General 'Sim City' discussion wanted!!

[doneydonydone]

hey guys and gals

does anyone have any insight into how the sim city games are created and how i might be able to begin to create a tiny version myself??

obviously the secret is in the code and how each area is slightly modified to fit into the map etc etc but does anyone have any input into how i could create a tiny working version of this type of game??

would i be able to use any freely available game engines etc etc

thanks for your time

[stocko2k]

without a coder then no you probably couldnt recreate a game like sim city. on the art side of things i think every tile type on the city grid would more than likely have 3-4 meshes such as...

started construction, basic shape in wood, scaffold and then finally the building.

you would need to swap between each mesh and then take in to consideration each building would probably need 3-4 textures too....

clean, dirty, fire damage, snow covered.

and i guess its safe to say thats not even really scratching the surface on what you would need to make it anywhere near the likes of sim city 4.

[ridix]

It is safe to say sim type of game have no AI. Player is the one who initiate everything. It is no more than just bunches of time line and loops per object that inter act with different object on the stage. And, the code generates random event to make things somewhat unpredictable / unrepeatable.

[Ariofighter]

I don't know if I would go so far as to say there is no AI. The AI just doesn't work in the way that we traditionally think of it.

If you look at the simcity games from 2 until now, there is an AI that governs the people of the city. It tells the player how they like the city and how they function within the city itself. Do they want a subway, they want more residential zones. It is one of the easiest way to tell what you need to add where and why. I guess it could also be random, or a calculation based on a series of mathematical events going on in the city (taxes, crime, etc.) but isn't that what a basic AI is anyways?

I could be very wrong, but I'm sure there are several programmers that worked at Maxis that have made a career off of programming some kind of AI.