I continue to work on my city builder game Microlandia, launched here in HN ~6 months ago. I originally predicted a few dozen urbanism nerds would play it, but now almost 10,000 copies sold. I'm still a solo developer but now I collaborate with 2D, 3D and music artists. Which is good because the original art that I drew myself for the launch was horrible.
I'm currently working on modeling energy, climate and new policies like universal basic income
Based on the general reception you get almost every time you mention this on HN, you really should make your own text-based forum available as there is a ton of us interested in diving into the game mechanics, your plans and general ideas a lot more than probably HN could support.
Let me know if you're looking for an experienced web dev who can help you with all of it ;)
That's brilliant. And 10,000 copies! Woot, look at you go! Very well done and I think it looks great. It gives me hope. I'll go make it 10,001.
For reference, here's the original post:
Show HN: Microlandia, a brutally honest city builder (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137953)
This reminds me of what "Hell Mod" did to Diablo I: Basically reinvented the game as it would have been if Blizzard hadn't been constrained by money or time, and knew what worked from their sequels.
Only to Sim City.
I'm working on a game myself. Mind if I ask:
- How difficult was it to get on Steam and other vendors?
- Are there any artists you'd recommend working with? I need a 3D/Blender artist, especially.
Steam is simple - pay the $99 and follow the instructions.
> How difficult was it to get on Steam and other vendors?
Not difficult at all. Pay the fee, get something going.
> Are there any artists you'd recommend working with? I need a 3D/Blender artist, especially.
My e-mail is on my profile, happy to send a few intros your way.
Depending on the kind of artist you want I might be able to recommend some people, have you done this before?
I'm saying this as a gamedev who's had some mixed experiences, not an expert at this at all, so happy to pass on any useful tips if it's helpful
Drop me an email if you want to discuss more, email in my profile
I'm really interested in how the landlord/land price logic works, as it would be key to building a realistic city where higher income earners live closer to CBD, etc. Are there slums and ghettos? Gentrification? The promo shows single detached houses seemingly quite close to city center.
Unhoused people do exist, and they vote for you so it's in there. Also shelters with real costs based on good data. Modeling slums is actually quite hard. There were unhoused camping sites in the early access version but I was unhappy with how it turned out and retired the feature back to the drawing board.
I want it to come back because it's in the spirit of the game not to hide the "ugly" aspects of city life.
There is gentrification in the way that landlords discriminate low income renters and NIMBYs have political power over you (in the form of the 'disagreement aura')
There's no rules against building single family homes in a city center, but the effect is what you would expect: non optimal tax revenue as you could zone it for something that's worth a lot more.
Does the AI have a say in what type of residential buildings are built, or is it all up to the player? If the AI is choosing, then there should be some way to naturally incentivize the landlords to build apartment towers where there is a higher demand, and cheaper housing in the suburbs where workers can't afford to pay higher rents.
Congrats on the game and I hope you're keeping some design notes as the balancing act between realism and gameplay will surely make for an interesting story.
I like that it's non-serious and contains jokes throughout the user interfaces. Reminds me a little of Airline Tycoon's non-serious/joking nature, and Theme Hospital if going further back in time. It makes the game fun rather than a boring simulator some city planner would use for work.
This looks great. I've had a quick look through the docs and can't see anything about bikes under transport, or, under housing, anything relating to modes of tenure that aren't private rentals (e.g. Vienna-style social housing, housing co-operatives, or private ownership). Would be lovely to play around with those variables.
Also, for finance, is there a particular reason why the finance sector calculations look quite simple (on the face of it, at least)? They seem only to be a percentage lift based on aura, rather than anything resembling any number of complex sectoral dynamics, from full rentier-financial domination to prudent support of industry/services.
Social housing and bikes are on the roadmap :)
Regarding the unit economics for finance sector, you are right, the calculations are way too simple, and I'm not entirely happy with it, so I'm looking to improve it, but it does need to be a sweet spot between 1. realistic enough to be educatioal and 2. simple enough you can use it as a gameplay mechanic.
Before the end of the year there will be mod support, and I will pay special attention to making sure that modders can swap the economic formulas for more sophisticated models.
Great stuff!
I can imagine the financial modelling side is a particularly difficult balance, yeah. Mod support sounds amazing though, I'll keep a look out. :)
Congratulations on releasing a game! It’s beautiful, looks like a mix of voxel art games and sim city
When I get time I want to buy it and play it :)
Do you work on it full time or do you have a day job too?
It's my main activity but I also work on other stuff to make ends meet.
Looks amazing! Might I ask what tool you're using to design the 3d models? Some kind of voxel editor, like MagicaVoxel?
We use Goxel. https://goxel.xyz
Steam says its unavailable on Mac's with Apple Silicon processors, is that right?
Only Apple Silicon is supported. It's unavailable for Intel, sadly.
Man looks amazing, the detail level of the simulation seems to be in another level compared to sity skylines and co. If you need any help or just chat about this, reach out to contact (At) khorchani (dot)fr
I've played a little bit of it so far, and really enjoyed it.
