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Comment by aurbano | Hacker News Reader

What a coincidence! I had been thinking of trying to make my own version of a city builder game (like sim city or cities skylines) for years and finally started last week - using rust and Bevy for the simulator

I’m trying to make the most realistic city simulator I can, using published papers on economy models, welfare, immigration, social policies… to drive each aspect of the simulation - and then use it to drive the game

So far I’ve used a team of agents to build the firsg phases of the simulator, and it’s looking really promising!

It’s my first time making such a complex game, but I’m super excited to see where it goes :)

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I keep seeing people mention they're starting a game using Bevy in response to this news...and then they mention a "team of agents" making the game. :P

"The first agent curls his brow and listens to the human tell him exactly how to win. He expects me to pass on this info/intel to the next bot to snatch victory from me? I've smiled and nodded plenty to win this one."

Haha well, as much as I’d love making this by hand I don’t have the time - so this way I get to focus on gameplay and simulator mechanics!

> I’m trying to make the most realistic city simulator I can, using published papers on economy models, welfare, immigration, social policies… to drive each aspect of the simulation - and then use it to drive the game

Sounds like you're building a simulation, not a game :) Games usually aren't so realistic as to be based on a ton of academic models, and gets "not so fun" when you try to make things too realistic. Maybe it'll be different in your game, maybe it'll be fun! Just worth watching out for the typical "if I just make it hyper-realistic it'll be hyper-fun" trap that myself and others have fallen into many times, including when building our own city simulations :) Again, don't wanna discourage, go for it! Worst case scenario you've learnt something new!

For sure!

I’m approaching it as a simulator core that provides a bunch of entities and primitives, that then couples with plugins providing simulation layers, all of which are optional or changeable

So should be trivial layer to adjust any part or provide simple/complex versions or whatever!

And thank you for the feedback! Did you publish your simulator anywhere?

I've been meaning to do the same one day but the time/energy just hasn't been available.

Maybe I should throw some agents at it and then maybe I can stop thinking about it?

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, and so far so good!

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