Gnome's Lair

A Wild Book Appears

2020-11-19T18:01:00.006+03:00

Time flies, and it seems I hadn't updated my dear and undead blog in over two years. So, well, thought I'd drop by, say hi, and let my sole surviving reader know that Virtual Cities has finally been published. You can find all about that atlas and exploration of 45 iconic video game cities, and even purchase your copy, here.

See you next year! Hopefully.

The Winter Menagerie

2018-12-07T18:10:00.002+03:00

Things keep on happening, cities keep on imagining themselves, games keep on being conjured, and I thought I should update a bit you on what I've been up to those past few months.

Mainly, I have been focusing on the forthcoming Virtual Cities atlas we've been working on for over a year now with friend, and visual artist Maria Kallikaki. We just announced the cities that will be included in the book, are working like crazy on its texts, illustrations, and maps, making good progress, and seem to be on schedule to deliver the finished manuscript to Unbound early in 2019.

I have also been helping shape the city, and environment of narrative game Lake by gamious, and doing things on a very secret, very exciting game with indie studio beyondthosehills. More info on those projects, as well as on a certain something I can't quite mention yet, soon-ish. And, yes, the still un-named board game, and the Blood Bludgeon RPG are still very slowly being worked on too.

On the writing front, I did start the CityCraft column about the design of game cities for the excellent, new, and dev-focused gaming mag Wireframe. The first three issues have already been released, and you can order them (or download the free PDFs) here. If you want to read something slightly less technical, here's the Designing death in the virtual city essay I wrote for the Wellcome Collection, and here's my AdventureX '18 talk (Narratives In Urbanism & Storytelling Cities) for the more audiovisual types:

And did I mention I appeared in a documentary too? Well, I did, and you can watch this lovely thing on video games and cities (in Spanish mostly, but it's been subtitled, and I do speak in English) on YouTube:

Cheers!

Autumn Talks on Game Urbanism

2018-10-02T19:31:00.002+03:00

I really do enjoy talking about the cities of gaming, and will be doing so twice this autumn. So, the brilliant and very lovely people who find attending my talks on imaginary, digital urbanism entertaining and/or useful will be thrilled to know I will be discussing utopias, dystopias, and game cities at the Athens Games Festival '18 (20-21 October, Athens), and narratives in urbanism & storytelling cities at AdventureX 2018 (10-11 November, London).

Do come and say hi!

An Update That's All About Interviews

2018-07-06T18:01:00.000+03:00

One of the unexpected (and utterly lovely) side effects of the Virtual Cities pre-order/crowdfunding campaign was that I actually got to discuss my work on game urbanism with some incredibly interesting/lovely people. The book, real world cities, design techniques, science and art, atmosphere, and all sorts of hopefully intriguing matters were touched upon in a series of interviews I thoroughly enjoyed. Here they are:

From Fallout to Half-Life, urban planning is crucial for game design | Wired

Interview extra: Konstantinos Dimopoulos | Cane & Rinse

Konstantinos Dimopoulos on the design secrets behind our favorite virtual cities | All Gamers

Exploring Real-World Cities in Video Games | Geek.com

Čo Je Za Úspechom Znamych Hernych Miest? | Sector (in Slovak)

Первый атлас виртуальных городов | DTF (in Russian)

Interview @ Unboxholics (in Greek)

Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities

2018-05-19T19:24:00.001+03:00

Go, go! Pledge, support, spread the word, and help make the first atlas of videogaming a very real reality! Here's the link: https://unbound.com/books/virtual-cities/

-----------------------------

PS. Thanks so much! You know I love you.

A season of books, magazines, and talks

2018-05-10T09:06:00.001+03:00

In another one of my sadly sporadic updates on Gnome's Lair I am extremely happy to let you know that I am working with artist Maria Kallikaki on Virtual Cities: An Atlas of Video Game Cities. This project will result in a book examining over 40 of the most iconic cities of gaming, mapping them, detailing them, and exploring them via a series of sketches and drawings. If you are interested in receiving a single email to let you know when the book becomes available for pre-order please do subscribe here.

Just in case books aren't your cup of tea, and you'd rather get your game cities presented to you via magazines, worry not. Issue 181 of Retro Gamer magazine should come with an article on 8-bit cities by me and Alexander Chatziioannou, whereas the lovely Kilobyte Magazine was kind enough to publish my words on the fantasy town of Dun Darach. You can enjoy said Kilobyte issue for free at issuu or as a more traditional PDF.

Finally, and if you'd like to hear me talk about urbanism and discuss designing cities for games, do attend Game Access '18 in lovely Brno this June. My talk 'The Virtual Cities We Play In: A Builder's Introduction' should be of interest, and we can always have a nice chat, and an early summer drink. Possibly even see what my dear friends at CBE Software are up to these days.

The Streets of Beat-'Em-Up

2018-03-08T16:16:00.000+03:00

What you see above are four rather classic urban scenes I grabbed from the ever-evolving, and always excellent MobyGames. I've been researching the evolution of urban depictions in games lately, you see, and the side-scrolling beat-'em-up genre isn't something that could be ignored. Oh, and do look at those lovely colours!

Game Cities: Those Handy, Simplified Urban Structures

2018-01-09T19:18:00.000+03:00

Very few cities are ever built from scratch. What we experience when walking through New York, visiting Beijing, exploring Rome, or living in Athens is not the result of a single planner’s all encompassing thought. On the contrary. Despite all the Haussmanns and Le Corbusiers urban realities are the dynamic outcome of complicated historical-geographical processes, plans upon plans, explosive contradictions, revolutions, progress and reaction, designs and re-designs, competing urbanistic ideas and histories, unexpected functions, layers of architecture, a menagerie of evolving antithetic needs, and a flux of materialized ideas, uses, and problems.

Admittedly, planners, urbanists, architects, and their teams have shaped important aspects and areas of our urban environments, and occasionally deeply influenced the urban process, but never truly created or thoroughly regulated city life and the urban experience as a whole. And yet here are we game crafters trying to simulate the combined effects of centuries and millions of people in order to create the illusion of believable cities with our (comparatively or literally) tiny teams…

Now, I have written several articles trying to help with this incredibly broad and occasionally cumbersome subject, but never one specifically meant to help artists get started with the imagining of their very own virtual urban centers. Apparently this initial step is sometimes both crucial, and what people — including several of my students — tend to find the most intimidating.

So, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the very first step should be answering the three main questions regarding imaginary cities: Where, when, and how big. Placing your city in time and space is crucial, as is determining its size. These factors, you see, greatly influence everything from the dominant architectural styles and central urban functions, to the existing topographies and weather patterns, which in turn profoundly influence and are influenced by the economy or local lifestyles.

Unfortunately, answering said three questions, important as it might be, will not help much when actually coming up with an initial map of the whole city.

Even if you do manage to write a few paragraphs (which you should) describing the place, its economy, its people, and its atmosphere, and even if you do commission some truly evocative concept art, creating a city map — or just a quick but meaningful initial sketch — has proved the trickier part. And that’s exactly where approaching the theories on urban structure can really help kick things off. Especially if we avoid the more complex (and admittedly more scientific) contemporary theories, and focus on the simplified models of yore.

What I am actually looking for here is to provide you with working, simple blueprints that can easily be modified and built upon, as well as a simple guiding logic.

Additionally, I will be focusing on the more or less modern city structures, which do in most cases apply to at least a hundred years back, and also to most cyberpunk, and near future sci-fi settings. These are helpfully super simple to understand, envision, and thus use and modify too.

Then again, I do keep mentioning structure, without attempting to explain what urban structure actually is. Well, the important and obvious thing to know is that all settlements come with structure, that structure defines urban form, and that structure itself can be relatively accurately mapped; also, that structure encompasses the crucial and defining urban functions.

