Date of Award

4-25-2005

Document Type

Thesis open access

Department

Computer Science

Abstract

The procedures and algorithms used to create a realistic city in a virtual world are outlined in this paper. The world is algorithmically created from a single random number. The terrain, water, and population of various races are created in real time as a viewer walks around the world. The world is created in various levels of detail; objects that are close to the viewer are fully generated in high detail, and objects further away from the viewer are not created. The locations of the cities are first based on the pre-existing world then on the set of tolerances of the races. To create an accurate representation of cities, they are built up from starting blocks. Starting blocks are small portions of the population places within the bounds of the city and are used seed the Cellular Automata. The Cellular Automata then computes the new population and zone for each city block based on the surrounding blocks using three different levels of rules. With this approach cities build up to reflect the development of real cities, by small collections of people settling around attractive areas of land and grouping together with other settlements.

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