The various decisions/petitions that pop up can break the immersion by mentioning details that don't fit the city(petitions with signatures from >250% of the town population, traffic issues at the "4-way intersection in front of the feed store" when no such place exists, or the new building causing shadows when there's nothing around it). It would be great if more text was turned into templates that pull game data for accuracy, and if the simulation were able to feed definitive descriptions of the town layout into generative AI prompts to make the text talk about scenarios reflected in the game.
Thanks so much for your feedback! I originally started with a pretty diverse corpus of prewritten story arcs for diversity, and went back to retrofit them into the engine once I started customizing stories and details for the city. It looks like I missed a few spots, sorry about that!
And yes, I did sketch a version that is even more procedurally generated, but it’s taking longer to get right than I thought
I'm a huge fan of city builders and a politics nerd... I can't wait to try this. But I hope it really is procedural in the details too!
To the parent post: I have actually seen public interest groups bring petitions to a small city council with more signatures than there are residents of the city... but hopefully there's some countervailing force in this game too where local residents reject petitions that are driven by outside parties. In other words, not every signatory to a petition is a resident, and there's local resistance to regional causes. I guess this happens quite a bit more in the exurbs of major metropolitan areas.
Usually the local petitions for city matters are spread through WhatsApp groups of friends and family of everyone directly involved, so they usually get a lot of signatures from people outside the city (valid more or less for any size of city)
First, it's awesome the developer is giving this away for free. I love the tongue in cheek approach, and the polish and labour-of-love artifacts visible in portions of the UI and gameplay.
That said, after playing it for a while something just felt "off". I like the idea of being involved in individual proposals, but there are too many immersion-breaking dialogs that come up (some of which just seem too irrelevant). And the text in them is sometimes "off" in a fashion that feels like it was written by AI (though I'm not sure if it was). The news articles and such in SimCity felt more hand-curated, concise and clever - thus more entertaining.
>The various decisions/petitions that pop up can break the immersion by mentioning details that don't fit the city(petitions with signatures from >250% of the town population, traffic issues at the "4-way intersection in front of the feed store" when no such place exists, or the new building causing shadows when there's nothing around it).
This is how real life works when when your proposed development doesn't fit the vision some random unaccountable bureaucrats and/or institutions you have to go through have for the vibe of the community.
some of the things come up over and over and over... I've trained 5 people in being food service acapble for the volunteer fire pancake breakfast and they've all moved to the county seat. I'm just a jobs program I guess.
Kind of like this one[1] which made the rounds on HN a few weeks ago. Looks like the social commentary from them are similar: "Real life is worse than SimCity because of rules and the public getting a say." and/or "Why can't we in real life let the mayor use the Bulldozer Tool to just wipe out any property he doesn't like and put up whatever property he likes in its place?"
I remember in Transport Tycoon, under certain conditions, you were no longer allowed to bulldoze willy nilly. If you wanted to put in a new bus station and were out of favour with the populace, you could try the old fashioned way: with bribes (and tree planting).
I haven't tried the game, but this is slightly hilarious and awesome.
I've often wondered about this kind of thing. When I go to an airport, it seems strange to me that each one is different with some of them having elaborate train systems, or multiple runways.
The engineer in me says "surely there is an optimal solution, so why are they all so different?". Is there a simulator?
Sim City was a fantastic simulation from the stand point of a game, but I'm curious; if you build a city simulator and let it grow organically (game of life style) can you put in sufficient regulation/parameters that get you to where we are today?
And if so, is there a simulation that shows us a way to get us to a better tomorrow?
Every airport is different because every local geography, existing land use, and weather pattern is different.
Seattle has generally ether north or south winds depending on season, and the airport is located on the only buildable flat plateau for miles around, so has 3 runways all going the same direction, N/S.
Denver built an all-new airport way outside of town where there was unlimited buildable land. Their winds are highly variable even within one season, so they have 6 runways in a crossing configuration.
> The engineer in me says "surely there is an optimal solution, so why are they all so different?". Is there a simulator?
Optimistically, because each one has a different optimal solution given all the unique constraints for each airport project.
Also, airports aren't just built and then done. Often the cities around them will grow and the airports will need to expand and adapt to new constraints, sometimes many decades after they were first built.
The optimal airport has two parallel runways, 9,000 feet apart, that align with prevailing wind. If a location has variable strong winds, another set can be built at a 90° angle. It's possible to add more runways at 9,000 intervals, but you're usually better off building an airport somewhere else.
Most airports were built during or before WWII, so few are designed to most efficiently accommodate modern usage. Maybe in the future we can better handle closer runways in low visibility, but first we'll have to figure out how to have two computers communicate directly with each other, instead of having one computer generate routes that get read out load by a human, transmitted over an analog radio, listened to by another human, then typed into another computer.
> but first we'll have to figure out how to have two computers communicate directly with each other, instead of having one computer generate routes that get read out load by a human, transmitted over an analog radio, listened to by another human, then typed into another computer.
