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I'm currently obsessed with an idea of scaling SimCity-like simulation to a whole country. Since it's infeasible to place roads and buildings manually at such s

by pornel 4y ago

I'm currently obsessed with an idea of scaling SimCity-like simulation to a whole country. Since it's infeasible to place roads and buildings manually at such scale, it would have to have an AI to grow cities automatically based on simulated demand and higher-level policies.

konschubert 4y ago
Why sim city and not cities skylines? (I don't have an opinion either way, just curious.)
- pornel 4y ago
  I've just used a classic name for the genre. I'm a big fan of Cities: Skylines. At a country scale some simulation techniques need to change. For example, tilemaps become ridiculously inefficient (a byte per 10m^2 becomes tens of GBs), so they either need some form of compression, or the simulation has to use vector-based maps instead (more like Cities Skylines). Another quirk is that at a country scale agent-based simulation becomes less interesting, because individual agents don't influence much, only their collective behavior is big enough to matter, and that starts looking just like a normal distribution of the simulation data you put in.
  - prionassembly 4y ago
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=emergent+behavior+agent+based+simulation&t=brave&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=emergent+behavior+agent+based+simu...
  - ouid 4y ago
    >at a country scale agent-based simulation becomes less interesting, because individual agents don't influence much, only their collective behavior is big enough to matter This is very untrue, which is why this problem is infeasible.
    - l33t2328 4y ago
      Why do you say it’s untrue?
    - pornel 4y ago
      For example rush hour is an emergent phenomenon. But it's something that is happening pretty regularly depending on typical work schedules. You can simulate thousands or millions of agents with their intricate goals of their daily lives to have it emerge naturally (and it's very fun to program that), or you can just hardcode fixed times for rush hours. In a big-picture view of country-wide statistics the difference between these approaches is underwhelmingly small. It's sort of like simulating every atom of an object vs using Newtonian physics. There is a difference in accuracy, but it may not even become apparent or matter for gameplay.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure they're using SimCity as a trademark-turned-common name like Kleenex, band-aid, etc.
  - a1369209993 4y ago
    The techinical term is "genericised trademark" IIRC. Same goes for "Civilization" upthread, and for things like "Tetris" or (edit: to the extent trademark offices are corrupt enough to register it in the first place) "Chess".
genedan 4y ago
Have you Transport Fever 2? The AI manages growth of the cities while you work on building out the logistics. The better your network, the faster the cities grow. Since there are planes involved I would classify the scale as being nation-sized.
- fendy3002 4y ago
  Similar with it's predecessor, transport tycoon or the newer openttd
  - mhio 4y ago
    There's also Voxel Tycoon in the same vein. Early access but polished enough to have a go. It adds a dash of Factorio to the resources.
- pornel 4y ago
  Yes, but the scale of things in TF2 is very symbolic. Cities are a couple of train lengths long at best, and grow by attaching new short roads at random. That's fine for the needs of the game, but isn't really a country-sized simulation.
Der_Einzige 4y ago
A game like this exists and has existed for many, many years. It's a relic of the old internet. https://www.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgip?plogplay https://www.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgip?plogplay
YesBox 4y ago
You might be interested in what I'm setting to out build. I'm working on Archapolis, a city builder with real time traffic simulation and interior views of peoples homes (which you can customize/build yourself if you want). While the game wont scale up to the country scale, I do want the player to have a more hands on approach to managing the city. Im thinking it would be cool if the player could hire their own board if they wanted to, otherwise they would have to manually manage that aspect of the game (e.g. no fire marshal could mean manually sending out fire trucks to fires, scheduling building inspections, etc). Here's a tech demo of what I've been working on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI I created a path finding algorithm that can simultaneously path 300,000 units to random destinations at a comfortable frame rate. Units can choose from any of the shortest paths between two points (there are many in a grid), and from those paths, can also choose the path that matches any preferences they have. Very early stages of development still!
- bryans 4y ago
  This is really cool, and I enjoyed hearing explanations of your process and decision making in the video. It sounds like you have a lot of ideas on how to develop "personalities" for units, and that's something rarely seen in game AI, so I'm eager to see where you go with all of this!
  - YesBox 4y ago
    Thanks! I appreciate it. The player connecting to the world they build is vital IMO. I'll be using old.reddit.com/r/Archapolis if you want to know when the first release is out.

