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Runaway Software

12 December 2002

[Traffic on Moo Canada]

  • It started with the wish to translate an ASCII art grid of into an HTML table grid.
  • Then it occurred to me that adding isometric icons from SimCity would be a nice touch.
  • SimCity's icons looked so 1990s, so they all had to be reworked and redrawn.
  • The resulting map looked a bit empty, so some cars were randomly added to the streets.
  • Not content with that, I just had to program the cars with individual personalities and have them drive around.
  • Of course that meant controls needed to be added so that the behaviour could be customised.
  • Preferences shouldn't be lost between sessions, so this meant employing cookies.
Beware the programmer who gets obsessed with a trivial project.

Update: Subsequently I've added an airplane and a helicopter, both of which can be interacted with. This project just will not die.

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