Still around people

[NBAFAN1 28]

A lot of cool ideas here. I would definitely buy such a game

[Ledhead 2]

Here is another idea. How about just having a Creation Mode where you are not involved in playing a money game and there are no freaking advisers. It would allow you to create and watch a city run without money being an object. Everything would be available for you to plop without any cost. I am sure there are several people who just like to create cities and not really play managing a budget. And I still like the idea of the city expanding, taking over smaller towns, rather than having a region 10 or 20 miles wide each way with 80 or more cities. I live in Kansas City and it is easily 20 or more miles North to South. It would also be nice to be able to terraform the entire region as a whole rather than have to use another program to do so, which I seem incapable of getting any program to work for me. I know you are in the "Getting it to work so a software company would be interested" stage, but I believe if enough people show interest on this forum, c'mon people this topic should have 100 pages already, then some company may be more willing to invest in the idea.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I hope his return is not once

I hope his return is not once

Seems to have a cometary orbit. Hope it is not hyperbolic.

[tranceplante 2]

I think the reason why people still play Simcity 4 is that the game is unique and the game has high impressive realistic graphics. In 3D, creating realistic graphics as in Simcity 4 is still not possible.

I really don't care about 3D.... I really don't!

Good work guys, seriously this is awesome. Where can I buy this game?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I think the reason why people still play Simcity 4 is that the game is unique and the game has high impressive realistic graphics. In 3D, creating realistic graphics as in Simcity 4 is still not possible.

I really don't care about 3D.... I really don't!

Good work guys, seriously this is awesome. Where can I buy this game?

If you don't have it, your best bet is to download it from the legitimate download sites. The only one I know is STEAM, but word is that it is not the best site. Google for it, find a legit site that can sell you the license, and go ahead. Prices have been as low as $5 if you wait for a sale. The advantage of the download sites is that you get a fully patched game, and can run without doing the otherwise necessary maintenance steps.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Only ideas are immortal but old programmers never die. We just get a little buggy.

You mean 'Buggi'? *rimshot*

*tomato is thrown*..

Anyways, I don't feel like I have much to offer the project right now, other than my virtual support, sadly. At least not yet...

It's definitely interesting and I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

  Edited August 9, 2011 by Yoshiisland  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Only ideas are immortal but old programmers never die. We just get a little buggy.

You mean 'Buggi'? *rimshot*

*tomato is thrown*..

Well, at least it was a fresh tomato. The sandwich was good. Maybe this is just a Buggi-ride.

I support this effort, and while I may not be much help, I am extremely good at QA.

[drharris 3]

I registered just for this thread.

I'm a full-time programmer who is willing to help however I can (if this winds up being open source; not interested in another job), being a lover of sim games since the original SimCity. No good at 3d modeling or graphics, and I primarily use C#.NET, but I know most popular languages. At the very least, I can offer some advice, having been on about 5 open source game development projects that died quickly, one as quickly as 2 months in. Some things I've learned, take them or leave them...

1) Don't even attempt multiple platforms. Try to name one successful game that really has seamless multi-platform without a huge budget and a ton of developers. The only thing that can port somewhat seamlessly is your assets and engine code. Even in OpenGL there are so many OS-specific quirks it's not funny. Focus on a Windows release, and then worry about porting to other platforms (*nix, phones, etc.). Otherwise you will get so quickly bogged down in bug reports from various OSes you'll never be able to finish the game.

2) 3D is not worth it. All 5 projects I was on attempted full 3d. It's great in theory, but when you don't have 50 developers and 50 modelers working full time on it, you get bogged down within the first month. Go with 2.5D at the most. Sim games are primarily fun because of the creative Machiavellian aspects of gameplay, not realistic full-motion graphics. For those that like city walker/copter views, simply allow the save file format to be an open format. You'll be surprised what the game community comes up with; possibly a full-3d walking viewer application. Point is, 3d bogs down a version 1.0. Worry about that in the next version.

3) Focus on what's going to make the game fun, not necessarily realistic. I know that the temptation as sim lovers is to say "wouldn't it be so cool if ____ was more realistic?", but many times there is a very explicit reason the game designers chose not to do that (usually development time). First and foremost, you need a compelling concept. For example, Cities XL fails in many regards, but the concept of cities playing together is very compelling. It's sim lovers' nirvana to have cities interconnected, forming new countries, continents, and whole planets. Imagine micromanaging a whole galaxy! Point is, it's easy to get carried away, but you should have at least one major draw that nothing else has, and it should be addictive. For all SimCity's faults, we still play it often.

