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Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

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Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#51

Post by glenstein »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #22
Kye wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 hy…

>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?

Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#52

Post by take_a_breath »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #22
Kye wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 hy…

==the "basic 5" domestication-friendly animals==

Can you expand on what you mean by this? I’m not finding much through search.

Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#53

Post by philwelch »

Kye wrote: post #17
bluedevil2k wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Which is exactly how you like it so it must not be that bad.

Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#54

Post by streb-lo »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #39
Kye wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. "coul…

Seems like an awful lot of armchair psychology you're doing here.

Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#55

Post by Arnavion »

take_a_breath wrote: post #52
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hy…

==the "basic 5" domestication-friendly animals== Can you expand on what you mean by this? I’m not finding much through search.

The list is generally cows, pigs, goats, sheep and horses. But it's not a rigid list; sometimes goats and sheep get merged, and sometimes chickens get added.

Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#56

Post by protomyth »

grawprog wrote: post #34
rightbyte wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

They do a lot of sales. About four sales let me catch up pretty cheaply. Skip the decor stuff and buy the stuff that actually adds play items.

As for mods, really the move it and traffic manager president edition is basically a minimum to not be frustrated.

Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#57

Post by foota »

Cactus2018 wrote: post #36
ghastmaster wrote: post #12

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 a…

Guangzhou, China timelapse https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/#v=37.79184,-122.33...

China looks different than the last time I saw it.

Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#58

Post by eropple »

troutwine wrote: post #32
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hy…

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.

There are, but a lot of them can't be reconstituted without other resources. Take, like, rebar, which is the post-apocalyptic author's favorite source of "chunky metal"--it's low-grade steel that melts north of 1200 deg C. If you don't have access to fossil fuels (or an electric arc furnace, and then how are you going to power it?) you're probably looking at a charcoal forge. Charcoal forges require a ton of airflow (relatively easy, if potentially work-intensive) and a ton of fuel to get hot enough to melt even iron, let alone steel (and remember that modern shitty steel is still pretty good by historical standards!).

You can absolutely do it, but you're crawling by your fingernails. And then you have to multiply that by thousands of different factors and different problems. I've thought about this a bunch through the lens of building a game in a world like this and done quite a bit of research, and I tend to think that most of what you might consider "ready resources" in such a world require a pretty significant amount of re-bootstrapping that become really, really hard without easy hydrocarbons.

Maybe doable! Probably really really hard.

Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#59

Post by dragontamer »

danbolt wrote: post #24
dragontamer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

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.

> Perhaps it might have been better to suggest from a "death of the author" viewpoint.

Well, I can agree with that viewpoint regardless. Even if the author didn't intend for something to be taken a certain way... if the audience took it one way, then that's what matters (unfortunately)

Re: Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

#60

Post by grawprog »

protomyth wrote: post #56
grawprog wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do a lot of sales. About four sales let me catch up pretty cheaply. Skip the decor stuff and buy the stuff that actually adds play items. As for mods, really the move it and traffic manager president edition is basically a minimum to not be frustrated.

Honestly, despite my op, the one I would really like is the park management one. The one that lets you designate custom size parks and stuff. I mostly got disheartened and pollutey when I realized I couldn't turn the large forest into a park. So I cut it all down and proceeded to lower the quality of life for all.

I was tempted once to grab them all during a sale, it would have been $40 down from like $160 or something, but I also don't want to get sucked into a game like that. Games like civ and simcity eat too much time i've been down those rabbit holes before. Even as it is I spent literally two days straight doing nothing but playing this game when I started that map.

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