Urban Planning in Games

[Music] uh and today I'm going to speak about urban planning in games but before uh a few words about myself um it's two years that I've been working at city project red and 10 years that I'm in Game Dev uh in general work mostly on environments uh also I have a master's degree in urban planning although I never work as architect or urban planning planner however I keep study uh urban planning because it's my biggest Hobby and I'm really into this topic so why do we need urban planning first of all because Urban setting is very common for many games it can be real uh it can be real City or fictional one like sci-fi fantasy futuristic whatever still it's an urban environment and we have to know how to work with it what's

more urban setting is common not only for you know big open world projects but also for smaller games with maybe like linear gameplay um still uh if we have to create let's say just one or or few streets instead of entire city uh we still have to understand what is the street and what kind of elements uh make your street actually recognize as a street and it's not the trivial question um when we uh create in urban environment for games we not necessarily have to create it realistic the goal is to make it believable I really like to compare uh urban planning for games with Anatomy for game characters because uh when we creating a character well not we but character artists uh they not necessarily follow real human

proportions but they still have to understand human anatomy you know to and follow certain rules and then like sometimes they simplify some things sometimes they exaggerate maybe add some additional Parts like I don't know horns Wings whatever so the same works with the city we have to understand Urban environment and then adjust it to our specific needs and of course we cannot just simply copy paste real City from Google Maps even in cases when we actually uh you know creating like real existing City because real proportions for cities will not work for for our needs simple example um if we have a a grocery store let's say 15 minutes away walk from our home we would consider it as super close and super convenient and of course it would be nice to have this this short walk to this grocery store but in game if we have to go uh you know for 15 minutes just walking we would consider this as super boring so yeah it

will not work um yeah and we have to remember that real cities were made for comfortable living and game cities should be made for fun playing and those are completely different tasks and I will start with how not to do because it's very common mistake for uh many artists and designers as that they perceive a city as a bunch of buildings randomly scattered on a surface and in first glance it might seem like that but of course it is not um and I will show my idea on this really simple scheme and uh if you look at this uh you may notice that actually those Two Silhouettes ct1 and ct2 they're almost identical it's really hard to you know to see any difference there but one of those uh is actually a city and another one is bunch of randomly scattered buildings and in a second actually right now you'll understand what I mean so I guess now

you got my idea uh so first one the city one is actually a city I mean of course it's very simplified one but we immediately read the structure because we saw it like many times um and when it comes to ct2 the second example it's chaos and I mean of course we can probably make a nice composition out of the Cubes but we still like of structure and city it's always a structure but let's see on those let's have a look at those two examples from the you know street view so this is how we perceive cities as us as person uh and as a player in F first and third um person view games um so if we look at uh first example the city one again uh obviously we have like lack of details but even now we more or less understand that this is a street with buildings uh and I would like to highlight it we have zero

information about this city but we understand a lot about the the space and I say a lot because I literally put 10 cubes and you already see a street and when it comes to Second example um it's really hard to say what's that like it's definitely not a street because uh Street supposed to have certain direction and there is none um maybe it's something like a backyard but I would say it's too complicated for backyard and it's really hard to imagine the shape of city block that would create this backyard so long story short it's really hard to to recognize the space it's really hard to say what's that and here is the main idea we probably can imitate the city without using urban planning I mean you know if we put all those cubes in nice composition like you know level design also could be quite playable uh but uh if we use urban planning from very beginning if we perceive a city as a structure we would just you know

simplify Our Lives because as you can see if we use urban planning we can create a distinctive and recognizable space from the very first step of production so to understand how to make a city first we should know what the city is made of but before short disclaimer uh I have to say that uh there are two uh generally like two types of urban planning uh it's a city block type uh and a super block type of urban planning so City Block is a dense row of buildings along the street we can meet this type like uh everywhere around the world like in Europe America basically it's I guess it's any city that was built before 20th century like San Francisco is great example of such urban planning and uh super block type it's a separately standing buildings uh usually uh around some infrastructure unit and surrounded by big roads and so there can

be a lot of like trees and stuff like that so this type of urban planning was invented by uh modernist or brutalist Architects uh in the first part of 20th century and it was really popular after second war and also we can meet this type of urbal planning everywhere around the world like Europe America Asia Africa I believe everywhere but in my talk uh I will focus only on City Block type of uran planning because well because I like it because I believe that it's much better for human perception although we can discuss it because you know it's my topic so if you have other thoughts just you know reach me out uh but still uh What uh will be said in this talk uh will can be easily extrapolated to Super block type of Ral planning is if this is something that you are interested in yeah so now let's go to the main part uh there are three basic types of City space it's Street Square and backyard uh in real cities there can be more types

but those three takes take the biggest surface and uh present like in every city uh there are other examples of City space like for example Parks or any type of green areas um also markets maybe parkings construction site you know list is endless you name it um and uh those examp uh those different types of uh City space can be uh present in your in in a game City optionally but those three will be there for sure so just to rephrase this three these three types are the core of the city but not the ultimate list of City space and here is example from from real life um like I mean I don't think that uh I should comment a lot about this so I guess you understand so Street and of course uh shape of those uh of those space can be different because for

example here we have straight street but of course Street can be also like curved or just angled uh Square also can be uh in the middle of intersection like this example but also it can be just you know a side um on the side of certain Street the same goes for backyards they can be bigger or smaller like different shapes um but still and here's the main idea if we imagine that we were teleported into random City that we have never been before so we have no idea where we are we would immediately recognize the space around us so if we are in the street we would understand that okay it's a street if we are in the middle of the square it also would be absolutely clear for us that yeah it's a square the same goes for backyard and there is no uh there is no chance that we would confuse I don't know backyard with a street or Square with with street or backyard whatever so it's it's quite uh it's it's quite clear for us and I believe that in games it should work the

same so if uh the player was spawned randomly somewhere in our city they should immediat immediately understand where they are just like that and here is example from night City so this is a street and again not not much to add here it's quite clear because we have we have direction we have road we have sidewalks we have uh uh buildings on the left and right so this is a street this is example of square uh pretty much the main one corpo Plaza and again it's quite readable as a square like we have no doubts what what's that um and the backyard and also as you can see um well I believe that it's really hard to confuse this three types of space they are very distinctive and uh I guess you would never confuse this backyard with uh with the square right so now uh when we know uh the main

uh components of City once again it's streets squares and backyards uh let's discuss how to actually make a city and there are three basic parameters of the city its size proportions and level of detail and I won't surprise you if I say that these three parameters are very much connected with gameplay obviously because we creating a city for game and not just abstract City and to be more precise these parameters are connected with type of movement and particular with speed of movement and now I will talk about this more detailed so first one is size uh size is the simplest parameter so it's literally square meters or square kilometers or Square feets I guess like it's popular here right um so yeah also at this stage we should think about um about borders of our city and the sh shape of the city

because maybe our city uh is located on a shoreline or maybe it's surrounded by mountains maybe it's in a valley maybe it's I don't know like Peninsula or something like that so at this stage we should kind of think about it uh and uh of course it is connected on gameplay and like I said speed of movement because if uh in our city we're mostly driving a car which means that our speed is quite big uh so apparently we would need bigger city than if we're creating a city for mostly walking uh example if we uh making a city let's say I don't know 1 kilm by one kilometer this like area probably not entire city for driving it would be super small uh because it would take us like how much like 5 Seconds to to reach from one side to another and uh if we are walking area uh 1 kilm about 1 kilm it's quite okay for walking and we can spend quite a lot of time you know exploring this area so this is about size and of course this

parameter would change during production but uh it's really important to come up with like you know basic numbers so we just need to understand whether we're creating 5 by 5 kilometer or 50 by 5050 so you know on this scale it's not something that you're you know set in stone right away the next parameter is proportions and this is about length and width of streets sizes of city blocks also size of streets yeah I said it um and and all the stuff which is like you know inside the city and it also depends on type of movement because again if we move fast uh then apparently we would need uh longer streets because uh it would be uncomfortable if we have to make a turn each like I don't know five seconds and um if we if we mostly walking then we can make it uh uh like proportions could be smaller uh and it would be still you know comfortable and proportions most

likely will be different in different T in different parts of the city but again at this stage we're coming up with some you know Global idea so uh like we just need to understand uh whether we're creating something big like uh a huge City with like Mega buildings skyscrapers like I don't know broad Avenues and that kind of stuff or we're creating small uh I don't know medieval town with uh narrow c c streets and you know tiny Ging bread houses so again on this scale we should decide it at this stage and finally level of detail also depends on game play uh because if our game is about slow movement and exploration most likely we should put like more details and they should look kind of unique um and if we move fast uh then there is no need uh in smallest details uh and we should focus more on um medium and big shapes and in night City we actually have different examples

because for example on Top Shot um we have this area where we only driving because it's hard to imagine why would player just go out and and walk there because there's nothing to do nothing to explore so here it was important to focus more on bigger shapes to create like nice composition uh player guidance Etc uh and bottom image uh it's from docktown and in docktown we actually walk a lot we still can drive there but we also working and um that's why uh it was uh like it was reasonable to create more details uh you know to make this area um interesting for exploration so I'm just trying to say that it doesn't work like as more detail you have as better no the amount of detail should be reasonable and uh to summarize this part um um I would just say that uh the main thing that affects the street parameters once again size proportions and level of

detail uh it's gameplay and particular speed of movement uh if we move mostly by car we should have long enough streets and quite big city and maybe not huge amount of details and if we move move on foood uh the city might be smaller and let's say more Compact and with bigger amount of details so after we decided how big our city should be what proportions we need there and amount of details we aiming for uh we should think about visual diversity of the city uh because every city doesn't look evenly the same they there are always like different parts uh which look different the best example like usually we have City Center which look often like fancy or not necessary actually and and and outskirts suburbs which look differently and uh speaking of these areas I usually use term neighbor NE hoods and by neighborhood I mean City

area that shares um same appearance atmosphere and other features which I will talk about of course and night city is actually good good example of course because we have a lot of different neighborhoods there and if you play it I guess you would never confuse for example Kabuki and Charter Hill they look completely different so to create this uh to create this visual difference we have three foundations how to how it is it built first its layout architecture and landmarks and now I will talk about all of these three uh things so first one is layout uh and yeah to create a diverse environment we should start with a different layout for each neighborhood first of all let's think about proportions yes we already spoke about proportions for entire high city but like I said it was like bigger scale

and now let's focus on proportions for each neighborhood um and um like because yeah like I said cities never built Heavenly the same right and uh we still can have uh we still can have neighborhoods with broader Broad Streets skyscrapers uh Etc and of course we can have uh areas with u smaller streets smaller buildings maybe even slums and example from from night City so on top on Top Shot we have franch Coronado uh which is which has this you know small uh one story buildings and city center with these huge uh Mega buildings and um uh when it comes to planning features so again looking at this at the slide we can immediately see that uh on Top Shot in Ranchi Coronada uh it's like um flat quite spacious environment and uh bottom image we can see that it's very uh I don't know

pucked with everything it's multi-layered because we have different levels of streets and side walks so this is about planning features and when it uh uh and about patterns let's have a look on next slides so I just created this uh really fast uh schemes and again I going back to this part when I created uh distinctive and readable environments using just cubes um so uh when I was creating this I was thinking about you know average European city with like middle siiz I would say everything like streets buildings and this is how player feel um inside the space and here we have uh pretty much similar pattern but different size and impression that we have here is well I guess quite different because all space uh space is uh much smaller and once again so this is how we feel there

and in a smaller uh smaller area and the third example which looks completely different so here we have different size different pattern and uh feeling that we have when we walk there it's also like completely different so this is something like I don't know um like maybe like town houses or something like that I think quite common pattern for America so that was about layout and now architecture um so we should Define architecture features for each neighborhood and we can start with architectural Styles because I don't know I guess it's the simplest uh in night City we have uh four main Styles and not only for architectural but pretty much for everything it's uh militarism K Neo and entrop ISM and here on the slide you can see uh City Center which was built uh in this uh militarism style and bottom image uh which is uh

built in entrop ISM the next one is colors so each neighborhood can have its own color coding and this top example is from uh Japan town and it's very colorful very KY and uh bottom image it's more like business district so it's gray uh like colors are quite calm and it creates this visual difference of course the next one is hate so we can have um neighborhoods with uh highrise buildings and some one two three story buildings also age in night city of course we don't have really ancient buildings uh but still there is a difference in age because we can have something uh older I don't know I would say maybe like ' 90s 2000s and uh like really brand new food re uh buildings

yeah um also richness so again we have Rich districts and we have super poor districts also condition uh we can have diff districts with uh which u in very uh in very good condition like this Charter Hill on the top image uh and something that is in very bad condition like dog town so this is like half destroyed uh dirty Etc so this list is actually can be endless like I just give like a few examples and it's not not even all examples from night City but just something that you know just give a give an idea about that because uh for your project maybe some of those examples would be irrelevant and maybe you would need to come up with something else but again it's just an example and the third thing it's landmarks because besides uh regular buildings we should have uh we should think about about landmarks um and ideally for each

neighborhood of course we should have its own landmark and this Landmark would become something like a symbol of this neighborhood and landmarks should look unique in comparison to other buildings but also at the same time they kind of should belong to this neighborhood so when we are there and when we see this Landmark we should kind of understand why it is it there uh what is this function and you know like why is there basically and of course Landmark should be visible otherwise it makes no sense and uh I would like to extend this topic about landmark a little bit more because it's really important thing um uh so uh besides local landmarks that just mentioned for each neighborhoods uh we also should think about uh main landmark for the city it can be one L Landmark or several of them depends so uh it's something that would become a symbol of our city and in real life like

think about Al alil Tower uh in Paris or Golden Gate in San Francisco so basically something that you can see on a postcard or you know this fridge magnet and in night City uh we have this uh uh advertising race uh they are big they're very noticeable and we can see them pretty much everywhere uh in the city but also when you working on landmarks it's very important to think about uh to make them visual appealing both from distance and from uh closeup and uh uh this is example again from from night City and about this uh this advertising race because like I said uh we see them and they are very appealing and for example this shot was taken like really far away from this Ray and like we want to go there we want to see like how how how how does it look because it's really catchy but when we reach this place we

actually see that it has no bottom like it's really even hard to understand that we already reach this place that we already there because uh because this Ray uh it goes from the uh roof of the building and there is nothing really distinctive uh in the bottom the same the same works sometimes with some uh Mega buildings uh so those Mega buildings they work as local land landmarks and they also very visible from different point of view and they are very eye-catchy but when we come closer uh it's again sometimes really hard to understand that we already there and this shot uh was taken directly um directly under this uh this um mega building so really there is no signs that we already there but lesson one was learn and uh uh when landmarks for dock toown were created um they were created in in in the way

that it's like appealing a visual appealing both from distance and from closeup so this example is this black sapphire club which is really visible from Big distance and when we come closer there is no chance that we would miss it because uh it's yeah it looks uh really unique and visually interesting from the close distance uh the same goes for stadium it's also really noticeable from distance especially when we are approaching dock town and when we come closer uh we can see it in all this uh Beauty And Glory uh because yeah like uh from closeup it also works great okay so we decided what is the size of our city um and uh what is proportions we also know uh how many neighbor neighborhoods we want to have and uh what what kind of features would

share those neighborhoods and also we have list of landmarks for our city so finally it's time to actually make a city and of course like any other design of pretty much everything we should start with references it's uh much easier if you're creating real existing City because of course you can use a lot from you know real life uh maps and examples uh but and yeah it's a bit harder if you create in fictional city but still I would recommend to stick to existing um you know existing layouts existing uh examples from from real cities and I made this uh fast exercise uh so I took this place from Vienna because uh well those those shots are from from Google Maps but still I was there in this uh place and I felt that it's really nice like this small square this irregular irregular shape uh it looks really it

was really comfortable to to stay to to be there like I like the composition so I took this and use used our um uh our cyberpunk buildings and as you can see it's really hard to recognize Vienna or any European city on this shot so it looks pretty much like like cyber Punk um so my idea here is that you still can use existing layouts like some parts of the city uh even at first glance even if they look irrelevant at first glance like they still could work if if composition is is nice and if you feel that it looks interesting also when you creating a city think about alternation of uh uh narrow and small spaces and some open areas here at this example uh I made a square it's right now so yeah so the guy runs and then suddenly he uh come to

some square and uh it makes this kind of difference but also it's not necessarily can be a square like any any type of of open open space like it can be maybe I don't know destroyed building I don't know parking river whatever um also of in your city there might be large streets and when you create in large streets they should never end up with some dead ends and by dead ends I also mean not only like literally dead end but also like T intersection um it will not work like in real cities usually bigger streets never just end up they usually merged with other big streets and go just outside the city but if you need to to uh break uh the big street uh just use a square so you have uh Street then it ends up with a square and then it can be divided by smaller streets and those smaller streets already can be interrupted by just dead ends and also I

