Figure 3:
Generalising a
neighbourhood by
fusing blocks and
parks. A simple
yet usually
effective solution.AdviceToolbox
into areas; whole sub-areas may be represented
with emphatic points and landmarks, whereas
repeated elements can be reduced in number
while retaining their character. A grid of 15×15
blocks could, in most cases, be represented by
an 11×11 grid, and three adjacent parks could
easily be fused into one. The city itself can also
be simplified – for example, by reducing its 20 or
so types of road to three or four, and assigning
all its citizens to one of three classes.
In Figure 2, I applied this generalising
approach to the façades of a city block. Initially,
the number of buildings was brought down
from nine to five, and the block itself was slightly
reduced in size. Then each building was itself
simplified, and enlarged to preserve the overall
volumes of the built environment, and to roughly
mimic the original silhouette. If architectural
details were important to my game’s setting,
I could have instead chosen to focus more on
preserving the block’s
character and not its size
while still saving on assets.
In this case, I could
simply pick five of the
original buildings, not
tamper much with their appearance, and thus
present players with smaller but more detailed
city blocks. I could have also been slightly
more subtle when enlarging each building, and
maybe only added a barely perceivable 10 to 15
percent to the length of each frontage, but the
truth remains that such decisions are always
an exercise in balancing contradicting aesthetic
and functional needs. Capturing the essence
of a place and deciding what to preserve and
what to abstract will always sit at the core of
this process, and will always require a thorough
understanding of each place.
Abstracting, merging, and simplifying,
especially when combined with well-crafted
modular assets or with the procedural
generation of environmental aspects, can allow
“Designers need to
be careful with what
they show or ignore”for the creation of impressive yet relatively
low-cost virtual cities. Obviously, any stylisation
will have to be applied to the entire city map,
and not just one block or a road. Not all areas
have to be equally abstracted, however;
the Assassin’s Creed series tends to recreate
important landmarks and their surrounding
areas more faithfully, and in greater detail, than
less spectacular districts, which it often treats as
spatial filler.URBAN SCALE
Figure 3 offers an example of how abstraction
could work on the scale of a neighbourhood.
In this particular case, blocks and parks were
merged, and shapes were
simplified, while still keeping
the area’s defining spatial
aspects in place. The major
avenues, the north-western
parks, and the overall shapes
of blocks and roads have all been retained, even
as the area’s complexity was drastically reduced.
Simplifying a whole town can follow this exact
logic, though the process shouldn’t just involve
the reduction of each district’s complexity,
but also the number of districts. A modern
metropolis might have tens of entertainment
hubs, countless suburbs, and several industrial
districts, but selecting only the right ones to
show can be enough to convey the richness of
its fabric, and suggest its size.
Entire locations can also be condensed into
a single edifice or landmark. Skyrim’s Whiterun,
for example, features three distinct districts,
but the upper one consists of a single building:
a huge keep that symbolises the world’s high-
born society.Degrees
of Fidelity
To sustain its players’
suspension of disbelief, a
photorealistic setting requires
a greater density of detail than
a cel-shaded one. Even though
both approaches could contain
an equal number of buildings,
the level of simplification of
each individual building will be
necessarily different. The cel-
shaded world could feature
low-poly buildings with simple
shapes and stylised windows,
whereas in a photorealistic
world, even the doorbells need
to look right.wfmag.cc \ 29 Even impressive, large, and detailed virtual places
like the bustling New Bordeaux from Mafia III are
heavily abstracted versions of urbanism.