Building my own SimCity

Creating a resource-based city simulation game from scratch

Hi all,

My name is Tom and I work at a large high tech company in the Netherlands. Since my youth, I have enjoyed building things. I remember well playing the classic SimCity on my Dos PC at least 15 years ago. Let's face it, the game was ugly - even for that time - but so much fun to play! You could create your own city! And you had to be smart to make it work and make your citizens happy. Then years later, SimCity 2000 came out. That was a revolution...the graphics were gorgeous, you could build underground, construct fusion and microwave powerplants, and even arcologies (little ecosystems in their own right). I enjoyed the game and played it extensively with childhood friends. 

And then...I grew up. I went to high school, studied mechanical engineering at university, played sports, dated, and got a proper job. I forgot about Simcity altogether, until reading on The Verge about the disaster that was the SimCity 2013 launch. Intrigued, I read up on the game, which seemed fun although maybe a little limited. Being an engineer, I was also interested in how it all was put together...and learnt a bit about Glassbox, the new simulation engine from Maxis that's at the core of SimCity 2013. And of course, a thought popped up in my mind: 'how hard can it be to make my own city simulator?'.

This blog is a logbook for myself and fellow enthusiasts of my efforts to create a city simulator. So why read this? The source code of the classic SimCity is available on Sourceforge and there are many people that have created clones of SimCity. Well, I guess this is my story of how to build a resource-based city simulation game from scratch step-by-step with my thinking along the way, instead of checking out a finished monolith of code in a computer language I am not specialized in.

There are two notes to add: (1) Since I am a mechanical engineer and not a programmer by profession, my code might not always be the most efficient nor pretty. But it should get the job done. (2) I will focus mainly on the code, less on the UI (user interface). In essence, this is a proof-of-concept.

The most important thing is that this journey will be fun. I hope you'll enjoy this blog. If you have comments, feel free to add them.