Posts Tagged ‘infinicity’

Updated Street Grid Demo

Oct 25th, 2004

I’ve built up the street grid app into a proper demonstration of the Infinicity system. This is a small application demostrating a persistent, infinite virtual space based on psuedorandom numbers. At any given moment, the app only knows about 9 grid units, each of which forms its streets independant of each of the other grid units, yeilding a bottom-up generation of street patterns.

Walking in any direction causes the program to move the existing grid units and generate three new ones. Walking more three or more grid units in any direction will result in an entirely new set of 9 grid units. However, since the generative process is based on pseudorandom numbers seeded with the world coordinates of the grid unit, returning to the same place will cause the exact same pattern to be re-spawned.

If you’d like to try it out for yourself, you can download a zip here.

projects c++, infinicity

Street Grid Demo

Oct 6th, 2004

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I’ve made a small demo app to experiment with local methods to generate streets for the Infinicity project with interim results at left. The approach the program takes is based on:

a randomized number of nodes per edge
a randomized (though so far hard-wired at 2) number of internal nodes per grid unit
creating edges between the internal nodes
creating edges between each edge node and the closest internal node

In the real app, the randomization of the edge nodes (both in number and placement) will be based on a simple mathematical combination of the coordinates of the edge vertices, causing neighboring grid units to line up with each other without any direct connection. This is implemented, but disabled in the above app, in order to get a better feel for the variations produced by the process.

If you’d like to see the demo in action, you can download it here.

projects c++, infinicity, procedural content

Infinicity: Installation

May 31st, 2004

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So us here at ACE have a show at the Beale center for Art and Technology, opening on June 3rd (Thursday). As such, I’ve spent most of yesterday and today setting up the physical incarnation of the Infinicity project.

Uncategorized infinicity

Infinicity: Interface, splash screen

May 23rd, 2004

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As mentioned below, I bought a metal Dance Dance Revolution pad for the navigation interface for the Infinicity:

I’ve got the pad controlling motion through the suburb demo. Stepping forward moves the viewpoint forward, stepping back produces backwards motion, and stepping to either side causes the camera to turn in that direction.

I’ve also added a splash screen- it alternates through three shots from the various pieces of the app (to be updated as the visuals improve) until a coin is inserted. Once a coin is inserted, the user is free to move around the space via the DDR pad. The time a quarter buys isn’t strictly limited, but if there is no motion on the part of the user for a set period, the app reverts to the splash screen until another quarter is inserted.

Uncategorized c++, infinicity, openGL

Infinicity: Buildings!

May 22nd, 2004

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I’ve got buildings-aplenty, being rendered via a recursive algorithm. Other than that, there’s been progress made on the interface front. I’ve got it responding to a coin interface I built awhile ago (pictures to come soon), and I have the navigation being controlled via a gamepad. In it’s final form, navigation will be driven by stepping on a metal Dance-Dance Revolution pad. I just received the pad on Saturday, but need to modify the code a bit, as the pad registers as X/Y axises rather than button presses.

Uncategorized c++, infinicity, openGL, procedural content

Infinicity: First pass at coastline

May 4th, 2004

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I’ve started in on the creation of a coast for the infinite city, with the above results. The textures are just stand-ins, and will be improved. Also, the water doesn’t yet animate, and the coast could use some more variation than it presently has.

Nevertheless, it’s a start

Uncategorized c++, infinicity, openGL, procedural content

Infinite planks

Apr 20th, 2004

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If you’d like to see for yourself, click here to download the demo app. The arrow keys will rotate around the plank, and F3 will cause it to alter itself. Note that there’s currently no bottom to the plank. I’m undecided as to whether or not to add one, as it adds polygons that aren’t likely to be seen, and a savings of 8 triangles per plank times lots of planks could end up being worthwhile.

projects c++, infinicity, procedural content

Infinicty: first draft write-up live

Apr 20th, 2004

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I have a short (one-page) write up of the Infinicity project up here. There’s also a link to it and both the planks and suburb demos in the “research” section

projects infinicity, writing

Infinite planks

Apr 20th, 2004

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So I’ve been thinking that the next thing I want to add to the infinite city is a coastline, and that I want the coastline to have piers extending out into the ocean. While thinking about how best to approach that, I started thinking about generating an infinite variety of worn planks with which to construct the piers. I’ve coded up an algorithm that does just that, with results to the left. Haven’t had time to add texture support just yet, but the final version will also select from a few different textures based on random choice and the aspect ratio of the plank.
If you’d like to see for yourself, click here to download the demo app. The arrow keys will rotate around the plank, and F3 will cause it to alter itself. Note that there’s currently no bottom to the plank. I’m undecided as to whether or not to add one, as it adds polygons that aren’t likely to be seen, and a savings of 8 triangles per plank times lots of planks could end up being worthwhile.