1,008 karma · joined March 10, 2018
I agree! Do you happen to know of any small discord servers / other communities for game devs making simulation games? The larger ones I've been to were just too big.
I dont have a name for my game yet. I'm only 3 months in. When I get to the point where I have a SimCity 2000 level of functionality, I'll know I should keep going and will start putting together a brand/webpage.
Im working on a video game too so I understand the necessity of limitations and shortcuts. And your point could be entirely clear if I were to play the game. I'm just pointing out, IMO, there's a disjoint between what I see and what you say.
Edit: I'll add, I believe the communication and interpretation of game functions is extremely important. Im creating a city builder/simulation game, but the depth of the simulation is determined by what's communicated to the player, not what the code does. I could create an intelligent game AI and a sophisticated economy, but if it doesn't communicate that to the player in any way, then it's no different than RNG to the players eyes.
Anyone who has become wealthy through crypto became so because they gambled. And, bitcoin has a history of being manipulated. I had a friend who was part of a network that communicated to him when to buy and sell bitcoin. He mentioned "the whales" a few times when talking about it.
When the game can begin competing with Cities: Skylines on a simulation level, I'll start charging for it.
The largest problem I will be tackling is simulating (to the best extent possible) an economy. One thing I liked (and made a lot of sense, at least to me) in SimCity 2000 is that the first demand you had to fulfill was industry. So the player will choose an industry to build their city around (though they'll be able to diversify any time. The price for that is possibly losing their edge in said industry).
One of the goals in the game is cashflow. Each service/industry/utility (SIU) that is outsourced is lost tax revenue for the city. For example, a new map will contain national power lines running through it. You'll have to tap into those for power initially. This means your citizens will pay a higher price for electricity, which limits tax revenue in two ways:
1.) You're not taxing the profits of the power plant
2.) You're citizens have less money to spend, thus the businesses in your city have smaller profits to tax.
Now iterate that math for every SIU required (which depends on city size).
To counter this, the player starts by owning all the land, so the city's initial revenue is from property sales. As the city grows, land value goes up. (Fun point, once the land is sold, its permanent until you can afford a great lawyer on your board to win an eminent domain case).
Over time the city will grow and more SIU's will be localized, increasing the cash flow of the city (more tax income). But, to attract/retain talent (thus have larger corporations), the city needs to spend this cash on services to make the city a desirable place to live. I think some fun side goals would be, for example, attracting the best chefs, artists, musicians, that are available, and have them e.g. open a restaurant in your city.
So, the macro scale is competing against other cities (both for talent and services/industries). I could say the winning condition is to be at the apex in every industry in the game, though that will likely be impossible, and I dont plan on having any real win condition.
I haven't sat down and mapped out how to simulate the competition (other cities), but I dont see a need to simulate each city at the micro level. I believe DF takes a similar approach. If anything, an infrequent mass calculation could determine who moves where and why, and to compare business competition. Im using SQL for storing game data to take advantage of what it does best, so this should be relatively easy.
The game is built from the ground up with SFML and C++. The graphics are sprite/tile based. The game is top down, 2D, and will display the interior of buildings so you can watch your citizens live their lives. You'll be able to change z-levels for multi level buildings.
The focus of the game will be more on the simulation (Dwarf Fortress is a huge inspiration) than on building pretty cities (e.g. Cities: Skylines), although I do care about the art direction.
I have a long runway to take off from, about 2-3 years, so I have the time (and patience, and desire) to care about quality and efficiency.
What Im working on now:
Here's a brag & demo of the pathfinding I am currently wrapping up:
https://i.imgur.com/vtKXKLK.mp4
Note a few things:
* All possible paths are found in O( m + n log n ) time, even though there's a binomial coefficient number of possible paths in this grid. The tree is stored in memory for constant time access. Im using parallel flat hash maps to significantly lower the memory footprint.
