A first look at the town

Until now the simulation has had a web dashboard and flat maps. This is the first time it has a 3D look: the style we’re aiming for, tested before any real art exists. Every building, tree and person here is a simple shape. The point is to settle light and colour first, since that’s most of what makes this style work.

The look is “clean miniature”: flat-shaded shapes, warm terracotta and cream, a low afternoon sun with long soft shadows, and a tilt-shift blur at the top and bottom of the screen, so the town reads like a model on a table.

The town

A river town seen from above: a stone bridge, an old core round a market square, red and orange roofs, woods and suburbs

The whole town from the default camera: the old core on a bend of the river, a stone bridge, suburbs along the roads, an industrial yard on the right, woods all round.

The old core: houses packed round a round market square with a church at the top

The old core. Houses crowd round the market square and the church faces it. Look for window boxes, chimneys and people on the square.

Street level

The market square up close: striped market stalls, a fountain, café umbrellas, benches and dozens of people

Closer in, more detail switches on: market stalls with striped awnings, a fountain, café umbrellas, benches, lamps and grass tufts. The people move about the square and the cars drive their roads.

Beyond the town

The world now has more than one landscape: mountains, a coast and a desert, around the same town.

Mountains with conifer forests giving way to bare rock and snow

Mountains in the north-west: conifer woods up to a treeline, then dry pasture, rock and snow.

A sandy coast with palm trees and two small islands in teal water

The coast where the river meets the sea: beaches, palms and two small islands. The water darkens with depth and turns pale at the shore.

A sandy desert plateau scattered with cacti and stones

A small desert plateau with cacti, scrub and pebbles.

The whole map from high above, sitting in open sea

The whole map from high up. It sits in open sea, like a diorama.

Testing the ground

Before the town, the ground and water got a test of their own: rock forming on steep slopes, snow on the peak, and faceted grass.

A test hill: a grey rocky peak rising from faceted green grass

A test beach: sand sloping into shallow teal water

The first ground and water tests, on a made-up patch of land.

Tuning the light live

Every light, colour and density can now be tuned while the game runs: change a value, and the scene picks it up within half a second.

The market square under a cool blue light instead of the warm afternoon sun

The same square with the sun’s colour switched to cool blue, mid-run, to test it.

What’s next

Tuning by eye: the light, the greens, the roofs.
Rocky riverbanks, crooked old-town streets, bikes and café chairs.
Drawing the simulation’s real town in place of this generated one, so what you see is the city that’s actually being simulated.

Everything here is placeholder geometry. Real buildings will be generated to fit each plot, and trees and props will come from a shared art kit.