[HN Gopher] Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity ...
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Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)
Author : riboflavin
Score : 157 points
Date : 2020-08-04 17:34 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rumorsontheinternets.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (rumorsontheinternets.org)
| Pxtl wrote:
| Kind of surprised that pollution is a problem with no roads and
| no industry.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Densely packed skyscrapers block wind maybe?
| ghastmaster wrote:
| The image reminds me of Guangzhou, China. I recently looked at
| google earth images of Guangzhou. I then looked at images of New
| York City. It is incredible to me that we in the U.S. think of
| New York City as a sprawling metropolis when not far from the
| city center it is mostly single family homes on plots of land.
| Whereas Guangzhou has many more high rise buildings for miles and
| miles. Get the ruler in Google Earth and check it out.
| kyuudou wrote:
| How many of those are actually occupied?
| Cactus2018 wrote:
| Guangzhou, China timelapse
|
| https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/#v=37.79184,-122.33...
| scott31 wrote:
| > The police state has essentially eliminated free will and
| allowed the city to maximize its size while reducing quality of
| life to a minimum -- and still maintaining total control over
| the citizens.
|
| Sounds like China as well
| thiagoharry wrote:
| No, the economic growth in China is in fact vastly improving
| the quality of life there.
| oefrha wrote:
| (2010). I distinctly remember the discussion from two years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933265
| jyriand wrote:
| Same here. Can't really forget the city once you've seen it.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I think we can often get sucked into optimizing our life to limit
| the possibility of negative surprises - predictable reliable
| employment, reliable transportation, go-to meals, healthy habits
| that work for us - and then we can often end up in a reality
| where things are stable but potentially boring or soul-crushing.
| That's what the essay reminded me of - even if the city were
| ruthlessly efficient but with a nice park and bodega and deli in
| walking distance, it could still feel similarly soul-crushing. So
| I've been trying to think more about how to leave more room in
| life for "positive surprise" but that's kind of a difficult thing
| to optimize for. I'm open to ideas anyway!
| kensai wrote:
| It is also a Civic in Beyond Earth.
| https://civilizationbeyondearth.gamepedia.com/Magnasanti
| grawprog wrote:
| Not to anywhere near the level of this but i've been playing a
| map on city skylines where i've been trying to make it as
| dystopian as possible, though at first I was just trying to model
| my city, the sad thing is, on a superficial level, it still
| resembles it.
|
| Industrial areas lined with low income housing. A whole
| neighbourhood with schools next to oil refineries, a prison
| island that receives its drinking water from the sewage run off
| of the rest of the city, I created roads and bridges everywhere,
| there's several 'nice' areas along the non polluted areas of
| water with large mansions, there's a big bustling urban center
| full of office buildings and highrises not far away from squat,
| squalid apartments underneath highway overpasses, schools next to
| landfills, a lack of hospitals and fire departments, many police
| departments, i've intentionally clearcut as much of the forest
| surrounding the city as possible, the next step was to create a
| small gated community out away from the city, for those with
| money who can't handle the horrid amounts of traffic and
| infrastructure...
|
| I may have also accidently poisoned the whole city briefly when
| trying to build the prison island and killed 30% of the people
| there, but things have been looking up, population growth is
| finally starting to rise again, though the health of the
| population is questionable.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Sim City 3000 might be the pinnacle of "Sim Cities" when it
| comes to the feeling of making a big scary city.
|
| I would rather play Skylines than 3000 today due to nice
| feeling and the roads, but the limit that 6 squares depth from
| the road is as far as housing will "grow" and that you can't
| make deep neighborhoods or more angled zones, is a sour thumb
| for what would otherwise be a perfect game. 3000 neighborhoods
| felt deep and the isometric view didn't make me sad about not
| doing angled zones.
|
| If Skylines could make roads free of the square course why not
| the buildings that seem to have to be orthogonal to the tangent
| of the road.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| So ready access to roads is preventing the creation of an
| urban nightmare a la Bladerunner? We better protect our road
| networks.
| EricE wrote:
| You can use zoneable paths to break some of the dependencies
| on roads. And with MoveIt, Anarchy and other mods you can
| pretty much bend C:S to whatever you want.
|
| Well, with the Steam version anyway. It's the only version
| that has mods and access to the Steam Workshop with all the
| community created assets.
|
| For example Sunset Harbor added above ground metro's but the
| modding community provided a solution years before.
|
| I sure hope they come out with a follow on version that can
| scale more than the current version but even as it is I love
| Cities:Skylines!
| Lammy wrote:
| Sim City 3000 is my favorite too for all the same reasons and
| I really wish SC3U shipped with multiplayer like the
| leftovers suggest it would have: https://tcrf.net/SimCity_300
| 0_Unlimited/Unused_Multiplayer_T...
| grawprog wrote:
| Skylines, at least without the mods, feels like an incomplete
| game in general. It's fun, but it's lacking the depth I
| expected. Though reading about all the addons and mods, it
| looks like they add in just about everything I felt was
| missing, it's just a lot of money to drop on a game I don't
| really have enough time to get that into.
