
SimCity Player Spends 3 years on optimal city design - bigfoot
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheImperar#p/a/u/1/9ezZgAl6aN8
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lotharbot
The best part of the vid is from 5:35 onward, where it shows pretty decent
detail of the city.

It's interesting to see the way "perfectionist" players approach their games.
The details of the optimization are often surprising. Even the specific choice
of factors to optimize for are interesting. In SimCity, one player shoots for
maximum population; another might go for the quickest time to reach a
particular population level; yet another might seek to maximize industrial
production. I like seeing how they work within the rules to reach those
different goals.

~~~
eru
Yes. SimCity is not really a `game', but more of a sandbox, where you set your
own goals. Of course you can set your own goals in more traditional games as
well, but they tend to come with a pre-defined one.

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dan00
If someone had fun, how could this time be wasted?

It's interesting, that the kind of people, that see this as wasted time,
because they think this isn't changing the world, that it isn't ethical to use
your own time this way, that these people will always criticize themself and
others regardless what they do, because there's always something more
meaningful to do.

At the end these people won't change anything in the world, but just bring
harm to themself and others.

~~~
_delirium
In some ways it's equivalent to solving any other seemingly esoteric
theoretical problem that people seem to like solving (and some people get PhDs
for doing so!). He took a formal system (a particular simplified model of city
simulation), and produced a constructive proof of some properties of the
system. Of course, the SimCity simulation parameters are unrealistic in a lot
of ways, but it doesn't seem inherently any more absurd than the people who
get PhDs for game-theory theses that also rely on absurd parameters in their
problem setup.

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a-priori
I'd be interested in seeing more of the analysis that went into designing
this.

~~~
nooneelse
I'd be interested in seeing the maker give a lecture on that. Well that and
getting a copy of the city and removing all the firehouses.

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Seiwynn
I'm a little disturbed at his population distribution in the final city. Scary
how his optimal city has no one over age 60.

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listic
Well, that last city was optimized for population count, not longevity.

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grinich
or culture.

~~~
cstuder
or life quality.

~~~
_delirium
bunch of commies in this thread!

~~~
IgorPartola
or homogeneity of political views.

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pgbovine
i wonder if there's a scriptable game like simcity (maybe freeciv? i dunno)
... that could make for a good testbed for certain optimization algorithms

~~~
ax0n
I'm not sure, but you just made me miss the day of scripting BBS Door games
such as Trade Wars 2002.

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DanielBMarkham
I do not understand why such a large piece of a person's life would be spent
doing this. Even model railroads have some tangible significance -- it is
possible to share them with others in such a way that the others enjoy them
and you bring happiness into somebody else's life. Perhaps this is because I
find value in helping others. Some may find value in simply being pre-occupied
as they wait for death. To each his own. I do not understand a lot of things.

What I found totally amazing wasn't spending years trying to optimize
solutions to random problems others have created, but how this guy made a
super-awesome video explaining how he did it. Very impressive. Loved the music
and the camera movements. This guy should start charging to do demo videos for
software products.

~~~
eru
> I do not understand why such a large piece of a person's life would be spent
> doing this.

You can share your digital artefacts with people all over the world. Isn't
that much better by your metric than a model railroad?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
It gets tough to debate life values, because we all come from a different
place, but I'll take the question as just for me. I can't answer for this
other guy. His reasons are his own.

The problem with spending so much time optimizing an artificial mathematical
model (game) is that less work and time is required to create the model than
to optimize it. Therefore (to me), it's the losers than spend time working on
other people's problems that never move up to the next level: being creative.
It's just a mechanical process. (and yes, I'm aware that some creativity is
involved in the optimization)

My value system is in creating something for other people. So creativity and
value to others, are the metric I use when allocating my time. I guess if such
a electronic work could benefit people -- by making them happy for a bit or
providing them with information they needed or something, it would be
worthwhile. I mean heck, under my value system you can stretch a lot of things
to make them work. The question (for me) is whether or not those 3 years could
have been better spent.

Yes, at the end it's all gone anyway. That doesn't mean piss away your life.
If anything, it means you only have a certain amount of time to do things you
find valuable.

