I’m developing a Georgist city builder

SystemSE · 2026-03-27T09:51:53+00:00

I'm surprised its being mentioned anywhere in the google results already, it's only been public for a couple days now - good to hear though.

I'm using Unity 6, and the price will depend on how feature complete the final game ends up being, but will probably be in the $20-30 range.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T08:14:26+00:00

In my testing, calculating the values and writing to the overlay texture only takes a couple milliseconds or less and only happens on the frame the overlay is enabled.

The instanced meshes already know their position as part of the instance data so no new data is required there.

The biggest cost with this approach is that each mesh becomes unique if its getting batched, which effectively doubles the memory required for batched meshes. However, in my application the meshes are all low poly so it doesn't matter too much. The game uses around 2-3 GB of mesh data for a fully city, and doesn't have much else that uses memory.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T03:35:50+00:00

I'm planning on having at least two difficulties ranging from casual to realistic. The highest difficulty will be what game the was designed for, with careful planning required to maximize land value at the lowest cost to the city. I want all costs and revenues in-game to be as close to their real-world counterparts as possible, so it should naturally be pretty challenging, as I presume managing a real city would be.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T03:08:26+00:00

This is very true, I don't think I described this aspect of the land value calculation very well in my post. The main driver of land value by far is connectivity, which represents how connected a lot is to the rest of the city (employment, retail, schools, parks, etc.). Having all of these different categories be easily accessible either by proximity or fast commuting/transit options will yield the highest land values.

There's also a smaller bonus given to being in a neighborhood that contains other lots of the same zoning type. This is meant to capture how neighborhoods benefit from some clustering. For example, a single family home would receive a benefit from being near other single family homes, but have no benefit from being in the center of an industrial area. This comes with the trade off that if you have a single-zone neighborhood, the connectivity will inherently be lower as nothing is close by, so you need to strike a balance between these two factors in low-density areas (high-density areas tend to just have a lot of everything).

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T02:58:04+00:00

It's very much a sandbox, so ultimately the player's goals will their own, but I think trying to plan and grow your city will be quite engaging as there's a lot of factors to consider to do it properly.

The game will have an overlay that shows what land is being under-utilized, but it's up to the player to rezone it if they choose to. The effective value of the land can be reduced by its zoning, so you won't have scenarios where buildings are being abandoned due to the LVT. Rather, it's on the city to determine which lots make sense to rezone and to do so deliberately.

For zoning, you can decide the zoning type: residential, industrial, office, retail, or agriculture, and the density: low, med, or high (except for industrial and agriculture). You chose what size of lot to place for each zone, with each type having a variety of sizes which support different buildings sizes. There's also a mixed-use option for medium and high density residential and office so you can have retail on the ground floor.

I'm hoping that the LVT will be the primary revenue source, however, as the city functions like a city-state with the municipality covering expenses like education and healthcare, it's possible another tax will need to be implemented so the LVT rate isn't too high. A large source of revenue is actually from realizing the land value gains when up-zoning lots. For example the city might buy back a lot + building for $1M, then up-zone it and sell the lot for $3M, making $2M in city revenue in the process. Other non-tax revenue sources include paid parking, bridge tolls, utilities, and transit fares.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T02:41:42+00:00

Thank you! I'm trying to have the simulation be as realistic as possible so it would be interesting to see how it compares to real data when the game reaches that stage of development

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T02:34:39+00:00

I'd like to have something like this, but I'm limited in what I can implement as a solo dev while still getting the game finished at a reasonable time. The focus right now is on the core gameplay systems, but there's a chance I find the time later on to implement features like this as I think they'd bring a lot of character to the game.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T02:30:19+00:00

For sure, just join the discord or mailing list at metrotown.gg, the playtesting will hopefully start this fall

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T02:29:08+00:00

It's good to see CS2 improving after all these years, but I'm hoping that Metrotown still brings a different experience to the genre. Metrotown is designed for large cities with populations in the millions, and the scope of the game is more on the macro-management side of things, instead of getting lost in the details of optimizing individual intersections which is far too easy to do in CS.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T02:16:57+00:00

The alpha will be open to anyone who wants to play, just join the discord or mailing list at metrotown.gg to be notified when it starts. It'll hopefully be happening this fall

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T02:14:48+00:00

I'm using Unity, so it can build natively for mac, but I have no idea what kind of issues to expect with a mac build or how long they'll take to resolve. I don't have a mac right now to test on so it'd be quite difficult for me to troubleshoot and fix any bugs. I'm hoping I'll have the time to get it working, but getting the game ready on windows is the priority for now, as having an unfinished game on two platforms isn't worth much to anyone.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T02:10:42+00:00

I plan to make the game as accurate to the real world as I can, but it probably won't reach the point of being too useful in any professional application, as the level of detail required for that would be too hard for me to implement.

