Notice window
welcome
scenario descriptions
warnings
zone status window
display live map picture
reconfigure to support various tasks
editors for chaging zone
invest $ => develop zone => increase land value
population density
crime prevention
environmental cleanup
enance growth
editor
pie menus
demand gauge
budget
multi user dialog
hour glass timeout
auto budget toggle
pause/resume toggle (to allow changing budget while simulation is running)
map
drag rectangles to pan map views
menus on palette
generate terrain mode
lengend
rearrange
switch overlays
dynamic zone finder
graph
2x3 palelet, 10/120 years
double buffering
communicate data. ard wire in c?
evaluation
historical graphis?
surveyor
other editors
dynamic zone finder
washboard filter sliders
get key dialog
new city -- or "use map"?
name, level
scenario selection
random terrain generator
player can propose a city by selecting a scenario, loading a city, or generating a random terrain.
all players must vote unanimously on a city to play
selecting a new city clears all votes
players can press next/previous to page through proposed city history
you can go back to randomly generated terrains, because it saves the random number generator seed
clears votes, proposes new or old city
terrain editor todo:
Integrate terrain editor code into map editor,
and have a button on the new city map to run in terrain editor mode.
Terrain editor will include only terrain editing tools,
plus random terrain generation interface,
and simulator will be paused.
print dialog
Newspaper printing and publishing metaphore.
Optionally save a snapshot of the city state, to link to from the newspaper article.
Publish in newspaper, print on paper, save to disk, copy to clipboard,
add to journal, blog, etc.
Allow user to enter text to be printed along with an image, like blogging.
Can print any map or editor view with data overlay and chalk drawings,
entire map (fit on one page, or split across multiple pages),
or other windows like graph, evaluation, notices, messages, chat log, etc.
Export text content as html with embedded images.
Make an html/image city overview and journal, like The Sims family view and scrapbook.
Printable windows and views should have a "print" button or function that pops up a
pie menu of possible destinations, for quickly making snapshots in your journal, etc.
Publish illustrated newspapers in the game, like The Sims storybook, with newspaper
articles composed of pictures of the city, text excerpts from chat logs, etc.
A player could be a "reporter" interviewing other player politicians via chat,
before and after the vote on building a stadium, asking them to make their case for
or against the stadium, and publish the interviews in the game's newspaper, the
"Micropolis Journal".
Players can browse each others newspapers over the net, and download the city snapshots
the articles write about.
Flash: Monster invades Micropolis, near nuclear reactor!
(story and link to saved city so you can read the story, then bring up the city and
play it live from the point the story was written)
quit
confirm
multi player logout
save dialog
load dialog
network city browsing and sharing
"What-If?" history tree.
Publish your cities on the net.
Download other peoples cities.
Use a URL to point to a saved city.
Grab a live snapshot of somebody's running city.
Checkpoint and branch timelines.
Save a city back to the point where it branched,
to create an alternate history that other players can load.
Multiple players build a tree of saved cities with branching alternate histories.
Like the parallel universes in Niven's All the Myriad Ways.
Rewind any city up the tree and select available alternate histories at each branch point.
Play back alternate histories edit by edit, stop them at any point and take over,
making a new branch point at that location.
When you play together in the same city, you have to discuss and agree with other players
about what to do, and convince other people of your ideas.
You can try an idea out yourself, by branching your own private history,
giving your idea a try, and reporting back to the other players in the main shared timeline
what happened (with links to the save file and history so other players can see for themselves).
GUI: Branching history tree outline viewer of saved files.
Drag and drop a history point into the chat log which other players can click on to open a
live view playing that history.
status control
views
players
new player
new view
Keep and export logs of simulation values
r, c, i demand
evaluation
tax rate, collected
funds
funding levels
event logs
simulation events
extend simulator to log all interesting simulation events,
so newspaper reporters can write stories about them
editing commands
Log enough information to replay all edits against a save file to recreate same city.
This is the key to high level multi player protocol between
multiple parallel lock-step simulations, like The Sims Online,
better than using low level x11 to implement the multi player
interface)
Treat any editing command as a "what-if" branch point where it could go another way.
Give players an easy interface to replay a simulation up to a branch point, and
and re-make the decision, to see how it would turn out differently.
chat logs
everything else of course
web service to access logs
export logs as xml for programs or csv for spreadsheets
import and export chalk overlay as vector drawing
support image overlays with transparency (begs for photoshop-like drawing interface)?
Careful how far down that road you go, because you could use it to paint the image of
a happy emerald green city over a dreary industrial wasteland.
