buildings as gifts to your friends.

We have only spent an hour or so with the iPad version but have to say that it looks like a must have city game, it is similar in nature to SimCity yet free and currently sitting at number 2 of the iTunes Chart.

You can download the app via the app store.

Please note that this post is now closed to 'please add' comments, we included as many as we could.

15 Days in Liberty City: Time-Lapse

The time-lapse below by The RockstarHQ covers 15 days in Grand Theft Autos Liberty City:



We really like the concept of taking a time-lapse inside of the game engine, it gives it a unique sense of life and presence.

City 17

Loosely based on the computer game Half Life 2, "City 17" by Daniel Eggert tells the story of a guy who finds himself in a city that isn't what it used be:

City 17 from Daniel Eggert on Vimeo.

For those who are not familiar with the architecture of City 17, we produced a short movie a few years ago:



Daniel produced the original clip for film school as his final project. It was shot it entirely on location in Cologne/Germany using the Canon XL1. The CG elements were taken from the computer game "Half Life 2" by Valve Software and animated in 3D Studio Max with a final render with mental ray. Compositing and color grading was done using Combustion and editing was via in Adobe Premiere.

Digital Urban City Exhibition Space: Downloadable Preview

The following exhibition space is a proof of concept, looking at the ability to share and display city datasets and simulations within an interactive game engine. Available for download on both the PC and Mac (intel) platforms the space is the result of a few days work with the Unity Engine, it is intended to be viewed in the spirit of development rather than a completed product.

The room includes our first 'crowd and delegate' models direct from 3D Max, created as basic wander and avoid simulations they provide the building blocks of emergent behaviour within the cityscape.

City wide data sets can to be honest be very 'dry', the whole point of digital urban is to look at new ways to outreach, visualise and ultimately communicate urban data. The ability to include 3D models via ESRI ArcScene is a notable step forward, pictured below is the retail and office space in London measured on a 500m grid. We note some polygon issues here but these are known and we think we have a way to fix them - its to do with the way ArcScene exports, the model forms the centre of the exhibition space:

The room features various architectural models, including the Swiss Re building and the GLA in London, it also features a number of our latest output movies, the London LiDAR and Second Life Agents are of particular note.

The model is, as we mentioned, proof of concept, the next step is the addition of themed rooms and a more organised structure. We think the concept of virtual exhibition spaces is a strong one, so as ever any comments are most welcome, if you would also like to know how any of it was done just ask, as is the spirit of digital urban.

Download the model for Windows XP/Visa (221 Mb zip file)

Unzip the file, open the folders and run the Exhibition1.exe file.

Download the model for Mac (Intel) (222 Mb zip file)

Extract and simply run the .dmg file.

We recommend running the application in 'Window' mode at 1024 x 768: use the mouse to look around, W/S move forwards/backwards, Space to jump, click and drag the digital urban cube to throw it around...

City in Games: Fastlane Street Racing on the iPhone

With 8 city routes to race Fastlane Street Racing is the first 3D city based game we have seen on the iPhone.

Its an impressive rendition of a city and while its no Burnout on the PSP the iPhone is quick becoming a jack of all trades. From Timelapse photography to GeoCaching, Google Earth to Instamapper it is almost an urban geographers version of a swiss army knife. That aside, take a look at the movie below detailing Fastlane Street Racing, especially the rendering of the cityscape:



See http://www.fastlanestreetracing.com for more info and a link to the iTunes store.

Thanks go to Andreas of http://bovens.net/ for sending us the link.

Cities in Games: GTA IV Liberty City

Heli Tours (GTA IV) from VIP3Rz on Vimeo.

Grand Theft Auto IV (abbreviated to GTA IV) is a sandbox-style action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Typical of the franchise it features some of the best free roaming city visualisations around, creating a believable sense of location and place thanks to interactive traffic models and pedestrian movement.

The game is set in 'Liberty City', a fictional city that is based heavily on modern day New York City. The movie above provides an insight into both the architecture of the city and the ability to freely visualize the urban skyline.

Below provides a further look at the city:


Freefall (GTA IV) from VIP3Rz on Vimeo.

In a report last year in the New York Daily News City Councilman Peter Vallone, chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee, stated that "Setting Grand Theft Auto in the safest big city in America would be like setting Halo in Disneyland". The article continues that "The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers," said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg.


The city map for GTA IV is pictured below, you can view an interactive 'Google Maps' style version here.


Now we are not going to get into the debate about violence and games based on real locations.. suffice to say the Mayor of London didn't pass comment on The Getaway (see our movie) which allows you, amongst other things, to hijack a bus at gun point and attack passers by, but these are changing times.

With games increasingly leading the way in the creation of digital cities, and the move towards photorealism, it looks like this is the first shot across the bows of game creators in what looks like a long running debate.

