About this game SimWorld
Development notes
Cities nobody is watching
With over 124,000 plots I can't tick every city. Growth uses no random numbers, so when someone opens a city the server integrates from its last settlement to now in one go, and tests check that splitting the time gives the same result. Events are decided by a hash of plot and settlement number for the same reason, and cars are placed by road flow, a hash of segment and car number, and the clock, so two viewers see the same car in the same place.
Why the world shrank to 1,000 km
The first globe was 3,072 km around with about 1.17 million plots, and even 70,000 players would have been sixteen plots apart. A neighbour beyond the horizon can't link roads, trade or be visited, so I shrank the world and the plot grid together. A plot is still 200 × 200 tiles; it just covers a region now rather than one city.
Growth between settlements
Growth is continuous, because growing only at settlements would show nothing in a 30-minute session. Settlements are where money moves: the design value is one every 2 hours (12 per UTC day), and the live game currently settles every 2 minutes. Every constant is defined per settlement, so growth, tax and upkeep keep the same balance at either pace. Offline, a city grows at 30% speed while tax and upkeep run in full, so staying away never pays.
Updated: