I am not sure the creator of this ever had a thought in his head about the fantasy mapping market. If he does like money though, he could turn this little gem into a quick city mapping game changer. The bones are there for an incredible mapping tool. I am reminded of flowscape, and how the developer has steadily added elements for RPG mappers.
The developer's Swedish roots are taking full effect here. Sweden's still got those old-world charms in their sleepy, quiet, by-the-sea towns. I doubt the developer intended for going for more than just this simpler, humbler "toy" aspect of the game, which is fine. I'll still play with it. Looks quite therapeutic and charming. I just hope he eventually considers hosting a modding community, which would be great, both for him financially and for fans leisurely. He'd probably have the next "Minecraft" on his hands here.
If you have a look at the two lectures that the developer has put out, you'll see just how labour intensive this game was to create. The labor requirements is a direct consequence of the "Wave Collapse" algorithm which is used as the core backbone of the system. Each new element that's added to the game needs assets created for how it reacts with every other asset in the game, in every position relative to itself. This means that modding would be extremely limited (Adding something which only modifies one part of a building, say a shop sign, that has no impact on more than 1/8th of a tile) would be easy, but beyond that it explodes in complexity. Additionally, as every interaction must be taken into account, having more than two mods running at the same time would be impossible.
I don't hate my Computer, but we love to challenge each other. For example he is compiling bullshit (totaly not me making really dumb programming errors), and I have to fix it. Or me running calculations that almost make his CPU explode. Science can be so much fun.
I would love to see just a simple gras or dirt to replace the water as an option and maybe just different building styles to keep it simple, like this option is wooden shingle, this is thatch and so on. So keep with the base of buildings change as you add to the side and hight. Great video btw
I think the creator (singular) wants to keep it ridiculously simple and that makes sense. As long as mods become an option that's perfectly fine. Give it a few weeks after mods and we can build anything.
From a coding standpoint i can see why the creator is reluctant to add all too much complexity-like, this game puts an emphasis on aesthetics, not on being feature rich. So it stands to reason that adding different roof options would be a NIGHTMARE Like, in order to keep the ability to swap colors, it’s possible that they’d need to add a whole different state for every single house color! Right now the only difference between one house block and another that’s not determined by what’s nearby is its color. Stands to reason that there’s a single variable keeping track of it for each little house block. But if you want to change the roof type separate from the house, you’d need to differentiate them as objects-not a concern in the base game as it is now
I'd easily pay triple for the features we're wanting, I'd waste away dredging up every granular detail for my dream dnd city, please capitalise on the potential devs
At the time I'm watching this there is a "export OBJ" option. I went to this website called Threescaper and it put the file in there and it gave me a first person view of the town where I could walk around
The grid size a lot of people complain about was actually was larger than the dev thought he'd need, he said he made it as big as he though people would want it, and then doubled that. His dev updates on the community tab show how happy he is that it's taken off, considering that to him he just thought itd be a fun little toy for people
People definitely need fun little toys! :) I did not test the limits, but the grid size seems plenty big. Apparently some people just want to recreate all of London or something.
@@WASD20 I've personally tested the limits and as a fanatic DM I would enjoy a size increase, although it's definitely bit a requirement! The tool is wonderful as it is, especially considering the dev added every piece by hand 😊
You can make a sort of wall, basically a second layer of foundation one building thick. I used it to make a large walled city with a few towers spread along the wall with buildings inside. If you complete a circle of 1 layer houses it switches it to remove the roofs and put in a railing. They also need to add a view mode where you can fly through the town would make it a lot easier for art reference.
I am pretty sure the owner stated he just wanted it to be used like a toy and that he wanted the game AI to guess what you are wanting to make and that is why the buildings are random and you cant pick, I personally support this and I think its what makes it good so we dont have to spend house choosing from stuff and if it looks bad making us upset.
i think what’s really valuable about this tool is how simple it is- the lack of control and conscious thought needed, while it may limit creativity, makes for a more therapeutic experience
It’s so wholesome how most videos of this are 10+ minutes with the first few explaining the game and the rest being some dude excitedly telling you about the magic Ghibli Disney fairytale town he built. Says a lot about how good the game is but also about how excited people get about the idea of a fun, peaceful magical little town...
The "stone foundations in water" thing heavily reminds me of Neverwinter Nights level editing, and how there were several tilesets that functioned basically like this. Also, 5:45 ends up making a smiley face when you talk about patrons. Well timed. It depends on what sort of dev this has, if it's going to get any mapmaking-fitting love or if it's going to just be a sort of arthouse hipstery thing. Still, I do hope it has potential. If the devs so much as expand on building styles/types and walls, this could indeed works a mapmaking tool.
I’ve tried it for my dnd city, which is an island, and While it is awesome, in its current form it is a bit limited. I.e. it’s size limit is an issue- I need more space! Also, I would love to be able to manually change the “grid” it works on. For the most part it’s great, but I wanted to do docks and it was awful for that. Walls too. But for early access, I love it. It could be invaluable.
Also, anyone else getting Studio Ghibli vibes from this art style? This town keeps reminding me of Kiki's Delivery Service, which would be a REALLY cool setting for an RPG.
