itch.io

Just ask ChatGPT to do it. You can include the source code too. :)

This is really cool but I wish I could export the star map as json or even use the source code.

I think it's great what you're doing. I didn't realize before now that this type of game is something I'm really interested in but now that I found this game I think after I finish my current project, if I don't get distracted by something else, I might try to poke around it a bit. I bet there's university research into this exact type of modeling.

That's great. I had a developer account years ago but didn't make the big bucks and didn't have the time and lost interest in keeping my apps up-to-date so I got rid of it.

I think the time scale of this game seems off.  The Earth's last ice age was only 15,000 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum). Egyptian history begins in 3100 BC. If this game mirrors the Earth's history, once civilization starts, the atomic age will occur in at least 5,000 years.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egypt)

And there is no climate change. 6000 years ago the Sahara desert was wet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period). 500 years ago there was the Little Ice Age. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age).

The population growth also doesn't seem to match the following chart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Past_population

You start with 5K people.  I have no idea how fast that would grow to 15K, but that's basically the starting point for the above chart. It only takes 60K years to go from 15K to 4 million. I just ran a simulation and put people in the best place possible and after a million years there were only 2.7 million people. It took almost 1.5 million years to reach 4 million people.  I don't think the simulation should even reach a million years unless the planet is totally hostile and there are near-extinction events.

Civilization began when there were 14 million people in 3000 BC. I think this is the most interesting period as things start happening faster and faster. This is actually where I would start the game or at least get there very quickly. I guess my poor laptop has maxed out and the simulation is now progressing very slowly.

Maybe the game is suppose to be pre-civilization because simulating more than 4 million people would take too much processing power?

Lastly, this YouTube video has some interesting points on civilization and climate.

You need to get it digitally signed by Apple, which means you need a dev account with them, which is about $100 a year.

https://developer.apple.com/programs/

https://developer.apple.com/account/

I would like to second: there is no such thing as hiring a free developer. This game parallels things I like, but I highly doubt I would ever have time to contribute. It takes a long time to get up to speed to even be helpful. Developing anything is huge a commitment. People only do it for money or because they are passionate about it.

I generated a world using the Earth heightmap but something isn't right with it. I had to change the sea level and after I do that the western United States is frozen. What is the correct settings for that map?

The biggest practical change I would suggest is to move the UI (views, overlays, messages, etc) to the side like in Google Earth. And to make them modeless so they can be displayed while interacting with the world.

After reaching the max supported date, it should be game over rather then an unhandled exception requiring a restart.

There's something about the game that is alluring but it doesn't quite hit the spot yet. This reminds me a little of Seedship. I think Worlds could be a lot funner if it had influence elements like Seedship's.  https://philome.la/johnayliff/seedship/play/index.html

I would love to see different map projections. My favorite is the Cahill–Keyes projection.  There's also the awesome Myriahedral projections (mainly the coastline and sea line projections). It would be great if several different world views could be on the screen at the same time, say like 4 globe views showing 4 different sides of the planet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill%E2%80%93Keyes_projection

https://www.win.tue.nl/~vanwijk/myriahedral/

This happens on 10.14 as well. 

Looking at the Console logs I found this:

Non-fatal error enumerating at <private>, continuing: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 "The file “PlugIns” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file." UserInfo={NSURL=PlugIns/ -- file:///private/var/folders/8f/8dx1z7gx3jd28tj3_xm35yy80000gn/T/AppTranslocation/3BB769A5-C32A-4D7A-A0E4-3E5F347B6446/d/Worlds.app/Contents/, NSFilePath=/private/var/folders/8f/8dx1z7gx3jd28tj3_xm35yy80000gn/T/AppTranslocation/3BB769A5-C32A-4D7A-A0E4-3E5F347B6446/d/Worlds.app/Contents/PlugIns, NSUnderlyingError=0x7fcfcdd29340 {Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=2 "No such file or directory"}}

I looked up "AppTranslocation" and found this. https://krypted.com/mac-security/app-translocation-services-os-x-10-12/

In my day job I deal with quarantine a bit so I'm familiar with it. I did what it suggested, 'xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/Worlds' and that fixed it.

James