took this example from just random European cities so sometimes it uh occurs in real world as well speaking of larger streets um think about Main Street in your city in smaller City it can be maybe one or two main streets in bigger city there can be more so this is something like arterious uh in your cities uh which connects different part of the city different neighborhoods uh and uh it's really good to have some because uh it creates like uh well first of all it's something that would really simplify the navigation in your city because once player reach the street they would more less understand where they are and where to go pretty much the same as in real world because when you're in bigger Street usually you kind of feel comfortable if you have to find the way uh one more thing about landmarks so

when you're drawing streets try to orient them towards landmarks bigger Street can go towards Main and bigger landmarks smaller Street can go towards smaller landmarks uh in uh in this in this case you would uh you would first uh create better navigation in your city because when you have landmarks something unique so it's uh uh it's uh something that you would remember something that you would immediately recognize and like I said it's easy to to navigate and also it would gives uh more it would give more V visibility for your landmarks also think about visual diversity of streets because uh we already spoke about visual diversity of neighborhoods uh but also different streets in one neighborhoods also could be different and uh uh this example is from again night City just random streets two streets in um in City Center

so the left one uh looks quite rich and fancy with all those neon lights and everything and the the right one looks quite gloomy and basically the place when you easily can be stopped so but the thing is that like they are they they both are in the same neighborhood they built with uh more less same architecture but they have completely different mood and the same the same Works real City this examples was taken from again Google Maps uh it's Pittsburgh and here you can see uh on on the left example it's quite uh big street with again with some different buildings uh and uh the right example it's it's there like it's it's like uh behind the corner so again it's the same neighborhood the same architecture the same I don't know property value but atmosphere and vipes of those streets they're completely different and why is that so well first

of all because of size uh I mean the the width of the streets so of course when you have narrow elev it feels different and uh also the function because on this um left Street uh we can see different uh buildings I don't know exactly what's that but I think it's something like a shop this yellow building might be a bunk or something like that also like Office Buildings and this uh example on right shot it's mostly residential areas and also just kind of back facades of buildings and only this uh plus uh wids of the street creates this uh difference also remember about elevation uh Hills and Essence can create very interesting composition and open unexpected Vistas and uh one more example from night City from Kabuki basically um if we if you look if we look on top of this

neighborhood we can see uh like streets and city blocks quite quite clear quite simple I would say but uh this this neighborhood was built on hills and when we walk there um we can uh we have like uh a lot of this nice openings to entire city again we can see this uh Landmark from this area so and we have it because because we have this uh heels and desence this is how it works also be careful with completely straight streets um besides that straight Street can have uh often feels like monotonous in terms of movement but also it might bring some problems in future uh when it comes to you know optimization because if we if you look at this left example you you can see this super long streets with lot of of buildings and of course now it's only a

cube so you know it's not a lot of things there but if we imagine uh that this is uh already uh like final shot like final city so we have all these buildings with some details also we have probably Street traffic we have NPC so a lot of details and it would be quite hard to you know to optimize this and if we look at uh right example so I made this uh small angle and iut the street like I don't know three or four times already so we have much less details there well I mean of course if we if we if we should if we have to create a city with completely Straight Street for example like most of American city they are they have straight streets uh it would be trickier but still it's possible to you know to work with it and again another great example from docktown so here we had this uh monumental venue that goes almost straight and actually when you walk

there or drive there you feel it as a straight street but it has this slight angle like really almost not noticeable but this angle already helped us to cut the view like almost twice and uh yeah when when when it was time to actually optimize this area we were quite thankful for this uh for this small angle and another one point about uh straighten cour Street and you might think that I am ambassador of cour streets and yes I am I love Court streets so on the left example uh player moves very like monotonously heavly straight like you know just along the straight line and I would say it's boring and again for this type of movement because apparently if uh if Player move by car or just you know 10 times faster it would be okay to have the straight chunk but particularly for this speed of movement it feels really boring and uh you know very monotonous

and uh on the right example player has to make a turn every some every few seconds I don't know and it also create this difference because uh once we make a turn we have completely different View and it also creates this kind of diversity so let's summarize so city is is a structure and rules and not just buildings randomly scattered on a Surface there are three basic types of urban space A Street Square and backyard there are three basic parameters of the city its size proportions and level of detail and there are three foundations of visual diversity its layout architecture and landmarks so or planning for City uh in for cities in

games is the same as Anatomy for characters it's a base and Powerful tool that helps to create great and high quality Urban environments thank you um and also yeah so also I have this small advertising shot so this is another talks from uh from my awesome colleagues please please join them I mean some of them already was uh were yesterday but still there are plenty of those um yeah and also I have this uh corporate shot this one so if you want to work with us uh we have like new office in Boston so scan the code and yeah we're hiring um thank thank you it was quite fast so I guess we have