This looks awesome. I’m pumped to try it out.
Great work! Game looks amazing. I'm curious. How many percent of people left a review on Steam?
less than 2%
> Microslop Excellent (TM)
Niceeeeee
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"... new policies like universal basic income."
Is the engine honest enough to reality to demonstrate failure?
OK, I'll bite - what would a failure of UBI look like?
Government revenue doesn't keep up with expenditures.
check the results from texas and illinois
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> Higher taxes for anyone earning over $100k
Not a failure. Society working as intended.
> [...] lower quality of life [...]
Agreed, that would be a failure, if it were to happen. How on earth could "giving people money" lead to a lower quality of life for them?
> Politicians and corporations earn billions in profits on UBI distribution fees
As opposed to the much higher fees accrued by the more-complex means-tested programs today?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of the economy is that money is earned when someone creates value. Just "giving people money" without having the corresponding value be created increases demand for valuable things without increasing supply, leading to inflation and the costs of said things going up.
Money is earned either by extracting rents/profits/taxes, through borrowing or by selling something. None of these have to actually create value.
You can advertise something without value and “earn” money selling it. The perceived value was created by advertising, but didn’t actually exist.
You can raise funds, sell at a loss, buy out the competition and later drive up prices without creating any value. This is how Amazon got started.
You can go to the bank, borrow money(increasing the money supply, driving inflation, thanks to fractional reserve banking), buy up houses (driving housing inflation), and extract rent without doing anything useful for your community.
In fact, cloud computing is largely that: buying up all the compute and renting it out to those without the capital to buy themselves.
A person can create value without earning money (parenthood, volunteering), and one can earn money without creating value (rent extraction), although the word “earn” is under a lot of strain.
You're wrong. People have inherent value whether they "create value" or not. UBI is not about rewarding people for some economic contribution but rather provides everyone with a reasonable amount of money so they can survive (hopefully) and stay healthy and have a shot at the prerequisites for "freedom" to exist.
Money has been completely manufactured in financial markets already and doesn't seem to be screwing us over too badly. I hardly think UBI paid from taxing the largest economic surpluses and wealth in the history of the world will have a significant impact on inflation.
Any inflationary impact would happen if you print the money supply to pay UBI rather than using existing dollars in the supply.
You're also completely writing off the additional surpluses that people receiving UBI could provide if they're confident they can get by on a daily basis and also ensure they stayed healthy and working rather than spiraling any time one or two things go sideways.
In, say, the Netherlands we already have something that's very close to free money. I know many, many folks perusing said mechanism(s). Sure, it's not UBI and there is some stigma involved but I think it's the closest you'll get. I won't be snarky about this, but let's just say I need some.. convincing this reliably addresses the primary obstacles in economically disadvantaged folks. In my experience our economic situation is downstream from other more urgent issues that we find hard to talk about. Culture, ethics, behavioral and cognitive differences, etc. Thorny, nasty things, but .. real and more importantly they don't respond to dollar bills. In fact, it may make it worse.
But anyway, I'm not too worried about inflation mainly because of the points you raised, but I am worried about resource constrained markets like housing. If nothing is done to stop this, and I don't know how, I'm sure they'll just raise the prices to completely cancel out any UBI you'll pass around. It's not just housing either, but that's an obvious one.
> our economic situation is downstream from other more urgent issues that we find hard to talk about. Culture, ethics, behavioral and cognitive differences
I see it as exactly the opposite - culture, ethics, behavior differences etc are downstream of financial inequality. When people are financially insecure it becomes much harder to tolerate disagreement, and much easier to blame [insert whatever populist notion of enemy]. I think it would be easier to engage with people with opposing ideas, not seeing them as an existential threat, if you are not worried about housing, income or health insurance.
Cultural polarization is a deflection mechanism (both in the subconscious psychological sense as well as a politcal/propaganda technique) meant to mask the real deeper structural inequalities. It's the lie we tell ourselves and the powers that be tell us to prevent to change the direction of the "wealth redistribution" we've been witnessing for 20+ years.
So far in Croatia any kind of stimulus from the government just makes the market compensate. For example, an increase in public spending made the prices of goods and services more expensive and providing subsidies for first time home buyers caused prices of real estate to increase by that amount.
Value is subjective and some value takes unknown time to create. So money is also given to people in that grey area.
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The real problem during the pandemic is most of the stimulus money went to the already wealthy. Higher cost of living is because we keep printing money, that money goes to banks, and inflation ends up being an implicit tax on the poor who aren't invested in the markets.
What I can definitely tell you is that the people that currently can't even afford basic things are somehow causing higher cost of living. The economy is not jacked up right now because we gave people laughably small amounts like a thousand dollars. The real problem is people like Sergei Brin spending 57 million dollars to fight a one-time 5% tax.
Pandemic checks were from expanding the money supply IIRC rather than distributed taxes on the already very wealthy. These are very different mechanisms. What they did (expanding the money supply) drove inflation way more than the actual money in people’s pockets. Otherwise you’d have argue people shouldn’t get paid because it causes too much inflation.
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