Series
SimCity
14 games, 1989–2014.
Games
Interactive: timeline (needs JavaScript)
The series by yearMechanics
A marked cell changed from the game before. “Uses” means the game has the mechanic, with no variant recorded yet.
Every claim, by mechanic and game
| Concept | SimCity
1989 |
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| Demand meter | - Every second cycle,
SetValves projects each zone type's population. Residential: the current figure (ResPop / 8) plus migration, that figure times (jobs per resident − 1), where jobs are the commercial and industrial populations at the previous census, plus 2% births. Commercial: (residential + commercial + industrial) / 3.7, times the labor base, residents per job at the previous census, held to 0–1.3. Industrial: the industrial population times the labor base times 1.2, 1.1, or 0.98 at game levels 0, 1, and 2 (starting funds $20,000, $10,000, $5,000), and at least 5. Each projection over the current population, capped at 2, is the type's ratio. Code - Each ratio becomes a step: (ratio − 1) × 600 plus
TaxTable[tax rate + game level] (index capped at 20), which at game level 0 runs from +200 at 0% through 0 at 7% to −600 at 20%; each higher level shifts the index up one. The step is added to the type's valve, which is held to ±2000 for residential and ±1500 for commercial and industrial. Code - A valve is held at zero or below while the city lacks a building it needs: residential once the raw residential count (
ResPop, eight times the figure the demand projection uses) passes 500 with no stadium, industrial past 70 with no seaport, and commercial past 100 with no airport. The check runs once every 64 clock ticks, one type at a time. Code
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| Disasters | - Once per cycle, unless disasters are switched off (a switch added after the original release), a random disaster strikes with chance 1 in 481, 241, or 61 at game levels 0, 1, and 2. It is a fire or a flood with 2 chances in 9 each, a plane crash, tornado, or earthquake with 1 in 9 each, and with the last 2 in 9 a monster, but only if average pollution is above 60. Code
- Each nuclear plant, on each cycle's visit and unless disasters are off, melts down with chance 1 in 30,001, 20,001, or 10,001 at game levels 0, 1, and 2. Code
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| Land value | - A zone's new building takes one of four value classes from its block's land value minus pollution: below 30, below 80, below 150, and 150 or more. Code
- Over the 120×100-tile city, the simulation keeps population density, traffic, pollution, land value, and crime in 2×2-tile blocks (60×50), terrain in 4×4 blocks (30×25), and fire coverage, police coverage, commercial location, and growth rate in 8×8 blocks (15×13). Code
- A 2×2 block holding any developed tile (a road or anything numbered above it) gets land value 4 × (34 − its distance from the city center, capped at 32), plus its 4×4 block's terrain value, minus its pollution, minus 20 more where its crime is above 190, held to 1–250. A block with nothing developed gets 0. Code
- A 2×2 block's pollution sums its tiles, held to 255, then is smoothed: heavy-traffic road 75, light-traffic road 50, fire 90, radiation 255, built industrial tiles 50, and seaport, airport, and coal plant tiles 100. Houses, commercial buildings, and the nuclear plant add nothing. Code
- Crime in a 2×2 block with land value is 128 − land value + population density, held to 300, minus its 8×8 block's police coverage, held to 0–250; a block without land value has none. Code
- Each police station adds the police funding effect, 1000 × spending / requested funds (1000 when nothing is requested), to its 8×8 block, halved if unpowered and, by a change after the original release, halved again if no road touches it. Fire stations fill the fire coverage map the same way. Each map is then smoothed three times, every pass setting a block to half its value plus an eighth of its four neighbours' sum. Code
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| Simulation tick | SimFrame runs one step of the simulation on every call at speed 3, on every third call at speed 2, and on every fifth call at speed 1; at speed 0 (paused) it runs none. Code- The simulation runs as a 16-step cycle, one phase per step (
Fcycle & 15). Phase 0 advances the city clock and, every second cycle, recomputes the demand valves; phases 1 to 8 each process one eighth of the 120 map columns; phase 9 takes the census every 4 clock ticks and collects tax every 48; phase 10 decays traffic; phases 11 to 14 rebuild the power, pollution and land value, crime, and population density maps; phase 15 rebuilds fire coverage and rolls for disasters. Code - The map rebuilds in phases 11 to 15 skip cycles at higher speeds. At speed 1, power and pollution run every second cycle and crime, population density, and fire coverage every cycle; at speed 2, every 4th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th cycle; at speed 3, every 5th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th. The disaster roll in phase 15 runs every cycle. Code
- The city clock advances once per 16-step cycle, and the date shown divides it by 4 for the month and by 48 for the year, so a month is 64 steps. Code
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| Traffic simulation | - When the simulation visits a zone, a residential zone tries a trip if its population exceeds a random 0–35, a commercial or industrial zone if its population exceeds a random 0–5. If none of the 12 tiles bordering its 3×3 footprint (corners excluded) is a road or rail tile, the trip fails at once and the zone declines. Code
- From the road found beside the zone,
TryDrive walks up to 30 steps (MAXDIS), each step trying the four directions in turn from a random one and never straight back. The trip succeeds once the current tile borders a destination: tiles 423–816 (commercial zones through the nuclear plant) for a residential trip, 249–698 (houses through the seaport) for a commercial one, and 249–423 (houses to the first commercial tile) for an industrial one. Code - At a dead end
TryDrive drops its last saved position and adds 3 to the step count, but it doesn't move back: the next try starts from the same tile, still barred from the way it came, so it fails again until the steps or the saved positions run out, and the trip fails. Code - A successful trip adds 50 to the traffic density of the 2×2 block under every second road tile on its path (rail tiles aren't counted). A sum above 240 is set to 240 one time in six, which also sends the helicopter there; otherwise it's stored in a byte, so a sum above 255 wraps around to 0–49. Each cycle, density above 200 falls by 34, density from 25 to 200 by 24, and density of 24 or less drops to 0. Code
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| Zoning | - One visit in eight (every visit, for an empty residential zone), a zone takes a score: its type's valve plus a local term. The residential term is (land value − pollution) × 32, held to 0–6000, minus 3000; the commercial term is its 8×8 block's
ComRate, 64 minus 4 × the block's distance from the city center, so from 64 down to −64; the industrial term is 0. An unpowered zone scores −500 whatever its valve. Code - A zone grows if its score is above −350 and (score − 26380) exceeds a random signed 16-bit number; failing that, it declines if its score is below 350 and (score + 26380) is under a second one. The numbers are uniform over −32768 to 32767, so growth comes with chance (score + 6388) / 65536 per evaluation, about 10% at a score of 0 and 17% at a residential zone's highest, 5000. An unpowered zone declines with chance 6887 / 65536, about 10.5%. A commercial zone whose trip failed can't grow; one that made no trip can. Code
- Growth adds one level at a time and stops at each type's top: a residential zone below 40 population (levels 16, 24, 32, 40), commercial below 5, industrial below 4. A residential zone doesn't grow where its block's pollution is above 128, and a commercial zone grows only while its population is at most its block's land value / 32, so it can reach one level past that figure. An empty residential zone builds single houses until it has 8, then fills in at level 16 only where population density is above 64. Code
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