SimBlob: Future Directions

Alternatives under consideration

This document lists some of the ideas I had for games that would fit into the SimBlob project. I never got past the design phase on any game but Blob City.

Blob City

• map scale: city
• computer players: no

Blob City is a software “toy”, like SimCity. There are no set goals; instead, you set goals (such as “get to 350,000 population”) and conditions (such as “no diverting or damming of rivers”) for yourself, and you play as you like. The world is constantly changing: water flows and forms rivers and lakes, trees grow, erosion creates canyons, floods and droughts occur, fires burn forests, and seasons pass. As mayor of the city, you can build roads along which the blobs will build their houses and farms. You build lumber yards to cut down forests to supply wood for building your town. You can also build canals to bring water to your city; walls to protect your city from floods; dams to hold water for the dry season; and artificial waterways to redirect flowing water.

• Result: Something like SimCity, but with a lot more environmental interaction
• Pro: Likely to get implemented, given the amount of free time I have
• Con: There’s no “game” - just free play

SimBlob

• map scale: city
• computer players: sort of

Like Blob City, your goal is to build a city for your blobs. However, this world is a dangerous place, with scenarios involving raids by barbarians, attacks from unfriendly armies, and competition from rival cities. (These are controlled by a “computer player”, but the computer player isn’t playing at the same level as you.) There still isn’t a major emphasis on “winning” or “losing” the game, but unlike Blob City, you have to build defenses and maintain an army to survive.

• Result: Something weird and unfocused
• Pro: More likely to be finished than Blob Conquest (The problem is similar, in that the computer player can’t easily identify anything in the world, but it’s not as bad as Blob Conquest in that there’s no pretense that the human and computer are on equal footing, so there wouldn’t be a problem in giving the computer player a lot more resources to balance out its wimpy AI.)
• Con: Less likely to ever be finished than Blob City

Blob Conquest

• map scale: city
• computer players: yes

In Blob Conquest you and the computer players build towns (smaller versions of the cities built in Blob City). As you start running out of space, your goal shifts from building your town to taking over another town. You do this by attacking or buying territory in another town. You can also cause disasters such as fires and flooding to weaken your opponent. In addition to the roles played in Blob City, roads and walls can facilitate or block the movement of blob soldiers. Towns can be protected by walls, and barracks can be connected to defense towers by roads.

• Result: Something new and different
• Pro: It’s not similar to existing popular games
• Con: Unlikely to ever be finished

The Silver Kingdoms

• map scale: kingdom
• computer players: yes

You and the computer players are kings of small kingdoms. Starting with one city, you build up your kingdom by using the natural resources of the surrounding area to enlarge your city and start new ones. You also build mills, farms, mines, and markets and manage the transfer of resources and goods from one place to another. Your goal is to conquer the other kingdom (or perhaps become a trading partner) by attacking cities, blocking trade routes, and causing disasters (such as fires, floods, and deforestation). The scale of the map differs from Blob City and Blob Conquest in that an entire city occupies just a few hexes, instead of the entire map. Details of your city are available by clicking on the city, instead of by examining the map. The economy is built on supply and demand: each object (such as a factory or a city) demands goods (such as food or iron) and can supply other goods. For example, a farm demands labor and water and supplies food; a sheep ranch demands food and water and supplies wool; a textile factory demands wool and power and supplies clothing.

• Result: Something like WarCraft or Civilization, but with a lot more environmental interaction
• Pro: Matches the scale of rivers, mountains, and lakes
• Con: Seems very different from the current SimBlob (although it isn’t too far from the current implementation)

Blob & Co.

• map scale: kingdom
• computer players: yes

Like The Silver Kingdoms, Blob & Co. involves taking advantage of natural resources to build up products that are used in cities. Instead of playing the role of a king, in Blob & Co. you play the role of a merchant. You make money by charging for transportation and products rather than by taxing city residents. You also invest in new products, in marketing, and in bribing city officials. Your opponents are rival merchants instead of rival kings, so the focus is more on economics and less on warfare. Military conquest is still possible, to take over resources, factories, or transportation systems.

• Result: Something like Railroad Tycoon or Transport Tycoon, but with a lot more environmental interaction and with a few possibilities for military warfare
• Pro: A game based on economics may be easier for a computer player to analyze than a game based on warfare, since the benefits and costs of any action can be boiled down to “money”
• Con: Seems very different from the current SimBlob (although it isn’t too far from the current implementation)

Comparison

Blob City, SimBlob, and Blob Conquest take place on a small scale: the entire map is the size of a city. Blob & Co. and The Silver Kingdoms take place on a large scale: the entire map is the size of a small country. With a small scale, it is possible to see the details of a city layout; with a large scale, those details disappear. On the other hand, with a large scale, it is possible to see and work with resources outside the city and with the trade between cities.

Blob City, SimBlob, and Blob Conquest have hundreds or thousands of objects, but there are just a few kinds available (currently five). Each object has very few details. Blob & Co. and The Silver Kingdoms have tens of objects, but there are many kinds available (approximately twenty). Since there aren’t as many objects, each object can have a lot of details, like a name, relationships to other objects, graphs of values (supply, demand, employment, profit, etc.). When there are a thousand small farms, you can’t really name each one, or store a lot of information about them, but when there are just a few farm hexes (representing large farms), you can give them names, choose crops, see profit graphs, choose which cities are supplied by the farm, assign soldiers to protect the farm, and so on.

Implementation

The current SimBlob can be divided into several modules, listed along with what percentage of SimBlob can be put into them:

1. (4%) General purpose routines
2. (30%) PM library (interface to OS/2)
3. (19%) Game library (sprites, fonts, etc.)
4. (27%) Display library (hexagonal map, scrolling, etc.)
5. (16%) Environmental simulation (terrain, mountains, rivers, lakes, soil erosion, water erosion, walls, canals, fire, trees, gates, volcanos)
6. (4%) Game simulation (farms, roads, houses, watchtowers, bridges, blobs)

(My time however hasn’t been spent in those proportions. I’ve probably spent about 60% of my time on the environmental simulation and 10% of it on the game simulation.)

If I decide to implement The Silver Kingdoms, I’d have to take out the Game simulation and insert a different (larger) simulation module. This would include the implementations of objects (cotton farms, cotton mills, water wheels, laborers, clothing shops, cities, farms, ranches, restaurants, canals, ore mines, silver mines, smithies, lumber mills, forests, armies, builders, roads, walls, etc.) and resources (water, cotton, cloth, clothing, food, ore, tools, logs, wood, weapons, silver, labor), algorithms for supply and demand, and so on.