todd

Grand Cell Auto: Timelapse

Here's a time sequence of the corner of 4th and 8th, over the period of about twenty seconds...

The street signs are staying, I agree with a lot of you who say it helps establish the setting. The textures are gone. I'd need scores of textures to accomplish what the flat silhouettes are already doing: implying further variation within the buildings...the lack of detail paradoxically allows your eye to imply more of it.

I eventually want to pursue the challenge of generating building appearance and style, but that won't be for this project.

Another addition that may not be communicated in these screenshots is the addition of sound...I'm working toward having it populate the space as much as these mercurial towers.

Grand Cell Auto: Sprawl City

Screenshot, although a lot of what I've worked on is getting the growth and decay to transition smoothly. You kinda have to see it in motion to get the full effect:

I also worked on adding features like texture mapping, different basic models, 3D text, even able to do transparency. And now, seeing a lot of these things in action, I may not stick with them (for instance, I certainly won't use the texture in this screenshot, and I may stick with the foggy silhouettes). The street signs as well are going to get a lot of work, or possibly be dropped as well.

On the other hand, the cellular behavior seems to be working out well. One variant I have has a few cells start alive at the center (or corners), and you gradually find yourself being boxed in by ever-growing, labryinth-like skyscrapers. A lot of stable cellular automata have a "wake" of cells that precedes the more permanent fixtures, so you can see the sprawl coming at you like a tidal wave...

Still a lot of work to be done, but I've a lot of the infrastructure (in many senses of the word) in place. Sound is the next necessity.

Grand Cell Auto...mata

No, I'm not an early riser.

I spent more time yelling, cussing and shaking my fist at Processing (the java-esque based library, not the abstract action)than I did porting the algorithms over to the OpenGL interface in C++:

In other words, Processing fulfilled its role admirably!

I managed to code, check, and toy with a number of Cellular Automata (CA) variants in processing before porting the code over to C++. If I had tried doing the algorithms directly in C++ right off the bat, I think I would have gone insane.

I'm sure that I'll have plenty of time to yell at malfunctioning C code later, but for the moment Processing saved me several hours (if not days). Many thanks to Casey and his fellow Processing advocates!

After trying to get Conway's game of life running for a few hours, a five minute check on google got me the basic code (twice as efficient as I had been doing it, I might add. I decked the source code out a little bit, I'll post my additions if there's interest). Referring to Mirek's Cellebration, which has a great amount of info on cellular automata (plus a CA program that puts mine to same dozens of times over) I found 1. a great method of codifying a number of CA families and 2. examples of said variants. The site is dangerous, you can spend hours there...thankfully it's directly related to my research.

So, now instead of a simple heightmap, you now have a basic, tweakable CA algorithm determining where the "buildings" lie. This is one of the more stable configurations:

I'm also trying out a moodier atmosphere, hence the fog and silhouette'd structures. Textures? They're on the list, after models and further generation algorithms.

This particular configuration is a "maze" CA...it's pretty stable once it's grown into place. Conway's classic "Life" (2-3 adjacent cells to survive, 3 adjacent to grow) makes an odd setting...it can be very dynamic or very stable...it often switches back and forth several times. You usually end up with something that looks like a very open University or Hospital ground.

I've added the streets in after the fact (regular grid), as vantage points to wander around in, looking at the cellular blocks. I still plan on giving them names.

So what am I going to do with this? I'll talk to people about my plans this afternoon, but I am thinking of a dual (duel?) setting, where two people have the ability to place buildings/cells within a space.

I might also add that I am looking at more complex CA and CA-like procedures. I'm planning to continue testing the intricacies of this chaotic behavior in Processing, trying out things like dependencies, different types of "Cells", even "ecosystems" that are fairly independent of each other, only merging in the final stages of environmental generation.

Hitting the Links

I'm just transferring the links I've been trawling through for the past two days (with categories) over the to blog for e-z transfer. Electrons are a lot lighter than my laptop:

Emergent Behavior (Cellular Automata, Neural Nets, etc.)
*indicates close architectural link as well

Sourceforge Neural Net stuff:
http://nnetlib.sourceforge.net/

Intro to Neural Nets
http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~lss/NNIntro/InvSlides.html

Googled info on Neural Networks
http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~lss/NNIntro/InvSlides.html#what

Stewart Dean's Guide to ALife
http://www.webslave.dircon.co.uk/alife/emergence.html

-Big problem googling "neural network architecture"

CelLab
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/
-Potential tool, but I'm looking more at how they organized a CA-type library

Another Person's Bookmarks
http://www.rpi.edu/~brings/ca.bkmrks.html

Ariel Dolan's Playground
http://www.aridolan.com/
Some interesting demonstrations (TSP, Knapsack, etc.)

mirek's cellebration
http://www.mirwoj.opus.chelm.pl/ca/index.html
Good stuff...check out the lexicon...and the applet...spent waaay too much time here

another promising links page
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/unamay/trellix/ed-mar20/id5_m.htm

Emergent Arch and Perl
http://www.openpolitics.com/ref/000485.html

Simulation meta-architecure for analysing the emergent behavior of agents
http://www.complexity.org.au/ci/draft/draft/schaef01/schaef01s.pdf
-were I a search engine, every alarm in my system would have gone off after reading that title (it got over half of the buzzwords on my radar...)

*army of clerks
www.armyofclerks.net

*Second Skin
http://www.lutyens.net/secondskin.htm
-From what I understand, this is stream-of-conciousness architecture. In other words, my topic's next door neighbor.