If we accept that each and every contemporary city provides and allows for at least some residential, service, and industrial functions, and thus reserves space — land uses — for housing, services, and production, the ways in which these functions are located on the land (on urban space), and in relationship to one another is what we generally call the urban structure.

There are three commonly employed models that are used to describe modern structures to students of urbanism, which will also be the ones I will be presenting here, as they can serve as excellent starting points for the creative process. Mind you, you should never hesitate to introduce anomalies to them, and you should definitely allow a place’s history, and natural geography to shape it.

Ancient cores, existing fortifications, demolished city-walls that have been turned into urban highways, rivers, space-hungry palaces, a new parliament, a surviving cliff, that great fire, etc should all inform your model accordingly, and make it more interesting to explore and play in.

[A disclaimer of sorts: such models do not dictate all aspects of city form, though they do definitely influence it; they do not for example include any data on street patterns, transportation networks, densities, architectural styles, or the degree to which a place has been planned and how.]

So, the first and most well known model — a classic admittedly — is none other than the famous model of Concentric Zones. Here’s what it usually looks like:

In this case, a city core — what Burgess used to call the Loop — sits comfortably in the middle, and is, as the word implies, the core of urban life. Here activity, power, wealth, goods, traffic, services, and even culture are concentrated. It is the area of maximum flow, and most probably the centre of business as it includes the Central Business District (CBD), and what we usually call downtown.

Obviously in an ancient Roman city the core wouldn’t be organized around the CBD but the Forum, whereas a dark cathedral would most suitably form the core of fantasy town, but you do get the general spatial logic of things. More important and older things are located in the middle, where also the crucial functions are gathered in order to be equally accessible by all. Supporting or secondary land uses are arranged around said center.

In the concentric model the core’s influence is maximized, as around it and outwards the rest of the city’s zones are organized. This is most commonly done in deceasing density. Like this:

A more modern update of the same model would expect a wealthy, culturally active inner city to surround the core, and would place manufacturing towards the outer parts of the urban area. It would look a bit like the following sketch with the added admission that only rarely could such rings/zones merely contain a single land use. The northern part of the outer ring, for example, can consist of posh suburbs, whereas the southern could be an industrial zone.

That is why Hoyt’s Sector model is, usually, closer to reality. Here it is:

Area 1 is the Central Business District, area 2 is a wholesale, light manufacturing area, area 3 is low-class residential, area 4 is middle-class residential, and area 5 is dominated by the homes of the rich.

Finally, even more complex, yet also easier to adapt to an uneven and more dramatic topography, is the Multiple Nuclei model, which tends to fit larger cities and the modern metropolis better. It subtly even recognizes the existence and importance of secondary and/or specialized centers.

Here’s what the numbers on the sketch above stand for:

1. CBD

2. Wholesale, Light Manufacturing

3. Low-class Residential

4. Medium-class Residential

5. High-class Residential

6. Heavy Manufacturing

7. Outlying Business District

8. Residential Suburb

9. Industrial Suburb

Now, if you pick one of those three models, and enrich it with considerations regarding such things as the street patterns of streets, the focus of the local economy, and the fact that the longer a city has existed the deeper its historic influences will have been, you should already have something vaguely interesting and modestly convincing on your hands. Or, at the very least, something to guide your research and build upon.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

*** If you are looking for help with cities and settlements for your gaming project do please drop me a line or visit game-cities.com. ***

It's a brand new 2018!

2018-01-03T15:29:00.003+03:00

Happy new year everyone! Hope all goes well, and all/any nuclear meltdowns are avoided. Now, provided our generally wonderful species survives another year of its demented economics, and provided nothing goes spectacularly wrong on a personal level, I'm aiming for a truly productive and rather exciting new year. Hopefully, you see, several games I'm working on, have worked on or have consulted for will see their release in 2018 :)

Huzzah, right?

Not surprisingly, I will of course keep focusing my work on crafting game cities, helping developers create believable urban geographies, tweaking immersive city environments, and researching playable/digital urbanism, which means more games to work on, more articles, more talks, and --if things go really well-- even a book. Paid work on virtual cities aside, I am also aiming to release my own little freeware videogames with distinctly urbanistic tendencies, get pen & paper RPG BLOOD BLUDGEON (facebook, twitter) published, and finish work on a still unannounced but almost ready board-game.

Oh, and I will be re-doing both my Patreon and this very blog, to further align them to my work and interests of those several years past my games-journo phase.

Eye^Game^Candy: Shadow of the Beast II

2017-10-23T15:18:00.002+03:00

Age hasn't been kind to Shadow of the Beast II's gameplay, but its aesthetics and visual successes have lost none of their original qualities. Psygnosis' arcade adventure hit remains beautiful and evocative to look at, a highly atmospheric 16-bit offering, and a game with a truly brilliant soundtrack. Actually, it's something that simply shines on YouTube, and is definitely worth checking out on MobyGames.

Urban Design and the Creation of Videogame Cities

2017-08-30T17:49:00.000+03:00

My Urban Design and the Creation of Videogame Cities talk from Develop: Brighton 2017 now handily available in the form of a slightly edited and abridged article. Huzzah! The video complete with Q&A --for those who attended the 2017 conference-- is available here. More information on the subject and on my work on virtual urbanism can be found over at my game-cities.com site.

This ~~talk~~ article, which I've tried to fill with as much useful information as possible, is an attempt to provide game designers and world builders with a spectrum of tools, ideas, and ways of thinking that will improve their game cities and interactive urban environments.

An attempt to help things move even further from the simplistic banality of ancient Police Quest-esque cities.

Urbanism, you see, both actual and imaginary, is incredibly complex, but I do hope that enough ground and most of the basics will get covered.

Unlike the majority of artists who get to do most of the interpretation of cities for their audiences themselves, in games we can only do part of this interpretation. The rest is up to the players; it is they who get to directly experience our virtual environments, and assign value to them.

Players get to decide whether our old fashioned, working class fish shops are brutal, backwards, noble or picturesque. They get to frame them, play with them, hide behind their benches, or totally ignore them while shooting things. We can only provide them with something lovely and convincing. Something believable. Something that even when barely registering will feel real.

To achieve this, what we actually have to do is provide players with places that --first and foremost -- make sense. And this is actually the most important rule to designing a good game city:

Game cities must always make sense.

Realism, you see, leads to believability, which in turn leads to immersion. A feeling of presence. Of being there in space.

Also, as I kept telling urban planning students for years, and am bound to keep on telling world builders, please, do not think like architects. That's the wrong scale when approaching settlements. Think like urban planners. Even better think like geographers and planners.

And, while you are at it, do let your city tell its story. Just like Los Angeles starred in the classic noir movies, your game's city can and should influence both your game's story and how it plays. Besides, researching your setting and trying to get to grips with its urbanism is bound to give you a lot of fresh ideas and solutions.

A city, you see, is not merely the sum of its walls, roads, buildings, and infrastructure. It is much more than its facades and landmarks. It is even much more than its roads and land use plans.

A city is the humans living in and using it. The animals too. A city is everything that happens within it. Everything that shapes and is shaped by it. A city is a huge, complex, dynamic stage for human life. For activity, and drama.

A city is its people, and how they dress. It is its economy, its rumours, hills, monuments, sounds, sky, traffic, buildings, power structures, the ways people get access to drinking water, religion, and a myriad other things, but above all, a city is its functions.

Now, I will of course be returning to the crucial subjects of urban functions, but first I'd rather briefly discuss some of gaming's most intriguing and inspiring cities.

