A call out to developers - Engine for a city builder?

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[Limewax]

Hello internet.  I am posting this in the hopes that a major developer (current or past) sees this post.  I am personally aspiring to break in to the games industry through my college education, but I do have an underlying passion with city building games.  I have done a little research on some of the major titles that have been released, but I am looking for the proper game development engine to start learning if I wished to create my own standalone city builder.

In school we are learning current gen Unreal (UDK) which caters specifically to the FPS market.  I have tossed around the idea with friends, but top down city builder through an FPS engine seems like a lot of conversion programming and modding, especially for a 1-3 man team of people who are all learning to program.  Much of the open source stuff that is available doesn't seem to cater to top-downs or even RTS for that matter.

Ideally, I'd love to create a city builder that would be on par with the graphics engine in Tropico 3.

I feel like most of these engines were developed in-house specifically for the games. . . . .  maybe this is a contributing factor to why the market is so dry for casual friendly city building games?

The reality right now is that there is currently nothing be developed as far as city builders goes.  (or really any sort of builders or "tycoon"/ business management games)

[crowebird]

Welcome and good luck with the degree!

It sure would be fun to develope your own CB, that is something I have always wanted to do, but I found I enjoy web development the most... I am however programming android for work, and have a great idea for a mobile "guild" platform, but time says I'll never do what I want there :P

You will find a lot of good ideas around here for the next gen CB, (One of our members (Khalan) started work on a CB: http://www.citybuildergames.com/index.php/topic,2112.0.html) as we have all had our take on what would make the next iteration great.

[Khalan]

Wish I had the motivation to work regularly on it.

In case you're wondering, this is what I use:
http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2000

It's cheap, and does everything I need it to do.  It is also easy to use, as it's based on the BASIC programming language, but has the power for all the advanced effects etc.  They are also offering a free ad-supported version now.


Here's an example snippet of some of my code.  This takes grass that is out of view, lower than the terrain, or that is intersecting objects and moves it into the current view, and also fades it in and out according to distance.  I'm not a great programmer, but it works at least.

Code:

`Grass fading
if grass_enabled = 1
for g = 1 to grass_count
show object grass(g)
grass_posx# = object position x(grass(g))
grass_posy# = object position y(grass(g))
grass_posz# = object position z(grass(g))
camx# = camera position x()
camy# = camera position y()
camz# = camera position z()

set alpha mapping on grass(g),0

grass_distance = Sqrt((grass_posx#-camx#)^2 +(grass_posy#-camy#)^2+(grass_posz#-camz#)^2)

if grass_posy#>=grass_height and object in screen(grass(g)) = 1 and grass_distance < grass_fade#
   grass_alpha# = 100-grass_distance / grass_fade# * 100
   set alpha mapping on grass(g),grass_alpha#
   if grass_distance >= grass_fade# then set alpha mapping on grass(g),0
endif

if grass_posy#<grass_height+50
   set alpha mapping on grass(g),0
   position object grass(g),-camx#-grass_range+rnd(grass_range*2)+camx#*2,ground_height_grass#+grass_height/2-10,-camz#-grass_range+rnd(grass_range*2)+camz#*2
endif

ground_height_grass# = get terrain ground height(200000,grass_posx#,grass_posz#)
position object grass(g),grass_posx#,ground_height_grass#+grass_height/2-10,grass_posz#

if object in screen(grass(g)) = 0
   set alpha mapping on grass(g),0
   position object grass(g),-camx#-grass_range+rnd(grass_range*2)+camx#*2,-3000,-camz#-grass_range+rnd(grass_range*2)+camz#*2
endif

if grass_distance >= grass_fade#
   set alpha mapping on grass(g),0
   position object grass(g),-camx#-grass_range+rnd(grass_range*2)+camx#*2,-3000,-camz#-grass_range+rnd(grass_range*2)+camz#*2
endif

if object collision(grass(g),food_object) = 1
   set alpha mapping on grass(g),0
   position object grass(g),-camx#-grass_range+rnd(grass_range*2)+camx#*2,-3000,-camz#-grass_range+rnd(grass_range*2)+camz#*2
endif

if grass_posy#<0 then position object grass(g),grass_posx#,ground_height_grass#+grass_height/2-10,grass_posz#
next g
endif

You could also check out Unity3d, it's supposed to be good to use and versatile.
http://unity3d.com/

[City Builder]

I spent the better part of a year during my college days learning basic on my own.  I started a course at the local college but felt they were moving to slow for me so I dropped out, managed to fanagle my parents into buying me a computer to learn on myself and spent the better part of the year almost all free waking hours working on doing simple tasks in basic.

That was a good 25 years ago now and when i look at your code Khalan, much of it has that 'old familiar friend' look to it, and then again much of it looks like gibberish to me with my limited knowledge.

I often think of the games that I'm playing and I think how simplistic this game is, then I start to wonder down into the code level of the game and I think WOW, you've really got to have knowledge just to make the game allow me to hook this to that, now how the hell would the developers even start to know how to do that.  And then I realize they probably spent a lot of time in college learning exactly how to do that and I have a lot of respect for the folks that pursue this path in life and accomplish making or even working on a game.

Good luck guys.