4) Do not design by committee. If you try to get everyone's input, and everyone's ideas implemented, you're going to wind up with a pile of junk. In the end, one person needs to design the entire thing. It sounds like you're doing well with such a large design document. Take things into consideration, but don't try to please everyone. You won't. Now, I'll offer some suggestions later, and feel free to scratch them! Design by committee is a good way to ensure nothing will get done.

Overall, I love the idea of resources playing into things. I think SimCity has always been weak on Industry, especially in late game play. Resources create a draw for industry, which creates demand for residential, and then commercial, making industry more critical. Basing it around resources also opens up better possibilities for trade. I would also say that it would be cool to allow "prospecting" for new resources. Each resource type should be some sort of gradient in the city, which forces the user to choose zoning more carefully (what if you put some low income housing over a uranium mine you later discover?)

I also like the idea of what someone mentioned about property. If resources help create cities, then property does as well (simply watch "How The States Were Made" on History channel). The idea of a city being limited to one small area and having to purchase additional property is a very good idea. Also, it would be interesting to model some sort of property value trending. For example, residential near coastline is more valuable than in the mountains. Commercial near major roads is more than smaller roads. So on, so forth, and it would be all behind-the-scenes. It also allows you to do things with "individual citizens" (the other sim lover's nirvana). For example, you might partition some residential along a coastline, but when property values increase and you don't have high tech yet, nobody is rich enough to afford it and it may go dormant (lack of residents make the nearby properties increase, which drive prices even further, and then it can never be afforded). Something to consider. Property is very important in city development, so it would be interesting to play on that theme at some level.

As a C#/.NET developer, I have to mention XNA studio and framework. It has excellent porting capability between PC, Xbox, and Phone (windows). This opens up immediate avenues of revenue if you go that route, and AppHub gets you visibility for cheap.

Sorry for the long post, and hope it helps. Again, willing to help if this turns into open source.

  Edited August 10, 2011 by drharris  

[-JD- 41]

I don't know if this would be possible, but maybe we could have some more disasters? Like a tsunami, riot (like in SimCity 3000 Unlimited), floods, etc. And maybe make disasters randomly happen and have a "god mode" way of doing it. The only disaster that I see that happens randomly in SC4 is fire, but there may be others.

Maybe you could have weather too? That would be awesome, but i'm not sure if that would be hard to do or not. But it would make it much more realistic. Also, maybe if this takes off, you could make a tool dedicated to creating new buildings and lots, similar to the one that came with SimCity 3000 Unlimited.

I would definitely buy this! I will be keeping tabs on this thread. Good luck to you!

[townscape 0]

Hello, I'm townscape from the Citymania project and I wanted to drop by and say i'm still available if you need help on the UI and logo design assets.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I still argue for portability, at least in source. There is very little reason to lock in to one operating system when protability software is available from the GNU project free.

Yes, development can proceed on a single platform, but a little care can avoid any incestuous operating system API calls. Just stay clear of them and lock-in languages such as those in Visual Studio and Java. Stick with ISO standards and you should be all right.

Game development is tricky, and if you must write some sections in assembler, stick to x86 decor and you should be good on any current platform. The GNU compiler will quite handily accept all of this.

Since you can denigrate any O/S desktop stuff and run full screen, I wouldn't get excited about "windowed" mode.

Open source would be good, but it is not the way to make any money.

[Nique 291]

Hello, I'm townscape from the Citymania project and I wanted to drop by and say i'm still available if you need help on the UI and logo design assets.

Hey Townscape,

Post your examples of the GUI, they looked great.

Yet, still.. i am more a fan o slick gui's (like simtropolis is looking).

We do not need to make money. I am thinking about a Plugin (packet) Manager based on the p2p networks. Then Simtropolis or SC4Devotion offer repositories that you can add to the manager. Dependency checks are automatically. This means: no more junk yard in %UserProfile%/documents/simcity 4/plugins

  Edited August 10, 2011 by Nique  

[townscape 0]

Hello, I'm townscape from the Citymania project and I wanted to drop by and say i'm still available if you need help on the UI and logo design assets.

Hey Townscape,

Post your examples of the GUI, they looked great.

Yet, still.. i am more a fan o slick gui's (like simtropolis is looking).

