“When I made BrickBlock and a couple of other, like, procedural toys. The game that inspired Townscaper and everything that preceded it: Tom Clancy’s The Division. So with this in mind, we start our journey in what is arguably an unexpected and unlikely place. So it’s a pretty good way of working: sort of releasing the intermediate steps of your project because you learn a lot from getting into the shipping mindset and wrapping things up.” Oskar Stalberg Release that and then make a slightly bigger thing with some new expansions, release that. But it’s also sort of fun because instead of turning it into one huge epic thing, I’m making a small thing at a time. “I feel like I’ve kind of been working on the same thing for the past ten years or so. And to successfully explain the tricks employed in Townscaper, we need to go back and visit each of them in turn.
Townscaper website series#
The game is effectively the fourth entry in a series of works that capitalises on Stalberg’s interest and growing expertise in procedural generation and technical art, with each project building upon the previous one. The secret to Townscaper’s success is one that many aspiring (and current) game developers should reflect upon.
Either for Townscaper, his previous game Bad North or his more recent projects.
Townscaper website plus#
Plus if you’re a game developer on Twitter, you’re bound to have seen one of Stalberg’s development tweets on your timeline. Despite this lack of direct control, the system is highly flexible and can handle a myriad of different scenarios that players can come up with, resulting in a variety of fun, interesting and aesthetically varied settlements.Īnd it’s this simplicity in gameplay combined with the game’s bright, abstract yet detailed aesthetic, that has led to Townscaper transcending boundaries: developing a huge following across social media that has captured the imaginations of many who don’t typically play videogames.
This creates what we would typically consider to be a mixed-initiative AI system: meaning that the player gives input to where the game needs to expand the structure, and the system assesses the current shape, identifies what prebuilt chunks of architecture are valid for that space and then injects them into the game world. Everything else that you see, is achieved courtesy of the game’s procedural generation system. Players have a very limited number of interactions: you can decide where a block is added or removed, and you can customise the colour of the blocks you place. It does not have any explicitly defined objectives and instead, you are left to craft towns based on your own design principles.
Townscaper website Pc#
Townscaper Explainedįirst released on PC and Mac in June of 2020, Townscaper is, by Stalberg’s own admission, more of a toy than a game. Because the secrets to the game’s success are hiding in plain sight, in everything else that he has built to date. In order to truly understand Townscaper, we’ll be taking a journey through Stalberg’s career and his previous work. Plus I sat down with the game’s creator Oskar Stalberg to gain a stronger understanding of how it all works and his aspirations in designing the game. But how is it capable of expanding, and rebuilding the world with such consistency? While also introducing fun and novel ideas for players to discover on their own.įor this case study we’re going to explain the different level generation systems that power Townscaper and the AI principles they derive from. A procedural generation engine running under the hood caters to the unique topographies players establish and refines the world with each new action taken. With this limited toolset, you can craft everything from idyllic seaside towns to a horizon spanning metropolis. A city builder in which players can simply add or remove a block from the game world. Townscaper is a small game, with big ambitions. You can support this work by visiting my Patreon page. ' AI and Games' is a crowdfunded YouTube series that explores research and applications of artificial intelligence in video games.
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