I bought it as soon as I saw it, just £4 is amazing, especially for the types of town maps I’m currently hoping to make (my campaign has many islands and Venice-type towns, so this is perfect) - sadly I realised I can’t zoom in and out on my laptop and may possibly have to buy a mouse (which I don’t mind too much) but this game has so much potential and I’m really looking forward to see how this sandbox grows! It’s already so charming.
You guys gotta think beyond that. You can use this as a baseline or a as a sample of what your city can look like in its natural habitat. Wanna see how a river going through a city would look like? Do it. A central castle with a sprawling city beneath? Do it. Its a baseline. I just did my city under siege for my writing. It really helps with visualising what you could write for the story and movement of troops.
I like how the grid looks very organic making it easy to make realistic cities! it has a lot of potential so I hope it goes further than just the town building.
I would like it if instead of starting in water, it was grass instead. Or give you the option to put both grass or water tiles. That way you can make small environments. Like walled towns or some such.
I kinda like the idea of different colors of buildings, in the fact that you can differentiate in the purpose or details of the buildings for your players very easily.
I think this could be a really useful tool as reference for drawing. You could figure out where you want all of your buildings and roads to be in a simple and pretty natural way, and then when you’re drawing it you can do all of the customization you want, without needing to worry so much about the base layout.
I’m thinking the same. There is great potential for improving the game through ways that were suggested in this video, but if we really just want a more sophisticated world and city building software for DM purposes then I think we can shift our attention elsewhere - like Cities: Skylines for example.
I agree. Adding actual different types of building would make controls a lot more complicated. A potential workaround with the current version: (though it might mess with immersion a little) you could just decide (for your city) that all Blacksmiths are blue or Stables are green or whatever.
Fully agreed. What sets it apart from other city builders is the simplicity and colour of its art-style, and the randomness of what you place - the chance of making something beautiful that you really didn't expect. I've seen people suggesting an 'advanced mode' for more control if you want it, but even then, I can't help but think I'd end up feeling obligated to use that. I say keep it simple, keep it random. That said, different options for terrain, and different options for tileset (so as well as this Swedish style, having a rustic medieval, or a Spanish, or so on) could be very cool, so long as they keep it light and cutesy. Although, seeing the sheer amount of work that goes into building a tileset and all the options that have to be created, I find it unlikely. Fingers crossed for mod support!!!
@@mannalosj2563 As I've learned already after posting this comment, such procedural building generation was the author's fun project while he was doing things like Bad North, until he apparently figured out that the very building generation is fun without any further gameplay on top. I too would've like to see other types of buildings, but I also think that this is better done on top by modders.
I've been fiddling with this toy for a few days and have a little yellow town I can't stop tinkering with. I agree, I'd like a few more tile sets to play with, especially a few storefronts like a cafe and a little market. How I hope this game changes, I'd like a second line next to the color menu for more building types and contextual specialty tiles.
One thing that comes to mind is if you could start with a simple straight grid to build your town on to start off with. Then as you are making your town you have the option of bending certain grid lines or an area of your map that lie on or around your town to morph it into the shape you want. That would be really neat!
I think a good way to specify certain types of buildings (like barn and blacksmith) would be to use the colors as a key! Like, say red buildings represent residential areas, blue denotes restaurants and food suppliers, green is local merchants, etc. It'd be a good way for the DM/mapmaker to keep track of what's what. (and if your players need to use the map, just slap a sepia filter on and no one can tell, lol) I think the game would definitely benefit from some skins/more powerful customization tools in the future, but as purely a means of reference and worldbuilding, I think it has a lot to offer!
i’ve seen a lot of folks just let down a hug island and surround in entirely with buildings. this creates a big field that you can build the whole city in which defjnitely helps with the fantasy aspect of it
Oh my god nate thanks for this! I need this so much. Only thing i need is a pc. Again... Anyway, thanks for the video! Great job making awesome content!
I think the developer could make buildings context-sensitive. Like, you put a building out by itself in the middle of nowhere? That's gonna be a farmhouse. Put more around? Barn etc. Put even more? Now you've got a village. Farm buildings that have no access to open space anymore are rebuilt to become inns, etc. Roads could form organically from how that population would prefer to move around. Oh, and of course, the ability to but in chunks of hills/mountains would help with realism. Maybe you start the game out by plunking BIG mounds of land into the water, and that lets you make height differences easily, and then afterwards you progress to the city-building phase.
Oskar Stålberg, the creator of this, was already previously known for creating similar procedural structures, from a similar city builder, albeit much simpler, to a planet generator, to yet another completely different city builder. One of his main goals is to create emergent behaviors through rules. Because each of the buildings has rules on when it can spawn and why, adding a customizable building type would be quite complex, as many more rules would be required to keep everything running smoothly and without bugs. I hope this can explain why townscaper was designed the way it was.
