#HIST3812

I’ve long loved SimCity, the original city-builder game. It’s a popular game over on Play the Past, too. I meant to talk about it during the lecture yesterday, but I got sidetracked. I draw your attention though to the new version of SimCity, to be released this spring: it runs as an agent-based model. And I’m willing to bet that it can be modded.

Over at Gamasutra (which you should be reading) they discuss the new engine architecture, which is called ‘GlassBox’. Look at some of its code:
unitRule mustardFactory
rate 10

global Simoleans in 1

local YellowMustard in 6
local EmptyBottle in 1
local BottleOfMustard out 1

map Pollution out 5

successEvent effect smokePuff
successEvent audio chugAndSlurp

onFail buyMoreMustard
end
Looks rather familiar, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t code, you can get a fair idea of what’s meant to happen. I do hope that the game comes out in time for us to talk about it in class. If not, well, I’ll certainly be playing it, plugging away with it, modding it….

Tags: agent based models, sim city