Reply With QuoteTorstan, what a fantastic idea! I am amazed by how much mileage you can get out of a single hex tile repeated & turned. Can't wait to see when you make ones for the different parts of the city.
Yep, the key seems to be enough internal variation in the tiles to break up the inevitable outer shape patterns. That's an excellent example RE - thanks for reminding me of that one.
For the programatically designed tiles, I can see the use of the directional shadows, but it's easier for me just to draw each one out than script it and run it. Now if I was generating a whole random city at once then I can absolutely see the value in scripting each building, with heightfield, along with some road design algorithm. I'd love to see how far you could take that - perhaps the City Engine program Ravells recently found would be the way to take that?
Torstan, what a fantastic idea! I am amazed by how much mileage you can get out of a single hex tile repeated & turned. Can't wait to see when you make ones for the different parts of the city.
It's slightly on a back burner at the moment as I clear commission work, but I really want to take it forward. There have been lots of good suggestions for content for the tiles.
How the Hex Tile helped me out
Dear Cartographer´s,
This is my first post in the forum. For months I´ve tried to build a city map for the capital of my fantasy kingdom, but got a enormous difficult to place houses and streets in a natural way. This hexagon tile idea just solved my problems and for the first time I was able to take this project forward.
To give a little small contribution to this topic, I made my "own version" of this hex tile quarters. I replaced all the original white squares for dundjinni rooftops and also created a stone pattern for the streets. This is a transparent PSD file, that means you can just apply over any land texture and you got a crowded little town.
Waiting anxiously for other hex tiles solutions such as with medium and big houses and even a castle.
best regards
Just seen this thread. I've tried and failed to do convincing tiling cities...the closest good looking thing I've seen are the tiles in the game Carcasonne...but the stuff here looks really cool. I'll have a think and hope to contribute.
Neat atreidestm! It's good to have an alternate version so that different aesthetics are accommodated.
That's pretty nice atreidestm. I'll update this when I get a few more added in. When using the tiling texture for the roads you need to be a little careful that the texture will match when you butt tiles up against each other. That's why I was going with a flat colour to start with. But also having a nice bordered edge to the tile will do it to.
Here's my effort with the same style that Torstan used with his tile but with slightly more elaborate shaped buildings and more wiggly roads and mixed up with Torstan's tile. Actually doesn't look too bad for just using two tiles.
::edit:: and with a cheap and nasty wall.
Last edited by ravells; 05-09-2011 at 04:13 PM.
The wiggly roads don't read like roads or a city to me. It looks like either rocky terrain or forests. The buildings similarly don't read as buildings to me. They look more like shrubs or plant life, which feeds back into the foresty look.
Hello Cartographer´s
I´m uploading my second version of a hexagonal quarter based on Torstan original idea.
After I placed the first version over my map, I got a sensation that something was weird. The houses placement looked way to much spreaded, without any sense of urban organization. I opened my Google Maps to do some research and pointed my quest for answers to the city of Bremen (Germany) since was a medieval city without much changes since her foundation.
What I found watching the satellite photos is the houses inside the quarters did not spread randomly, bu instead organizes itself in closed clusters, following the street contour. I adopted this aproach and ended with something similar to this.
The only problem is when you join the hexquarters, they usualy need a few adjustments so the houses could fit properly. Soo far, I´m liking the results in my city. I uploaded the PSD version so more people could conduct experiences and show new results.
Hope I´ve contributed a little more to the subject