The first one has to be Bioshock's Rapture. Not only is it brilliantly imaginative, utterly exotic, and unique in its underwater beauty, but I also consider Rapture an iconic place realistically organized around its guiding ideology. It is, admittedly, neither a complete nor a perfect design --no artificial city can ever be-- and its illusion of coherent urbanism is thoroughly helped by a plot that does away with the need for a proper city life, but it really works. And the Art Deco architectural choices are truly apt too.

On the other hand, Bioshock Infinite wasn't as successful, mostly due to unrealistic crowds, and its deeply flawed roller-coaster inspired transportation option. The latter in particular was what broke immersion for me, though I was happy to see several reviewers mention it too.

Interestingly quite a few reviews also picked up the importance of Dunwall's economy in Dishonored.

Like Bioshock Infinite, Dishonored doesn't take place in an empty city. Unlike Infinite, Dishonored's Dunwall is a living, breathing place. It's got some wonderful architecture, and an all influencing and original whale-based economy around which much of the city, and its everyday life have been constructed. Also unlike Infinite, Dishonored wisely sets its battles in places mostly populated by guards, safely outside the uncanny valley.

What both games do really well, is providing us with a sense of stark, spatially organized class divisions, and exciting (if hateful) civic politics.

Another clever choice is that the huge scale of Dunwall is mostly implied, and not modeled in detail in its complete and very expensive entirety. It is beautifully shown off from afar while travelling in boats or while looking from the shores of the river.

Another one of my favourite game cities would have to be Kane and Lynch 2's Shangai. A place that felt incredibly lived-in, dynamic, packed with detail, a strong sense of locality, and thus real. Palpable almost. Much was shown and even more was implied via carefully crafted routes through backstreets and informal markets, and by utilizing skyscrapers that could be glimpsed in the backgrounds, or by emphatically showing that the city was a place under heavy construction.

More ambitious and an actual open world, Assassin's Creed's London is a truly impressive, 100% walkable game city. It only models part of the of the 19th century metropolis of course, but manages to cram in all major characteristic districts types, as well as many recognizable landmarks. It is a fine and very expensive abstraction of a city that existed, and one that is vastly helped by incorporating a lovely to look at and relatively cheap assets-wise river. Assasin's Creed doesn't forget to include upper, middle, and working class areas, historically accurate industrial spaces located both inside and separately from poor residential quarters, pastoral suburbs and parks, and even utilities such as railways, hospitals etc.

I would have probably gone for slightly narrower roads, and a greater mixture of land uses myself, but, admittedly, this is quite an amazing city. Oh, I would also fog up the sky a bit more too! Like this:

The lovely if extremely compact Prague from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is also worth a mention, as is CD Project's forthcoming and apparently terribly ambitious sci-fi city of Cyberpunk 2077.

But, what we really have to spend some time on is Half-Life 2 and City 17. A hugely successful urban environment to play in that, believe it or not, is already 13 years old.

And yet it remains one of the most believable, coherent, economically designed, and memorable urban environments ever crafted. The imposing alien tower, the Combine Citadel --a major, central landmark-- instantly sets the tone and always keeps players oriented. It makes the well designed city easier to navigate in combination with minor landmarks (such as the train station), and acts as a defining juxtaposition of Combine and Human architecture and space organization logic.

Said landmark also works as the latest addition to the historical layers of the city. City 17 has different tech-levels co-existing, buildings of various ages, regimes, and styles, decaying houses, alien constructs, and, importantly, everything placed in it feels as if it has been placed there to serve some personal or collective purpose. Either for residents past and present, or the occupiers. The fact that the urban environments have been based on obviously extensively researched cities such as Sofia and Belgrade obviously helped a ton too.

What's more, the urban layouts and spatial organizations selected for the place, serve well as battlegrounds, what with City 17's courtyards, canals, and streets of varied sizes. Even the sky and climate feel right and not just something randomly chosen. As for the plot, it supports not having too many 2004 tech taxing people around, while blocked off areas due to security reasons, and long canals, help imply a civic size that isn't fully modeled.

In a nutshell, here are the major successes of City 17:

Major Landmark: Citadel
Obvious Historical Layering
Extensive Research & Use of Actual Urban Configurations
Urban Layouts that Support Level Design
Sky, Climate Were Obvious Considerations
Believably Restricted Civic Life

Sadly though not all game cities are this successful... I can think of MMO capitals that are supposedly sprawling metropolises, and are yet nothing more than a few dozen mostly disjointed buildings populated by a mere 100 or so NPCs. I can also think of dozens of medieval-esque RPG fantasy towns where there are two inns for each house, but, well, I'd rather quickly mention Citadel City from the otherwise brilliant Mass Effect 2 instead.

I consider it a missed opportunity. Despite being wildly imaginative, and stunning on the concept art level, it simply got its scale and complexity all wrong. Felt far too much like theatrical scenery built around Shepard. Like hints of paper-thin places only constructed to let her do a dialog bit and then vanish.

But I don not like being too negative. Instead of going on and mentioning all the cities that were sort of off, I have compiled a list of urbanistic elements usually missing, or commonly done wrong.

A (far from complete) list of problems and omissions:

* First of all we have vehicular and human traffic which is sometimes completely forgotten, but more usually inadequately approached. Traffic is commonly very scarce or overtly simplified, even if it is an essential and occasionally imposing part of the urban imagery. Then again, most game cities even lack ranked road networks. That is, a hierarchy of roads from the local to the interurban.

Roads in particular, those important elements, are too often done incredibly wrong. I know that Syndicate is an old game, but you'd be surprised as to how many recent, even forthcoming releases have roads this angular. Now, I do understand why this happens, especially for smaller indie studios using tile tools, but just rounding the corners of the pavements will instantly make things look better. Then you can start thinking about modeling your crowds and vehicles.

* The lack of in-city topography or of anything interesting from a natural geography perspective also hurts game cities. Topography doesn't only help with orientation. It has also historically shaped how cities were build. Besides, hills can be incredibly characterful landmarks, differences in elevation can be associated with class differences, and Rio de Janeiro just wouldn't look this amazing if it were flat.

* Believable city life. Or any city life for that matter, though usually there are some animatronic style interactions that keep on repeating themselves, as well as a few people randomly moving around. Or just standing there like some sort of prop. Even worse, eternally re-enacting the same little scene at the exact same place.

How could this be fixed? Well, first of all, do flag your urban life vignettes! Seeing them once is much better than seeing them a dozen times. Maybe, have a pool of interactions and just make certain they are all seen by, say, forcing them on the players paths. Or have simple, sensible scripts governing the movements and actions of people around cities. Have workers commuting towards the factories in the morning and then back. Have guards patrolling the walls, and cooks walking around the markets looking at ingredients.

Also, keep in mind that not everything has to be extraordinary. Mundane images of city life are essential. Just look at those screencaps from Ghost In The Shell -- the mundane can be beautiful.

* Similarly, the scale of things is often all wrong. Size, functions, and variety are correlated you see. Though it would make sense in a village, being in a supposed metropolis and telling the players to go to the one book shop just doesn't feel right. And all it needs to get this fixed are a few words. Do not tell them to go to the butcher, but to John's -- the best place to grab meat in all the city. Or direct them to the only open place at this time at night in the butcher's district. It's OK for Thimbleweed Park to have a single factory, but it wouldn't be OK for GTA Vice City to sport a single bar.

Other commonly forgotten elements include:

* the evidence of functioning infrastructure

* public spaces

* street furniture including benches, signs, dumpsters, lights, etc

* and class and land use divisions in space, and realistically mapped land uses

* Dynamism and history. Particularly irritating is the incredibly common lack of buildings under construction. It would be nice see a palace or a cathedral still under construction -- these things took centuries to complete. Also, cranes and building sites are too common a sight in each and every contemporary city, and can help provide a virtual place with a sense of history in the making.

