specification for a game

[abigailbrady]

There should be a game. Probably a computer game. It should be called 'Metropolis'. It should start in 1850. The game board is London, Middlesex and the nearer parts of the Home Counties, as they existed then. It should be a fairly realistic map, not a stylised one. You are the chairman of the Metropolitan Railway Company or one of its contemporaries. (Possibly a fictional contemporary). You have to raise capital, secure Parliamentary approval for routes, build lines, buy trains and run services. You can agree to joint ventures or get running rights over rivals' lines. You can buy land near your lines, build houses on it, and sell that. It is done on a maps-and-timetables level, with real prices for tunnels and trains. Where you build your lines and the service pattern you set up affects how London develops. If you decide that suburban Essex is the right place to expand into with your railway, maybe you don't even get a Metro-land in north-west Middlesex, or maybe someone else comes along and does it instead. Around 1890 you get the option of building tube railways too. I don't know when the game ends. Maybe it always ends in 1933 with the formation of London Transport. Maybe you can carry on.

Does this game exist already?

[Edit: It's not Transport Tycoon. That's far too stylised, I want a simulation].

Comments

[thatmakesmemad.livejournal.com]

Sounds like transport tycoon (http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/240/Transport+Tycoon+Deluxe.html) only with less transport options and far more political content and localisation.
Hmm you can get maps (http://www.canadiansteve.uklinux.net/transtyc.html) which have been laid out to match various locations mind.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of Transport Tycoon. It's too much of a toy and not enough of a simulation for what I'm imagining.

[thatmakesmemad.livejournal.com]

I suspect the market for such games has died along with adventure games with puzzles instead of fighting.

[eldritchreality.livejournal.com]

Tell that to puzzle quest!

[thatmakesmemad.livejournal.com]

Not exactly in the same league as the old Lucas Arts point and click adventures or the old Infocom games

[eldritchreality.livejournal.com]

Ok, I see your point.

Though I have to admit that puzzle quest galactrix has had me stalled because I can't solve a puzzle in the very short timespan it gives me to the point where I've given up on the game. Which never happened on any Lucasarts etc game I played (though I was probably less than 10 years old during Infocom's glory days so I can't really comment on those.)

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Transport Tycoon / Railroad Tycoon or some mod for it should have most of those elements, although city development is only somewhat affected by the railways and it doesn't really model the sheer scale of the growth of London.

[hazyjayne.livejournal.com]

OpenTTD is the closest I can think of.

However this game sounds AWESOME :)

[eldritchreality.livejournal.com]

Railroad tycoon 3 is actually pretty close to what you're after. It's extremely simulationist relative to the other games in the genre.

Building railroads through places actively improves their economy, and this is an important part of the game strategy.

Also ISTR one of the later scenarios involves picking one of the major london railroads to play in the late 19th century. I have fond memories of my time as head of the great western railway.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Does it still have little trains that take in-game months to get from one and to another end of their line?

[katsmeat.livejournal.com]

No, I imagine that's a feature of Railroad Tycoon: UK Modern Edition.

[eldritchreality.livejournal.com]

Alas, I think it is also a feature of railroad tycoon 3.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I think that's inevitable. After all, you cannot literally take 100 years to play the game, nor examine 100 miles in track in detail, so you already know time and distance scales are going to be messed with somehow. The approximation whereby a train runs once over several calendar weeks and that represents many journeys is not a bad one.

RRT3, especially, avoids much of the OTTDism of complicated implausible junctions by its mechanic where if two trains meet the slower one becomes intangible and stops, representing the operation of passing places or whatever.

RRT3 can't simulate the movement of passengers inside a city, though, let alone the detailed growth of one.

How else would you deal with the time and distance scales? I suppose you could abstract it further; set up a map and a timetable, design the approaches to major stations, and ordinarily just get a series of "end of day" (maybe "end of week") reports on operations, with a large number of train movements being simulated under the hood - perhaps occasionally being called upon to play signalman when things go pearshaped.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's basically what I'm imagining. You wouldn't see individual train movements in the game any more than would see individual personal combats in a strategic war game.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Hm. I don't believe anything like that exists, no. The only hardcore simulation train games I can think of are the "realistic looking train driving" ones like Trainz (*sigh* and what a terrible disappointment its steam model was) and SimSig.

[psych0naut.livejournal.com]

You should totally post this to uk.transport.london.