I think the easiest way to lay road and track is to drive a road laying vehicle around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkVBg_-OviI http://www.youtube.com/watch?

I think the easiest way to lay road and track is to drive a road laying vehicle around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkVBg_-OviI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkVBg_-OviI Definitely a terrain editor, plus more tweakable procedural terrain generation. There are many interesting ways to support multiple players, beyond the "cooperative committee with god mode limited by unanimous voting on expensive things" approach I implemented with the X11/TCL/Tk version: http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/SimCityNetDemo.mov http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/SimCityNetDemo.mov Your friends could fly helicopters around your city, reporting on problems, or just chatting with you as you drive your brick laying machine around to make roads. Your enemies could fly drones around and turn your citizens into terrorists by bombing their wedding parties. Your governor could conspire to cause terrible traffic jams by closing lanes on your bridges. Deconstruct the god mode tool pallet into something more like Magic the Gathering cards, that have particular tailored zones, purposes and budgets that multiple players can win, trade and play. The code must be open source, and the basic game free down download and play (online or off), but I'd like to think of a revenue model that will support the development of the game, as well as educational courseware (for free educational use). I don't think many people would pay to download other people's cities, but maybe artists/architects could sell their buildings in an online real-estate (virtual-estate?) market like eBay. I'm seeking advice and suggestions about how to fund the development and support running it! It's futile to pitch an educational game to a big publisher like EA, but Indiegogo may be a good route. Are there other alternatives focused on open source or educational software? I would really appreciate some mentoring and guidance from people experienced with that.