That just makes it computer -> person -> computer -> computer -> person -> computer
We need something where a control center computer that issues clearances can radio them directly into an aircraft's flight management computer. This wouldn't disallow ATC from reviewing the routes before transmitting them, or the flight crew from reviewing them before accepting them, but without people manually copying over the information, there's a lot less potential to insert errors in the first place.
The original EPCOT as imagined by Walt Disney was a master-planned city, with all the pleasant amenities and cleverest design you could imagine in the 1960's: Walkable areas, clean public transit, no traffic congestion, homes furnished with the latest in technology and appliances. It was his greatest ambition at the end of his life to make it a reality.
But it didn't happen. Namely, because of how much central control would be given to one man and/or his company to pull it off. The plan in its early iterations essentially meant that if you lived in EPCOT, you forfeited certain freedoms, such as what goes in your home, where you worked, and so on.
This game gave me a good chuckle as a Sim City fan. I'm guilty of complaining about politicians of all levels. But I don't envy their position of having to cut through the vines of competing motives and regulations. And at the same time, as a citizen, I'm not sure I would opt for the Utopian alternative.
I think the bigger reason the original "EPCOT as a city" didn't happen is that once Walt passed, everyone else in the company looked at the plan and knew it would be a bottomless money pit from day 1.
I think EPCOT could have been quite successful. The Villages, Florida was centrally planned and designed by many Disney architects (among others) and it is hugely successful and profitable.
Walt's brother, Roy (who remained after Walt's passing), was not the same visionary that Walt was. Simple as that. Most people would never have taken the risks Walt did with the company. Even the idea of a theme park that has tens of thousands of employees and requires millions of people to fly in from all over the world to be profitable sustainably, was quite a bold idea in the 1950s.
I regret that Walt passed too young. Florida would probably be covered in a large monorail network had he lived a couple more decades. And Epcot as a city would have been a tourist destination in its own right, and might have influenced urban development elsewhere.
Well, sure, but The Villages doesn't have all vehicles restricted to an underground roadway supply system grid built out under an entire city, pedestrian PeopleMovers for an entire city, a downtown completely enclosed in a climate-controlled dome, the legal issues that come with changing peoples' furnishings out from under them or trying to evict anyone unemployed, etc etc. There's a huge difference between 'planned community' and the kind of absurd stuff that Walt wanted to build that would all need to work perfectly before anyone could even move in for the first time.
The residents in EPCOT would have been renters, so the ideas of evicting for nonpayment, or the landlord doing remodeling and upgrades, seem pretty banal.
Separating vehicle form foot traffic is a strong feature of modern urbanism and even the buried road network doesn't seem prohibitive, if done on greenfield. But it is a rigid concept, that would expose you to immense costs down the line, as the city grows and tries to adapt to changing reality.
There are fully planned and built cities, like around here so called "Garden Cities": Welwyn Garden City, Milton Keynes.
I've been in several and they actually feel okay to live in, to run errands, to shop.
It only sounds funny if it's cranked up to the extreme -- like abusive housing associations, a cancer growing on the corpse of the old communities which just wanted some quiet evenings and the bins to not be overflowing, but it can be done well.
The garden cities were merely planned in layout and after that have "normal" levels of planning control. It does make them a bit different but not in uncomfortable ways. Sometimes called "soulless", which really just means "new" - lack of feeling the connection to previous generations through heritage.
It sounds essentially like 1984. Not that the world needed him for that though because with the most recent Samsung TV scandal about microphone and camera spying on users it seems also that fiction became reality to a certain extent.
I wouldn’t mind a complete recording of my life at all times, provided I get to determine who has access to what. Would end a lot of I never said that arguments in my house.
I would actually love a Sim City designed for realistic economic experimentation. A population of 1000’s of professions all acting self-interestedly with their various characteristics, motives, social and economic arrangements.
With a proper SimCity interface and the full complement of fun natural disasters of course!
goda90 4 days ago
pcai 4 days ago
And yes, I did sketch a version that is even more procedurally generated, but it’s taking longer to get right than I thought
noduerme 3 days ago
To the parent post: I have actually seen public interest groups bring petitions to a small city council with more signatures than there are residents of the city... but hopefully there's some countervailing force in this game too where local residents reject petitions that are driven by outside parties. In other words, not every signatory to a petition is a resident, and there's local resistance to regional causes. I guess this happens quite a bit more in the exurbs of major metropolitan areas.
darkwater 3 days ago
rkagerer 3 days ago
That said, after playing it for a while something just felt "off". I like the idea of being involved in individual proposals, but there are too many immersion-breaking dialogs that come up (some of which just seem too irrelevant). And the text in them is sometimes "off" in a fashion that feels like it was written by AI (though I'm not sure if it was). The news articles and such in SimCity felt more hand-curated, concise and clever - thus more entertaining.
cucumber3732842 3 days ago
This is how real life works when when your proposed development doesn't fit the vision some random unaccountable bureaucrats and/or institutions you have to go through have for the vibe of the community.
grogenaut 4 days ago
noduerme 3 days ago
ryandrake 4 days ago
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50036864
joshvm 4 days ago
caspar 2 days ago
blobbers 4 days ago
I've often wondered about this kind of thing. When I go to an airport, it seems strange to me that each one is different with some of them having elaborate train systems, or multiple runways.
