Dreamburg - a game I'm trying to put together.

[RollerSimmer 0]

I'm currently working on a city game, the working name for which is "Dreamburg". It's still pretty early in development, but I started a blog to log some of my activity. Right now I'm working on the core simulation. Graphics will come later. I don't plan on doing all of them myself. I'll probably need some help (though I did make a giant SCURK tileset back in the day...). It's going to focus on simulating a collection of neighborhoods (called "Wards") rather than just searching through a million tiles for a need provider. I'm aiming for jumbo maps of 1024x1024 tiles (400 sq. mi.) and possibly more.

It's going to be 2D and I'm using Allegro library 4.2 for the graphics and input. The development environment is Code::Blocks IDE for Linux (Ubuntu), the language is C++, and I'm pretty much working solo on it right now. I am open to making it open source if there is any interest, but after working on a failing theme park simulator open source project, my taste has kind of soured for this type of development environment. I'd be willing to take any suggestions on my blog or collaborate with graphics artists if I ever get to a stage where the core simulator works and is organized properly. I may get help for UI coding whenever it comes to that point.

I'm working on a CS degree right now, so this may get in the way, but I hope to follow through with this.

A little background on me and my history with SimCity and other sim games:

I've been playing video games since the old ColecoVision and Atari 2600 in the early 80s. I got my first SimCity for SNES back in the early 90s. From there I studied urban design and looked at road maps more than your average teenager should. I even made some model cities in my room out of index cards and poster board. SimCity 2000 was my first PC game for my first PC back in '94. I played that game constantly. I started out on Weburg's SC3000.com site back in '98 and posted under my real name, John Anderson. I worked on SCURK building art and contributed to the community a little but eventually faded out in '00 or so.

Around this time I started to get into programming. I started out with QBasic and moved on to Pascal and C++. Back around '96 or so I played a game called Transport Tycoon, and it became my second or third favorite simulation/tycoon game at the time. About three years later I noticed a game on the shelf called RollerCoaster Tycoon by the same developer, Chris Sawyer. I played this game a bit when it first came out, then faded out. It wasn't until RCT2 was about to come out in 2002 that I renewed my interest in the game. I started getting into the pre-release hype and joined sites like RCT2.com. I followed the developments as they unlocked the RCT2 custom object abilities. I think this was put in for online releases, but only a silly Panda bear set was released. Anyway I became pretty famous in the community almost overnight when I released an trainer called 8 Cars per Trainer. I produced a lot of content for that game, including utilities, parks, scenery objects, and even working rides. Some of the content is still available somewhere if you search "ja227", "Parkitect" or one of my other screennames.

But this good thing came to an end eventually, and as I noticed the community dieing a pretty notable coder in the RCT community recruited me to participate in an open source project called Theme Park Builder 3D. Sadly, this never really got off the ground, but I did learn a few things regardless. My dissatisfaction for this project lead me to brainstorm about some city simulator ideas. I have always wanted to do a game like this. I know it's an ambitious project, but I have a basic plan and just need the time and dedication to follow through.

I hope this explains where this is coming from, and why I am hesitant to make it open source right now. However I'm open to pointers and advice. Ideally, I'm hoping to make something on par with Simutrans or Freeciv. A nice free alternative to a commercial simulation game. I am also hoping this game will be as open-ended as possible for user-created content, and available on multiple platforms. I like retro isometric sims, so this is the style I'm going for. Well that, and I have no experience with 3D graphics. It's possible that can be wrapped around the cored code eventually, but for now it will have an old school/retro look to it. I am hoping for SNES/early 90s level graphics, though they can be pre-rendered like RCT, AOE or SC3000.

Below is a link to the development blog. I posted a load of information about the internals today, the first day of the blog's existence. The game has been on graph notebook paper, in my head, and on my hard drive up until today.

http://dreamburg.blogspot.com/

I'm going to post the source on a open code site eventually. I don't want all the code to go with my computer should it croak on me.

[cashmoney 5]

You're making a game?

[The_City_Builder 299]

Cool! I hope you don't give up on this kind of thing; many who try this lose motivation.

[Linoa06 1,374]

Don't give up, this looks promising.