Unsurprisingly, SimCity focuses on the economic and social aspects of a successful city. Not enough money and people become unemployed and leave, not enough electricity or transport and various undesirable consequences follow. When people do leave and industries shut down, the result is rather boring bits of wasteland and delapidated buildings.
In reality, this isn't all that happens when a city is abandoned, cases in point including the Mayan cities and Chernobyl. In actual fact, "nature" takes over. I think this should happen in a city simulation game.
The game has two modes, each of which includes features of the other. You start off with an empty piece of land with a certain climate, terrain, water and local flora and fauna. You manage this piece of land both ecologically and economically, so either a city or a rural ecosystem can develop. If something happens to the city, for example the nuclear power plant melts down, it becomes abandoned due to economic failure or there's a natural disaster of some kind, the city fails in human terms, but not in ecological terms. Although the human population abandons the city, the likes of rats, cockroaches and stray dogs increase in population and plants in the "waste ground" begin to progress towards whatever the climax community is in the locality. Forest may take over, leading to a "lost city", or wetlands may emerge with herons, otters, beavers and fish. At the same time, human beings may still be in the picture, perhaps leading a nomadic lifestyle, settling in small villages or following the Mad Max dream. The precise details of what happens depend on the historical period and location of the initial piece of ground. It's also important to manage the ecology of the city as an urban environment, so for instance poorly-managed sewers or a stray pet problem can become an issue.
Extra natural disasters are available, such as plague, volcanic eruption, ice ages and so on. I also imagine the music changing tone, so for example it becomes classical and pastoral in a temperate region, thrash-metally in the Mad Max scenario or characterised by a succession of repetitive beats in a rainforest region. Hard to pull this last bit off without stereotyping though.
-- nineteenthly, Apr 11 2009

life after people http://www.history....s/life_after_people
good show [jaksplat, Apr 12 2009]

Thanks. Not much to say about it really though, is there?
-- nineteenthly, Apr 12 2009


well it's not so much Sim *City* as Sim *Planet*(-Regional). [+]
-- FlyingToaster, Apr 12 2009


Thanks, [jaksplat], that programme did come to mind, just after i thought this up.
[FlyingToaster], does that actually exist? Anyway, it does add an extra feature which so far as i know doesn't exist besides what i mentioned: practically permanent preindustrial scenarios. Simulating a Minoan or Mayan settlement would never reach the industrial revolution, and that business of stuff being invented through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries you get in SimCity wouldn't apply.
-- nineteenthly, Apr 12 2009


"the nuclear power plant melts down ... the likes of rats, cockroaches and stray dogs increase in population and plants in the "waste ground" begin to progress towards whatever the climax community is in the locality."

sp. "three-headed"

[+]
-- dbmag9, Apr 12 2009


your changeups involve planetary or at least continent sized events: ice ages, plagues, volcanism rather than the fixed backdrop used in SimCity.... not complaining mind.
-- FlyingToaster, Apr 12 2009


Good idea. It should go farther, though...

"A majestic, state-of-the-art particle accelerator is built. It creates a planet-destroying black hole. Suddenly, the simulation becomes much simpler."

Simulate that.

or...

"A project at a local university discovers AI. The rapidly-expanding consciousness discovers it is a simulation, running on some bozo's computer for his entertainment."

Ha! Irony.

this would be followed by...

"The AI goes on to discover a bug in the game's software that the AI can exploit to gain local admin rights. The AI quickly steals said bozo's credit card numbers and buys some web servers to gain additional processing power."

OK, back to sleep for me.
-- sninctown, Apr 12 2009



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