Ok, that''s the right forum now ^_^ Is there anyone who knows if there''s ever been a *pure* city simulator? By saying ''pure'' i mean a simulation where the player doesn''t really interact (like SimCity), he just sets some details and then a random city is created... Why I''m asking is because i''ve been playing around with the idea of developing such a simulation for some time, in 3D (well, no stunning high-end effects, just using simple low-poly objects like cubes etc. as buildings)... uhm *scratches his head* actually i haven''t planned to put any kind of AI into the simulation... first, the player (maybe we should say ''user'') gets an option panel where he can adjust the amount of some city properties (like ''skyscraper amount'', ''street amount'' etc.) in %...then the programm creates a random city based on the settings the user has made. The city is placed on a map with an invisible grid, every tile is occupied by an object (related to the settings) and shown in i 3D. Now the user has the possibility to explore the city moving around the camera. So, no AI so far (the only point i can think of to have an AI routine would be the traffic in the city, but i planned to make the streets only with flat, animated tiles...). I know you''ll maybe think that its gonna be kinda boring after a while, but - hey - its just an experiment What do you think?

Sounds like Unrealty in a superscaled setting. I think it would be kinda neat to do this as a sort of "Superman flight-sim" where you get a city, then get to cruise around looking at the city from 20 stories and try not to plow into anything and cause property damage

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-WarMage
...I am the man of gypsum!...

Hehe, nice idea that superman thing... maybe i could build in a "superman-mode" later, with "realistic flight model & physics"


...hm, whats ''Unrealty''?

Unrealty is an architectural modelling package based on the Unreal engine. Allows you to build a property with textured surfaces and conduct virtual walkthroughs

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-WarMage
...www.unrealty.org I think...

www.vterrain.org has a section on city generation. They list a few academic papers and a bunch of links to procedural city generators.

I always thought that the game Hitman would make a great conversion over to a city-type sim that you are describing. The idea is that you would log into the persistent city as a Hitman with your own apartment somewhere anomously in the city (as in no one on the internet knows you live there), and you have a job to both protect a potential hit-subject, and a primary objective of hitting another subject. The city and its heavily populated AI would make for a great imersive feel with the ability to move through the city undetected and undifferentiated from the AI. this way you could stalk your target, but do so in such a way as to not look suspicous because another real player has either assigned other AI to protect this target, or is watching the target himself. This would make a great mmofps in persistentence.

I think that that is actually a really good idea and it will look pretty amazing if you could go under stuff like briges, i think they use those sorts of programs for flight sims well great idea hope it turns out well