Game Design Procedural Procworld Grammar Time

Yes, grammars. The last update had a hint of this, but here you can see them in more detail. As you probably know, we are building a repertoire of architectural grammars. The following video shows a few of them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=scacfkd_Tao

This set is geared towards medieval, fantasy settings, but I suspect most of these grammars would hold for a different theme.

This system becomes very interesting once you consider ending building blocks could be replaced by elements that tie closely to your project's vision. At any time you could replace the arches, columns, ornaments, even bricks, by custom components you may have sculpted earlier. What the grammar gives you is the order and structure of these prefabs, but the final look and feel can be pretty much up to you.

As you can see for the moment we are focusing on smaller grammars. You can think of these as smart brushes that will allow to lay walls, floors, bridges, even towers in the locations you choose.

While grammars are able to express entire buildings (even cities), I believe we need to start small and allow you to place these smaller elements following your imagination. Also there is little point in generating an entire castle if the building elements are not interesting enough. So we are making sure we have a solid repertoire of grammars before we take on larger things. Even something as simple as a basic stair tool can save you a lot of time.

stairs.png

As usual let me know what you think. I'm in particular interested in how many of these do you think we would need for a particular theme, how generic or specific they should be, what kind of parameters would you like to have as inputs.

Real men don't draw buildings

Real men -and women- don't draw buildings, they write them. Why limit yourself to one instance of a building when you could define an entire family?

It turns out writing building grammars is hard, it feels closer to programming. For procedural architecture to take off, creation tools must appeal to artists. All we have now are maddening languages and graph editors. Only a few artists have the skills to make any sense of them. I would like to find a solution for this, but I got nothing so far.

I have created a timelapse video where you can see me creating a grammar from scratch. It is for a family of simple, rustic houses like this one:

This is a rendering of the triangles output by the grammar evaluation. This model has not been altered by hand.

Here is the video

Ideas

• Example of why we want to use Procedural grammars.
  • Using this method, ShieldKings could enable Hârn style maps of a building that the Player wishes to create, either via an architect template/blueprint, or if they have the Skills, design their own.
    • Creating grammars that include Tiles, Bricks, and other components that are assembled into a grammar set. See Grammar Time

Breakdown of Grammars

List here how a grammar works, into a workflow to create the idea.

• Link Name
  • Link Name
• Link Name
  • Link Name

Notes

• Procedural World Blog