Procedural city generation using cellular automata

Abstract

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) algorithms are a common solution to create automatic and dynamic content for games and entertainment industry. To procedurally generate a city, its components should be handled with algorithms that are tailored to their individual characteristics. We propose a set of methods for the generation of the city layout, and work on that layout to generate and place the 3D buildings. The layout generation use cellular automata to create organic looking clusters, and the rules are repeated for each cluster to hierarchically create different levels of the city. This approach provides fractal properties which results in an organic city layout. The results are very promising; cities can be generated within seconds, and the generation can be controlled with only a few parameters. © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2020. All rights reserved.