uh quite some time for questions so you're welcome hi I was wondering um how do you balance environments that are more enjoyable to Traverse with like walking versus a car do you balance it strictly off of how much access the player will have to the car like you know uh if there's a point in the game where they actually gain access to that is that when you would introduce environments that are more car friendly um just how would you balance those two modes of movement that's great question and I think it should be addressed to to game designers no honestly like uh I don't think that it's me who actually made this decision uh I would say that well I mean uh when when I work in cities I I kind of make some assumptions but I don't know pretty much at the end it would be different because it's not me who who make this decision so you know thank

you hi I was wondering um you talked about different neighborhoods having different visual identities I was wondering about how the intersections of those neighborhoods work like how they blend into one another so you can move from one to the other seamlessly that's great question thank you uh so uh actually it depends and basically we can we can uh go like in two directions uh or we can make this this uh intersect well not I guess not intersection but border between those neighborhoods very contrast so uh if player like moves there they would immediately understand that they went something you know they they went to different area or it can be um like really smooth uh there will be no border and this difference would be smooth so well you know the simplest the simplest way I guess to make uh to think about something like buffer area so for example there will be let's say uh a few streets or city blocks that shares uh

that shares features of both neighborhoods and that's how you would make this uh this smooth um transition or again contrast also works great uh because uh like you know for example you can have this really nice and fancy neighborhood and then you make a turn and suddenly you are in like poor really uh you know uh dangerous area so it also might work it depends on what um well like what's your intention what what you want to you know bring to player thank you any thoughts on how a small team could make a big interesting City or is that just impossible um once again a small team making a big city well it will be challenging I guess I mean of course for example maybe if you have 10 years or maybe a century then thank

you uh I saw that on the Pres presentation you had a picture of Vienna as a reference but in gray scale what was a purpose on that uh I mean uh particular on that slide it was just an exercise because I just wanted to take uh something that seems absolutely relevant to cyberpunk because come on like old city in Vienna and cyberpunk it's something absolutely you know not not connected to each other but I just wanted to show how we can use references you know because because you know something that would obviously come to your mind to actually check some you know this uh modern cities uh yeah but also you can go this way and maybe you will find something fresh something you know something different something that was never used before so only only because of that that that example was quite random to be honest ah okay yeah thank you and thank you for sharing your knowledge it was awesome thank you hi um I was just curious when um working on a city more so I guess a top

down City when you're trying to spawn in enemies what's a good way to do it without having it be like oh this is where the enemy spawns how do you make it feel organic or like oh they're now coming for you because you did something or so forth yeah so one more question to Quest designers I guess because I have no idea where to spawn enemies sorry oh good okay hi um thank you so much I guess like one question that I had was obviously like urban planning and level design has a lot to do like works very closely with like quests and systems and that kind of thing and in my own experience I've had a lot of times where the environment has shaped how we DET like how we set up the quest or vice versa I guess I'm just wondering if you have any examples off the top of your head where you had a particularly challenging like moment where you are really trying to either bend the

environment to the quest or vice versa doing something to make make the like environment work for the design goals of the game um well honestly this uh this work always goes uh in really close cooperation so I mean I don't think there ever was any kind of conflict of interest or something or if it was we tried to deal with it in the very beginning so I mean you know yeah it's about teamwork and cooperation I guess and I don't think I I think maybe I'm telling like very boring things that everyone knows but yeah it's about cooperation and teamwork like if you work uh together from the very beginning you know what gameplay needs uh you have what quest needs you have that's it like you just you just uh all all always keep it in your mind and you know and use it in your layouts so your layout would support the all the gameplay needs and

yeah this is essential this is very important thank you hi so um I have a question in relation to multi- theer cities like if you have regular Street layouts but imagine you have also flying cars and you have multiple layers of street level if you will so if you have a street but it's taller think Sixth Element but maybe also some cyberpunk so do you have any insight in City layout regarding that or is that out of scope of cyber Punk uh thank God we don't have flying cars well I mean no kind of it's kind of the same because uh like still if this car uh moves along the street because I believe this is what you mean right I mean of course if we can go just up to the sky to I don't know to Stratosphere and just you know wandering there on top then I don't know and you know it's it's a little bit different I guess but still