We do not need to make money. I am thinking about a Plugin (packet) Manager based on the p2p networks. Then Simtropolis or SC4Devotion offer repositories that you can add to the manager. Dependency checks are automatically. This means: no more junk yard in %UserProfile%/documents/simcity 4/plugins

Here's the old mockup.

We can make some new mockups, those are at least a year and a half old, but I think I'll wait until the team and initial details are decided upon.

He was planning on making this a commercial project for some reason, but it seems that if he wants to accept any help he will need to do it open source.

[Buggi 685]

Only ideas are immortal but old programmers never die. We just get a little buggy.

Just a little

[Buggi 685]

Hey all, Thanks for the replies. I try to read every one carefully. I'm limited on time as I require a job to pay rent which cuts WAY back on time. So if there is a wealthy Simtrop member willing to help me out I could easily devote 24/7 to my passion project. For the meantime I'm trying to digitize my design document. It's all hand written and hand drawn.

So if we rule out 3D that changes things a bit. I'll have to read up on the engine info Quigley posted on his blog.

As for more information, I noticed someone mentioned resource categories.

Yes my design has them categorized.

"Surface", "Mine", "Water" (as in on water, like fish), "Special" Covers them all...

Keystone Industries are further specialized:

"Extraction" uses resources, be that a coal mine or an orange farm. Even covering seafood industries.

"Processing" is built largely based on what resources are extracted. So a city with a Iron Ore mine will be offered a Steel mill as well, or it could be built in a neighboring city.

"Manufacturing" is just what it sounds like. It gets a little away from the "dirty" industry. So a Auto Plant is an example, or a tool and die plant, say.

"Retail" are the big box stores. "Sim-MART" for example. (Wal-Mart is the US's largest employer)

"High Tech" is a natural fit, also included in this are green techs like "Wind Turbine Manufacturer"

"Tourism" rounds out the industries and covers theme parks, water parks, landmarks

----> Tourism categories are "Environomental", "Vacation", "Entertainment", and "Adult"

As far as bringing on people to the project, I would gladly take feedback on the design once people read and see the big picture, but changes, especially big changes would happen rarely. There are already a great number of features in the design and adding stuff would be rare. So stuff like precipitation simulation has been thought of but thrown out in lieu of the 25 other simulations already in the design.

One other thing in my design radically changes the concept of difficulty level. What I put down as the difference between easy and hard are the simulations that are active. So on "easy" many of the simulations (crime, land value) are ignored in growing a city. Where on hard or expert all simulations are active and some are further toughened. I also include a "custom" for the person who loves to use all simulations but just shuts off one or two, like money. This features of selectable simulations derrived from the mods that disabled or tweaked simulations in SC4. I saw a need for customization and I thought it prudent to include it in the design.

[Nique 291]

Buggi,

Do you realize that it is in fact possible to make money without being closed source?

Look at MineCraft

  Edited August 10, 2011 by Nique  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Buggi, I do offer my services in QA.

I have been an analyst/programmer since 1962, and have run several commercial projects. I am retired and can give you as many hours as are reasonable. If you like, I will participate in design discussions as a critic, but I am not a games programmer, only a user in that regard.

I am very good at testing to a specification, and will ignore the code, testing only functionality. Programmers who test their own stuff in an integration test, test only what they think they have created.

Oh, and I am a son of a female canine when it comes to documentation.

  Edited August 10, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[tranceplante 2]

I think the reason why people still play Simcity 4 is that the game is unique and the game has high impressive realistic graphics. In 3D, creating realistic graphics as in Simcity 4 is still not possible.

I really don't care about 3D.... I really don't!

Good work guys, seriously this is awesome. Where can I buy this game?

If you don't have it, your best bet is to download it from the legitimate download sites. The only one I know is STEAM, but word is that it is not the best site. Google for it, find a legit site that can sell you the license, and go ahead. Prices have been as low as $5 if you wait for a sale. The advantage of the download sites is that you get a fully patched game, and can run without doing the otherwise necessary maintenance steps.

eh? I was talking about that project, not sim city 4.

or can I buy that project somewhere? I would be glad to buy it for 5$

I have sim city 4 already.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I think the reason why people still play Simcity 4 is that the game is unique and the game has high impressive realistic graphics. In 3D, creating realistic graphics as in Simcity 4 is still not possible.

I really don't care about 3D.... I really don't!

Good work guys, seriously this is awesome. Where can I buy this game?

