Griffin Hale
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Permit Office

in-progress

A playable ArcGIS Pro city-management prototype where Python rules, map layers, and geoprocessing become the game engine.

GameArcGISArcPyPython
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Overview

Permit Office is a turn-based city-management game that runs inside ArcGIS Pro, using the GIS platform as its engine. You play the permit clerk, not the mayor: you shape the city through paperwork, inspections, approvals, denials, and reports.

Each week a docket of permit applications, civic incidents, and proposals lands on your desk. You select districts on the map, inspect cases, and approve, mitigate, or deny, spending limited action points and budget. Approvals spawn real point, line, and polygon features (businesses, housing, transit, hazards) whose effects ripple through a district and into its neighbors. After 12 weeks, a final audit grades you.

Every game is randomly seeded, so the city layout and docket differ each playthrough. The point was not to make a novelty map demo. It was to see whether GIS data structures could carry a real game loop: state on the map, player input through selections, and rules that resolve spatial consequences.

How it’s built

  • ArcGIS Pro as the engine: feature classes hold districts, permit features, dockets, and logs; map selections are how the player gives input.
  • ArcPy geometry and cursors resolve proposals, spatial spillover, district state, and saving to a file geodatabase.
  • Tkinter provides the docket dashboard.
  • A pure-Python rules layer (decisions, turns, audit scoring) stays separate from the ArcGIS adapter, so the gameplay is unit-testable outside ArcGIS Pro.

This project started while I was reusing logic from Evocatio. The docket-and-rulings control scheme I worked out here is what later gave Evocatio its interface.

Status

Playable prototype. The full loop works: seeded city, weekly docket, inspection, approve/mitigate/deny decisions, district effects, end-of-week processing, and the final audit. A deterministic 12-week seed-2026 regression test covers the game rules outside ArcGIS Pro, with additional fake-ArcPy coverage around the adapter. Core ArcGIS launch/render/repaint has been smoke-checked; full live smoke-test recording and demo polish remain. Built in Python on ArcGIS Pro’s bundled arcpy.

Screenshots

Permit Office running as a geoprocessing tool in ArcGIS Pro, with the labeled district grid and districts D0401 and D0402 selected from the active docket.
Permit Office runs as a geoprocessing tool inside ArcGIS Pro. Each run reads the active docket and selects the districts it targets, here D0401 and D0402.
The Permit Office district grid: tiles representing city districts with point and line features placed on them.
The map holds the game state. Each tile is a district, and the squares and lines are point and line features that approved permits spawn.
The Start New Game dialog with an editable random seed field set to 2033 and Start and Cancel buttons.
Every playthrough is randomly seeded. Starting a new game lays down a fresh city and docket, so no two runs are the same.
The Permit Office docket dashboard showing a Connector Corridor Pilot permit case, its affected districts, action costs, the city health panel, and approve, mitigate, and deny buttons.
A permit case in the weekly docket: the districts it targets, its costs, and its tradeoffs. You spend limited action points to inspect, approve, mitigate, or deny.
The Permit Office docket showing a civic incident case with the city health panel reading Audit Fail, services critical, and grievances rising.
Decisions move the city's health meters. Push too hard and the audit slides toward FAIL, like this commuter-incident week with services critical and grievances rising.