My opinion only. To each his own.

~~~
eru
> The problem with spending so much time optimizing an artificial mathematical
> model (game) is that less work and time is required to create the model than
> to optimize it. Therefore (to me), it's the losers than spend time working
> on other people's problems that never move up to the next level: being
> creative. It's just a mechanical process. (and yes, I'm aware that some
> creativity is involved in the optimization)

I can see where you are coming from. But I do not entirely share your view.
E.g. inventing the game of Go is much simpler than mastering it. But I would
not call go players losers.

> My value system is in creating something for other people. So creativity and
> value to others, are the metric I use when allocating my time.

Why make an exception? Just use: "My value system is in creating something for
people." You are worthwhile, too.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I've toyed with reverse Solipsism for some time now. Must be too much
philosophy.

What did Steve Martin say once? He didn't have a lot of philosophy in college,
just enough to screw him up for the rest of his life. :)

I don't seek validation in others -- but I do seek validation in my own
assurance that I am creating something that will prove of value to others. By
that metric, I question if I would be able to be so certain about that if I
had spent those 3 years doing what he did.

Game-playing, drinking, singing, hiking, flying, etc are all wonderful
activities -- but they are wonderful because they help me optimize the other
things I am doing. When I start focusing on the pleasure they give me in
themselves, I lose track of the larger goal. Perhaps even forgetting I have a
larger goal. Not a good thing.

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petercooper
As an aside, and because SimCity doesn't get mentioned much here, if you're on
OS X and want to play Simcity 4, I spent a lot of time getting it to work
"just so." The trick is.. Windows XP + Parallels 5 (I'm a big VMware Fusion
fan but Parallels 5 boosts SC4 performance wise somehow) + software rendering
(hardware rendering is a FAIL/unstable on both Parallels and VMware with
SC4).. and I can run everything on high no probs on my iMac. Works a treat.

~~~
ka2
I'm using Ubuntu but this should still apply to OS X. SimCity 4 works nearly
perfectly (both software & hardware rendering) under Wine. There used to be a
problem with the installer but based on test results on the Wine AppDB that
works now too. Also you can set a custom resolution using
"-CustomResolution:enabled" and using eg. "-r1440x900x32" which helps make the
game more playable on widescreen monitors. I used to run SimCity under
VirtualBox but with larger populations it's much faster under wine.

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rradu
As someone who's played SimCity for many years, I'm super impressed by this.
Although he didn't use cheats, SC3000 was the best cuz it had a cheat where
you could place a specific building and have it be there permanently--without
any worry of abandonment. SimCity 4 is much harder because there are a lot
more variables to deal with, including the fact that you can run multiple
cities in a region.

~~~
potatolicious
Huge SimCity nerd back in the day here - his city design is impossible in
SimCity 4; the new game requires all lots be connected to some kind of road.
The secret to his success is that there are _no_ roads, every single tile is
connected to a subway station that's impeccably designed. There's no traffic
congestion of any sort.

Personally, I think SC4 teaches people a bad lesson - that cars are an
absolute necessity to urban planning.

~~~
ars
Cars might not be, but roads certainly are.

How do you expect to even build the place without a road? Much less deliver
furniture and other things?

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potatolicious
It's not so much that roads are necessary, but that every single lot must be
directly adjacent to one - it's entirely reasonable in real life to have large
complexes that are pedestrian primarily, connected via some kind of mass
transit, where road density is greatly reduced.

This is impossible in SC4, since every single building must be directly
adjacent to a road.

Also, because of the city size limit increases between SC3000 and SC4, the
pathfinding algorithm used for transit calculations is _really_ barebones -
your sims will only ever travel towards their destination. Even there was a
direct subway line to their destination _right behind_ them, they won't take
it. This makes transit in the game a complete pain, since the model the game
follows is counter-intuitive to the max.

The trick of course is, with a grid road network, this pathfinding works
really well. This only compounds the problem - since a subway system, no
matter how well designed, has a hell of a time competing with a road network -
and in no time at all you have citizens screaming about congested roads, and a
perfectly good subway system that's sitting at 5% capacity.

There are ways to "trick" the game - mostly involving designing your road
networks in such a way that you create disconnected islands between demand
zones. In essence, you're creating a ludicrously broken road network nobody
will ever use just to get people onto mass transit. But it's worth it (in the
game, and IMHO maybe real life also) - the capacity and density of rail mass
transit blows the crap out of driving, and allows you to get people much
further, much more quickly. Air pollution becomes a complete non-problem

~~~
ars
Sounds more like a problem with the game rather than a lesson about cities
having cars.

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johnyzee
I wonder how many of the theories could be applied to actual urban planning.

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hugh3
A grid of subway stations with a stop at every block? Sounds rather expensive.

Besides, all attempts to build "perfect" cities in real life have resulted in
dull and lifeless places. A certain amount of chaos is necessary to keep
cities liveable.