If you don't have it, your best bet is to download it from the legitimate download sites. The only one I know is STEAM, but word is that it is not the best site. Google for it, find a legit site that can sell you the license, and go ahead. Prices have been as low as $5 if you wait for a sale. The advantage of the download sites is that you get a fully patched game, and can run without doing the otherwise necessary maintenance steps.

eh? I was talking about that project, not sim city 4.

or can I buy that project somewhere? I would be glad to buy it for 5$

I have sim city 4 already.

Sorry, I misunderstood you. The thread says quite clearly that no machine loadable version of the design exists as yet.

[tranceplante 2]

So if we rule out 3D that changes things a bit. I'll have to read up on the engine info Quigley posted on his blog.

If you ask me, 3D is just eye candy. I hate citiesxl because of that. I don't mind 3d, but it has to be a good game first.

Anyways i would love to help out in such a project, but I doubt I could be much help.

I have one suggestion. Not sure if it cane be done, but if all the mods from this site could work on that ''new'' project that would be totally awesome and I think it could spike interests. Just my 2cents

Bonne chance

[tranceplante 2]

I think the reason why people still play Simcity 4 is that the game is unique and the game has high impressive realistic graphics. In 3D, creating realistic graphics as in Simcity 4 is still not possible.

I really don't care about 3D.... I really don't!

Good work guys, seriously this is awesome. Where can I buy this game?

If you don't have it, your best bet is to download it from the legitimate download sites. The only one I know is STEAM, but word is that it is not the best site. Google for it, find a legit site that can sell you the license, and go ahead. Prices have been as low as $5 if you wait for a sale. The advantage of the download sites is that you get a fully patched game, and can run without doing the otherwise necessary maintenance steps.

eh? I was talking about that project, not sim city 4.

or can I buy that project somewhere? I would be glad to buy it for 5$

I have sim city 4 already.

Sorry, I misunderstood you. The thread says quite clearly that no machine loadable version of the design exists as yet.

Right right.... it was just a way of giving out my support. I guess I should be more clear

[Buggi 685]

Yeah, I have a budget of 2 to 3 years for the development of engine and art resources for the project. Which hasn't started since I also estimate the cost for all of that at $10 million (which is a drop in the bucket for game budgets these days).

[Nique 291]

So if we rule out 3D that changes things a bit. I'll have to read up on the engine info Quigley posted on his blog.

If you ask me, 3D is just eye candy. I hate citiesxl because of that. I don't mind 3d, but it has to be a good game first.

Anyways i would love to help out in such a project, but I doubt I could be much help.

I have one suggestion. Not sure if it cane be done, but if all the mods from this site could work on that ''new'' project that would be totally awesome and I think it could spike interests. Just my 2cents

Bonne chance

I don't think it is a good idea to make the game in such way. The way Simcity 4 plugin works is not that powerfull. We need a package manager with dependency checks on which you can add repositories (from different websites/creators) like the major linux distributions have now.

Yeah, I have a budget of 2 to 3 years for the development of engine and art resources for the project. Which hasn't started since I also estimate the cost for all of that at $10 million (which is a drop in the bucket for game budgets these days).

Just start like Synekism. Make a list of classes/functions that have to be made. (work over SVN / GIT version controll so there can be forks). Then we can merge when other forks are good enough.

  Edited August 11, 2011 by Nique  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Yeah, I have a budget of 2 to 3 years for the development of engine and art resources for the project. Which hasn't started since I also estimate the cost for all of that at $10 million (which is a drop in the bucket for game budgets these days).

Just start like Synekism. Make a list of classes/functions that have to be made. (work over SVN / GIT version controll so there can be forks). Then we can merge when other forks are good enough.

GIT will definitely allow for distributed development. One project that I know it works for is wine. There is a staggering list of developers, and everything is parceled out very carefully. The nice thing of it is that if you are tracking a problem with a version of the package there is a neat way to do a regression test to isolate where the problem originated. wine is open source, by the way.

[croxis 150]

tl;dr: Tough, its going to be long

I was another dev on citymania, I did a lot of the server, net, and client code (omg I need mipmapping). Here are my thoughts and experience, assuming EA says no and assuming you go open source (WHICH YOU SHOULD):

1) Use an existing cross platform engine. There is no need in 2011 to reinvent the wheel. The anti-cross platform argument is complete rubbish for exactly that reason, the only case is if you are writing a graphics engine from scratch. With the correct engine (panda, ogre, irrlicht, unity, etc) it is just as easy for one as is the other. What WAS difficult was making the simulation engine from scratch to make it "light weight." All it did was waste time trying to recreate something that already existed in the game engine we were using.