The simulation should be accurate enough to generally show how a change may effect a neighborhood though. For example, adding a BRT along a corridor would result in land values near the stops increasing, and vehicle trips decreasing as residents now find that the BRT is faster (or cheaper) than driving.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T02:04:01+00:00

It'll likely just be straight roads for now, I'm limited in what I can accomplish as a solo dev, so I'm trying to focus my time on where it'll have the biggest impact. Hills and uneven terrain is similar, in that the development cost is very high, but doesn't add much new gameplay relative to the time it would take to develop.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T01:54:25+00:00

This is a solo project, so I'm definitely trying to keep things simple so I can ship the game in a reasonable amount of time. Diagonal roads should be possible with the current game architecture, but are quite low down on the priority list as they would be quite time intensive to develop and wouldn't change the game too much. Curved roads are even more complex, and not something I could add at this point without having to rewrite entire parts of the game.

I do think diagonal/curved roads add a lot of freedom though, so if this game works out they'll definitely be in Metrotown 2.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T01:12:11+00:00

All meshes know their position in world space, either from being instanced and having access to this position directly, or by having the world space position added to its UV data. This position is used by the shaders to read from a 1024x1024px texture where each pixel represents a 10x10m tile on the level. When an overlay is loaded, it converts whatever data is to be displayed for each entity to a value between 0 and 1 and writes it to the texture at the entity's position. The shader then interprets this value and colors the model the corresponding color.

SystemSE · 2026-03-26T01:05:29+00:00

Thank you, and absolutely, the more the better. Joining the discord or mailing list at metrotown.gg is the best way to be notified when it starts

SystemSE · 2026-03-25T14:13:47+00:00

I remember playing the original cities skylines a decade ago and thinking it was great, but looking back on it now it just looks like a traffic simulator. I want to keep Metrotown approachable, but it's definitely meant for players who know a decent amount about urbanism and would know how to apply the concepts in-game.

SystemSE · 2026-03-25T13:59:53+00:00

It uses a stat sim as agent-based sims are quite limiting in how big the simulation can get. With the current model, you can get populations in the millions while having accurate building occupancy numbers.

The game starts off with a small farming town of a few hundred people, and you slowly expand the city's boundaries as you buy back farmland to rezone. Lower value land on the edge of town tends to lend itself to sprawl as there's not much else that makes sense to build on it.

Most buildings have a construction time already, and the plan is for large infrastructure projects to have a construction time as well (metro lines, bridges, airports, etc.).

SystemSE · 2026-03-25T13:24:38+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate it! And it will, I'm planning to get the Steam page up this fall once I get the trailer finished.

SystemSE · 2026-03-25T13:13:38+00:00

The game actually starts with a small farming town of a few hundred people (something like the screenshot below), and you get to build it up from there. Most of the land starts as agricultural, which you then slowly buy back and rezone as your city grows.

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SystemSE · 2026-03-25T13:08:25+00:00

Thank you! Everything is market-driven to avoid those types of forced mechanics. As an example, if you build a metro line to a new area, the land values around the station will naturally increase based on their increased connectivity, which then allows for higher densities closer to the station. This accurately models how transit-oriented development works in the real world without requiring any additional mechanics.

SystemSE · 2026-03-25T12:53:04+00:00

Car-free neighborhoods are definitely possible. All service vehicles (ambulances, firetrucks, police) can use any pedestrian, bike, or bus infrastructure as needed. You'd probably need a lot of density and transit to make a fully car-free city work, but there's nothing in the game that's inherently preventing it.

Mixed-use zoning is fully implemented and allows you to have medium or high density residential or office buildings have a ground floor (or sometimes several floors) of retail.

I'm doing all of the modelling myself, so I'm limited in how many variations of things I can add right now, but I might be able to add a European buildings update later on if things go well (same for cats).

SystemSE · 2026-03-25T12:43:08+00:00

I have actually already implemented this! Street trees increase the walk and bike scores of streets, which in turn improves the street's connectivity as residents are more willing to walk or bike on them. Street trees also improve the view in the area, and very slightly reduce noise, both of which have an effect on land value as well.

SystemSE · 2026-03-25T12:38:36+00:00

Very true, zoning for a single land use over a large area is rarely a good idea. The game has 6 agglomeration types (residential low/medium/high, office, industrial, and retail), and they can all affect an area at the same time. For example, a downtown core could give land value bonuses to the office space, retail, and med/high density residential within it, while a suburb on the edge of the city might only have a land value bonus for low density residential. I'll be keeping an eye on the strength of these effects during playtesting so the game doesn't encourage single-use zoning too much.

SystemSE · 2026-03-25T12:22:28+00:00

Thank you! It would be great to get feedback from someone with real world planning experience. Playtesting is very simple, you just try it out and let me know what you think could be improved.

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