* The units choose the shortest path that match their preference (i.e. the color of the unit), thus choose a path that contains the most tiles of their color.
* Pink units dont have a preference and will use any of the paths available.
* I'm not an artist!
* Currently wrapping up multi-lane road pathing (which is quite tricky!).
* In the game, preferences will be history, tourism, beauty, food, neighborhoods the unit can relate to (religion/nationality), etc.
Also, you could brick the device in a couple seconds with a hammer too. Should the sales guy have take down training too?
If thats an unrealistic argument, you failed to realize you were the only one in the room who couldnt see the hammer in your hands.
All of those filters meant a narrow spectrum of the population participated on the internet. It also meant the ratio of creator to consumer was much smaller. The market sold to itself (other creators), not just consumers; or in other words, the community existed to serve itself.
I think the same idea can be applied to any creative outlet (music, art..). As soon as everyone has access, and the old filters (e.g. the RIAA, publishers) are torn down, it loses its uniqueness and glamor and the culture collapses, morals aside.
The next "big thing" will have a high barrier to entry, whether it be costing a lot of money, or requiring a specific skillset that takes time to learn. It will attract driven people who live to create and build. And like everything else, the barrier will eventually be torn down leaving mediocracy in its place.
If we increase the efficiency of something (lets say software) by 100%, all the good things that can be done with software gain a 100% efficiency. However, that does not equate to all the bad things that can be done with software gain a 100% efficiency. Many destructive actions are orders of magnitude more efficient than all things constructive (currently), so the net result is that the world gets more dangerous.
For a more physical example, consider that a truck filled with powerful explosives could knock down a sky scraper. That is, for a handful of manhours, it is possible to undo the work of hundreds of thousands of manhours, plus the hundreds of thousands of manhours society would need to divert to managing the after effects of that disaster, and the emotional cost, etc.
There's an underlying efficiency bonus that destructive actions have that is not being accounted for.
Also since this submission hasnt been downvoted into oblivion, your personal, anecdotal reaction is not the norm (on HN)
Your definition is what I would call "culture defining art", which is art that some part of the culture identifies with (or more specifically, a person's way of communicating that they can identify with). The currency here is tribalism, i.e. it creates a way for two or more people to bond together through what they feel and think.
>Those who have the courage necessary to become artists, and renounce the vulgarity of the world, will continue to do so.
Courage is trumped by needs. If they need pay rent, buy food, support a family, pay for a car, etc, then no matter what they are sacrificing some part of their time in order to obtain those things. Thus any artist who can make money off their work would have more time for their work, and possibly grow faster.
>Those who delude themselves into thinking they're creating anything while being employed in commerce, will be managed out.
Seems like you're too attached to the idea of what an artist is and isnt?
>Ironically, if it's that important to you, why don't you start giving monetary support directly to artists?
Because Im not building something that is taking away from their dreams (e.g. living off their work/passion).
<side thoughts> I wonder if people are aware of the consequences of automating creativity? IMO humans need human input in order to stay human. The less and less we come into contact with humanity, the less human we'll become.. and at the very end of that long path is a bag of chemical reactions that's forgotten the meaning of "how are you?" [1]
Which made me think, perhaps its the inefficiencies of life that is what makes us human
[1] This is because some company/companies will realize/have realized that tuning the machine to become most efficient at creating what the masses want will be the most profitable path.
Comparing photography to hand drawn art is silly. They are two different mediums.
Your company could be the first to capture the market. I guess if you can sleep with the consequences of your work,who cares? Im not judging because if its not you, it will be someone else.
Personally i think we as a society need to step back and press pause and really consider the consequences of this technology, and even existing technologies.
If you become rich, could you set up a charity for all the future starving artists, if that future comes to pass? I dont want to live in a world where theres no room for human creativity.
Not an artist, just a concerned human.