2) Frequent code updates. Code is never finished, only forgotten. Tomkeus did a lot of awesome work on the road construction code, but he never published the code to a public repository, so we could never use it. This happens all the time in the FOSS world. Someone works on something great but never publishes their code because it is "poorly documented/not finished/needs cleanup/etc." If it works, push it so people can use it. I see no purpose on hiding source code until you release.

3) Release often. One of the things I noticed working with minecraft/bukkit is that the most successful plugins use a special project page. Every time new code is added to the source the page compiles a new build of the program. Devs then select specific builds that they consider stable and has the features they want to make a release. FOSS survives on releasing early and often, although with making a game there is a bit of leg work before there is the first release. If the project shows life, more devs are interested, you get more pull requests, and it is a positive feedback loop.

4) Keep the lead. There needs to be a single person in charge of the game design and vision. While there can be discussion about game design and features there needs to be one person in charge. Games can not be designed by committee. If that person has to leave due to real life, it should be clear who the next head person is. This happened to us.

5) Language. Everyone has their pet language that they adore, here is mine and why. Developer time is very important. C/C++, while one of the fastest, takes a while to develop for. Python is faster to develop in, but is slower than C/C++ especially with a lot of mathematical computations. However python modules can also be written in C/C++, so if there is a chunk of code that is slow in python, it can be written/rewritten in C/C++ and integrated seamlessly with the existing python code. That is what the Panda3D engine does. The question isn't which language is faster, but what is fast enough. CCP also uses Python for Eve online, especally their server code. They found that when optimizing code they generally get more performance per developer time refactoring the game logic more efficiently in python than rewriting the code as a C module.

My notes: I think a full 3d game is still the most viable option UNLESS you are specifically making a clone of the sc4 engine -- which isn't a bad idea in and of itself. I would still use an existing cross platform engine for that task. Doing so would give clear targets on what to develop for and, once the engine is feature complete, bug fixes and new features can be added.

The hard part with using 3d graphics is getting art assets (which this community has more artists than coders, opposite of many other projects, leverage that to your advantage) and, for this game, the geome count. Graphics card can render an object with millions of polygons in real time, but throw on just 500 different cubes on screen and even the most robust gaming card slows to a crawl. Most engines come with features to merge geoms, and they can be recreated on the fly if you need to change a building, but it is something to consider in the game design. We were going to accomplish this with our "blueprint" layer. Instead of the player making changes directly (causing the need for a lot of geoms to be recreated and merge on the fly), the player would draw their plan on a blueprint interface. Once they were happy with the plan those changes were then committed in the world. A bit more realistic and we would have more control over how these changes would work in simulation and graphically.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, maybe it is my culture, but I am not a fan of Python. For fast, small code I don't think you can beat C unless you drop to assembler, which is fatal to portability. One of the big problems with any Python environment I've encountered is that it seems to be interpretive. This is a layer you don't need. The same applies to the .NET compile-on-the-fly stuff. A simulation like this cannot afford much overhead as it needs all the processor it can get.

Even dividing up the tasks won't stop some of them from eating processors when the universe of discourse becomes large.

[croxis 150]

Well, maybe it is my culture, but I am not a fan of Python. For fast, small code I don't think you can beat C unless you drop to assembler, which is fatal to portability. One of the big problems with any Python environment I've encountered is that it seems to be interpretive. This is a layer you don't need. The same applies to the .NET compile-on-the-fly stuff. A simulation like this cannot afford much overhead as it needs all the processor it can get.

Even dividing up the tasks won't stop some of them from eating processors when the universe of discourse becomes large.

Disclaimer: I am a hobbyist programmer only. Never been to school for it or worked in the field, so my culture differs greatly.

I've found that a lot of trained coders hold engineering ideals of speed and size very close to their heart. I think these are good things that we should try for and always iterate on, but it seems more often than not it gets in the way of community-oriented proejcts. I can't tell you how many Bukkit plugins died because the developer was waiting to release the code when they got it smaller/cleaner/faster/better documented, but they left before that ever happened. Thankfully java is easy to reverse compile

My other view on it is a little more data driven. Yes certain languages are faster and small, and vitally important if this is going to try and run on a notebook with an atom processor. If the assumption that this is a game going to be made for desktops and high end laptops then, while you don't want to go to the opposite extreme and be lazy, I question to what degree language A is faster/smaller than B and if it is worth it. If it takes an extra 6 months to code the complete game in pure C, but you only save 100 megs of ram in a world of 4 gig systems, is it worth it?

