Vuntra City is a procedural VR city generator in Unreal Engine 5 developed by a single person over the last few years. I know, I know. Procedurally generated content has got some serious shortcomings. Too many games with procedural content are just thinly veiled programmer art designed to fill spaces rather than be part of the experience.

The author actually does a great job recognizing those traditional limitations and attempts to fix them. Probably the best observations they make is not from the technical side, but the aesthetics side.

It turns out they have made an excellent solution with just some good observations and shockingly simple engineering solutions. As an engineer, I see far, far too many projects over-complicate things that could be done much more simply. Simplicity is how you know you’re on the right track. Complexity leads to tears.

After 2 years of experimenting, they have a really interesting solution. Check out the VuntraCity youtube channel to see vidoes of how they experimented with different techniques and solutions. I particularly liked how they used a normal old treemap layout to break up boring city grid structures. Combining it with a caching and pooled allocation system is nothing new; but was a good little optimization.

Links:

• Reddit article