Bi-Weekly Talk: Christoph Grüne: Fun with Mini Metro and Mini Motorways

Mittwoch, 22.12.2021, 10.30 Uhr

Ort: Online Session

Vortragender: Christoph Grüne

 

Abstract:

The computer games Mini Metro and Mini Motorways of the game design studio Dinosaur Polo Club are strategy games concerning city planning.
The goal of Mini Metro is to build up a metro infrastructure for an ever evolving city. Over time more stations have to be embedded into the infrastructure and rising passenger demands have to be satisfied. The maps are based on real cities and imitate the geographical conditions such as rivers, which are travelabel only by tunnel.
The goal of Mini Motorways is to build a street infrastructure for a fast growing city. Over time houses and shops are spawned into the landscape. The shops produces demands, which have to be fulfilled by a connected house by driving a car from the house to the shop. The maps are based on real cities as well and introduce constraints such as rivers and mountains, which are travelable by bridges or tunnels respectively.
Both games introduce simple (in comparison to real world) but interesting dynamics on city planning. Thus, robustness of the infrastructure against an (randomized) adversary are key points to make high scores on the game. The aim is to analyze both games on computational complexity, advice complexity and competitiveness etc.