
A winning solution for SimCity - gasull
http://m.ammoth.us/blog/2010/10/magnasanti/
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kj12345
"The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it"

I don't think any irony or toleration is going on here, at least not more so
than the players in Madden "tolerate" being forced to play football again and
again. The players in Madden also fail to express concern about overpopulation
but I think that's just the nature of a limited simulation. I'd love to play
more sophisticated games, but SimCity just isn't there yet.

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BlazingFrog
It makes me wonder if it was the programmers' intention to define success at
playing the game by achieving construction of a hugely morose, sub-human,
megalopolis where personal freedom (cars, entertainment venues) and basic
social needs (education, safety from fire, health) were simply eliminated.
Would have made a great propaganda tool to fight communism in the 50's...

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sprout
I always defined success at the game as growing your city while all power
sources were renewable and you had ample schools, colleges and trees.

It's a sandbox game, the cost function you try to optimize says more about you
than it does about the game.

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barrkel
Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1352864>

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Ygor
I am always amazed when people use games to create something of value,
something more than just fun, and prove how there are game systems out there
that are really interesting from other standpoints, not just the entertainment
part. I have seen other projects like this - of people creating really
impressive in-game cities, usually with some version of SimCity. Also, various
AI implementations for Starcraft and similar games come to mind.

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drv
The article doesn't say, but it looks like SimCity 3000. I haven't kept up
with the more recent iterations of the game, but the complexity of the
simulation seemed to increase with each new release (2000 added a water
system, and 3000 added garbage, among other things); I'd be curious to see how
this solution's complexity compares to those in the other games.

Perhaps more interesting would be how the optimization was performed. If I
remember correctly, the manual from the original SimCity hinted at formulas
used in the underlying simulation; I'm sure some dedicated players have
reverse engineered such information for the newer games.

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potatolicious
SimCity 4 added significantly more complex transportation simulations
(particularly in the expansion) - but was more or less handicapped for
performance reasons (pathfinding only allowed movement _towards_ the
destination... conveniently ignoring the subway stop right behind the Sim).

Popular (almost de facto standard for SimCity fans) mods have sprung up to
correct this, and with modern hardware there is really no performance hit.

Transportation is now, IMHO, the toughest part of the simulation - even fixing
their pathfinding, it's still wildly unpredictable what your sims will do, and
creating a mega-city generates a _lot_ of congestion that so far I've been
unable to avoid.

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billpg
I once "won" SimCity 2000 by having my hundreds of launch arcologies all take
off. Unfortunately I was dealing with the plumbing at the time and so I missed
it all. I just saw several squares crumble one after the other and couldn't
switch modes until the show was over.

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stcredzero
The old Lemonade simulation on Apple computers had such an optimal solution.
Unfortunately, it was relatively easy to find. (Much to the chagrin of my
teacher, who tried to use it to teach economics and business to my grade
school class!)

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mkramlich
I'm an old skool Lemonade player and BASIC hacker from the Apple II days. You
must tell me the sekret. :) Seriously, please email me!

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nailer
This would appear to be Manhattan.

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stcredzero
More like Coruscant or Trantor. (Star Wars and Foundation, respectively.)

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nailer
Really? Coruscant doesn't feature a central garden AFAICT.

<http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=coruscant>