And like I said, in the case of python specifically those heavy lifting simulation modules can be written in C/C++ and used by python code no problem. My quick check in top shows that python interpreter seems to have about 35 megs of overhead in ram. (Granted there is also the issue of the GIL too)

[Nique 291]

It is possible to use the Panda3D Engine and still stay 100% with c++.

[drharris 3]

Disclaimer: I am a hobbyist programmer only. Never been to school for it or worked in the field, so my culture differs greatly.

I've found that a lot of trained coders hold engineering ideals of speed and size very close to their heart. I think these are good things that we should try for and always iterate on, but it seems more often than not it gets in the way of community-oriented proejcts.

My other view on it is a little more data driven. Yes certain languages are faster and small, and vitally important if this is going to try and run on a notebook with an atom processor. If the assumption that this is a game going to be made for desktops and high end laptops then, while you don't want to go to the opposite extreme and be lazy, I question to what degree language A is faster/smaller than B and if it is worth it. If it takes an extra 6 months to code the complete game in pure C, but you only save 100 megs of ram in a world of 4 gig systems, is it worth it?

As a professional programmer who has been to grad school for it, I'll wholeheartedly agree. You can spend 12 months getting a version 0.1 up and running in pure C, or you can get a slow but working 0.1 out in a few months with Python. Having 8-10 months to then inline some C to speed things up goes a long, long way to performance improvements. Inlining C code in python usually results in code that is about 95-98% as efficient as pure C, and using pure C for compiled modules shows little difference at all.

A project's death is normally directly proportional to how long it takes to get that first working version up and running. Once you can see it in action, the rest is polish and maintenance. Using a higher level language gets you that first version much more quickly, and you can worry about performance when it actually becomes an issue. Premature optimization is a huge no-no in the development world, because it bogs down your development time with little reward in most cases. It's much better to run it slow, use profiling to determine where bottlenecks are, and then redesign those bottlenecks for performance. Iterate until it runs like butter.

That said, simulations running outside realtime environments are notorious CPU hogs, and I think we'd find a lot of optimization will need to be done. But I still believe a higher level language is by far the way to go here. How many other community sim projects have failed because they try to get everything perfect before even writing a line of code? You have to get a playable version out quickly or your project dies.

[Nique 291]

Disclaimer: I am a hobbyist programmer only. Never been to school for it or worked in the field, so my culture differs greatly.

I've found that a lot of trained coders hold engineering ideals of speed and size very close to their heart. I think these are good things that we should try for and always iterate on, but it seems more often than not it gets in the way of community-oriented proejcts.

My other view on it is a little more data driven. Yes certain languages are faster and small, and vitally important if this is going to try and run on a notebook with an atom processor. If the assumption that this is a game going to be made for desktops and high end laptops then, while you don't want to go to the opposite extreme and be lazy, I question to what degree language A is faster/smaller than B and if it is worth it. If it takes an extra 6 months to code the complete game in pure C, but you only save 100 megs of ram in a world of 4 gig systems, is it worth it?

As a professional programmer who has been to grad school for it, I'll wholeheartedly agree. You can spend 12 months getting a version 0.1 up and running in pure C, or you can get a slow but working 0.1 out in a few months with Python. Having 8-10 months to then inline some C to speed things up goes a long, long way to performance improvements. Inlining C code in python usually results in code that is about 95-98% as efficient as pure C, and using pure C for compiled modules shows little difference at all.

A project's death is normally directly proportional to how long it takes to get that first working version up and running. Once you can see it in action, the rest is polish and maintenance. Using a higher level language gets you that first version much more quickly, and you can worry about performance when it actually becomes an issue. Premature optimization is a huge no-no in the development world, because it bogs down your development time with little reward in most cases. It's much better to run it slow, use profiling to determine where bottlenecks are, and then redesign those bottlenecks for performance. Iterate until it runs like butter.

That said, simulations running outside realtime environments are notorious CPU hogs, and I think we'd find a lot of optimization will need to be done. But I still believe a higher level language is by far the way to go here. How many other community sim projects have failed because they try to get everything perfect before even writing a line of code? You have to get a playable version out quickly or your project dies.

Croxis has a playable version available