The trailer below provides an insight into the game:

MMORPG’s require large amounts of virtual land to both accommodate the number of players and to create a varied environment – as such they lend themselves to mapping. Games have long been mapped to provide a path through the various environments, often to be printed as part of ‘walkthrough’s’ in magazines (see our post on Ant Attack for the ZX Spectrum). With Web 2.0 it is becoming increasingly easy to provide maps of games as if they were real world locations.

As such Lord of the Rings Online has been mapped using the Google Maps API. The overview map is pictured at the top of the post, of interest are both the geographic features of the game and the level of functionality of the mapping interface. The inclusion of layers and levels of selection approaches a MMOPRG Geographic Information System – an interesting development in the mapping of games.

Take a look at the Lord of the Rings Mapping Tool.

More information on the game can be found on the developers site.

Mapping Games looks like becoming a regular series of posts in a similar vein to our Cities in Games Thread.

The post Mapping Games – Lord of the Rings Online appeared first on Digital Urban.

Final Fantasy developed as a role playing game in 1987 by Square Co., Ltd. for the Nintendo Entertainment System. To date there are 28 games in the series and it has become one of the most renowned role playing games on both console and PC.

In 2005 ‘Advent Children’ was released a CGI film directed by Tetsuya Nomura, based on Final Fantasy VII, released in 1997. The CGI is unique in its style and in some way links in with our Steampunk post on architectural visualisation. Central to the film and the Final Fantasy series is the city of Midgar as the fan created movie below illustrates:

Set to the soundtrack ‘Big City Life’ by Mattafixthe movie provides a good illustration of the high production quality and the architectural style of the city.

Thanks go to Atomek for suggesting looking up Midgar…

The post Cities in Games – Midgar Final Fantasy appeared first on Digital Urban.

Final Fantasy developed as a role playing game in 1987 by Square Co., Ltd. for the Nintendo Entertainment System. To date there are 28 games in the series and it has become one of the most renowned role playing games on both console and PC.

In 2005 ‘Advent Children’ was released a CGI film directed by Tetsuya Nomura, based on Final Fantasy VII, released in 1997. The CGI is unique in its style and in some way links in with our Steampunk post on architectural visualisation. Central to the film and the Final Fantasy series is the city of Midgar as the fan created movie below illustrates:

Set to the soundtrack ‘Big City Life’ by Mattafixthe movie provides a good illustration of the high production quality and the architectural style of the city.

Thanks go to Atomek for suggesting looking up Midgar…

The post Cities in Games – Midgar Final Fantasy appeared first on Digital Urban.

The ‘Blob’ is a downloadlable game integrated into the website of the City of Utrecht detailing planned changes to the station area. The game itself involves a ‘Blob’ rolling around the city painting the buildings of Utrecht and avoiding capture by the authorities.

Our movie below provides an insight into the game:

While not directly linked to the planned changes in the area the game is simply a joy to play and provides an excellent use of a real city layout. If your creating a 3D model of an area than converting it into a game such a ‘Blob’ is something to be encouraged.

You can download the game direct from the Station Area of Utecht site.

Thanks go to Michael of metromapper.org for sending us the link.

The post Cities in Games – Utrecht’s ‘Blob’ Downloadable Game appeared first on Digital Urban.

The ‘Blob’ is a downloadlable game integrated into the website of the City of Utrecht detailing planned changes to the station area. The game itself involves a ‘Blob’ rolling around the city painting the buildings of Utrecht and avoiding capture by the authorities.

Our movie below provides an insight into the game:

While not directly linked to the planned changes in the area the game is simply a joy to play and provides an excellent use of a real city layout. If your creating a 3D model of an area than converting it into a game such a ‘Blob’ is something to be encouraged.

You can download the game direct from the Station Area of Utecht site.

Thanks go to Michael of metromapper.org for sending us the link.

The post Cities in Games – Utrecht’s ‘Blob’ Downloadable Game appeared first on Digital Urban.

In terms of city visualisation the genre is suited to high rises and long draw distances. As UK GameSpot note in their review of the game – The city isn’t gigantic, but there’s enough familiar scenery around to make you want to explore, and that the city looks excellent is a big plus. Buildings are nicely detailed, the streets are jam-packed with cars and pedestrians, and the game uses some nice lighting effects to give the sky, as well as reflections of the sun off buildings, a rather pretty glow.