like if we move along the street okay yeah it can be not a street level but higher but it makes no difference because still you are in the street the street has Direction you still have some uh intersections like uh you you you still well for example you know that I don't know maybe you have a map you know where you have to go and and that's it you just move and you know it doesn't matter whether you move on the ground or above yeah I mean there are there are tunnels and lower areas below buildings in the uh cyberpunk environment as well as s could you please speak closer to micor there are um multier levels within cyberpunk like the tunnels underneath the buildings and the bridges or buildings with bridges in between so kind of the same I guess well yeah but again like uh you can you can of course here I showed maybe like simpler examples because you know just to bring my ideas but you can you can um uh make this make the structure even more complicated because again uh so for

example you you decided okay so this neighborhood or a couple of neighborhoods uh will have this um complicated multi-level structure like this is important to decide it at some point and then you just start you know making blockout you know all right thank you hello uh great talk I really appreciate your breakdown of the process and the abstract the abstraction of it um the person ahead of me actually kind of already asked my question but I would like to if you're okay with it get further characterization on your communication with Mission designers and um game designers like a timeline or like would you further characterize your interaction with other team members as far as placement of points of interest ambient resources things that promote player agency in the cityscape I guess the answer is yes I mean well yeah I always always uh if if I if I understood the uh the question

correct so yeah I always taking this to account and I for example I know that okay this is our point of interest for example this is landmark and it should be something that should be visible so yeah it would affect my layout for example I would um Orient streets toward this uh toward this place this points of interest uh because yeah like uh when uh when you creating layout it's really powerful tool and you can make it really visible you can make it in a way that it would immediately catch players attention and yeah this is this is our work pretty much yeah I'm just interested in would you characterize like some of the more successful communication team members what that looks like sorry could you again closer to microphone uh is this better oh that's so much better oh that is embarrassing okay I'd be interested in uh hearing you characterize um some of the communication processes between like Mission designers and Quest designers and and your work as far as placement goes and and a timeline or something like that or whatever you come up

with I mean well the communication process well it's it's good I mean the the processes are built really great in our company and all uh designers uh that I work with they are my friends and uh we often like we we have um uh like brainstorms and we discuss things together it's not like I'm just sitting in my box drawing something and then just breathing to the table like here I made it no it's not like that we we always uh like in touch and we creating things together and even like again when it comes to City it's not like it's really hard to it's not like hard it's impossible to name a person who create a city because it's not persons like whole team and we we create this together outstanding thank you hello um so while obviously night city is a very big uh video game Space it's I think fair to say quite a bit smaller than uh an equivalent real world city and I guess I was wondering if you could speak a little more about how some

of these techniques go to creating that sort of Illusion of scale and making it feel um closer to like a an enormous sort of Mega City real world environment while being geometrically a lot smaller than say like a Los Angeles type environment thank you you see uh it's about it's all about perception because it's it's like this example that I gave like in the very beginning so if you have something uh if you have to go somewhere for 15 minutes in real life it's okay it's super close but if you have to walk for 15 minutes in game you would just close this game and never open it again right so uh it's always like that like uh game proportion they always smaller it's okay um I cannot give you certain formula for example like some Cici that you should use when you create it and pretty much it h it doesn't exist because uh uh again it depends on type of movement because maybe in some cases you have to use proportions that would be quite close to real City because for example if you move really fast uh then like why not um

but yeah if you if you're mostly walking or walking SL driving you have to be smart about these decises and honestly I don't know like I would say that uh yeah again there is no formula uh it's only like empiric way that you can just you know trials and failures so you know you just create you you can create like a few streets walk there or drive there or fly or whatever you need and just just ask yourself okay is it comfortable do I like it and that's it and once answer is yes this is your proportions wonderful thank you hello hello uh um I just wanted to ask what's the design process to decide between having a playable or interactive POI compared to like a bottomless POI uh it sounds like if it's visible from every location when it just push itself to be an area of more interest or interactive gameplay damn I didn't think I understood the question I'm sorry what's the difference

between the design process to create something more interactive compared to a bottomless POI kind of like what you showed in the slides okay so again uh it's something that we decide uh together with um I don't know lore Team game design team and initiative on their side so I mean I can suggest something of course but uh like uh the final word I guess after them and uh yeah I guess it's really again it's really hard for me to answer because I think they rule the process yeah all right thank you hello can you hear me okay yeah uh thank you for the talk first of all uh you mentioned that it's often good to have streets lead to or highlight nearby landmarks and based on your responses to some other questions it seems pretty important in your design flow uh how much are you or other level designers willing to bend or change the

