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SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

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Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#81

Post by distances »

bombcar wrote: post #59
nextaccountic wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a Tropico game, I think it's Tropico 4, that is very realistic in that you don't need to literally make roads and asphalt all the things, and roads don't need to be car-centered; you just make buildings and people will walk, and you add a road network to make things more efficient, but it isn't required Also curved roads and buildings don't need to be right besides the road, etc. Sim City 4 is more like a sub…

I want free-form zoning, where it's not tile based; CS can do something kinda like it but it's still just tiles in the end, with empty space between. Emergent paths would be fun, too; if you don't make the sidewalks and paths good enough, people start cutting across empty areas.

Free-form city blocks is also high on my wishlist for C:S2. Without it you can't make convincing European style cities.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#82

Post by mcaravey »

devman0 wrote: post #40
chongli wrote: post #5

I prefer SimCity 2000. I feel like it hit a pretty good sweet spot between simulation and fun (which is to say, not even a vague gesturing at anything remotely realistic). Realistic simulation in games is almost universally less fun than simple, predictable game logic. Probably the most extreme example of this is chess: way more enjoyable than real warfare. Back on topic though. My beef with SimCity 4 is that it adde…

The ability to import a SimCity 2000 map in to SimCopter was amazing for the time, imo. I remember flying around cities I had worked really hard on thinking how the cross over between the two games was really cool.

Absolutely! I remember adding a bunch of rail to my cities just so I could do more train rescues or catching robbers on the trains. It was huge fun at the time…

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#83

Post by gdprrrr »

nextaccountic wrote: post #43
sidewndr46 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities Skylines just turns into "transportation mode simulator" for me. Still fun, but it is not the same thing.

There's a Tropico game, I think it's Tropico 4, that is very realistic in that you don't need to literally make roads and asphalt all the things, and roads don't need to be car-centered; you just make buildings and people will walk, and you add a road network to make things more efficient, but it isn't required Also curved roads and buildings don't need to be right besides the road, etc. Sim City 4 is more like a sub…

There's also Foundation, a medieval city builder that works like this.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#85

Post by dirtyid »

carabiner wrote: post #42
bombcar wrote: post #3

I think SimCity 4 is the best city simulator game. Cities Skylines is an excellent city painter ; however.

All of these city games need to simulate bureaucracy. For example, if trying to demolish an apartment, you need to solicit 400 approvals and gain local support before doing so. Or to build to a railway you need to buy out all of the land and organize environmental studies for every square foot of it before laying track.

All in game achievements should be around negotiating bureaucracy. You should be able to look at a city and have fond / traumatic memories over all the compromised mess. Campaign mode should include trying to build new subway expansion downtown, ranked on time. Cheat code activates is maximum authoritarian mode for old school bulldoze everything / eminant eminant domain / rich petro state pay with migrant worker experience. Or maybe that's just easy mode.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#86

Post by Semaphor »

csomar wrote: post #62
xixixao wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age of Empires 2, Sim City 3000, Diablo2 and Red Alert 2. Released in the span of 3 years. What an incredible era. Can’t shake off the feeling that 3D took away as much as it gave gaming. Also can’t believe it’s just my age-based selection bias.

It's not an age-based bias. These games couldn't expand on graphics, so they expanded on the logic of the game. That made them interesting. Very few games do that today (EU4, a favorite of mine, for example) but the trend now is to confuse the user with graphics while giving really little in term of content.

> Very few games do that today

I’d say quite a few. Just not AAA publisher shovelware.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#88

Post by carabiner »

dirtyid wrote: post #85
carabiner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these city games need to simulate bureaucracy. For example, if trying to demolish an apartment, you need to solicit 400 approvals and gain local support before doing so. Or to build to a railway you need to buy out all of the land and organize environmental studies for every square foot of it before laying track.

All in game achievements should be around negotiating bureaucracy. You should be able to look at a city and have fond / traumatic memories over all the compromised mess. Campaign mode should include trying to build new subway expansion downtown, ranked on time. Cheat code activates is maximum authoritarian mode for old school bulldoze everything / eminant eminant domain / rich petro state pay with migrant worker expe…

Bureaucracy slider should range from China (easiest) to New York City (hard) to San Francisco (nightmare).

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#89

Post by qball »

JonathonW wrote: post #16
genocidicbunny wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought 3000 was the best showing, though perhaps that's looking at it back later when performance is not as much of a concern. It felt like an upgraded SimCity 2000, rather than a big change in game mechanics that 4 was.

Same here— SimCity 3000’s the one that really hit the right spot gameplay-wise for me. Prettier and deeper and more polished than 2000 without departing too far from 2000’s core mechanics or simulation approach.

>without departing too far from 2000’s core mechanics or simulation approach

SC3K is similar enough in structure to SC2K that it can actually load SC2K city save files directly; SC3K being a relatively strict superset of SC2K in terms of available elements and their sizes certainly doesn't hinder that backwards-compatibility at all.

The only things that would actively break when you did this were related to maximum terrain steepness for underground elements (metro, water pipes), 90-degree rail connections would sever (at least, graphically), and hydroelectric power generators as they're the only power building not implemented.

The arcologies were also dropped from SC3K, but to be fair those were mostly just designed to be population boosters in SC2K- something that wasn't necessary in SC3K now that the simulator was allowed to keep track of more than 250 buildings (or at least, so the manual and the query tool say).

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#90

Post by qball »

lagniappe wrote: post #6
CydeWeys wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the arcologies were fun, but , they were also game-breaking, and building them completely changed the nature of the game into something unrealistic that frankly didn't really work. So not having them isn't a huge loss.

ah but placing that 301st arcology was so fun to young-me for some reason :)

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