*more on second skin:
http://asci.org/artsci2002/artworks/Saturday/second-skin.htm

Chris Pound's Name Generation Page:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/
-more template-like, but hey, I'll probably be using a lot of that, too. Good links as well

Name Generation & Grammar, as well..
...http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2016.asp

Steven Johnson: Emergence (book on ants and cities)

--And just for kicks, an empire of ants:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1932509.stm

AI Wisdom- A book.
http://www.aiwisdom.com/

Tron behavior:
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~pablo/thesis/html/node108.html

Architecture

On Berkeley and Paths
http://www.peterme.com/archives/000073.html
myth(?) that UC Irvine let the "cow paths" determine the sidewalks. Even if it's not true, it's still a damn good idea.

Archinect
www.archinect.com

Anna Hesketh Continuity in Arch
http://www.msa.mmu.ac.uk/ciastudent/annah/

The Architecture of Artificial-Gravity Environments for Long-Duration Space Habitation
http://www0.arch.cuhk.edu.hk/~hall/ag/Dissertation/FrontMatter.htm

Emergent Architecture
http://www.emergentarchitecture.com/

Architecture .com
http://architecture.com
Duh. Although right now I'm listing it becuase it led me to...

Great Buildings
http://www.greatbuildings.com/
Which is cool enough, but this in turn lead me to...

http://www.greatbuildings.com/types/models/spatial_models.html
Or: 3D spatial models of buildings. Translation: Candy store.

Architectural History One-o-2.
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/dic/colls/arh102/
Some good pics for reference.

Death by Architecture link list:
http://www.deathbyarch.com/html/general.html

SPIRO Berkeley Architectural Library Search
http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/query_forms/browse_spiro_form.html

Games And "Generators"

D&D Dungeon Generator
http://www.aarg.net/~minam/dungeon.cgi
-D&D is standardized to do this, yet open enough to break it when it wants.

maze generation
http://www.pmms.cam.ac.uk/~gjm11/programs/maze/index.html
http://www.aarg.net/~minam/dungeon_design.html
http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth.htm
http://www.mazeworks.com/mazegen/mazetut/
-That last one has about everything you wanted to know about mazes, plus Daedalus, a mongo maze generation program

Roguelike Games
http://www.hut.fi/~eye/roguelike/
http://www.adom.de/misc/qhack.php3
http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/roguelk.htm

Fractal & Random Terrian
http://www.gameprogrammer.com/fractal.html#heightmaps
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/6902/terrain.html

Interesting Thread on terrain generation
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=183493

Another neat thread...
http://intheoryforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=185

and another
http://archives.seul.org/linuxgames/Jan-2001/msg00032.html

Mantigua.-Randomized Board
http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Software/514710/Mantigua.html

Prior Art Database
http://www.priorartdatabase.com/IPCOM/000016302/
-Frickin' tease.

Guy Lecky-Thompson: Infinite Game Universe
http://www.charlesriver.com/titles/infinitegames.html
Could be a good read...

Generators
http://www.maxpc.co.uk/features/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=9552&subsectionid=736&subsubsectionid=607

Game Theory (or: what I mainly got after googling "emergent games"):

Emergent Conventions In Evolutionary Games
http://erl.tamu.edu/JVH_gtee/cc2.htm

Adaptive Learning and Emergent Coordination in Minority Games
http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/BibEc/data/Papers/scescecf120.html

Random Games & Equilibia
http://www.ne.su.se/paper/wp99_16.pdf

EDIT:

I can't believe I forgot about this site:

Roger Dean
http://www.rogerdean.com/

I suppose this would technically fall under "Architecture", although his artwork has influenced video games more than a lot of people (notable exception Douglas Coupland) care to admit.

Whew...my bookmarks aren't liking this...

Been finding some magic phrases google likes...you can imagine "neural net architecture" isn't quite what I'm looking for (although I found some useful things) and "emergent architecture" is often a bit of a misnomer (although that phrase got some good stuff).

Compiling all this will take a bit, and I don't want to post too much before meeting tomorrow.

However, a few interesting things that warrant linking right now:

mirek's cellebration
Very nice site on Cellular Automata...with a good applet and source.

Second Skin
From what I can determine, this is basically stream-of-consciousness architecture.

I'm actually poking around for source code as well...even basic node management (which is both the bane and common reason for computers and computer scientists alike). I'll have an (obviously incomplete) list by next class.

That is, if I can stop playing with the cellular automata applet...

Final Plan Presentation

Here's the text, in DOC format:

Thesis Proposal Draft

And a few melodramatic pics:

Separated at Birth?:

Reusable Elements:

And, finally, I think a computer could get the hang of this. And then experiment on its own...

Also, go ahead and check out the post below for a few more pics.

City of Sprawling, USA

To Naimark: This is what I'm working on at the moment, but it dovetails into the proposal.

To Hoberman: This is the Tuesday thing.

Yeah, basically laid down the system for the citywide cells. Just between you and me, this is basically a glorified (and in a sense de-resolutioned) Digital Elevation Modeler. However, soon there will be models where once there was merely height. I basically generated a bitmap in proce55ing (where I'm doing most of the acutal generative stuff), with streets and buildings:

Then read that into openGL:

In the meantime, for reasons I'll leave to outside speculation, here are two articles. From The Onion, no less:

New Strip Mall of America Stretches Over 1/6th of North Dakota

Stoner Architect Drafts All-Foyer Mansion