And where are the wells or aqueducts in our medieval fantasy cities? They were super important social spaces back in the Middle Ages, and we all still do need water, but I do believe that even the amazing urban centers of Witcher 3 missed those. And if they do not exist, shouldn't we have substitutes? Magical water catchers perhaps? Or merchants monopolizing the water trade? Regardless of the way it is done, being able to sustain the life of its inhabitants is a core urban function.

Then again, Thimbleweed Park, which I adored, actually did away with the whole urban function of residence. So, yes, games do miss the concept of urban functions --of the core things that cities are meant to do, allow or provide with-- mainly because they don't have them in mind, and this is the source of many of their problems.

This of course leads us to the very basics of imaginary city building and geography, which have a lot in common with the very basics of urban planning and real life city geography. For, as already mentioned, things in virtual space have to make sense even if conforming to the most alien of internal logics.

The very basics of imaginary (and actual) city building:

* First of all, we have the crucial subject of urban functions. The functions that are the reasons cities exist, the functions that differentiate a village from a city, the absolute core of urbanism and city geography. Cities are built to facilitate and support said functions and in turn evolve as those functions themselves evolve.

To give you an example... Contemporary urban functions, core urban functions, would be commerce, production, consumption, human reproduction, transportation, culture, ideology, the circulation of capital, and housing. Reproduction itself would include further functions that an urban area has to provide such as health services, shelter, entertainment, schools, and access to food and water.

Functions do of course change, and dialectically evolve throughout history. Religion for example would be at the absolute center of a holy city, shelter via walls would be important during the medieval era, and a modern metropolis, an essentially new urban formation type, has variety as an essential new function. Obviously it incorporates many more functions than a village. In a nutshell, functions are what a city does.

* To start building an imaginary city though we have to first ask (and answer) three questions: where, when, and how big? Answering these defines a set of central functions, and also helps us approach crucial elements, like topography, history, and economy. You don't obviously have to answer the questions in this order, but keep in mind that what you choose to ask and answer first, is probably what you find to be the most important thing in your city. For example: let's do something in an ancient town or let's do a huge sci-fi metropolis.

Obviously if climate and topography are to define your settlement, then you'll have to start with where. And this where can and will influence local attitudes towards the sea, nature, and even the building materials used.

* On to the production and dialectics of space. Always keep in mind that space produces and is produced. Space for example is produced when we plan and build a road from the city to the airport, and then this produced space in turn produces its own space by attracting malls and gas stations around it.

* Everything in every city, town, or settlement of any size has been put in its place for a purpose. That is, everything has in a way been planned. Even if not by a central authority, or in recent years, everything that exists has been put there by someone for a purpose. That is why we expect spatial elements to have been designed, and why certain spaces in games work even better when their function is instantly recognizable and understood. When buildings, public spaces, or street furniture lack a sense of function, they fail to convey a meaningful sense of civic illusion, and believability suffers.

* The biggest and most prominent buildings can and should emphasize the dominant urban ideology. Are they cathedrals? Corporate HQs? Military installations? The Parliament? The halls of the People's Assembly? We have to show them off.

* Cities are always works in progress, always dynamic. Created by hugely complicated histories, they are the battlegrounds of classes and social groups, and the places of countless human interactions . This dynamism has to be reflected on the built environment too. Mix old and new buildings, have your majestic central temple be under construction, remember the majority of buildings in New York don't get to be 25 years old, that factories open, go bankrupt, and are reused as art spaces, and that even a square might radically change itself for a carnival or the Sunday market.

Change and dynamism are such important elements of city life that even board games like Arkham Horror tried to incorporate them. Arkham has its shops closing down, and people moving out as the game progresses and the horror escalates.

* All cities are internally differentiated, with sub-areas either strictly or porously defined. The main divisions are those according to class (rich and poor areas for example), prevalent or exclusive land use (entertainment, residence or industry), topography, proximity to the center or centers, and any combinations thereof. We can for example have industry in residential areas, marketplaces inside posh districts, the poor by the harbour, and guild halls next to Papal residencies.

* All cities have history. Even if this is brief, and especially if we've set our game in something as old as Cairo, this history has to be researched, possibly made up, and definitely layered. If you visit Geneva's Cathedral you'll have a fine chance of observing the physical layers of the city. From the primitive, to the Roman, to the Medieval, to the Renaissance one.

* Each city is unique, with its own distinct feel and internal logic.

Keeping those absolute basics in mind, let's move on to some spot rules.

Spot Rules:

* First. Always try and have a fully functioning city in mind. If possible sketch it out, and always allow your thinking to move from the general city to specifics to details.

* Embrace huge, dramatic differences and changes within your city.

* When informed by history make sure your historic choices match. Be influenced by what actual cities were influenced by. Keep things consistent.

* Consider the wider geography and hinterland of your city.

* Never forget to also think about urban infrastructure. From today's complex telecom networks, to medieval wells, to the Roman roads, infrastructure is the skeleton of cities.

* Another thing you should be considering is which parts of your city are public and which private. What are their relations and how strong are the borders. In the UK for example you have private parks, which would be pretty unthinkable in Greece, where --in many villages-- house yards are essentially used as public space.

* Street activity is very important. If possible show people doing everyday stuff: butchering, praying, laughing, playing, looking at the sky, carrying things, going places. The power that little vignettes have in evoking city life cannot be underestimated.

* The importance of graffiti, posters, signs, street art is also significant. Not only do these tell stories, but they've been around for quite a while, and can be safely considered as almost integral to the image of the city throughout history. From ancient graffiti, and 19th century posters, to terrifying street signs, and the hobo sign language, urban streets & walls should be intriguing.

* Little uniquely local touches can work wonders in conveying the particular sense of place an urban center has. It could be everything from thousands of little god statuettes wrapped in tinfoil that are everywhere to be seen, the common use of gestures when passing in front of a temple, a tendency for people to always wear something red, an overabundance of beggars, or even small open street restaurants or cooks.

Locality can also be further emphasized by the use of distinct materials, the climate, and one (or more) particular architectural styles. It also becomes apparent in idioms, customs, and myths.

* A city or town name is also important. City 17, Rapture, Liberty City, Raccoon City all set a tone and evoke initial thoughts, but do allow me to digress and ask you not to overuse the cyberpunk trope of Neo New York, Neo Tokyo, and New London. It's been done do death, and actual place naming never worked like that. Medieval York did not actually grow up to become New York.

* Do not forget that the vast majority of cities have important historic remnants and monuments from previous periods. Not all buildings are new, and not all buildings are contemporary. Cyberpunk settings do tend to miss this particular detail too.

On to some urban planning and design guidelines now, as, generally speaking, good urban design and planning practices can be applied to virtual cities. Frankly, I believe they should be.

Interestingly though, and especially when it comes to virtual and imaginary cities, the opposites of good city planning and design practices can also be applied; provided we are looking to evoke a specific feeling. An imposing city ignoring the human scale, utterly confusing labyrinths of narrow dark alleyways, and unnerving symmetries would never be considered good urbanism, but could be used to create evocative, unique cities for specific atmospheric needs.

Inverting the rules for comfortable streets, and safe and inviting public spaces, can be employed when we are, to give you an example, designing for horror. Dreamlike environments could employ spaces that would not work in reality, or completely ignore core functions.

As a rule of thumb I'd say you should generally let your city inform and enrich your level and game design, and in turn allow it to be shaped itself by the needs of gameplay.

On to some specifics:

* First of all, aesthetically speaking at least, a nice balance of order and chaos works wonderfully for cities, as both the sense of a planner's intelligence and forethought, and the elements of surprise make for good looking, intriguing places. Mixing things up usually works.