streets that you've made or the layout to frame landmarks and in the event where that might not be possible just because of the layout of the city is there like a second best option for a street to highlight or direct to okay so I think this situation won't be possible if again if you work together from from the very beginning you know I kind of I kind of have this feeling that uh some of you really want to force me that yeah we have fight we actually go to a rink we fight and someone who wins this is how we make it no it's not the case so yeah we work together from the very beginning we decide like and again it's very iterative process so because I can I can provide or okay not not like me but my team maybe can provide some drafts uh we can discuss it with level designers with lower team with Quest designers whoever is interested and uh we have like this first approval or maybe they uh they suggest some some

things to maybe change something we work on it then we we we meet again and you know and this is like really long process from the very beginning from till the very end I guess and I think this is not a case where for example we are in the closer to the end and then suddenly uh level designers uh or I don't know Quest designers thought that hey it's completely not something that we expected no it's impossible okay thank you uh hello uh when designing environments we have to balance the familiar and the new since we can only do so much weird Innovative and unique stuff with cities before the player gets confused how do you determine what to spend effort on making new and unfamiliar and what to just keep basic normal boring City that's tricky question [Music]

I'm confused to be honest because I don't think that I understood the question I'm sorry I guess the question of I mean it's the the 8020 rule you do 80% is familiar to the player and 20% is like new and different so when building a futuristic cyberpunk city how do you determine what to make familiar that anyone can understand and how do you determine okay this is worth putting energy making new exciting and something no one's seen before okay that's interesting I don't know I think it's it kind of it's intuitive process I think because we I don't think that like okay I don't have any guidelines I don't have any formula that uh I don't know that every every 100 MERS we should have something unexpected no so uh and you see like uh this process like I said it's very iterative process uh we uh and again like uh we start in with like very

drafts and we try to you know to walk uh around our cities and uh and yeah like and and if if it if it at some point if we feel that okay it it feels boring then let's kind of change it and if it's not then let's move forward so I don't know I would say for me when I create in some City layouts I have this kind of approach in my mind that I imagine myself as a tourist that you know just wanding around because at this very stages we don't have any gaml like we have nothing maybe and uh there's nothing there's no activities at this very early stages so I just uh I just imagine that I'm a tourist I just came in the city I just wandering around making pictures so I like you should answer yourself okay would you make a picture of this would you post it into your I don't know Instagram if yes then you're good okay thank you um hi I just had a quick question about when you're designing a city and you don't have access to uh visual

landmarks so when you're designing like back alleys and things like that uh what kind of strategies do you have to give like a visual dialogue to the player of like hey this is like a good direction to get to like a main point or like this is where you would move to kind of here's your like flow area towards your quest without just using um like Quest markers and stuff like that the thing that comes in mind is like V's apartment at the very beginning of the game it's kind of like a complex space to navigate I just was curious what strategies you have for uh allowing the player to navigate that without too much confusion so um okay I need to think how to answer it best to not you know uh repeat myself so again like like I said we work all together and I can maybe make some suggestions for example I can say okay so here we have this landmark Mark and there are multiple street that goes there and then we just check if it

works or not like if it's visible uh if it's uh like you know fit the quest so again like yeah you ask about strategies no I guess there are known like it's not about strategies it's about trials and failures I I would say um and again maybe what also matters is that you know that kind of visual gallery that I already had in my have in my head because I have a lot of um uh examples so I can for example I know if I if I think about some some situation I can think ah okay I think uh I think uh I saw something like that in certain city that might work in our uh in our game and I for example I can try to make fast draft of this layout and check if it works because again I don't think that I uh creating this you know on just from my head I actually try to use some existing things because you know we have everything in in real life we can just use it just take it thank you very much yeah and I think maybe one last question and and yeah and

we can just continue somewhere outside uh all right I have a question um you didn't mention anything about public transportation uh in urban planning and I was thinking there is a Metro System in night city as far as I remember how how does that affect sort of the layout and the should I maybe send you to our PR department I mean Casper help me what talking that's that's a good one yeah um so I mean no seriously like I I don't know like you know that metro metro it it it it um appears like in the very last patches so you know in the very early stages I guess it didn't affect much that's it I guess thank you wor

[Music]