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This is one comprehensive description you gave here. But the problem is, it looks like a simulation that will be more enjoyable to the programmer than to the person watching it. After all, it would just look like dots moving around changing color.

Additionally, I'm looking for something that besides being cool, will be sort of useful.

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Eh I can tell you that variations on the above scenario are actually useful.

There's a handful of companies that essentially do more in-depth versions of these things at like the level of "h1n1 comes to small town america; what emergent behavior patterns do we see in our model" (names escaping me sorry).

There's also a lot of boring-ish economics sims that've been done (names escaping me also, sorry).

To make it fun for the end-user you'd have to "borrow" tilesets from a videogame I think.

You're right though: it's more fun for the person making it than a casual observer.

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