| AnonsLadder wrote:
| I never played 3000 but was going to make a comment a lot
| like yours about Sim City 4
| XaoDaoCaoCao wrote:
| That's a slice of the horror of our civilization lololol
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| I know it's cool and trendy to trash our current society and
| treat it like it's the worst time to be alive in human
| history, but in reality there's never been a better time to
| be alive in the history of our species. Poverty, infant
| mortality, childhood mortality, crime...all at all time lows.
| Literacy, income levels, food quantity, public health...all
| at all time highs.
| Kye wrote:
| Purchased on the credit card of carbon release. We might
| get lucky and see some technological or social innovation
| negate or stop the coming disaster, or civilization could
| snap back to where it was centuries ago.
| philwelch wrote:
| Which is exactly how you like it so it must not be that
| bad.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The worst part is not the horror of mass extinctions and
| runaway greenhouse gasses might eventually resolve itself
| on geologic timescales, but that the society that rebuilt
| might find it impossible to get out of the stone age;
| much less through an industrial revolution: we've
| pillaged the highest-yield mines, germs have been
| developed into antibiotic-resistant superbugs, we've
| extracted the easiest-to-reach stored hydrocarbons, and
| replaced natural, hardy, diverse crops and the "basic 5"
| domestication-friendly animals with inbred monocultures.
| glenstein wrote:
| >but that the society that rebuilt might find it
| impossible to get out of the stone age; much less through
| an industrial revolution
|
| I don't disagree, necessarily, but I would be fascinated
| to know if there are any books or articles that game out
| this scenario in detail. What _would_ industrialization
| without massive reserves of hydrocarbons look like?
| take_a_breath wrote:
| ==the "basic 5" domestication-friendly animals==
|
| Can you expand on what you mean by this? I'm not finding
| much through search.
| troutwine wrote:
| I do wonder how much our extractive technological culture
| would play to the benefit of a child society that
| intended to learn from us. There'd be an awful lot of
| material at the surface that could be recycled or
| repurposed, if we're talking a reboot on the order of
| centuries. Idle thought.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| This is a perfect example of the trendy "everything's
| leading to a doomsday" sentiment among some people on
| this site.
|
| "We might get lucky" - humans have overcome every adverse
| condition in our 2 million years alive, why do you have
| the hubris to believe that _you_ know we can only survive
| if we get lucky.
|
| "stop the coming disaster" - again, hubris to think that
| the _only_ possible outcome for humans is a disaster.
|
| "could snap back to...centuries ago" - this has happened
| once in the past 2000 years, you really think you're
| going to be alive when we enter a 2nd Dark Age.
|
| I think it's the same sort of thinking with the "Jesus is
| coming back in the next 5 years" religious crowd. You
| want to feel important and part of something bigger than
| yourself, something planet-wide, so you're almost looking
| forward to being a part of it so you can feel like you're
| part of history.
| bmitc wrote:
| By the same token, one could argue your comment is part
| of the trendy progress worship that's been happening
| since the beginning of humanity.
|
| Mental disorders are at an all-time high. Extinction
| levels are well beyond their natural baseline rate, due
| to human activity. Environmental destruction is at an
| all-time high. Now, with the Internet, we've managed to
| build a system that can amplify nearly every negative
| aspect of human society but at the same time offers a
| shield of sorts from those effects.
|
| Yes, humans are likely to survive in the same way that a
| virus survives. We find a way but it isn't always a
| virtuous path. We humans have yet to understand that
| nature is a balance and that we choose to operate outside
| of that balance. Everytime we progress we invent new ways
| for people and other animals to suffer.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| > Mental disorders are at an all-time high
|
| Please provide some references that show mental illness
| is higher now than during the Dark Ages. Or in Egypt
| among the slaves under the Ptolemy's.
| bananaface wrote:
| Infinitely more people are being diagnosed now than in
| the dark ages
| Kye wrote:
| Please soapbox on someone else's comment.
| danbolt wrote:
| I think it's important to remember that a "system" in a video
| game is a work of art just like the game itself. The systems, in
| a lot of ways, reflect the ideas and thoughts of the authors of
| that game. Magnasati's highlights and flaws help illustrate that
| thinking, or what tax rates are best for doing well in the game.
|
| An example that comes to mind is Factorio, where solar panels are
| more tricky to operate than generators, but minimize conflict
| with the ingame fauna. Earlier versions of Rimworld were
| programmed to have men be either gay or straight, but women to be
| bisexual. I think both of those gameplay mechanics illustrate (or
| at least point to) the author(s) idea about the world.
| joaomacp wrote:
| > have men be either gay or straight, but women to be bisexual
|
| There is some scientific truth to it:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34744903
| [deleted]
| rsynnott wrote:
| I think they're reading a lot into a small survey, there...