The simple white chalk overlay has the advantage that you always know what's chalk and what's not.
opml outline with geo-codes
store city overlay information in opml
register the corners of the map with real-world lat/long values
allow rotation and scaling but not arbitrary shearing or distortion
register nodes of the opml outline at lat/long points and areas on the map
what's a good way to associate an opml node with an arbitrary area on the map?
an attribute with a polygon in lat/long coordinates?
a list of rectangles in lat/long coordinates?
a list of tiles in row/col coordinates?
associate geo-coded opml nodes with features on the map like
zones, buildings, streets, neighborhoods
use opml nodes to give names to features,
take notes about them,
attach pictures to them,
write stories about them,
support overlapping features, so roads can cross,
and each tile can belong to any number of features.
allow users to plant signs on the map, like micropolis 2000.
represent signs with an opml node.
signs can contains arbitrary opml outlines
with links to other opml nodes
like a sign at a crossroad, linked to the nodes representing each road,
and the regions of the city that the roads bring you to.
use opml to write a city guide
attach chalk overlays and signs to opml nodes so you can show and hide them hierarchically
head window
Represents root window of Micropolis application to TCL, and ties all the other windows together.
Contains the application's main menus and scrolling message and chat log.
An artifact of the way TCL/Tk/X11 works.
With another gui, might be the main base window that contains all other subwindows.
In X11, we depend on the user's chosen X11 window manager to manage all the separate windows.
In a better world (Sugar) Micropolis should let users save and restore windows
configurations and multiple views, tailored for various roles and tasks.
When a new player joins, the select a role to play, which will grant them
permissions and customize the interface, opening and positioning the appropriate
windows and tools for their role.
Each role supports various tasks that might themselves reconfigure the user interface.
User interface configurations should be selected based on the role and the task.
Users first select a role that stays the same (forever or most of the time)
and which grants them a set of permissions.
Each role supports a set of tasks (like Eclipse's "aspects"), which users may
switch between, to reconfigure the user interface.
Players can hold elections to grant each other roles
(like mayor, treasurer, planner, builder, reporter, god, etc).
Ownershop
This vastly complicates the game, so I didn't try it, but I wrote down some ideas.
Consider the screen area of the user interface it would require to
enable the user to micro-manage all the ownership issues, in terms of
the number of acres of city map it would cover.
It seemed like it would be too complicated to be fun.
Even if it could be magically implemented with a simple gui, would it be any fun?
That said, here are some ideas.
Ownership plane: 0 => nobody, 1-256 => user id
(note: Can't save ownership user ids into save files if we want multiple
players to enter and exit independently from the city itself, or if we
want to support an open-ended, possibly large number of players over time.
As I said, this gets complicated pretty fast, without a lot of beneficial fun.)
Players have separate funds.
This raises issues about: who gets paid how much of the city's overall income,
and who pays for city services?
Could have a main shared city budget, then certain players can be appropriated
funds from that budget earmarked to perform various tasks.
But again, that gets pretty complicated, and how is it fun?
Competition or cooperation?
Should we attempt to make the game support competition between players,
or is it better to keep it cooperation-oriented, by requiring unanimous votes,
sharing the budget, etc.
I think it's simpler and more educational to give players the freedom to misbehave,
while building in social networking and accountability, to let players discuss,
negotiate, make and break deals, establish reputations, reward good behavior,
and punish bad behavior, by developing real-world social interaction skills.
What fun would politics be if you couldn't have scandals?
Land value
higher resolution land value grid
effected by sales
asking price
Tiles are owned by someone, and may be for sale, and given an asking price by the owner.
Requires complex user interface for selecting tiles, assigning price, etc.
How is that fun?
Groups of tiles: parcels of land, for sale all at once, to highest bidder.
M.U.L.E.-like multi player auctions for land.
Developers can build on empty tiles that are for sale, and they're bought automatically.
What's so fun about being a developer? Nothing to do after setting the price of the land.
Buyers can offer to buy something that doesn't have a price, which initiates an
M.U.L.E. dialog with the owner, and allows other players to join in the auction,
submitting their own bids.
Transaction tool - $ (or local currency symbol)
select group of cells
negitiate deals with the owners
automatically calculates default land value suggested price (upon which the tax rate based)
based on modified land value through worth
communication window
so people can negotiate and talk
irc-like chat rooms where people can have a side discussion
private person-to-person messages
calculate evaluation for each player
Independent and combined scores and statistics.
Hard to define what this means in terms of the current simulation.
Would have to deeply change the way the simulation works,
but then would it still be fun?
Zone ownership.
Develop Micropolis into a more Monopoly-like game: SimCitopoly.
A player can own power plants and other utilities, and makes money
by selling electricity and other services to other players.
Zones don't develop until someone buys them.
Own residential => collect rent, pay maintainence.
Own industrial, commercial => collect income, pay expenses.
All zone owners pay taxes.