The engineer in me says "surely there is an optimal solution, so why are they all so different?". Is there a simulator?
Sim City was a fantastic simulation from the stand point of a game, but I'm curious; if you build a city simulator and let it grow organically (game of life style) can you put in sufficient regulation/parameters that get you to where we are today?
And if so, is there a simulation that shows us a way to get us to a better tomorrow?
buildsjets 4 days ago
Seattle has generally ether north or south winds depending on season, and the airport is located on the only buildable flat plateau for miles around, so has 3 runways all going the same direction, N/S.
https://wrcc-archive.dri.edu/cgi-bin/wea_windroseclim.pl?laK...
Denver built an all-new airport way outside of town where there was unlimited buildable land. Their winds are highly variable even within one season, so they have 6 runways in a crossing configuration.
https://wrcc-archive.dri.edu/cgi-bin/wea_windroseclim.pl?laK...
bagacrap 4 days ago
nkrisc 4 days ago
Optimistically, because each one has a different optimal solution given all the unique constraints for each airport project.
Also, airports aren't just built and then done. Often the cities around them will grow and the airports will need to expand and adapt to new constraints, sometimes many decades after they were first built.
dlcarrier 4 days ago
Most airports were built during or before WWII, so few are designed to most efficiently accommodate modern usage. Maybe in the future we can better handle closer runways in low visibility, but first we'll have to figure out how to have two computers communicate directly with each other, instead of having one computer generate routes that get read out load by a human, transmitted over an analog radio, listened to by another human, then typed into another computer.
cjrp 3 days ago
Tada! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller%E2%80%93pilot_data_...
dlcarrier 3 days ago
We need something where a control center computer that issues clearances can radio them directly into an aircraft's flight management computer. This wouldn't disallow ATC from reviewing the routes before transmitting them, or the flight crew from reviewing them before accepting them, but without people manually copying over the information, there's a lot less potential to insert errors in the first place.
goodcanadian 3 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...
dlcarrier 3 days ago
zabriel_goss 4 days ago
But it didn't happen. Namely, because of how much central control would be given to one man and/or his company to pull it off. The plan in its early iterations essentially meant that if you lived in EPCOT, you forfeited certain freedoms, such as what goes in your home, where you worked, and so on.
This game gave me a good chuckle as a Sim City fan. I'm guilty of complaining about politicians of all levels. But I don't envy their position of having to cut through the vines of competing motives and regulations. And at the same time, as a citizen, I'm not sure I would opt for the Utopian alternative.
turbocon 4 days ago
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration,_Florida
mock-possum 3 days ago
https://youtu.be/fiChvSOABxI?is=Yt3nPcQI9e2NWr5j
crooked-v 4 days ago
chrisco255 4 days ago
Walt's brother, Roy (who remained after Walt's passing), was not the same visionary that Walt was. Simple as that. Most people would never have taken the risks Walt did with the company. Even the idea of a theme park that has tens of thousands of employees and requires millions of people to fly in from all over the world to be profitable sustainably, was quite a bold idea in the 1950s.
I regret that Walt passed too young. Florida would probably be covered in a large monorail network had he lived a couple more decades. And Epcot as a city would have been a tourist destination in its own right, and might have influenced urban development elsewhere.
crooked-v 4 days ago
cornholio 3 days ago
Separating vehicle form foot traffic is a strong feature of modern urbanism and even the buried road network doesn't seem prohibitive, if done on greenfield. But it is a rigid concept, that would expose you to immense costs down the line, as the city grows and tries to adapt to changing reality.
pbhjpbhj 4 days ago
subscribed 4 days ago
I've been in several and they actually feel okay to live in, to run errands, to shop.
It only sounds funny if it's cranked up to the extreme -- like abusive housing associations, a cancer growing on the corpse of the old communities which just wanted some quiet evenings and the bins to not be overflowing, but it can be done well.
pjc50 3 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury is the King's pet village which is more dirigiste.
dgently7 4 days ago
I'm pretty sure the point of the game was to make a statement and make people think/talk and boy-howdy op you did a great job.
huijzer 4 days ago
wombatpm 4 days ago
jcft2 3 days ago
namuol 4 days ago
yuppiepuppie 3 days ago
aidriftline 3 days ago
Nevermark 4 days ago
With a proper SimCity interface and the full complement of fun natural disasters of course!
bombcar 4 days ago
I've heard the soviet one is closer to what you're looking for - https://www.sovietrepublic.net