{"author_name":"Will Edwards","cat":"LD #26","comments":[{"author_name":"sorceress","time":"April 10, 2013 8:02 am","epoch":1365598920,"text":"I’m guessing your flood fill idea is of this form: Influence(x+1,y) = Influence(x,y) * Fraction","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"Topaz","time":"April 11, 2013 3:23 am","epoch":1365668580,"text":"Not sure if this will help, but I played a game a while back called xlincity, and it was a Debian package which you could download through aptitude. It had a pretty good city simulator and it might give you some ideas.","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1365598320,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"47144","p_author":"Will Edwards","p_authorkey":"10313","p_urlkey":"82807","p_title":"Asking for help: how would you simulate a city?","p_cat":"LD #26","p_event":"LD26","p_time":"1365598320","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"2","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"10313","us_name":"Will Edwards","us_username":"william_edwards","event_start":"1366934400","event_key":"16","event_name":"LD26"},"text":"

I can’t enter LD26 but, rather than complaining and doing nothing about this travesty of priority, I’ve done my own little LD in my evenings.\u00a0 An hour here and an hour there and, after about 2 days worth, this is how far I got with my city-building game (video)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"WillCity2_1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now I must press on and make a proper full game of this!\u00a0 Its a big project, of course…<\/p>\n

I ask for your help<\/strong>!\u00a0 How would you simulate a city, at a very deep technical algorithmic level?<\/p>\n

I’ve played around with a “priority flood fill” so that, from each zone of a type, it fills outwards over neighbouring tiles using its score as the priority.\u00a0 There’s a cost lookup by tile type so residential influence travels further along roads, for example.<\/p>\n

This is very pretty and its neat but is it useful?\u00a0 Will a large building with a high score ‘drown out’ nearby low-scoring buildings?\u00a0 Will the influence of a high score building cause it to reach lots of target zones – e.g. residential finding industrial – quickly, meaning it sates the needs of far-off target zones at the cost of nearer but not-yet-high-score zones?\u00a0\u00a0 Will it mean a concentration of score?\u00a0 Will it be intuitive?<\/p>\n

What ways can you think of of actually computing, each sim step, if a zone should increase or decrease score?<\/p>","time":"April 10th, 2013 7:52 am","title":"Asking for help: how would you simulate a city?"}