* It's all about the exciting dialectics of mystery versus orientation. The interplay of open spaces and enclosure. That sense we get when entering the medieval centre of a modern European city. Sometimes getting lost can be exhilarating.

* You should also go ahead and do some rudimentary but sensible land use and city planning. You could for example have the polluting, space-hungry factories in the suburbs, decide on the density gradient of your city (higher in the walkable center), and work all the way down to the more architectural level of city design.

There's another whole set of separate rules for city design, but let me just provide you with a couple examples. When designing a square that's supposed to be cozy keep it to up to 30-35 meters in width --that's the distance people are able to recognize each other from afar. And your sidewalks should allow for at least two citizens to walk abreast.

* Most of the times you will want to guide players through your city. There are of course many game and UI design tricks to help you achieve this: mini maps, in game GPS guides, big arrows, subtly lighting the right path, having NPCs provide with directions, or even giving players a character to follow.

Then there are also the --definitely more subtle than a big red arrow-- tricks urbanists, and city planners use to help actual humans navigate actual cities. From the very obvious and widely used street signs, road names, and numbered buildings, to ranked road networks, public "you are here maps", and networks of pedestrian only streets. Helping people find their ways is a very important real life concern.

In addition to these, legendary city planner Kevin Lynch, came up with certain tools we can use to make urban space legible and thus easier to navigate. Lynch decided there are five crucial elements people see and experience when moving around cities -- they are the same elements gamers can be provided with in order to create their own mental maps:

Paths. Routes along which people move throughout the city. Like roads, highways, railways.
Edges. Boundaries and breaks in continuity. Again these could be railways (if you are a pedestrian for example), city walls, waterfronts, etc.
Districts. Areas characterized by common traits; internally coherent areas. This could be aesthetically, architecturally, or by activity. Say, the printers area or a red light district. Maybe even the red or multi-coloured district like Boca in Buenos Aires. Or the Old Town.
Nodes. Important, strategic even focus points that help orientation such as squares and junctions.
Landmarks. Landmarks, can be major or minor (even personal, player-centric places), and must always be highlighted.

Add to those the elements an old professor of mine suggested , scale and grade/slope, and my humble addition of sound, and you have all the elements an easy to navigate city needs. Mind you, the soundscape can really help show off such things as how close to the metalworks you are or how busy a particular area is.

* Finally, there's the matter of implying size and scale in cost-effective ways. Of conveying scale and complexity that really isn't there. And, truly, there is always the need to imply more for a game city. Even the huge virtual worlds of Grand Theft Auto are tiny when compared to real life urban formations.

First tip! Know that even a simple picture can imply scale. Look at the set of buildings above. Look at the obvious residential density. The signs of life. The amount of detail, and the number of windows. Could this be found anywhere but in a big city?

Or how about this scene from the Mouth of Madness movie? It feels instantly as if we are in a town, yet there are only 7 buildings we can see. Their placement and our almost instinctive knowledge of how settlements tend to look does the director's work.

Then again, and that's another tip, when you are looking to create long avenues and boulevards, you should probably avoid straight roads especially if they allow the horizon to be seen. Compare these two slides of a model I quickly did in Sketchup:

You can also block off areas as Grim Fandango brilliantly did.

Or just like Grim Fandango, and a ton of other games, have taller buildings, landmarks, or major infrastructure been shown in the background.

Better yet, if possible add more inaccessible buildings to your urban areas. And, yes, these do make sense. We do not after all expect to enter every building we see, and most doors are locked. Even when in a panicky situation just having to knock on 5 different doors to find the one that budges and allows you to hide can be incredibly tense, not to mention realistic.

Also do consider the solution of procedural buildings. Maybe even whole procedural sub-areas if they are to be shown from afar, or edited by hand at a later date.

A very brief city how-to:

So, to put everything together in a way, let me quickly discuss how could someone go about crafting a city for their game. It could of course be for any setting, be it fantasy, contemporary, sci-fi, or covering a specific historic era.

1. The first option would be to pick an existing city, and try to abstract it to a manageable level. A kind of cartographic generalization, the method, that is, that cartographers use to decide what goes into a map could be applied. It's a method for deriving a smaller-scale map from a larger-scale one. That is for example showing a city from a sum of buildings, to a sum of city blocks, to an outline, to a dot. You'll have to pick and choose what to show, what to model, then note down the main urban functions, and research and codify what makes the place unique. Assasin's Creed's London is a fine example, as admittedly is the original Gabriel Knight.

2. Of course you can always heavily modify and combine existing cities and urban configurations, following the example set by Half Life 2.

Famously, even Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork was based on Tallinn, Prague, and had bits of 18th century London, 19th century Seattle, and early 20th century NY thrown in.

3. But, let's say you decide to create something from scratch. Well, start by asking where, when, and how big. Then make a list of your core functions in as detailed a way as possible. Start crafting and layering the place's history. Make sure you come up with at least a rough map of the whole city and its environs, and work from the general to the specific.

To tackle the task ahead you'll probably need to also do your research, and read quite a bit. The urban planner and geographer was always considered a dilettante and dabbler in all trades, and we could argue that the game designer is the ultimate dilettante. So read. Know things. Use a variety of tools.

My tools include sketchbooks and notepads, digital tablets, LEGO bricks, QGis, SketchUp, Autocad, and anything else from tile utilities to Photoshop. They have to change with each project and each city.

As for the books, well, to finally bring this article to an end, here's my suggested bibliography for you:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

*** If you are looking for help with cities and settlements for your gaming project do please drop me a line or visit game-cities.com. ***

Earthling Priorities Launched!

2017-08-03T13:42:00.000+03:00

It's been years, I know, but Earthling Priorities has finally been launched for Windows! Sporting the wonderful music of Chris Christodoulou, the excellently animated pixel art of Daniele Giardini, and the coding devilry of Jim Spanos, I must admit I'm really happy with this short, silly, and sci-fi adventure game. I believe you will be so too. It might even make you laugh, and it will definitely change the way you see doors.

Play it here. It's freeware.

Game Cities: Going To Brighton

2017-06-28T20:36:00.002+03:00

Yes! Me and my game cities will be in Brighton, UK talking about interactive and possibly imaginary urbanism at the Develop: Brighton conference. I am truly looking forward to discussing video games, design, and cities with some amazingly creative artists, hope to meet many lovely new people, and can't wait to see a few dear friends again.

So, if you are attending this summer's Develop do please let me know! Would love to have a chat, and would be honoured if you attended my Urban Design and the Creation of Videogame Cities talk (July 13, 14:00, Room 3).

Also, here are a couple more articles of mine on game cities: The Urbanism of Thimbleweed Park and The Labyrinthine Realities of the Medieval City, A Designer’s Primer.

Words On The Crafting Of Playable Cities

2017-05-18T17:59:00.000+03:00

The life of the game urbanist --which is exactly how I've chosen to describe what I'm doing for a living-- involves a lot of writing, and, happily, not all of it has to be kept under wraps. Besides, I do consider trying to explain urban planning for games, and attempting to provide guidelines for the construction of successful virtual urban environments as an integral part of my Game Cities work.

So, I have been writing quite a bit lately. I have been writing on medium, on Gamasutra, and even a tiny bit on this very blog. I have also contributed a piece on mapping virtual spaces and The Old City: Leviathan for the second issue of Heterotopias, argued about the politics of transportation on How We Get To Next, and launched my mini series of long articles on medieval urbanism for fantasy settings over at the Kobold Press blog.

More words, quite a few of them actually, appeared on the excellent Presura NºXXIII, as my A Beginner's Guide To Crafting Video Game Cities (direct link to PDF) article appeared in this fine publication's first issue in English. Oh, and there will be some spoken words about designing cities for games by me this July at Develop: Brighton.

Hope to see some of you there!

