Talk Title: Urban Planning in Games

Effective talk: Building a believable city

Year of Talk: 2024

Video Link: Urban Planning in Games

Why we need Urban planning:

• Many games have urban settings that need to be planned out.

• Can't just be a carbon copy of Google Maps

• As important as characters. The cities and urban areas give the city life and backstory. People normally build cities in a normal way.

Common mistakes:

• Normally designers and artists believe that cities are just randomly placed buildings. It may look like that from a distance. 

• It's important to take into account the street layout and how it affects city spacing and where buildings might appear.

• Cities are normally built with certain types of structures. It's important to learn what it is. Having buildings in front of each other helps make it look like a street.

What the city is made out of:

• There are two common types of urban planning seen in buildings.

• City Blocks (Vienna, Roma, New York) and Super Blocks (Kyiv, Warsaw, Paris)

• City Blocks normally contain dense building backed into blocks or rectangles looking onto a street. Will normally be packed together.

• Superblocks normally contain buildings standing alone or surrounding certain infrastructure or common landmarks. Will normally have a large road passing by and around it.

3 basic types of areas in city blocks:

1. Streets

2. Squares

3. Backyards

• Many cities contain a lot more options but the previously mentioned options are the primary ones that someone can see.

• It tends to be very easy to know which part of a city blocks. You can easily recognize which of the 3 areas you are in.

How to make a City:

• Size

• Proportions

• Level of Detail

Size:

• How big will the city be?

• The different shapes that the building might appear to be.

• City border and edges (Limits of where it can grow).

Proportions:

• Length and width of streets.

• How many buildings per street?

• The size of buildings and how they are distributed.

• Does not need to be highly detailed, primarily to determine where everything should be.

Level of Detail:

• Depending on how close the player can get then more details are needed.

• Making sure each block or street feels unique and recognizable.

• Make sure there is a good amount of density of items and things to see/do.

Neighborhoods

• Given a city won't look the same throughout the same city each neighborhood (Or certain blocks of streets) will have a different culture and layout affecting how it works. 

• Layout

• Architecture

• Landmarks

Layout:

• Each neighborhood will have different proportions. Financial areas will have taller buildings while others might just have small wooden buildings and streets.

• Some areas might have been planned to house a lot of people in small areas or to allow people to move around easily between places.

Architecture:

• Architectural styles; This is how whole areas might be built (I.E militaristic, Futuristic, etc)

• Colors; Different cultures might express themselves in unique ways. Can be colorful or not. Japan town can be colorful while the business district is more gray.

• Height can also help create neighborhoods. Normally taller buildings might be part of a financial district or smaller buildings are for stores and housing

• Age is a major factor as well. Certain areas can be built at the same time and have people move in at the same time allowing for a community to build around the area.

• Some neighborhoods have richer or poorer people which leads to buildings looking worn down or newer based on how much available money they have to pay for said things.

Landmarks:

• Some unique features of an area or building. Which helps make the area more recognizable.

• There needs to be some function to said landmark. An area where people meet up or for public transportation (Train station, bus stop).

• Symbolism can be quite useful as people can find meaning in the buildings and worship it or use it as a source of strength.

• It needs to be easily visible and unique from other areas. This allows the player and the people in the neighborhood to easily find it and orient themselves.

Making a city:

• Once the team has worked through the previously mentioned options it means that they can start putting everything together.

• It can be useful to find references to other cities and how they connect.

• Finding real-life options can help give ideas on how cities have grown over the years and how different neighborhoods connect and bleed into each other.

• Make sure to pay attention to spaces and distances between streets and buildings. Can help make the map/city bigger or smaller.

• If planning on adding large streets, then make sure to not have it reach a dead end and instead give multiple ‘escape routes’ where the traffic can go towards and disperse.

• The best option for dispersing a large street is using a square where multiple smaller streets leave outwards.

• Take into account the main streets as they help control traffic and allow people to move between areas of the city. Helps navigate throughout the city.

• The bigger the streets then they should point toward larger landmarks. Helps orientate the player and shows what's most important in the city.

• Make sure to keep the streets looking diverse. This way it is harder to get confused and certain streets are better kept than other streets. Even in real life, streets that are in the same neighborhood will look different. Some can be creepy others not so much.

• Elevation can help obscure or show certain areas of a city. For example, a hill might have a church or other landmark. Alternatively, the player could access a tall building that lets them see the local area and where to navigate.

• Most cities don't make the city super plan. They try to build based on how the terrain moves around.

• Try not to do straight streets. It forces more buildings to be rendered while corners and turns allow for things to be hidden and can help improve performance, especially for bigger cities where a lot of things need to be rendered.

• Straight streets can feel monotonous. Especially if you're only walking through it. Having other movement mechanics like a car can help speed through the street and not make it feel as monotonous.