The three YouTube movies below provide an overview of the cityscape – from the game trailer to a run down of the city map and finally general gameplay.

Spiderman 3 Trailer

The City Map

Game Play

As ever with such games we, maybe uniquely, don’t focus too much on gameplay but on shear visualisation and the ability to explore the urban realm. As such Spiderman 3 is a game that should be on display in any architecture office if only to simply open peoples minds up to what can be achieved with game engines.

See our Oblivion posts, Game Engines and Cities in Games for more thoughts..

You can buy Spiderman 3 for the Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii from our Amazon Store.

The post Cities in Games – Spiderman 3 – New York appeared first on Digital Urban.

Many blogs will find themselves in the same position and there are a numerous articles online on how to increase traffic and therefore readership. Social networking sites are pointed at by a number of commentators as the way to increase traffic. Digg is one such example which the Wiki defines as

“a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control”

We have recently taken the plunge and added a ‘Digg It’ button along with various other social bookmarking sites after each post. The button is slightly intrusive but allows Digg users to easily click and recommend the post. However, not all posts are world news worthy or cutting edge, so a number of posts may have ‘0 Diggs’ which looks bad on the front page so maybe Digg buttons are only relevant to larger sites with more traffic?

So the question is to Digg or not to Digg on a blog? We are going to give it a go, after all we have faith that posts such as our series of Tutorials or our Cities in Games section etc are noteworthy or else we wouldn’t be running the blog.

We will be running a series of thoughts and ideas on blogging, from a blog that was rated one of PC Pro Magazines Top 5 Web 2.0 blogs the series will cover our thoughts about blogging and stats – don’t believe all the hype from other sites…

The question is will anyone Digg this post or do you self start and Digg It yourself – now that is a question..

The post To Digg or not to Digg appeared first on Digital Urban.

Ant Attack predates the innovational Knight Lore, created by Ultimate Play the Game, by over a year making the use of such visualisation techniques noteworthy. Indeed ‘Crash’ magazine, in a review of Ant Attack, described it as ‘containing the most breathtaking 3D graphics yet seen on the Spectrum’.

The prefix of the game was simple – to find and save your boy/girlfriend who was lost in a city patrolled by giant ants. The movie below illustrates the game, firstly we find our girlfriend and then before saving her we take a look around the city:

In the days of the ZX spectrum it wasn’t possible to gain an overview of the city but a series of landmark structures often provided a guide to its layout and relative location. Today it is of course possible to view the city in its entirety as the image below demonstrates:

In a future post of the Cities in Games series we will take a look further look into the ZX Spectrum and games such as Knightlore, Fairlight and Gunfright.

You can play the Ant Attack online via a The Spectrum Java Emulator, and to find out more take a look at Sandy Whites page.

The post Cities in Games – Ant Attack appeared first on Digital Urban.

Ant Attack predates the innovational Knight Lore, created by Ultimate Play the Game, by over a year making the use of such visualisation techniques noteworthy. Indeed ‘Crash’ magazine, in a review of Ant Attack, described it as ‘containing the most breathtaking 3D graphics yet seen on the Spectrum’.

The prefix of the game was simple – to find and save your boy/girlfriend who was lost in a city patrolled by giant ants. The movie below illustrates the game, firstly we find our girlfriend and then before saving her we take a look around the city:

In the days of the ZX spectrum it wasn’t possible to gain an overview of the city but a series of landmark structures often provided a guide to its layout and relative location. Today it is of course possible to view the city in its entirety as the image below demonstrates:

In a future post of the Cities in Games series we will take a look further look into the ZX Spectrum and games such as Knightlore, Fairlight and Gunfright.

You can play the Ant Attack online via a The Spectrum Java Emulator, and to find out more take a look at Sandy Whites page.

The post Cities in Games – Ant Attack appeared first on Digital Urban.

The majority of real cities in games are based around street car racing and as such it is difficult to appreciate the modelling behind the simulation. In a bus based game the pace is slower so it is easier to view how the city was constructed.

If they were to make a London version they would have to include a ‘hoodie’ with his/her mobile phone on ‘speaker’ mode playing ‘Urbanz Diss’ on the 168 to Camden Town.

The post Cities in Games – Tokyo Bus Simulation appeared first on Digital Urban.