An Earthling Update Of Priorities

2017-03-08T17:07:00.000+03:00

I realize now that I originally announced Earthling Priorities back in May 2014. I also realize that this was almost three years ago, that time does fly by even things do not go well, and that the game should have been released ages ago. But, life is relentless, and even though Daniele created dozens of lovely animation frames, Chris composed some utterly amazing music, and James quickly coded a proper demo, I simply failed to find the time to bring this project to conclusion.

Yes, making games is indeed hard, adventure games even harder, and it was only sometime during the end of 2016 when I finally managed to bring all Earthling Priorities related procrastination to an end. The puzzle design has now been updated, new animations have been prepared and implemented, descriptions have been added, the flow of the game has been improved, and I've almost finished writing all of the dialog. Provided nothing explodes, I will actually be emailing James before the weekend with all sorts of things for him to add to the game.

By the time he's done, I'll have hopefully edited most of the texts one more time, completed a few relatively minor tasks, and prepared the required sound effects. Or, well, most of them. Add in a bit of testing, some polishing, a few re-writes, a couple extra builds, and I'm certain this nice little adventure game will soon be available for all to download. For free of course.

Estimated launch date: sometime before the summer of 2017!

(crosses fingers)

Eye^Game^Candy: Where Time Stood Still

2017-02-16T12:37:00.000+03:00

There were but a few games that really took advantage of all the extra RAM the 128k ZX Spectrum provided, and even fewer that attempted to craft beautiful, isometric open worlds populated by rule-based AIs, and the odd Tyrannosaurus Rex. Actually, Where Time Stood Still by Denton Designs (published by Ocean Software), a follow up of sorts to the already groundbreaking The Great Escape, is the only game that managed to really pull off such an impressive feat on the humble Sinclair 8-bit. It is still a beautiful, ambitious, and engrossing survival horror, exploration, RPG-lite action-adventure that has aged remarkably well. Its crisp and fluidly animated black-and-white graphics look as beautiful as ever, and its exotic The Lost World-esque setting remains properly fresh. Interestingly the game also got MS-DOS and Atari ST ports.

Find out more, download a copy, or even play Where Time Stood Still online on World of Spectrum, and then read a bit more about it over at Hardcore Gaming 101.

Game Cities: A Nékromegàn Tale of Two Cities

2017-02-03T12:45:00.002+03:00

Nékromegà, a game by lectronice powered by the RPG In A Box engine, is an unexpectedly ambitious freeware project, and also a 3D, voxel-based, adventure with RPG elements, that has already had both a long pre-production phase, and an accordingly longer production one. Hopefully though, Nékromegà will grow up to become an actually released game with an engrossing story to tell, vibrant cities to experience and possibly sack, clever mechanics, a unique take on undeath, and some very harsh yet cunningly subtle words about colonialism.

Provided things do not change in a cataclysmic manner, players will get to play as Bàmoq Cxohàmon, a young citizen of Suùn and eventual priest of Sleep. Torn between his family and his motherland's conquerors, Bàmoq is used as a tool by two not equally evil sides, until deciding that speakers of the language of the dead can actually take matters into their own desperate hands. Possibly even bring whole empires down. Or, you know, enjoy some city sight-seeing along with an army of well behaved undead.

Now, having worked quite a bit on the game's urbanism, I do hope said sight-seeing (and possible sacking) will be worth the players' time, and that the game's urban centres will be evocative, intriguing, and rich. We have attempted, you see, to not only come up with believable, immersive, and exotic ideas for the cities of Nékromegà, but to also use them -- their image, their structure, their form, their feeling -- as storytelling tools. As grand environmental storytelling devices.

The first step towards achieving what I believe to be effective and implementable city designs was, of course, closely working with lectronice on the world building itself. Getting to both thoroughly understand and even influence the setting was incredibly helpful to me. There was a crucial interplay between city, world and game design, that informed all aspects of Nékromegà and actually uncovered new ideas, and unexpected solutions.

Said dynamic back and forth, said continued discourse, was the main force shaping a very interesting and realistic fantasy world sporting some, hopefully, completely original elements. And it also got our excellent and ever-evolving RPG In A Box voxel engine to impress everyone by allowing for walls like these:

Curves aside, lectronice and I had lengthy discussions regarding the cultures of the Suùn Archipelago and the Bohr Imperi; that is, about the two opposing and vastly differing nations around which the game's setting, central conflict, and story were constructed. Happily, we couldn't help but agree that one of the best ways of showing said differences would be to let two vastly contrasting cities explain things for us.

Obviously, different architectural styles would have to be employed, but, more importantly, we would have to express fundamentally differing spatial organization and space creation views. Showcase the planning mindsets guiding the evolution of each city, as these mindsets would express important aspects of the societies that gave birth to them. A small, almost class-less, self-contained matriarchal collective, and a huge and ever-expanding proto-capitalist empire simply cannot regard urban space in the same way.

It was all about manifesting contrast in a realistic way, and making said contrast evident as an expression of the built environment via city planning. Admittedly nothing can sum up contrast better than the juxtaposition of fundamental shapes. In our case it simply had to be circles versus squares. Not only are those ur-shapes instantly opposing to each other, they felt very appropriate too, as each one could intuitively imply differences in beliefs, goals, and even societal and ideological relationships to nature.

The Suùnian people live in a peaceful, generally fair society, where equality and harmony are both the norm and a core value, whereas the Bohr are stuck in a highly competitive class system the hierarchy of which is literally defined by personal wealth. So, the Suùn would get a city with soft round shapes carefully adapted to their idyllic environs, and the Bohr would have to go for sharp, functionalist shapes that, though definitely not fascist by definition, are at least emphatically industrial.

Round shapes have the added advantage of their historical association with matriarchy and actual proto-communist neolithic settlements, but they cannot define an urban geography all by themselves; let alone map out a functional topography. As the Suùnian civilization was supposed to be spread over an archipelago, tackling the topography and physical geography of the place was first on my list. Based on lectronice's descriptions I came up with an early sketch; mainly to get things started and placed on a map.

The initial placement and shape of settlements made decent sense both geographically and when taking the RPG In A Box engine into account, and even though the region's topography would have to evolve quite a bit from this early concept to include such elements as huge desert islands, and some geological storytelling, this first core sketch really helped us. It provided the basis on which we designed and built the cities -- towns, actually -- we needed to.

Speaking of engines, and thus also engine constraints, the main problem we (well, lectronice) faced was that voxels are by definition cubic. This made the construction of circular or curved buildings rather taxing technically, but apparently lectronice did manage to overcome those barriers. Besides, even non-circular buildings or architectural elements can be arranged in circular patterns on a city planning level, and sometimes the effect of rounded corners is more than enough.

Alderhil, on the other hand, the imposing capital of the Bohrian dystopia, solved many of its technical problems by following the path of rectangular functionalism, and a planning logic of utter efficiency and strict divisions. Even though it was a city that would have to be designed in its complete and (sensibly) detailed whole, all it took was a few early sketches, and then inspiration struck. An original concept that would instantly define the city appeared. Alderhil would thus look a bit like the following sketch, which already implies its stark class divisions, production focused ideology, paranoid defenses, obsession with symmetry, and complete disregard for the nuances of the environment.

All the plans, cross-sections, and descriptions that followed never really altered the core of this design. It was, we felt, perfectly oppressive and anti-egalitarian, built for the comfort of the elite and the efficiency of the workers. The working poor were compartmentalized along with major production facilities in the east and west parts of the city, and would have no access to the outside world except through the two main gates at the north and south of the central, administrative and monumental, district.

