"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> With a little bit of fog thrown in-- smog, or city pollution.

This is a nice project, looking good. What happens if the fog is too dense to
see the ground? :)

You could also try to group buildings in blocks, alley-distance apart, with
blocks separated more widely. Maybe vary the height distribution using a
large-scale pigment to select the maxima - you tend to get clusters of tall
buildings in many cities.

[anecdote warning]

I spent quite a bit of time on something similar about a year or so ago, and
it's interesting to see how others approach the same problem differently. I was
making buildings from simple triangle-based boxes, to avoid the textures looking
obvious in close-ups. I then moved on to preparing a city 'plan' by intersecting
street lines to find polygonal blocks, then filling the blocks with buildings
placed very closely together. Both the blocks and the buildings were not
necessarily rectangular. The rooftop furniture was also an issue, and I too
spent a bit of time googling images of Manhattan :)

The block approach proved far too complex and slow for SDL macros, so I moved it
over into a small C++ project with a POV-Ray export to make it more
comprehensible and maintainable. Unfortunately, it's fallen by the wayside for
the time being (stupid real life), but I fully intend to go back to it at some
point!

Keep up the good work.
Bill

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