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A world-scale MMO city builder with depth that matches Cities: Skylines and with realistic supply chains for industry (ie, cargo traveling hundreds or thousands

A world-scale MMO city builder with depth that matches Cities: Skylines and with realistic supply chains for industry (ie, cargo traveling hundreds or thousands of miles) and realistic commutes (in C:S, a commute over 2 miles is likely going to be considered too long). I just don't think a simulation on that scale can possibly work. Obviously, such a massive scale would have to be split over multiple servers, but I'd want the world to be seamless, as in, you can just pan over and see other people's cities. The player shouldn't be able to tell that the area they're looking at is being run on another server. I just can't imagine how a system would operate. How do you perform path finding when the paths are likely to cross over areas run by a dozen other servers? How does it scan to millions of vehicles needing to find their path?

aqfamnzc 4y ago
I wonder if this would be possible if you could abstract away enough detail when necessary, and bring it back when zooming in. For example, when you zoom out from a city, the server stops calculating individual vehicles' paths, and instead models the city as a node with x cars flowing in via I-69, y cars flowing out via I-01, etc. Using this you could even abstract away entire planets. Then when the player zooms in again, individual roads can still be adjusted, which simply changes the formula describing the city's traffic flow.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  I'm not sure how well that could work when I want industry to have the same depth as C:S. Like, if a commercial building is expecting a shipment from a specific industrial building two cities away, the location of that truck needs to be tracked through its entire journey. I suppose it could be possible for a server to track something like "The last 10 trucks to enter my area at location A and leave my area at location B took an average of C minutes, so just assume any path finding through me will take C minutes and don't track the individual trucks" But then what happens when some zooms into that server's area while a truck is partway through its course? How do I simulate a traffic jam occurring after a path has been planned if I'm abstracting the individual vehicles away?

aqfamnzc 4y ago

I wonder if this would be possible if you could abstract away enough detail when necessary, and bring it back when zooming in. For example, when you zoom out from a city, the server stops calculating individual vehicles' paths, and instead models the city as a node with x cars flowing in via I-69, y cars flowing out via I-01, etc. Using this you could even abstract away entire planets. Then when the player zooms in again, individual roads can still be adjusted, which simply changes the formula describing the city's traffic flow.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
I'm not sure how well that could work when I want industry to have the same depth as C:S. Like, if a commercial building is expecting a shipment from a specific industrial building two cities away, the location of that truck needs to be tracked through its entire journey. I suppose it could be possible for a server to track something like "The last 10 trucks to enter my area at location A and leave my area at location B took an average of C minutes, so just assume any path finding through me will take C minutes and don't track the individual trucks" But then what happens when some zooms into that server's area while a truck is partway through its course? How do I simulate a traffic jam occurring after a path has been planned if I'm abstracting the individual vehicles away?