Hello dev.to community!
I'm excited to share my journey creating Power Network Tycoon, a game that simulates realistic power grid physics and infrastructure management. As a power engineer who tries his hand at solo game development, this project combines my technical expertise with my passion for creating technical things.
The Technical Challenge
Building a physically accurate yet approachable power grid simulator presented some fascinating engineering problems:
-Implementing realistic power flow calculations with line losses and capacity constraints (and running at 60+ FPS, which is much less important for simulation software than games)
-Designing real-time supply/demand balancing that affects grid stability
-Creating cascade failure simulations where one problem triggers a chain reaction
-Modeling electrical physics including grounding systems and fault scenarios
-Simulating environmental factors like weather and natural disasters
Under the Hood
I built the simulation engine using C#/Unity while incorporating power engineering modelling calculations, which allowed me to balance performance with accuracy in a visual way. One particularly challenging aspect was making complex engineering principles visually comprehensible without sacrificing physical accuracy but while not excluding the non-engineers out there.
Why I'm Sharing
I thought the dev.to community might appreciate the technical challenges of translating real-world engineering systems into code. For those interested in simulation design, game development, or electrical engineering, I'd love to share more technical details or answer questions. Power Network Tycoon is available on Steam and Itch.io including a free demo.
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