Having markers of some kind would be nice for an RPG map. As a video game "experience" it would be nice to see little NPCs start to walk around and do things in real time as you build out the town. So not only do they start to populate the map with daily routine AI but they start to interact with the buildings and little accents and additions would happen around the map. Maybe if they added special buildings like a bakery, fishery, courthouse, etc it would look like a regular building at first but eventually a baker would show up, go inside and the building would change into a bakery with a sign and a table outside with bread for sale. That kind of stuff. The map comes alive as you're making it and you can make edits that change AI behavior, like the flow of traffic, how they behave in specific combinations of buildings in the same area and other stuff. Ok I am basically describing an RTS but it wouldn't need RTS gameplay to be interesting and fun to play with. Just changing AI behavior through building. No points or resources or anything.
I've been following the development of this on Twitter, it's a gorgeous game! I think a fun application for this has been explored a little bit already: framing up your settlement and drawing over it in a digital app like Photoshop or Procreate to have it more stylised to your needs.
If you are able to make grassy locations by surrounding it with buildings, theoretically you could make "town walls" by building this large ring of a building surrounding whatever town you make, so that your village appears as if it is on a plain or near a forest. I think I got that right.
In the rpg setting of things it be amazing if you could set a view point and movie that around to show what a character would see of the city standing at one point, be that on a road, or rooftop. It would also play especially well with being able to put down spesific buildings like a store or a blacksmith.
This game has amazing potential and looks so relaxing - even meditative. If the developer listen so some suggestions and ideas from the TTRPG-crowd, this might just become the next big thing.
maybe its possible to give the algorithm that is creating the structures more verity and put in a option where to select a theme for the whole village/town. Also make the flat surface at the start editable to change your map into a real world with different heights. Some vegetation would give the thing even more space for creativity. But all new features should be only accessible per a button on the left which only says: vegetation, rock, etc. Looking forward to any updates to the game :)
Maybe it's a crazy idea, but it'd be great having some kind of integration with Google Maps. I mean: Open Townscaper, type any town or city in a search box and it loads the street layout of that city in particular, and then you add houses, blocks of flats, shops, parks and so on... If you want to go even further, it could have 3D terrain meshes and maintain road directions, as well as generating simple car models and people walking around to make it more lively. I'd buy something like without hesitation!
I would definitely buy this. It’s cheap and has so much potential. The possibilities are endless. For example, anime/cartoon, realistic, fantasy, apocalyptic etc graphics. I would love to see walls, watchtowers, castles, keeps, estates, forts. There’s so much potential for this.
I've seen another timelapse, noticed that you can make a layer of buildings look like walls (same look as the foundation), I think the grey color near the bottom is what did it but I couldn't see if there was something else.
Gives me a very nebulous, studio ghibli-esque time period feeling. It's definitely not ready, but looking this clean in early access gives me hope. Added to watchlist. I like your idea of more "skins" to select. Might be nice to have a mode where you can manually force a type of item to appear, but as-is I think it's got a place.
even for just vague planning and idea farming its a great lil tool ! a few reskins and perhaps a grass base or even a simple tree / ground tool would make it even better :’)
When I saw this, just a moment ago I thought this would be ideal for nice maps and bought it. I now watch this to learn why this might have been a bad idea
It would be so cool if there was a "world scale" mode. Where instead of plopping down small bits of island, you'd be creating massive chunks of continent. And instead of buildings, they'd be forests or mountains or entire towns. Basically a glorified retexture that would bring this software to a whole new level. It'd be a massive help to worldbuilders that love to draw their world's continents and countries.
I would LOVE if Townscaper allowed you to make land around your city. Imagine if you could sculpt hills or valleys or beaches onto a coastal city instead of it just floating in the ocean.
I love it. I just wish it had people walking around, sitting on benches, playing. My city looks great, but feels really empty minus the occasional pigeon flock.
Obvious palette swaps aside, the feature that would make me gush the most would be...an interactive vertical grid so you could create say a sky bridge or a massive archway or gate. Also more fantastical palettes like the tree city, the mushroom city, and the sunken city.
You can build up some buildings near each other, connect them, and then work back to delete some blocks. The game's logic will calculate out stuff and use one of 500+ puzzle pieces to generate arches and bridges between those stacks you've built/removed from. Definitely more sculptural of adding/subtracting elements to get it to work just right, but it's in there (just maybe not as powerful as having a separate setting for it).
Maybe they can add in different time periods and regions at some point. So, for example, you could make a Renaissance South American city, if you wanted to.
The creator has said on twitter he doesnt intend to take this game too far, also because of the numerous ammount of pieces (~500) it would take a lot of time and effort to make different skins/themes (ex medieval, east asian, ect). You can find the creator on twitter, @OskSta, he responds to a lot of questions and ideas so feel free to reach out w further questions if you want
Age Of Empires II DE scenario editor is great for world and town building. Edit:pressing ctrl+g a few times until they are yellow will remove the grid for buildings and units. Going to the "gaia" player and choosing "units" will allow you to access wild animals and gridless trees and other things in "other"
It's Simcity-ish but without the need for funds! Chuck in a few different skins and models from various time periods and I would happily buy this in early access.
This is cool but there needs to be a grassy plains option instead of ocean. Also it would be sweet if there was an option after you finish your city to go into first person and walk around from that scale to see what it would be like to actually be in the city
In its current state I don't think it would work well for making rpg cities using the program alone. However it is a great tool to get started before drawing a town/city map. I could also see this as a great tool to make sets. If you wanted to draw an alleyway, for example.