by pornel 4y ago

konschubert 4y ago

Why sim city and not cities skylines? (I don't have an opinion either way, just curious.)

pornel 4y ago
I've just used a classic name for the genre. I'm a big fan of Cities: Skylines. At a country scale some simulation techniques need to change. For example, tilemaps become ridiculously inefficient (a byte per 10m^2 becomes tens of GBs), so they either need some form of compression, or the simulation has to use vector-based maps instead (more like Cities Skylines). Another quirk is that at a country scale agent-based simulation becomes less interesting, because individual agents don't influence much, only their collective behavior is big enough to matter, and that starts looking just like a normal distribution of the simulation data you put in.
- prionassembly 4y ago
  https://duckduckgo.com/?q=emergent+behavior+agent+based+simulation&t=brave&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=emergent+behavior+agent+based+simu...
- ouid 4y ago
  >at a country scale agent-based simulation becomes less interesting, because individual agents don't influence much, only their collective behavior is big enough to matter This is very untrue, which is why this problem is infeasible.
  - l33t2328 4y ago
    Why do you say it’s untrue?
  - pornel 4y ago
    For example rush hour is an emergent phenomenon. But it's something that is happening pretty regularly depending on typical work schedules. You can simulate thousands or millions of agents with their intricate goals of their daily lives to have it emerge naturally (and it's very fun to program that), or you can just hardcode fixed times for rush hours. In a big-picture view of country-wide statistics the difference between these approaches is underwhelmingly small. It's sort of like simulating every atom of an object vs using Newtonian physics. There is a difference in accuracy, but it may not even become apparent or matter for gameplay.
sgtnoodle 4y ago
I'm pretty sure they're using SimCity as a trademark-turned-common name like Kleenex, band-aid, etc.
- a1369209993 4y ago
  The techinical term is "genericised trademark" IIRC. Same goes for "Civilization" upthread, and for things like "Tetris" or (edit: to the extent trademark offices are corrupt enough to register it in the first place) "Chess".

genedan 4y ago

Have you Transport Fever 2? The AI manages growth of the cities while you work on building out the logistics. The better your network, the faster the cities grow. Since there are planes involved I would classify the scale as being nation-sized.

fendy3002 4y ago
Similar with it's predecessor, transport tycoon or the newer openttd
- mhio 4y ago
  There's also Voxel Tycoon in the same vein. Early access but polished enough to have a go. It adds a dash of Factorio to the resources.
pornel 4y ago
Yes, but the scale of things in TF2 is very symbolic. Cities are a couple of train lengths long at best, and grow by attaching new short roads at random. That's fine for the needs of the game, but isn't really a country-sized simulation.

Der_Einzige 4y ago

A game like this exists and has existed for many, many years. It's a relic of the old internet. https://www.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgip?plogplay https://www.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgip?plogplay

YesBox 4y ago

You might be interested in what I'm setting to out build. I'm working on Archapolis, a city builder with real time traffic simulation and interior views of peoples homes (which you can customize/build yourself if you want). While the game wont scale up to the country scale, I do want the player to have a more hands on approach to managing the city. Im thinking it would be cool if the player could hire their own board if they wanted to, otherwise they would have to manually manage that aspect of the game (e.g. no fire marshal could mean manually sending out fire trucks to fires, scheduling building inspections, etc). Here's a tech demo of what I've been working on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI I created a path finding algorithm that can simultaneously path 300,000 units to random destinations at a comfortable frame rate. Units can choose from any of the shortest paths between two points (there are many in a grid), and from those paths, can also choose the path that matches any preferences they have. Very early stages of development still!

bryans 4y ago
This is really cool, and I enjoyed hearing explanations of your process and decision making in the video. It sounds like you have a lot of ideas on how to develop "personalities" for units, and that's something rarely seen in game AI, so I'm eager to see where you go with all of this!
- YesBox 4y ago
  Thanks! I appreciate it. The player connecting to the world they build is vital IMO. I'll be using old.reddit.com/r/Archapolis if you want to know when the first release is out.