| You could make a similar argument about men based on the
| Kinsey Report, but it's now considered fairly flawed.
| danbolt wrote:
| Yeah, I think a lot of the ideas around women being more
| sexually fluid are hard to separate from societal
| pressures. Or, I think the ways men are expected to behave
| romantically is a big reason why we have the term "MSM"
| [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_who_have_sex_with_men
| moritonal wrote:
| As an aside, why do you say that in Factorio solar panels are
| trickier than generators. To me it seems you can stick panels
| down infinitely and just make more power. Generators require
| coal trains, nuclear power, steam conversion, water lines and
| everything else? Or did you mean purely in construction from
| the start?
| m463 wrote:
| But you have to match them with accumulators.
|
| First game I played, I just made far-off copper mines that
| would only mine during the day.
|
| (Then I learned it's just as easy to run power lines along RR
| tracks)
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I think both of those gameplay mechanics illustrate (or at
| least point to) the author(s) idea about the world.
|
| For good games, I don't think so. The #1 concern of any video
| game is "is it fun??".
|
| Case in point: Factorio oil is infinite and a renewable
| resource (pumpjacks never run out). This isn't there because of
| some preconceived notion of infinite oil. This mechanic exists
| because planting new pumpjacks is far more annoying than
| planting iron mines / coal mines. In fact, pumpjacks are
| basically the only endgame mine that cannot be automated with
| blueprints.
|
| As such, its best to have pumpjacks pump infinite oil for the
| rest of time. Because it'd be too an annoying of a game if oil
| ran out.
|
| ----------
|
| In the case of Factorio solar vs nuclear vs coal: the game
| developer made them different enough to make the difference fun
| to think about and fun to play with. But I don't believe it
| necessarily reflects upon the political opinion of the creator.
| m463 wrote:
| A friend of mine told me that old capped oil wells that ran
| dry decades ago are frequently opened up and found to be full
| of oil again. (in real life, not factorio)
| danbolt wrote:
| I think you're likely right, and that I'm being a bit
| overzealous in assuming that the mechanics are statements
| about the real world. Perhaps it might have been better to
| suggest from a "death of the author" viewpoint.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Huh? Pumpjacks give less oil over time. They never really run
| out, but eventually you'll stop running regular trains to an
| oil depot because your reservoir tanks take hours to fill.
| Unless you have a small base and dozens of oil fields, you
| could never run on depleted fields alone, and thus you're
| constantly needing to expand and seek out more oil fields
| (just like the other resource types) mimicking the way that
| maintaining fossil fuel based industry requires continuous
| petroleum exploration.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > They never really run out, but eventually you'll stop
| running regular trains to an oil depot because your
| reservoir tanks take hours to fill.
|
| Speed beacons + Speed Modules + Infinite Productivity gets
| you pretty far.
|
| > Pumpjacks give less oil over time.
|
| Back in 0.13, they dropped to 0.1 oil/second. Today, this
| minimum has been grossly buffed, greatly reducing the
| number of depleted pumpjacks you need in endgame. The
| output is also improved by infinite-productivity research,
| increasing their output the longer your megabase runs.
|
| There's also Coal Liquefaction, which came a few years
| after 0.13. That also reduces the need to find new
| pumpjacks (and again: because coal mines use electric
| mines, its possible to automate mines with blueprints).
|
| So Coal runs out, but is far easier + automatic to expand
| compared to oil. So you just turn your coal into oil
| products.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Is this using the SC erasing exploit?
|
| There's a bug that lets you delete a building tile but keep the
| building there in memory, meaning you can build over it but have
| all the same pops/crime/etc.
|
| Lots of megopolis SC maps use this exploit.
| [deleted]
| jacksonpollock wrote:
| as a purist sim city 2000 player, i love this
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Alphaville (circa 2000) forever rules as sim-anarchy's crowning
| achievement. Without moderation it quickly became saturated with
| the worst crimes people can come up with.
|
| The Alphaville Herald was dedicated to it; the blog continued on
| for years, after the sim was shut down. This Salon article
| references the mag
| https://web.archive.org/web/20040217030353/http://www.salon....
|
| Alphaville is one of my favorite pieces of internet history but
| it wasn't ever really documented. It's hard to find anything
| about it now.
| burkaman wrote:
| I've never heard of it before, but the Alphaville Herald and
| all of its archives are still online:
| http://alphavilleherald.com/archives
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Nice. Thanks!
| kipchak wrote:
| Magnasanti seems like a more tangible application of the AI
| paperclip maximizer. A city built to maximize population reduces
| the pleasantness of each life.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| There are no transportation issues because there is nowhere to go
| because everywhere is the same.
| schnevets wrote:
| To quote the article:
|
| Population growth is stagnant. Sims don't need to travel long
| distances, because their workplace is just within walking
| distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block.
| Wherever they go it's like going to the same place.
|
| -----------------------------------
|
| Maybe OP posted this after working from home in quarantine for
| one week too many.
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