The Imperi's architecture, a sort of weird Brunelleschi-inspired wood/timber-punk with hints of Stalin-Gothic, would help emphasize a perfectly planned, geometric, and imposing city. Such a city would be both perfect for our voxel engine, and LEGO bricks would in turn be equally perfect for its physical representations.

As Alderhil was set in the mountains, and mountains unlike your average archipelago are less of a hassle in the topographical department, getting the physical geography right was relatively easy. The Bohrians' utter disregard for the environment and their tendency to level things was also helpful. Not that eventual plans didn't include a much more detailed topography, or that a flattened city in the mountains wouldn't feel imposing in 3D...

And did I mention that Alderhil was to come complete with a functioning undercity? Well, it was. As you'll hopefully see in the finished game, it's a rather sensible and definitely horrific underground city with cisterns, living districts, markets, some mining tunnels, factories, and the odd death pit. Frankly, it will have to be a horrible place for workers, the undead, and undead workers, but also a central part of the city's defenses including the bunkers of the rich, secure administrative facilities, vaults, etc.

It should be quite the dungeon too, and was actually a joy to plan and map out. Working with visual artist Maria Kallikaki to create the finished map of the undercity as it will appear in-game was, admittedly, even more entertaining, and on that high note, I'll leave you to actually go and do some work.

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

You can find out more about my game cities, urban consulting for games, and interactive urbanism over at game-cities.com.

The Neverending Betrayal at House on the Hill

2017-01-11T13:21:00.000+03:00

With the release of the Widow's Walk expansion I and my beloved boardgaming (also, you know, proper) friends decided to return to Betrayal at House on the Hill, only to discover we had never really left. We never actually stopped playing this game, and even though we were all busy appreciating what the expansion did for it, and how subtly Widow's Walk managed to integrate itself into the overall experience, I just couldn't help myself. I kept on wondering why on earth we were so happy with what essentially seemed like more of the same.

The obvious answer, of course, is that this was exactly what we all wanted. More of the same, only slightly better. More weird procedural buildings, and more weird stories to play through, even more variety, a few much needed clarifications, new cards, and an extra floor, and we'd be perfectly happy.

Then again, I do for a fact know just how easily I'm bored when it comes to playing the same boardgames over and over again. There are favourites of mine like Space Alert, Carcassone, and Ticket To Ride I haven't touched in ages, and I did notice three years separating my two latest Space Hulk campaigns. So, really, why have I/we stuck with Betrayal at House on the Hill?

Sadly, I haven't managed to come up with an incredibly elegant answer that will solve ancient game design problems and provide invaluable insights, but I have at least come to the realization that this game has a lot going for it, and it all starts with coming in a lovely box:

What's more, and beside those ominous greens, Betrayal is incredibly easy to explain to new players; even to complete boardgaming novices. The fact that it is played in two phases, with the first one being completely co-operative, further helps ease newbies into their first game, and makes sure they've got the game's simple set of rules all figured out before things heat up. When the haunting happens and the slightly more demanding and definitely more interesting second phase begins they are ready to enjoy the game.

Said second phase of the game where one (usually) player becomes the traitor and the rest work together to foil her/his satanic/silly plan is the meat of Betrayal, and sits comfortably at the core of what apparently makes me love it. There are, you see, 50 wildly different scenarios -- every haunting results in one being chosen -- offered in the base game, and another 50 in the expansion, and though not all are equally well designed or outlandish, they all come with their unique mechanics to play with and different stories to tell.

Things never get old. Never get boring or repetitive. The traitor might turn into a huge snake, the investigators might have to stop the mansion from flying away into space in true Rocky Horror fashion, horrible incantations might have to be chanted, a movie director might have to pick a suitable actor, and every scenario is so different on every level the game can never feel stale. Good writing, clear goals, dozens of counters for all sorts of monsters and items, and mechanics that change but remain familiar, certainly do more than merely help support things. They turn the game into a consistent canvas for the dozens of its scenarios to be played out.

Even if/when you get to run into the same scenario twice, chances are the role and condition of each player and the layout of the mansion will be different. Besides, knowing what to expect from the other side will allow Betrayal to become more strategic than usual. Oh, and did I mention how delightfully asymmetric the game is or how cunningly it disguises the goals of each side from the other? Well, it is and it does, and it's all the better for it.

To the clever mechanics and the constant expectation of fresh stories, add the procedural nature of the game board and the Event and Omen cards that sometimes manage to construct brilliant micro narratives within the main stories. Simply exploring the mansion and expanding the board is a joy in and of itself. And I did once draw a card that had my future self appear and give me some rather handy weapons, only to draw another card 5 turns later that had me giving items back to my past self.

Frankly, I can't help but enjoy each and every one of those delightful moments Betrayal at House on the Hill has to offer. I can't help but appreciate every weird new idea the game presents me with. And I frankly can't think of anything else to add, but suggest that you try Betrayal out at least once, and that you should feel free to make more games like it for me to enjoy. Oh, and have a look here to get an idea of how the thing plays.

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

Reminder: I could really use your support via Patreon in order to survive long enough to make more words and, mostly, actual games and things. Thanks so muchly!

Let there be Game Cities

2016-12-08T13:57:00.000+03:00

It took a little bit longer than expected, all things do, but I do believe it's looking rather lovely, and hopefully as enlightening as possible. I am of course referring to my brand new personal/professional site (and not blog) Game Cities, that can be found over at game-cities.com. A place for my work on designing game cities, consulting on urban matters, and approaching the creation of all sorts of settlements in video games, board games, and RPGs.

Have a look. And, if you are looking for some help on your project, do drop me a line!

Game Cities: Five Equally Essential Books

2016-10-06T14:25:00.000+03:00

Feeling that five books can never be enough --let alone cover the bare essentials of applied imaginary urbanism-- here is a list of another five books that will hopefully help you further understand cities, and design or tweak the ones about to appear in your game. It is, mind you, a proven list of books that has already assisted me in tackling the game worlds of a variety of projects. So...

Let's start with a classic; none other than Italo Calvino's literary masterpiece Invisible Cities. Though far from a technical handbook, this rather famous work is the darling of each and every urbanist, planner, and/or city geographer I have ever met. It follows Marco Polo as he explores dozens of fantastical, whimsical, and wildly imaginative cities, and describes them to the ageing Kublai Khan. Each city is fundamentally different to the other ones, and over the two or so pages that are dedicated to it, explores a different idea. One city might look like a ship from the desert and a camel from the sea, whereas another one might be hanging over the abyss, or be sitting atop a huge necropolis mirroring it and encompassing its past. Each of said cities could obviously help inspire an entire game world by itself, or even allow us glimpses at the reality of the human condition or, at the very least, its built expressions.

A Burglar's Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh wasn't what I expected it to be, and though it really does help with providing a vastly different approach to viewing the urban environment --as a burglar and thus as someone not constrained by doors and the accepted use of urban space-- it isn't as thorough and methodical in its approach as I would have liked it to be. Still, the Burglar's Guide is a fine source of inspiration, and, unexpectedly, a very handy tool when it comes to actually approaching level design on the city level. The fact that it made me think of other alternate approaches to the use of urban space --say by a beggar, a dissident, or a prostitute, to name a few-- can only be considered a good thing.

If you are working on a dystopic setting though, what you simply need to read is Evil Paradises (edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk). It is a provocative, varied, and thought-provoking collection of texts, focusing on the horrible utopias pure capitalism has created for itself in cities, deserts, and even the oceans. A multi-faceted examination of how the (impressively innovative) utopia of the rich is bound to become the dystopia of the poor, the book covers places from Dubai and Orange County, to Kabul and Beijing. It features the words of urbanists, geographers, architects, planners, historians, and even China Miéville.

