from Hacker News

Magnasanti: The Largest and Most Terrifying SimCity (2010)

by riboflavin on 8/4/20, 5:34 PM with 105 comments

  • by grawprog on 8/4/20, 6:17 PM

    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.

  • by danbolt on 8/4/20, 6:18 PM

    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.

  • by tunesmith on 8/4/20, 5:54 PM

    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!

  • by oefrha on 8/4/20, 6:34 PM

    (2010). I distinctly remember the discussion from two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933265

  • by ghastmaster on 8/4/20, 6:54 PM

    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.

  • by WarOnPrivacy on 8/4/20, 8:02 PM

    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.

  • by 29athrowaway on 8/4/20, 6:47 PM

    There are no transportation issues because there is nowhere to go because everywhere is the same.

  • by alickz on 8/5/20, 4:10 PM

    Reminds of the person who played a single Civ II match for 10 years.

    IIRC it ended with the Celts, Vikings, and Sioux facing off in thermonuclear war in the year 3991.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_play...

    https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uyswv/here_i...

  • by three_seagrass on 8/4/20, 6:40 PM

    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.

  • by kipchak on 8/4/20, 8:33 PM

    Magnasanti seems like a more tangible application of the AI paperclip maximizer. A city built to maximize population reduces the pleasantness of each life.

  • by _5659 on 8/5/20, 12:12 AM

    I'm surprised no one's mentioned that this is more or less a stochastic cellular automata.

    It's essentially a grid-based parallel computer.

  • by schnevets on 8/4/20, 10:39 PM

    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.

  • by thedudeabides5 on 8/5/20, 12:07 AM

    Anyone else here play foundation?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqZWxCv-_5I&list=PLIsqJzeZeG...

    Interesting game to max out, not sure if anyone has tried though...

  • by finaliteration on 8/5/20, 2:14 AM

    In a some tangential way this makes me think of Derek Parfit’s “repugnant conclusion”:

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/

  • by simonebrunozzi on 8/5/20, 10:13 PM

    Curious to why it is called "Magnasanti"; possibly related to Arcosanti [0]?

    [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcosanti

  • by kensai on 8/4/20, 8:26 PM

  • by Pxtl on 8/4/20, 6:08 PM

    Kind of surprised that pollution is a problem with no roads and no industry.

  • by Kipters on 8/5/20, 1:08 AM

    Magnasanti in Italian sounds like "Saints' Eater". Poetic, isn't it?

  • by dirtyid on 8/5/20, 7:32 AM

    Wonder if we'll ever get planet scale Simcity for sweet Ecumenopolis planning.

  • by jacksonpollock on 8/4/20, 9:01 PM

    as a purist sim city 2000 player, i love this