July 2010:
In order to test a lot of cool programming things like atmospheric scattering, terrain, lighting and shadows and so on, a test environment was needed. It existed of some walls, a cilinder, a box and something called 'The Teapot Construction'. This didn't really represent The Wizards. So in order to do so, the decision was made to start of with a city, the first city in The Wizards.

To ensure that The Wizards-feeling is transported into everyone who looks at The City, it has some requirements:

• Location: near the ocean
• Look: 'dreamy'-medieval
• Style: clean to start with. Detail will be added with 'decals'.
• Easy to handle. This includes that it shouldn't take too much time to create, expand or enhance it with things like collision detection bounding boxes.
• Every building should be accessible by the player.

The buildings are created in one file, called 'The Yard'. The advantage of this is that whenever a new 'module' is created, it can be copied several times without having to merge between different files. A disadvantage is that this file will become too big to manage easily. To solve this problem, old buildings are deleted from the file, so only the newest buildings remain. Besides these, The Yard contains a copy of every interesting 'module' that can be re-used in other buildings, for example a balcony, a window with flowerbed, …

Every building is saved apart in two different files:

• A file which contains a fully editable version of the model.
• A file in which the building is attached into a single object.

This second file is necessary to create the scene which contains the full city. This scene contains mostly xref-objects. This way of working provides an efficient RAM-usage when working on The City.

The City itself consists of about 20 different buildings, wich are mirrored, rotated an slightly edited so that no-one notices the fact that most of them are copies.
Besides the buildings, The City contains some barrels and crates to give a little more detailed feeling without putting too much effort in it. At the moment, it also contains some basic (very bad, handmade) terrain. In time, this will be replaced by the terrain created in 'The Wizards Editor', but for testing purposes, it comes in very handy.

In this section, an overview will be made from the first building that was created until today!

The Blacksmith's house provides -as you probably can derive from it's name- housing to the blacksmith. Basically, it's a normal house with some sort of shed besides it, which is the blacksmith's workshop. The building contains three levels that are all accesible by the player. This house sets the style for the whole city. It's inspired by some of the buildings that appear in the BBC serie 'Merlin'.

In the beginning, my goal was to rapidly create a lot of buildings in a short amount of time. To do so, this houseRow was created. It's based on the Blacksmith's house, with just some changes in window and bearing configuration. Unfortunately, the buildings aren't accesible because of poor measurements made by the architect which results into decapitation onto entering the building. This building will probably be a placeholder until a better version of it is created.

The Bakery is one of my personal favorites. It's a small building which consists of two floors. The groundfloor contains the actual shop. A nice detail is the oven which can be seen from this floor. The upper floor is for storaging purposes. It has a pully to transport bunches of grain and other stuff. On the outside, there's a working table and the oven's entrance.

This moderatly large building forms the headquarters of the local guild. It also provides shelter to guild members and guests. Inside, there's a large hallway connecting all the floors. The top floor will be containing the bedrooms, other floors will be stuffed with a dining room, some desks, a little library perhaps? Also to be added are some huge flags at the facade with the guild's logo.

The Tavern, a place of drinking, singing and house of many travellers.
The Tavern is a building which introduces a lot of new building modules: for example little towers, large windows and tablets with flowerbeds! The top floor has some bedrooms and an entrance to an outdoors walkway, which might be nice for sightseeing purposes. In The City, the tavern is located at the market place.

Things won't go well when you're in the tavern's buisness, but no beer is invented yet!
So here it is: the superduper-oneandonly-specialoffer-limitidedition-allhandmade Barrel!

For citizens who fancy bricks rather than clay, the stone house provides an excellent housing. It consists of two floors (who are currently inaccesible because of the lack of stairs) and has a chimney which comes in handy in winter. The texture might be replaced one day, because it contains already lighting information. Special about this house is the roof: it's flat on one side and curved on the other and has some roof-windows, which provide an amazingly unexpected capability of copying the building without this being too noticeable.

What good it is having a market without stalls? It isn't! So this basic market stall was created. Different versions of it have different goods for sale. Little crates and tables make sure the goods can be properly showed to customers.

Well, it's time to combine these buildings into an actual city! Here are some renders of the initial city-configuration.
Some details are added:

• The Blacksmith's house now has a ladder against it
• A basic fountain was added
• Some stairs are build which will lead to a lower area of the city

This house is based on the stone house, with the major difference that it's walls aren't made of… stone. A new building module was added: some sort of outstanding window, which i think i'll use more often in future buildings.

The Merchants house consists of a living area, where a dining room, living room and bedrooms are to be located, and a store-area. The store is build into the facade and consists of a large table to expose the merchandise. It's inspired by the garmentmaker-stores of assassins creed II.

Not to mix up with a storage house, the house with storage facilities provides a place to the merchants to store their crates and stuff. The lower floor is open. Besides it a staircase leads to he top two floors, where the normal housing facilities are located.

With so many merchant facilities and goods, transportation equipment is needed! The cart will just do the job. It can transport all sorts of crates, barrels, heaps and the like. Just be carefull with the wheels, they may come off!

Guarding a town isn't an easy job. These towers provide a nice overview of the city and more important, they're awsome for letting stuff tumble down stairs!

The training grounds provide facilities to improve you're fighting techniques and practicing combat. Inside, there will be some storage for various weapons. In front of the building, there's a sandbox and some dummies to fight against in all safety. If you look for some training, you want to check this place out!

This house is a bit akward…
Try taking a normal house, turn it 45 degrees and then put the entrance in it. The house consists of two floors wich will probably be equipped with simmering, bubbling experimental stuff!

TODO: add documentation on the storage house, Barracks, Walls

Time for some more city-building! All new buildings are added and also the docks are new. Walls now surround the city. This is starting to go somewhere!

Currently working on: The Port Entrance

Funny small things to add when i'm bored:

• Pile of Books
• Rubbish
• Bucket

Big TODO's:

• Library
• Roads
• Interiors
• Castle
• Church
• Port

Stuff to add to existing buildings:

• Tavern: add a door so you can actually enter the balcony on the second floor
• Towers: add more detail
• Add stairs to all buildings