The Spotter's Guide To Urban Engineering was suggested to me by former PC Gamer US editor Logan Decker, and, despite trusting the man's taste and knowledge, I frankly didn't quite know what to expect. Happily, I ran into an excellent book covering everything regarding the foundations of the modern city. Everything I was taught when studying to become an engineer has been condensed, illustrated, and brilliantly presented in a way that will make sense to all sorts of creative and not-so-creative people. Infrastructure, materials, technology, roads, nuclear plants, communication networks, sewage systems, and all sorts of other mostly ignored crucial bits of the urban tissue get presented in a useful, and, most importantly, implementable way.

Cities of the World - A History In Maps by Peter Whitehead does exactly what it says on the cover. It crams centuries of global urban history into its couple hundred lush 9"x12.2" pages, and shows it off with short texts and some wonderful cartography. Major cities across all continents are showcased, and unique insights into their history as well as the whole of the history of cities are provided. As for the 16th century map of Venice by Ignazio Danti you'll find in this book, well, it's a masterpiece.

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

(Bits) Of Ancient Cities and The Dreaded Nékromegà

2016-08-31T17:38:00.000+03:00

So. Here's what I've been working on both lately and mainly in case anyone was wondering and for everyone who doesn't really care for introductions: Nékromegà, Moribund, and an interactive, stylized version of ancient Athens for Culturplay. Now, as these things are taking up tons of time --all of the time actually- I will not be elaborating on any of them just now, but I will be fervently hoping that you try and check them out. Also, do please keep in mind that one of the lot will be a truly ambitious freeware thing and sport three (whole and wholly) imaginary cities.

Eye^Game^Candy: Wonderland

2016-07-05T08:02:00.001+03:00

Being one of the most ambitious text adventures ever created, and making a brave attempt at thoroughly modernizing interactive fiction interfaces, Wonderland by Magnetic Scrolls is one of those few games that should be considered important. It also happens to be one I really do love. Somewhere between the fact that I never managed to finish it, the childhood memories of opening its big box with all those 5.25" floppies, the amazing little visual vignettes, and those incredibly appropriate and very whimsical puzzles I absolutely struggled with, I may have created a mental image of Wonderland that might just be too good to be true. I know. And even though I don't want to spoil the memories, I know I'll eventually have to revisit it.

You can play the game online here (albeit not in its full glory; you'll be needing DOSBox for that), and find out more about it on Mobygames and the Magnetic Scrolls Memorial.

Game Cities: Implying Size and Complexity

2016-06-23T18:05:00.001+03:00

Let's imagine for a moment that you have created a unique, believable, sprawling, and impressively detailed metropolis. You have it mapped out, thoroughly described, and have its architectural styles all sorted out. It's a unique, beautiful, and complex place, and you are rightfully proud of it. Only problem is that realizing all of it on screen would probably cost you a few million dollars/euros/pounds/what-have-yous.

Assuming you are neither Blizzard nor Rockstar, you'll thus have to try and keep things as simple and cheap as possible -- your ability to create assets will always be limited. Chances are you will have to abstract and generalize your world, decide to move to 2D, avoid creating an open-world, or to even allow exploration and gameplay in only a handful of locations. As you will not be able to show the full size and complexity of your work, your city, you will simply have to imply it.

Now, take a look at the picture above if you will. Notice how few buildings are actually shown, and ask yourself whether this could be a village scene. Or even a picture taken in a small town.

It could not. Of course, it could not. You know, possibly without exactly knowing why, that this is a picture depicting a part of a big city neighborhood; most probably of a 20th century metropolis. You might only be able to see a tiny part of said city, but this sort of density, and this kind of spatial organization couldn't be found anywhere outside a big urban centre. A town or village would neither be able to support it, nor would they need it.

What's more, said picture provides the viewer with even more information. Information that goes beyond the type of urban agglomeration we are looking at, and lets us feel the living texture of the particular place. A thousand little stories, some of them possible only in this particular city, have left their mark on the hanging clothes, those buildings, the women, and even the wires we see, while the organization of everyday life itself and the class-based nature of those tenements is instantly obvious.

Small urban scenes and carefully selected areas, you see, can work brilliantly in implying size, complexity, urban function and texture, and in letting us conjure images of everyday life. In showcasing our elaborate creation in an easy to summarize way. Provided of course, there is a sensible backstory of our city, and an imaginary or real geography to draw upon. It's incredible how the existence of a city plan, regardless of whether it's ever used in its entirety, can help lend even the tiniest of places character and, once again, imply size.

Here is a screenshot from the wonderful Blackwell series:

It is, admittedly, based on a very real place, but only a well thought out and decently mapped imaginary (or, indeed, real) city, would make it easy to calculate what the view from a particular position would look like, and to decide upon the street furniture. Besides, not every place sports ghostly jazz musicians, and only a metropolis of certain wealth would be able to both afford and need such a bridge.

Infrastructure, bridges and roads in particular, but not exclusively so, are another means of instantly conjuring images of massive urban formations. You don't see many places with the road and mass transport networks of big cities, and it would be sensible to assume that a huge, multi-tiered bridge close to the home of an important NPC, would imply said NPC is an urban dweller.

Admittedly, as cities are incredibly complex and dynamic entities, and as bigger cities are even more so, tricking players into believing that a handful of locations or a vastly abstracted open world setting are functioning, living cities, can be done in a myriad of other ways too. Ways that can and should be combined with each other, without obviously ignoring rather crucial matters such as the ones already mentioned.

We can have players travelling through space (but only looking at it via the highly controlled and easy to manipulate view of a car window) long enough to make them feel the sheer enormity of things, we can present them with architectural creations designed to daily service tens of thousands, we can model and properly arrange a few buildings in relation to each other, and obviously we can provide them with maps. Actual in-game maps.

Possibly like the one from the original Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, which, combined with the excellent and highly atmospheric locations, gave adventurers the illusion of exploring a huge chunk of New Orleans:

Related @ Gnome's Lair:

Out of the blue and Into The Basilica

2016-06-17T16:21:00.000+03:00

Sometimes my brain works in mysterious ways. Some other times the poor thing gets hopefully confused, and on even rarer occasions it decides people should have free access to the Into The Basilica: Revisited PDF. Why? Well, because I think it's a nice little booklet I had fun putting together, and because it's a document oozing misguided pre-launch optimism. Oh, and it's not been available anywhere else since that one time it appeared as a Bundle In A Box bonus.

Also, the pictures in it are interesting, as are the words. Apparently and for some incredibly odd reason I still have fond memories of the making of Droidscape: Basilica too...

Adventures In Urban Imagineering

2016-06-01T12:29:00.000+03:00

With the first (and hopefully not last) part of my cooperation with Frogwares on the Sinking City's city just completed, I felt I really should let you know what the plan is, oh reader dearest. Besides the odd patreon supported piece for IndieGames.com, and those Warp Door or Retro Treasures posts, that is.

Well, excitingly, I've started working on another big project involving cities and games with a fantastic new studio. It's back to urban imagineering full-time, and I couldn't be happier!

I cannot say much more about this new project just yet, but I'm loving the fact that I got involved in it early in pre-production, and that the team is determined to create both an excellent game and a unique urban environment. Some incredibly intriguing concepts have been going around lately, though I do imagine there's a lot of work to be done before things can be made public.

What I can talk about though is Nékromegà. An adventure-RPG hybrid sporting voxels, that is already looking unlike anything I've ever seen, and will attempt to do very weird stuff with its storytelling, while simultaneously tackling matters of colonialism and undeath. My role in it is, not entirely surprisingly, being an urban consultant. Mostly.

Oh, and I'm very slowly designing a fantasy / medieval city for my own entertainment, which might or might not evolve into an exploration focused game. It's too early to say, and, before I embark on another project of my own, I will have made sure that all the work on Earthling Priorities has been completed.

Off to work!