Cityscape – Hello, internet!

So, Shamus Young, the lovely man whose PixelCity project this entire developer diary is inspired by a tribute to a total rip-off of, has linked to it from his blog. Which means my pages views for the last couple of days have totally exploded.

I left a comment on his blog, but I should perhaps address a couple of the same points here:

  • I’m doing this because I can, and because I wanted something to do in the evenings that my wife is out of the house. I’m on a hiatus from World of Warcraft at the moment, so figured a programming project might be fun, and as an ex-games developer with a lingering interest in 3D graphics, PixelCity provided a perfect inspiration.
  • I’m focusing far more on the technical aspects of my project than Shamus did for his – this is because, as I said above, this is a total rip-off of his original project, so all the interesting stuff about what looks right and making things look realistic has all already been written about. This isn’t a “How to draw a realistic city” diary – it’s a “How I did it in C#/XNA using more modern techniques” diary. As things progress, I might head in a different direction on some aspects (like the city planning entry) – I’ll discuss what I’m doing there in a bit more detail.
  • The C#/XNA “ZOMG MS ARE TEH EVILS” thing is not something I’m interested in discussing. I just can’t get worked up about it, I’m afraid.
  • I make no promises about how often this will update. It was pretty rapid at the start but, as with many things, it’s sort of tailed off a bit lately. It’s got sunny, I’ve been busy at work, my chilli plants need tending – I fully intend to carry this through to… well, some poorly-defined and probably still distant end-point, but I have no idea when that might be yet.
  • I apologise for inconsistently switching between first-person singular (“I did [x]”) and first-person plural (“We need [x]”). I’m a programmer, not a writer.

I think that’s about it. Thanks for dropping by; I hope you enjoyed what you read.

Tags: , , , , , ,

4 Responses to “Cityscape – Hello, internet!”

  1. Matthew says:

    As a software developer with no games experience who is interested in XNA programming, I really appreciate your blog series. Thanks a ton for ripping off Shamus (I have no desire to ever code in C++ again) and thanks to Shamus for letting me know about your work.

    I can’t wait to see how it ends.

  2. 2tm says:

    I’m another user jacking in from TwentySided and am finding your project quite interesting so far. I like that your going into more of the 3D rendering side of this in a bit more detail and with more modern techniques as it’s something I’ve always been interested in but never really dabbled with.

    On another note, what happens if I answer yes to the ‘I am a filthy dirty spammer’ question…?

  3. Brent Gulanowski says:

    Eve heard of CItyEngine? Not that I think you should stop what you’re doing. But check out this video:

    <embed src=’http://blip.tv/play/gpkko49JiI0y’ type=’application/x-shockwave-flash’ width=’720′ height=’435′ allowscriptaccess=’always’ allowfullscreen=’true’></embed>

  4. Brent Gulanowski says:

    Oh, well, just go here:

    http://www.procedural.com/cityengine/movies.html