Town planning simulator

Software	An object oriented language, preferably with good GUI tools and graphics
Covers	Simulation of complex systems, economics, object oriented design
Skills Required	Programming, interest in games, interest in economics and current affairs.
Challenge	Conceptual ???? Technical ?? Programming ????

Brief Description

The aim of the project is to develop a computer game in which the player makes decisions about how to arrange roads and buildings and various kinds of open spaces in a town or village. The arrangement - essentially a town plan - is evaluated according to various criteria, and a score or assessment is returned to the player.

While the idea for the project is derived from Sim City, the aim is a little different: the idea is to create plans that can be modified and evaluated through a more transparent mechanism so that the reasoning behind the evaluations can be understood (thus enabling debate about whether the assumptions they embody are realistic). This will involve creating what is essentially an expert system for town evaluation.

This will involve creating a game architecture and an interface through which the players can add elements of the town plan, with some sort of display of what the town looks like.

Variants

The project could focus on a powerful and flexible interface for creating town plans. Ideally this would incorporate geographical features of the landscape that might influence how the town develops.

The project could focus on the town evaluation expert system. Ideally the project would include an editor for creating and changing rules so that these don't have to be hand-coded, and enable the user of the system to explore possibilities by playing around with the evaluation rules as well as with the town designs.

The project could focus on nice graphics, giving impressive displays of the appearance of the towns.

Developing a game to be played through time is a possibility, but one that would involve sacrificing the sophistication of the display or the evaluation. However a good feature to include would be making changes to an existing town (which have costs and bad consequences as well as good ones) rather than designing a town from scratch to be built on empty farmland.

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