I dream of a game that lets you build your own maps and actually play a good rpg on them. Imagine the kind of community content you'd get in a game like that. Some people would make absolutely insanely good maps just because they enjoy making them, and enjoy people enjoying them lol. Maybe you could even form different player maps into one wider world. Maybe it could be a multiplayer game on the scale of Wow or something.... A man can dream :^)
i see why you would want the ability to make specific buildings like walls/barns etc but i think that kind of loses sight of the point of the game - the 'random' element isnt just a by product its kind of the point, i think its trying to stay away from being a super complex detailed city builder with dozens of types of buildings and so on. i agree it would be nice to have some more skins, but i would rather they stayed seperate and within each city there was only one kind. What id really like to see is the ability to walk around the city in a first person view - i also think itd be kinda fun to have a randomly generated base map with elements of grass/water/rock/shoreline that affects how you build and what structures look like, but still controlled by the ai, so structures built on grass/solid ground look slightly different to those on water, which might be a nice way of doing an alternative to whole seperate skins
Hoping the dev adds in options like desert, planes, rock terrain around city. Then the city have options to be either a steam like, oriental, medieval or other known designs. Also add in trees, ponds/lakes, hills/mountains and more. If somehow the dev doesn’t plan to hope at least the dev allows steam workshop so ppl can make those, add them in and ppl can download and use.
Other than some of the small details (mailboxes, rubber boots, electric lamps) it looks a lot like medieval Italian architecture, imho. Greek buildings even have the bright colors (though, I don't know when that became a thing).
You beautiful man Nate, you dropped this video just at the right time. I'm just about to do Waterdeep dragon heist campaign and put it on world anvil. Keep up the awesome work and you got yourself new sub. 👍😁
I really like the unusual grid pattern, but i wish it wasn't so pronounced, or at least there was a square crystal structure like in different carbon based materials, where there are clumps of square grids with random rotations, and the clumps of grid meet at lines and there, the ends of the squares are sliced off to fit maybe train rails, or just turn it into a wider street, because the current pattern introduces 5 point crossings, which i'm pretty sure never existed, no matter the complexity of the city layout, lmao.
If the creator(s) support mods on Steam then they're just giving us the keys to the kingdom.
Great point! That would be awesome.
He has already talked about wanting to integrate it but it may take a bit as its one person
@@WASD20 Greetings! Could you please share this amazing creation of a city somehow?
Thanks, in advance.
I'm buying that game if it has mods!
mods!
Dear God it has so much potential just a few more updates
Right!?
It sure does
Yes, that's why it's in beta
modding community awekens
And it's only $6
I am not sure the creator of this ever had a thought in his head about the fantasy mapping market. If he does like money though, he could turn this little gem into a quick city mapping game changer. The bones are there for an incredible mapping tool.
I am reminded of flowscape, and how the developer has steadily added elements for RPG mappers.
Flowscape is another one I hope to take a look at one of these days.
The developer's Swedish roots are taking full effect here. Sweden's still got those old-world charms in their sleepy, quiet, by-the-sea towns.
I doubt the developer intended for going for more than just this simpler, humbler "toy" aspect of the game, which is fine. I'll still play with it. Looks quite therapeutic and charming.
I just hope he eventually considers hosting a modding community, which would be great, both for him financially and for fans leisurely. He'd probably have the next "Minecraft" on his hands here.
It do look like the old town in stockholm.
All we have is by-the-sea towns xD
I mean with minecraft being known for its insane copies sold I doubt that would occur but it could be very successful certainly
If you have a look at the two lectures that the developer has put out, you'll see just how labour intensive this game was to create. The labor requirements is a direct consequence of the "Wave Collapse" algorithm which is used as the core backbone of the system. Each new element that's added to the game needs assets created for how it reacts with every other asset in the game, in every position relative to itself.
This means that modding would be extremely limited (Adding something which only modifies one part of a building, say a shop sign, that has no impact on more than 1/8th of a tile) would be easy, but beyond that it explodes in complexity. Additionally, as every interaction must be taken into account, having more than two mods running at the same time would be impossible.
You can actually have up to 256 Z levels in the game, but I wouldn't recommend building that high unless you really, really hate your computer.
I don't hate my Computer, but we love to challenge each other. For example he is compiling bullshit (totaly not me making really dumb programming errors), and I have to fix it. Or me running calculations that almost make his CPU explode. Science can be so much fun.
There should be an “advanced mode” where you can control finer details. I like the simplicity so this would be an alternative mode.
The main way this program could be useful is for chase scenes or heists, where the exact geometry of the city around you is really important.
Ooh. Yes, that would be cool.
I would love to see just a simple gras or dirt to replace the water as an option and maybe just different building styles to keep it simple, like this option is wooden shingle, this is thatch and so on. So keep with the base of buildings change as you add to the side and hight. Great video btw
yeah hope they add things like grass, snow, desert as optional
I think the creator (singular) wants to keep it ridiculously simple and that makes sense. As long as mods become an option that's perfectly fine. Give it a few weeks after mods and we can build anything.