We can't help wondering how different it is however to film, how many violent films have been set in New York and depicted it in a negative way? From the Lights of New York in 1928 (the first Gangster film to feature sound) to the latest blockbuster - New York is often portrayed as a crime ridden city due to its gritty urban environment and architecture. GTA IV is simply following a similar path.

GT4.Net has a great write up showing comparisons between in-game images and the architecture of New York.

Also see the 86 page thread on GTAForums.com

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Build a City in the Game - City Coaster

Sandbox games such as RollerCoaster Tycoon provide a powerful set of tools to create 3D environment - in the case of RollerCoaster Tycoon normally a theme park.

An enthusiast known simply as 'Steven' and uploading to YouTube as alloria has used the game engine to create a city.

The end product is a flythough that some visualisation companies would be proud of:



Steven states that:

This started out as a sandbox game, to experiment with different building types, I created one building, then another, then another, then another, and before I knew it, I had nearly filled the entire map with buildings!

I did of course leave a small area in the middle to build a small theme park, which contains two roller coasters, a mini-golf and an Enterprise ride.

The main coaster is a "Giga-Coaster" and is known as "Thrasher" This is the only ride that I have filmed, as the other ride "Swift" can be viewed in my "Off-Shore Theme Park" video.

Excitement Rating: 8.25 (Very High)
Intensity Rating: 4.66 (Medium)
Nausea Rating: 2.47 (Low)

The name "Thrasher" was chosen by my friend Matthew.

But of course, this video is not really about the coasters, it is about what happens when I am bored, and have plenty of time to experiment with the game.

The city contains several buildings, including:

Some Tower Blocks.
A Multi-storey car-park.
Several ground-level Car Parks.
A Church with graveyard.
Several Houses With Gardens.
Several Small Blocks of flats.
Some Shops.
A Large warehouse-type shop.
A Bus Depot.
A Rest Home.
A Small Park With A Fountain.
Some office buildings.

Still pictures of the city can be found at http://pjxzzt.deviantart.com/gallery/

Mirror's Edge: Running in the Cityscape

Mirror’s Edge is a first person adventure game currently under development by DICE, set for release in 2008 on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC its shows innovative use of the cityscape:



The story is based around a city...

where information is heavily monitored, agile couriers called Runners transport sensitive data away from prying eyes. In this seemingly utopian paradise, a crime has been committed and now you are being hunted. You are a Runner called Faith - and this innovative first-person action-adventure is your story

The developers interview, embedded below, is well worth a look for those interested in cityscapes:



We will have more on the city behind Mirror's Edge in future posts.

Prototype: Modelling New York 2

In a second post on Prototype - a forthcoming game from Radical Entertainment - we feature an interesting insight into their modelling of New York.

The movie below provides various concept drawings and views of the model imported into the game:



Its interesting how well New York has been recreated for the game, although to be honest the last section of the video was slightly cringe worthy on delivering a product.

The game is scheduled for release on PC, PS3 and XBox 360 in 2008 - date yet to be confirmed.

See http://www.prototypegame.org for more screen shots and videos.

Thanks to Ian for posting a comment letting us know of the new video...

City Generator: Subversion Game from Introversion

Introversion, the guys behind Darwinia and Defcon are currently working on 'Subversion' which features an in-game city generator.

Currently running at over 70,000 buildings generated in approximately one minute the generator is the latest in a series of developments in 'automatic architecture' in games.

The YouTube movie embedded below provides a look at a city being generated:



See It's all in your head, Part 8 (the developers blog) for more details and screenshots.

We picked this one up via the ever readable http://kotaku.com/

Cities in Games: Chernobyl in Call of Duty 4

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a first-person game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. Available for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 it features various real world locations, one of them being set in Chernobyl.

The movie embedded below illustrates a series of photos taken from inside Chernobyl and the in-game models:




The original movie on YouTube is also worth a look, although it only contains the city photographs.



The full level in Call of Duty 4 can be seen below, the architecture in the movie above can be clearly seen, it is an impressive if chilling rendition of Chernobyl:



See http://www.nextgenboards.com/ for the full story behind the images...

Gamescape: Create a City while Playing a Game

Gamescape is an interesting concept - the players in game movements are translated into 3d floorplans. As gameplay progresses levels are added and over time structures develop which in turn build into cityscapes that can subsequently be downloaded and imported into Google Earth.

Is the sort of concept that does not translate well to text, the movie below provides a clearer insight:



The concept has been developed by 'and-or.ch'- an art group which is looking to find new ways of communication by tapping into the subconscious streams of human minds and network data. and-or was been founded in 2001 by Rene Bauer and Beat Suter, based in Zurich, Switzerland.


For more info, Google Earth examples and to download the game see: http://www.and-or.ch/gamescape/