Tim Stutts: ITP Project Blog

For research I downloaded SimCity Societies and Zoo Tycoon game titles onto my cellphone. I feel like such a lucky grad student to be able to do this for my thesis! After playing both titles for a couple hours on the subway commute, I determined that SimCity has a more effective interface. For one, less of the screen is taken up by the GUI, thus making more available for the map, which squeezes into the remaining space quite effectively. This is accomplished by tabbed buttons along the bottom, which only expand to sub-menus as they are needed in the game and activated on the numeric keypad. Both SimCity and Zoo Tycoon feature a diagonal view point, which does justice to the 3D graphics in both cases. SimCity, however, wins out with its controls for placing buildings onto the map–the arrow pad on the cellphone assumes each direction is straight, whereas in Tycoon, the pad permits a non-user friendly diagonal approach that takes some getting used to. Also, SimCity allows the player to zoom out from their map and have the cursor conveniently lock onto structures and display their info.

review and screenshots of SimCity Societies Mobile: http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3165562

review and screenshots of Mobile Zoo Tycoon 2: Marine Mania: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Mobile/Zoo+Tycoon+2:+Marine+Mania/review.asp?c=4756

Fireflies move in smaller random paths as they approach the corners of the jar, where they tend to linger.  Run here.

After much thought and discussion with my friends and colleagues on developing SimSuburbia into a thesis project, I have decided to design a city simulator with an entirely different set of goals.  I wanted to move away from the gaming function—though maintaining the look—and create something that functions more as a blog or diary, where users represent their community through a common graphics set, and offer up text commentary at locations on their map, where they have an experience to tell or solution to propose.

You may recall that the previous goal was to bring franchise establishments to an untouched landscape and generate suburban sprawl; addressing the issue of corporations, such as Walmart and McDonald’s, becoming cultural centers for youth in Middle America.

In the new version—which I will here on out refer to as LivelyHood—the user (aged child through teen) relies on a palette of tools (similar to those offered in the recently open-sourced game title, SimCity) to build a rendition of their own neighborhood.

In the application I aim to design, the user goes to www.LivelyHood.us and starts by typing in an intersection into a Google Maps form.  A square outline surrounds the origin outward by half a mile or so on each side of that intersection, forming the space of a square mile.  The Google Map within the square fades away, and we launch into edit mode.

Once the editor has launched, a blank square map 25×25 tiles in size is displayed, and a street sign pops onto the map defining the origin of the intersection (i.e Manhattan/India ).  The user places their home location onto it, and eventually adds roads; structures—homes, businesses; and moving avatars—non-specific people and vehicles, which are representative of their local community.  The view is top down and the structures are all two dimensional, but have the appearance of 3D.  There is no budget, so user’s can build as much as they want to and control the look of their community with variables like color and decay.  Users are also free to log back into the site at any time to make additional changes and place flagged text entries on their map, as they find new things that they would like to say.  If a user chooses to make their ‘hood public, other users can find the square on a larger map and visit it, and leave comments, that are tied the original user’s comment flags, thus controlling the number of text flags on the map.

To ensure privacy is kept and to allow for each user’s own unique interpretation of distance, size, and perception, no actual address is ever used, and the size of each tile (if it were to exist in the real world) is only suggested, not enforced.  Therefore a user can choose to leave certain streets or structures out of their rendition if they chose to, if they don’t find them important.  The application is focused on self-expression and feedback, rather than gaming.