From a coding standpoint i can see why the creator is reluctant to add all too much complexity-like, this game puts an emphasis on aesthetics, not on being feature rich. So it stands to reason that adding different roof options would be a NIGHTMARE
Like, in order to keep the ability to swap colors, it’s possible that they’d need to add a whole different state for every single house color! Right now the only difference between one house block and another that’s not determined by what’s nearby is its color. Stands to reason that there’s a single variable keeping track of it for each little house block. But if you want to change the roof type separate from the house, you’d need to differentiate them as objects-not a concern in the base game as it is now
I'd easily pay triple for the features we're wanting, I'd waste away dredging up every granular detail for my dream dnd city, please capitalise on the potential devs
So, you'd pay 18 bucks. Wow.
The problem is it's algorithm based and he's only one guy. It takes time and he just put a note up on steam about what all he wants to add in time.
@The high ground no one said anything about how much the dev would profit.
@The high ground Possibly not because steam takes a cut.
This looks like the graphics and feel of the game Bad North
Oh that explains a lot, I thought so too! That’s really cool, I’m looking forward to how all this develops.
Literally the first thing I thought to and then saw that it was the same dev
I wonder if they'll have a modern version of Bad North.
I loved bad north it was such a good game, and then I got townscaper and it felt really similar, never realised it was the same developer
Townscaper is made by the guy who designed the procedural generation of Bad North, Oskar Stalberg.
At the time I'm watching this there is a "export OBJ" option. I went to this website called Threescaper and it put the file in there and it gave me a first person view of the town where I could walk around
The grid size a lot of people complain about was actually was larger than the dev thought he'd need, he said he made it as big as he though people would want it, and then doubled that. His dev updates on the community tab show how happy he is that it's taken off, considering that to him he just thought itd be a fun little toy for people
People definitely need fun little toys! :)
I did not test the limits, but the grid size seems plenty big. Apparently some people just want to recreate all of London or something.
@@WASD20 I've personally tested the limits and as a fanatic DM I would enjoy a size increase, although it's definitely bit a requirement! The tool is wonderful as it is, especially considering the dev added every piece by hand 😊
You can make a sort of wall, basically a second layer of foundation one building thick. I used it to make a large walled city with a few towers spread along the wall with buildings inside. If you complete a circle of 1 layer houses it switches it to remove the roofs and put in a railing. They also need to add a view mode where you can fly through the town would make it a lot easier for art reference.
I am pretty sure the owner stated he just wanted it to be used like a toy and that he wanted the game AI to guess what you are wanting to make and that is why the buildings are random and you cant pick, I personally support this and I think its what makes it good so we dont have to spend house choosing from stuff and if it looks bad making us upset.
i think what’s really valuable about this tool is how simple it is- the lack of control and conscious thought needed, while it may limit creativity, makes for a more therapeutic experience
It’s so wholesome how most videos of this are 10+ minutes with the first few explaining the game and the rest being some dude excitedly telling you about the magic Ghibli Disney fairytale town he built. Says a lot about how good the game is but also about how excited people get about the idea of a fun, peaceful magical little town...
The "stone foundations in water" thing heavily reminds me of Neverwinter Nights level editing, and how there were several tilesets that functioned basically like this.
Also, 5:45 ends up making a smiley face when you talk about patrons. Well timed.
It depends on what sort of dev this has, if it's going to get any mapmaking-fitting love or if it's going to just be a sort of arthouse hipstery thing. Still, I do hope it has potential. If the devs so much as expand on building styles/types and walls, this could indeed works a mapmaking tool.
Oh cute. I like how when you make a building that's a complete square or closed shape, it automatically adds grass to the inside space.
I’ve tried it for my dnd city, which is an island, and While it is awesome, in its current form it is a bit limited. I.e. it’s size limit is an issue- I need more space! Also, I would love to be able to manually change the “grid” it works on. For the most part it’s great, but I wanted to do docks and it was awful for that. Walls too. But for early access, I love it. It could be invaluable.
What I hope is the dev adding mod support, so that modders can add different textures/buildings. That would be super useful.
I’m obsessed with the design of the birbs -
Potted plants aren't a modern times thing; ancient greek women sacrificed potted plants to honour the god Adonis.
I just get the image of praying to Adonis and then just pushing a pot off a balcony like a cat.
@@maxxor-overworldhero6730 Maybe the sacrifice were the people hit by the falling pots?
Also, anyone else getting Studio Ghibli vibes from this art style? This town keeps reminding me of Kiki's Delivery Service, which would be a REALLY cool setting for an RPG.
Definitely. The same thought crossed my mind.
Both are inspired by certain parts of Stockholm. Miyazaki based Kikis world on his Scandinavian vacation.
I bought it as soon as I saw it, just £4 is amazing, especially for the types of town maps I’m currently hoping to make (my campaign has many islands and Venice-type towns, so this is perfect) - sadly I realised I can’t zoom in and out on my laptop and may possibly have to buy a mouse (which I don’t mind too much) but this game has so much potential and I’m really looking forward to see how this sandbox grows! It’s already so charming.
can't you zoom by pinching or spreading you fingers like on a touchscreen?
The sound when you plop down a house is so addictive. The developer is Oskar Stålberg, a fellow swede, so well done Oskar. I enjoy it alot.
