Show HN: TinyCity – A tiny city SIM for MicroPython (Thumby micro console)

92 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by inflam52

16 Comments

_joel

3 hours ago

I hope it "Reticulates Tiny Splines" (good work btw)

inflam52

2 hours ago

Haha thanks! Definitely adding that during map generation in next release.

allanrbo

3 hours ago

SIM=subscriber identity module. sim=simulator. :-)

inflam52

3 hours ago

I originally had sim but HN autocorrected it. I tried to edit it back to what I had but can't seem to now.

gaudystead

2 hours ago

I literally JUST bought a Thumby out of a vending machine this past weekend, so this post feels a bit serendipitous for me. Thanks for sharing, and I'll have to check this out!

inflam52

2 hours ago

Congrats! Unplayable by most means but absolutely incredible how tiny it is so I love it.

Tiberium

2 hours ago

Small bug: the sim seems to double count residential population for taxes, industrial pop gets ignored. The duplicate logic seems to exist in UI but it's correct there.

Also I wonder if all the repetition could be reduced, or would it affect performance on MicroPython?

https://github.com/chrisdiana/TinyCity/blob/88d07cf98f13bb73...

inflam52

2 hours ago

Yeah great catch. So I mentioned this in the README but much of the mechanics were heavily inspired by jhhoward's MicroCity. This is the same way he calculated taxes and I figured to test it out to see how it worked in game. I really liked the flow of how his game played and seems like there are some pros/cons to that inbalance.

Pros: - Makes residential population more valuable for taxes, which helps early‑game cash flow. - Encourages zoning residential since it has outsized budget impact. - Offsets the fact that residential growth can be more constrained by pollution/unemployment.

Cons: - Skews the economy away from industrial/commercial impact. - Makes budget feel inconsistent with “total population.” - Can mask balance issues by injecting extra money, making difficulty tuning harder.

bowlcutWiz

41 minutes ago

looks awesome! can't wait to try the online version :)

inflam52

22 minutes ago

Thanks I'll post when it's available. Still waiting on the PR to merge in their Arcade repo.