~~~
brianobush
what if the subways weren't subways we know of today, but rather conveyor belt
like roads. might be feasible if in a more automated future.

~~~
rlpb
This is stuff of science fiction. I remembered Arthur C. Clarke for having
written this, but apparently H. G. Wells was first:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#Science_fiction>

~~~
ovi256
Jules Verne did it before that, in the Floating Island if I remember
correctly. Which is a parody of 19 century USA, by the way.

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Tycho
The other day I was studying 'dashboard' systems for ERP software and the like
and it occurred to me how SimCity and Civilization type UIs would fit the bill
(if only they worked on reality).

~~~
Gormo
Remeber the old Caesar series from Impressions/Sierra?

It was ostensibly a city-building sim set in ancient Rome, but gameplay was
more like a supply-chain logistics simulator. About 3/4 of the time spent
playing was in allocating raw materials to production facilities and designing
distribution networks for finished goods.

If Impressions or Maxis decided to start writing enterprise software, they'd
probably dominate the market within a couple of years.

~~~
eru
> If Impressions or Maxis decided to start writing enterprise software, they'd
> probably dominate the market within a couple of years.

Yes, if the enterprise software makers would compete on their software. They
seem to compete more on having better sales teams.

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CoachRufus87
impressive, fascinating, yet a tad bit disturbing... kudos none-the-less

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swombat
What a waste of time! I'm a bit ashamed that we (me included) are all so
impressed by this. We should be weeping for the tragic waste of human
ingenuity and productivity. Three years of _work_ for nothing.

~~~
gtt
from commets to TFA:

To everyone belittling his 'waste' of 5 years of his life on a pointless
endeavour, remember that in life, everything is essentially pointless, you are
born, you live, you die. And thats that.

You may in life build the perfect Simcity city, or refurbished a muscle car,
or discover electricity. But at the end of the day you end up dead, and its
all irrelevant.

~~~
redcap
I'm sure that people like Martin Luther King Jr and others who have made a
difference would beg to differ.

Your life doesn't have to be pointless.

~~~
RevRal
Your two sentences are inconsistent.

The assertion was that _life_ or _existence_ itself is pointless, nothing to
do with the esteem of individuals. You say "people like Martin Luther King Jr"
would beg to differ about gtt's assertion, but you follow-up by saying "
_your_ life doesn't have to be pointless." So, a life can be pointless? So you
disagree with MLK? Either that, or your entire comment doesn't really have
anything to do with gtt's.

Regardless, the worth of an individual wasn't really what gtt was getting at.

So, SimCity guy felt compelled to be awesome at SimCity, besides that I don't
know much else about him. But there are billions of people in the world, so
there is room for someone like him and there is almost no reason to stifle
diversity in personalities. After all, that's how MLK eventually came to be.
Perhaps the same force that compels SimCity guy to build awesome Megacities is
compelling him to do something else that most people would consider more
worthwhile.

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dirtbox
I'm surprised he could find the time with all the sex he must have been
having.

~~~
dirtbox
Burried in record time! God I love how pompous this site is.

~~~
mixmax
Though it might seem like it that isn't the case - people here are generally
helpful and down to earth. The problem is that there's an ingrained fear here
that the site will turn into reddit[1] with all of the oneliners, memes and
silliness that defines it nowadays. HN is the last resort for intelligent
discourse for many users. And they don't want to lose it.

As a result of this fear anything that resembles a comment that might have
been made on Reddit will get downvoted.

[1] I have nothing against Reddit, on the contrary I personally write loads of
silly comments there and enjoy the oneliners.

~~~
icey
Funny jokes seem to get upvoted (see the first comment here
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1277622>)

~~~
graywh
But the funny jokes that get up-voted are generally intelligent, too (I
think).

~~~
dasil003
At least we can say the bar is higher than reddit where half the stories are
dominated by a big 50-level-deep thread of stupid puns.

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wazoox
Fucking loving Jeezus christ. This guy could have solved wolrd hunger with his
skills, instead he maxed out Simcity 3000.

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ugh
Nah, to max out SimCity he probably only has to know about a few dozen
variables and how they interact, to solve world hunger he probably has to know
how thousands of variables interact with each other. Maxing out SimCity is one
of the easier problems out there :)

~~~
gtt
But he could made one step, say reducing number of varibles involved from
1000000 to 999999. And someone else could reduce this number too...

~~~
eru
Maybe he did that reduction by stepping out of the way?