Just bought it, I will try it out for the cities of my campaign
So does every town gotta look like Venice?
Kind of! Not a ton of variety here.
If you make the map one huge "courtyard" with the grass you can make it look very different. But mostly, yeah, it'll always be a porttown
Rens Gervers Thanks for that idea
I think it's actually based more on Sweden and its by-the-sea towns, where the lone developer's from.
You guys gotta think beyond that. You can use this as a baseline or a as a sample of what your city can look like in its natural habitat.
Wanna see how a river going through a city would look like? Do it. A central castle with a sprawling city beneath? Do it. Its a baseline.
I just did my city under siege for my writing. It really helps with visualising what you could write for the story and movement of troops.
I use the colors to set as districts in my D&D games
Nice. That would work well.
I like how the grid looks very organic making it easy to make realistic cities!
it has a lot of potential so I hope it goes further than just the town building.
I would like it if instead of starting in water, it was grass instead. Or give you the option to put both grass or water tiles. That way you can make small environments. Like walled towns or some such.
I kinda like the idea of different colors of buildings, in the fact that you can differentiate in the purpose or details of the buildings for your players very easily.
I think this could be a really useful tool as reference for drawing. You could figure out where you want all of your buildings and roads to be in a simple and pretty natural way, and then when you’re drawing it you can do all of the customization you want, without needing to worry so much about the base layout.
I think adding building types will sort of kill the simplicity.
I’m thinking the same. There is great potential for improving the game through ways that were suggested in this video, but if we really just want a more sophisticated world and city building software for DM purposes then I think we can shift our attention elsewhere - like Cities: Skylines for example.
I agree.
Adding actual different types of building would make controls a lot more complicated.
A potential workaround with the current version: (though it might mess with immersion a little) you could just decide (for your city) that all Blacksmiths are blue or Stables are green or whatever.
Fully agreed. What sets it apart from other city builders is the simplicity and colour of its art-style, and the randomness of what you place - the chance of making something beautiful that you really didn't expect. I've seen people suggesting an 'advanced mode' for more control if you want it, but even then, I can't help but think I'd end up feeling obligated to use that. I say keep it simple, keep it random.
That said, different options for terrain, and different options for tileset (so as well as this Swedish style, having a rustic medieval, or a Spanish, or so on) could be very cool, so long as they keep it light and cutesy. Although, seeing the sheer amount of work that goes into building a tileset and all the options that have to be created, I find it unlikely. Fingers crossed for mod support!!!
@@mannalosj2563 As I've learned already after posting this comment, such procedural building generation was the author's fun project while he was doing things like Bad North, until he apparently figured out that the very building generation is fun without any further gameplay on top. I too would've like to see other types of buildings, but I also think that this is better done on top by modders.
That’s why the mods should be the thing that builds the game further
Chinese theme, pirate theme, japanese, theme I can think of a lot of themes that can go so well with this,
I've been fiddling with this toy for a few days and have a little yellow town I can't stop tinkering with.
I agree, I'd like a few more tile sets to play with, especially a few storefronts like a cafe and a little market.
How I hope this game changes, I'd like a second line next to the color menu for more building types and contextual specialty tiles.
It looks a lot like that toy train game - super chill, building a town, perfecting as many or as few details as you like.
One thing that comes to mind is if you could start with a simple straight grid to build your town on to start off with. Then as you are making your town you have the option of bending certain grid lines or an area of your map that lie on or around your town to morph it into the shape you want. That would be really neat!
I think a good way to specify certain types of buildings (like barn and blacksmith) would be to use the colors as a key! Like, say red buildings represent residential areas, blue denotes restaurants and food suppliers, green is local merchants, etc. It'd be a good way for the DM/mapmaker to keep track of what's what. (and if your players need to use the map, just slap a sepia filter on and no one can tell, lol) I think the game would definitely benefit from some skins/more powerful customization tools in the future, but as purely a means of reference and worldbuilding, I think it has a lot to offer!
Geezer here...
Great vid..
One of the reason I subscribe. Looks like a useful tool for my homebrew.
Thanks...
Game on.
i’ve seen a lot of folks just let down a hug island and surround in entirely with buildings. this creates a big field that you can build the whole city in which defjnitely helps with the fantasy aspect of it
Oh my god nate thanks for this! I need this so much. Only thing i need is a pc. Again... Anyway, thanks for the video! Great job making awesome content!
Oh! This is PERFECT for making your own towns for a The Troubleshooters game!
Fired it up for the first time last night, literally got lost in it and had time fly. Truly an awesome peaceful "toy" / game.
I think the developer could make buildings context-sensitive. Like, you put a building out by itself in the middle of nowhere? That's gonna be a farmhouse. Put more around? Barn etc. Put even more? Now you've got a village. Farm buildings that have no access to open space anymore are rebuilt to become inns, etc. Roads could form organically from how that population would prefer to move around.
Oh, and of course, the ability to but in chunks of hills/mountains would help with realism. Maybe you start the game out by plunking BIG mounds of land into the water, and that lets you make height differences easily, and then afterwards you progress to the city-building phase.
Oskar Stålberg, the creator of this, was already previously known for creating similar procedural structures, from a similar city builder, albeit much simpler, to a planet generator, to yet another completely different city builder. One of his main goals is to create emergent behaviors through rules. Because each of the buildings has rules on when it can spawn and why, adding a customizable building type would be quite complex, as many more rules would be required to keep everything running smoothly and without bugs. I hope this can explain why townscaper was designed the way it was.
Having markers of some kind would be nice for an RPG map. As a video game "experience" it would be nice to see little NPCs start to walk around and do things in real time as you build out the town. So not only do they start to populate the map with daily routine AI but they start to interact with the buildings and little accents and additions would happen around the map. Maybe if they added special buildings like a bakery, fishery, courthouse, etc it would look like a regular building at first but eventually a baker would show up, go inside and the building would change into a bakery with a sign and a table outside with bread for sale. That kind of stuff. The map comes alive as you're making it and you can make edits that change AI behavior, like the flow of traffic, how they behave in specific combinations of buildings in the same area and other stuff. Ok I am basically describing an RTS but it wouldn't need RTS gameplay to be interesting and fun to play with. Just changing AI behavior through building. No points or resources or anything.
I've been following the development of this on Twitter, it's a gorgeous game!
I think a fun application for this has been explored a little bit already: framing up your settlement and drawing over it in a digital app like Photoshop or Procreate to have it more stylised to your needs.
I've seen some excellent repaints popping up on Twitter already!
If you are able to make grassy locations by surrounding it with buildings, theoretically you could make "town walls" by building this large ring of a building surrounding whatever town you make, so that your village appears as if it is on a plain or near a forest. I think I got that right.
I would LOVE a "walkthrough" mode for the camera, allowing you to go down into the streets and explore your town from the ground level.
That would be rad!
In the rpg setting of things it be amazing if you could set a view point and movie that around to show what a character would see of the city standing at one point, be that on a road, or rooftop.
It would also play especially well with being able to put down spesific buildings like a store or a blacksmith.
This game has amazing potential and looks so relaxing - even meditative. If the developer listen so some suggestions and ideas from the TTRPG-crowd, this might just become the next big thing.
Oh, man! Tell me I'm dreaming right now, this is so close to becoming something absolutely awesome!
I just got TS 2 days ago. I haven't played it much but I wanted to support the creator.
maybe its possible to give the algorithm that is creating the structures more verity and put in a option where to select a theme for the whole village/town. Also make the flat surface at the start editable to change your map into a real world with different heights. Some vegetation would give the thing even more space for creativity. But all new features should be only accessible per a button on the left which only says: vegetation, rock, etc.
Looking forward to any updates to the game :)
Maybe it's a crazy idea, but it'd be great having some kind of integration with Google Maps. I mean: Open Townscaper, type any town or city in a search box and it loads the street layout of that city in particular, and then you add houses, blocks of flats, shops, parks and so on... If you want to go even further, it could have 3D terrain meshes and maintain road directions, as well as generating simple car models and people walking around to make it more lively. I'd buy something like without hesitation!
I would definitely buy this. It’s cheap and has so much potential. The possibilities are endless. For example, anime/cartoon, realistic, fantasy, apocalyptic etc graphics. I would love to see walls, watchtowers, castles, keeps, estates, forts. There’s so much potential for this.
there should be DLC for different Cultures, I'd especially like it if you could make your town look Medieval European, East Asian, Greek or Arabian.
this tbh. Either that or make it part of the base game. The dev would make soooo much money that way, and we get cool stuff! Win win situation!
I've seen another timelapse, noticed that you can make a layer of buildings look like walls (same look as the foundation), I think the grey color near the bottom is what did it but I couldn't see if there was something else.
Gives me a very nebulous, studio ghibli-esque time period feeling. It's definitely not ready, but looking this clean in early access gives me hope. Added to watchlist.
I like your idea of more "skins" to select. Might be nice to have a mode where you can manually force a type of item to appear, but as-is I think it's got a place.
I got this yesterday and it acts as the Zen Garden of my Steam library. So peaceful.
That's a great way to put it!
even for just vague planning and idea farming its a great lil tool !
a few reskins and perhaps a grass base or even a simple tree / ground tool would make it even better :’)
It might work for Minecraft related builds.
Its simplicity might be useful,and it lets you randomize the town every single time.
Super interesting ideas!
Different surfaces make sense, maybe even some kind of terrain? Building on a hillside could be amazing.
When I saw this, just a moment ago I thought this would be ideal for nice maps and bought it. I now watch this to learn why this might have been a bad idea
Me moments ago: "could townscaper work for rpg city maps?"
TH-cam:
It would be so cool if there was a "world scale" mode. Where instead of plopping down small bits of island, you'd be creating massive chunks of continent. And instead of buildings, they'd be forests or mountains or entire towns. Basically a glorified retexture that would bring this software to a whole new level. It'd be a massive help to worldbuilders that love to draw their world's continents and countries.
Honestly it sounds like a great buy just for when it does get out of early access and is a nice polished game
I would LOVE if Townscaper allowed you to make land around your city. Imagine if you could sculpt hills or valleys or beaches onto a coastal city instead of it just floating in the ocean.
