ABSTRACT
This chapter presents implementation details of the production rule system used in the game 1849. The system’s main design goals were enabling quick iteration via a data-driven approach and good performance on a variety of hardware, down to significantly underpowered tablet devices. 1849 is a city building and management game for tablets, desktops, and the web. The fiction of the game is that gold has just been discovered in California, and player’s task is to build gold mining towns and make money in the gold rush. The following is an overview of the game mechanics and simulation. In terms of game mechanics, the game is a classic city builder, along the lines of early Impressions Games such as Caesar or Zeus. The game simulation is implemented using a production rule system: all buildings run a collection of stand-alone rules that simulate the town’s economy.