The problem with digital art is that it is infinitely copyable (at no cost) and untraceable (with little effort, and a huge/impossible effort to trace backwards). There's nothing stopping an artist from selling a work of art as edition 1 of 1, and then a month later "minting" another copy or 10. Secondly, there's no way to prove the image uploaded is from the original owner. What happens if someone steals someone else's work, mints an NFT and sells it, and the buyer finds out the next day?
Thus, I cant be convinced a "respected" NFT collection / distributor can exist.
There's one caveat, which I should have made more clear. Since the game is based on a grid (i.e. tiles), the art will need to be sprite based, which is essentially pixel art. In my experience, this isn't every one's cup of tea, so Im making that clear now for her and everyone else!
L;R: I'm 2 months into creating an ambitious grid-based city builder/simulation game from the ground up using C++ and SFML (think Dwarf Fortress inspired city builder). There are many changes I want to make to the established genre. For example:
* You start by owning all the land and you sell it off to citizens to build their homes/businesses (a permanent action, at least until you get an amazing lawyer on your board who can help you win an eminent domain case). You still collect taxes on it though :).
* Displaying (as the primary graphics) the inside of buildings and being able to scroll up Z levels for sky scrapers; all to see what units are doing inside their homes. Exterior building graphics would be nice but are not the primary goal for the first release.
* Custom shape/sizes for all buildings. Design the interior of home. Blueprints.
One of the goals of the game is to keep as much wealth within the city as possible. At first, your citizens will be buying power/water/gas/commercial services from existing companies outside your city. The problem is they charge more for being far away, and since they are not local, you aren't taxing these companies. Eventually your city will have enough demand for e.g. a powerplant (or any business) to be built locally. This means more savings for citizens (i.e. more money to spend, which means more tax revenue) + the tax revenue of the profits from the business. This in turn allows you to offer more services to your citizens to attract/retain talent (if desired). This comes around to having that great lawyer on your board.
Right now I am wrapping up the pathfinding code for lane-based travel. I developed a new algorithm that solves the "find all k simple paths" orders of magnitude faster than the existing solutions.
The door that opens from this development will help bring the city to life because citizens will be able to see all the shortest paths available to them, which means I can add other factors (i.e. weights) like beauty, history, crime, tourism, food, etc to the graph/network that will let units choose paths based on their preferences. This is all saved in memory so pathfinding is constant time after the search tree is created.
The key of course is communicating that to the player. This is one place Im inspired by DF and plan on using heads to represent units (color coded based on their discipline), with flashing symbols to graphically display their immediate desires/emotion.
About: This is the first time I'm developing a video game (10+ years of coding experience), though I've had these seeds rolling around in a desert for many years. Now I've come with the water. I've got 3+ years of savings to work on this project. Email is in the profile.
CTRL Fs: City Simulation Video Game Marketing Graphics Visual Builder Tycoon gamedev
This summer I purchased the 24mm GM F1.4 and WOW does it take fantastic night photos. No tripod needed, it lets in enough light that I can use 1/30+ shutter speed. https://i.imgur.com/CcNEUsM.jpg (photo I took recently. 1/40s, 1.4F, 1250 ISO. No photoshop magic, just basic lightroom adjustments)
Also, the iphone opens up to 1.4f, so you're probably not making a fair comparison to your camera (assuming your lens does open up as much)
EDIT: Sony has a 1.2F 50mm lens I really want to get my hands on, but now I am an entrepreneur so my spending days are over for awhile.
Death is necessary to allow new ideas and change to be brought into the world. Death is necessary to prevent wealth and power accumulating into fewer hands. Death is necessary for others to enjoy the right to bear and raise children.
EDIT: 2 minutes go by and this comment has already been downvoted 3+ times. At least respond before you downvote.
That is precisely what Dijkstra's algorithm does. The limitation of that algo is that it only finds one path from the start to each other node, not all possible paths. As a really simple example, consider a 2x2 graph:
A---B
| |
C---D
EDIT: PS I read the paper you linked before your ninja edit :)