Try checking out foundation on steam for creating a medieval city/settlement with all the unique buildings and walls
I love it. I just wish it had people walking around, sitting on benches, playing. My city looks great, but feels really empty minus the occasional pigeon flock.
This is the most satisfying sounds
Obvious palette swaps aside, the feature that would make me gush the most would be...an interactive vertical grid so you could create say a sky bridge or a massive archway or gate.
Also more fantastical palettes like the tree city, the mushroom city, and the sunken city.
You can build up some buildings near each other, connect them, and then work back to delete some blocks. The game's logic will calculate out stuff and use one of 500+ puzzle pieces to generate arches and bridges between those stacks you've built/removed from. Definitely more sculptural of adding/subtracting elements to get it to work just right, but it's in there (just maybe not as powerful as having a separate setting for it).
This looks great, very simple like you said to make a town or city. I would love to use something like this.
This should stay simple, at least the game itself. The mods should build this game further. Different build styles, cosmetics, the whole shabang.
Really waiting for the future updates. So much potential.
I just realised this game reminds me of the town map in the early D&D game "Hillsfar".
I just got Wonderdraft and having a lot of fun with it making homebrew maps for homebrew worlds.
Wow, that's a very nice concept
Maybe they can add in different time periods and regions at some point. So, for example, you could make a Renaissance South American city, if you wanted to.
The creator has said on twitter he doesnt intend to take this game too far, also because of the numerous ammount of pieces (~500) it would take a lot of time and effort to make different skins/themes (ex medieval, east asian, ect). You can find the creator on twitter, @OskSta, he responds to a lot of questions and ideas so feel free to reach out w further questions if you want
having somthing like putting yourself as a person in the town like u would in google maps would be cool
Age Of Empires II DE scenario editor is great for world and town building.
Edit:pressing ctrl+g a few times until they are yellow will remove the grid for buildings and units. Going to the "gaia" player and choosing "units" will allow you to access wild animals and gridless trees and other things in "other"
When your campaign setting is a marriage of steam punk and water world.
It's Simcity-ish but without the need for funds! Chuck in a few different skins and models from various time periods and I would happily buy this in early access.
Another similar game I've used before is "Islanders" and it's only $5 USD
This is cool but there needs to be a grassy plains option instead of ocean. Also it would be sweet if there was an option after you finish your city to go into first person and walk around from that scale to see what it would be like to actually be in the city
In its current state I don't think it would work well for making rpg cities using the program alone. However it is a great tool to get started before drawing a town/city map. I could also see this as a great tool to make sets. If you wanted to draw an alleyway, for example.
I dream of a game that lets you build your own maps and actually play a good rpg on them. Imagine the kind of community content you'd get in a game like that. Some people would make absolutely insanely good maps just because they enjoy making them, and enjoy people enjoying them lol. Maybe you could even form different player maps into one wider world. Maybe it could be a multiplayer game on the scale of Wow or something.... A man can dream :^)
i see why you would want the ability to make specific buildings like walls/barns etc but i think that kind of loses sight of the point of the game - the 'random' element isnt just a by product its kind of the point, i think its trying to stay away from being a super complex detailed city builder with dozens of types of buildings and so on. i agree it would be nice to have some more skins, but i would rather they stayed seperate and within each city there was only one kind. What id really like to see is the ability to walk around the city in a first person view - i also think itd be kinda fun to have a randomly generated base map with elements of grass/water/rock/shoreline that affects how you build and what structures look like, but still controlled by the ai, so structures built on grass/solid ground look slightly different to those on water, which might be a nice way of doing an alternative to whole seperate skins
Watching @ 8:50 and I started looking around my space trying to figure out what that notification was.
Hoping the dev adds in options like desert, planes, rock terrain around city. Then the city have options to be either a steam like, oriental, medieval or other known designs. Also add in trees, ponds/lakes, hills/mountains and more.
If somehow the dev doesn’t plan to hope at least the dev allows steam workshop so ppl can make those, add them in and ppl can download and use.
Other than some of the small details (mailboxes, rubber boots, electric lamps) it looks a lot like medieval Italian architecture, imho.
Greek buildings even have the bright colors (though, I don't know when that became a thing).
You beautiful man Nate, you dropped this video just at the right time. I'm just about to do Waterdeep dragon heist campaign and put it on world anvil.
Keep up the awesome work and you got yourself new sub. 👍😁
Thanks!
I really like the unusual grid pattern, but i wish it wasn't so pronounced, or at least there was a square crystal structure like in different carbon based materials, where there are clumps of square grids with random rotations, and the clumps of grid meet at lines and there, the ends of the squares are sliced off to fit maybe train rails, or just turn it into a wider street, because the current pattern introduces 5 point crossings, which i'm pretty sure never existed, no matter the complexity of the city layout, lmao.
The Grid system could have a vertical stretch feature to make hills or elevations.
Wow!! Inspired! Going to try Waterdeep from the Forgotten Realms now.
This game is awesome. It looks so fun, and relaxing.
This has so much potential for a “landscaped”
I've started using Civ VI's world builder for overworld maps.
You're AWESOME at this pal!