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SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

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Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#121

Post by short_sells_poo »

zamnos wrote: post #80
genocidicbunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating a competent and usable level editor that you can publicly release is a lot of work, and unless you can somehow turn it into a major selling point for the game, you will be hard pressed to afford it. Dev time for games is expensive and if you're hacking together levels using a bunch of disparate tools including some third-party ones it might not really be worth it to make a tool that you can release.

The ultimate "level editor" was released - Unity. It's infinitely moddable and you can even sell your mods for money.

There's a world of difference between making a new map/level and making a new game. The effort required for the former is measured in years, whereas the latter is mostly weeks to months (ignoring open world games where the level spans the whole game universe).

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#122

Post by codingdave »

xixixao wrote: post #44
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.

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.

That is also just a few years before World of Warcraft came out, which drove everyone to focus more on multiplayer games. Not that we didn't all do multiplayer at LAN parties, but that is when it really switched to being done across the internet.

FWIW, I have a pet theory that WoW took over at that point not because of the MMO concept (which already existed), but because their UX was so smooth. That was the first MMO that "just worked" to understand what you were trying to click. The others at that time would take multiple tries to click an object correctly.

In any case, the success of WoW is what changed the direction of gaming a few years after all those games came out, so I'm agreeing with you that it was an incredible era.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#123

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

mattmanser wrote: post #100
csomar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

High content, big budget, games still exist, e.g. Elden Ring + Zelda (as someone mentioned) are two recent releases. There's also plenty of sim games in the indie market, Factorio, Banished, Frostpunk. Then things that are close to the market like They Are Billions, Kenshi, etc. to name a few I've personally had time to play. Kenshi is a bit rough around the edges, but absolutely brilliant in terms of sandbox play. T…

Let’s not forget all the Paradox games: City Skylines, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron. Very much content over graphics.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#124

Post by yreg »

I might be a bit younger than the average commenter here, because for me the favourite citybuilder was SimCity 3000, not 2000.

Anyway, I miss the isometric grid. Yes, it's less realistic, but it's so pleasing. The thing I'm most annoyed by in modern sim games is placing roads and paths. They never look quite right. It's the same with Rollercoaster Tycoon -> Planet Tycoon.

I'd like to see some new games which embrace a grid.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#125

Post by rl3 »

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.

SC3K's soundtrack and art was magical. Especially the advisor portraits.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#126

Post by Stevvo »

Gigachad wrote: post #37
spideymans wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s worse is that CS is a transport simulator that’s heavily biased towards cars; to the point where every new game starts off with a giant unsightly freeway in the middle of your town. I hope CS2 is more agnostic on transport mode. It would be nice to be able to create genuinely car-free cities in the game.

That was my problem with the game as well. You don’t really have all that much freedom and there isn’t that much emergent behaviour. You just replay the same road builder scenario where the only interesting part is designing intersections. I’d love to see a city builder game with an extremely powerful policy builder feature. Let me design new rules and see how the city responds. For example, let me implement congesti…

Cities skylines has the policy builder feature like you describe. One of the policies you can implement is congestion charges. You can set the policies city-wide, or in certain districts. In the latest builds with the newest DLC, you can even ban cars completely with pedestrian only districts/roads.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#127

Post by lvl102 »

I’d really like to modernize Simcity 4. Throw some AI on it for simulation. Stable diffusion for one of kind buildings. I just realized you can do so much with AI to make old games interesting now.

Who knows, maybe that will be a big trend in the near future.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#128

Post by fendy3002 »

mattmanser wrote: post #100
csomar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

High content, big budget, games still exist, e.g. Elden Ring + Zelda (as someone mentioned) are two recent releases. There's also plenty of sim games in the indie market, Factorio, Banished, Frostpunk. Then things that are close to the market like They Are Billions, Kenshi, etc. to name a few I've personally had time to play. Kenshi is a bit rough around the edges, but absolutely brilliant in terms of sandbox play. T…

Sim City 3000 was my most favorite sim game, while the sims (one) and zoo tycoon (one) follow close. That is until I tried Factorio, man that game got the title Cracktorio for a reason and elevated sim games to a new level. Since then I don't have any courage to try Rimworld, don't want my addiction to relapse.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#129

Post by fendy3002 »

boredhedgehog wrote: post #120
jhbadger wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But everything is relative. I started gaming in the early 1980s and so those 1990s/early 2000s games had incredible graphics compared to what I was used to. And I'm sure people who grew up earlier on things like 1970s Pong would think my 1980s games had amazing graphics. The argument "Games back then cared about gameplay rather than graphics" ignores that every era has tried to make graphics as good as possible; I'm…

What amazes the audience might be relative, but there are objective components to different styles of graphics. Take clarity in communication. Pong is maximally clear: the background is black, an interactive object is white. Every white object is integral to the game. The further you move away from this ideal towards photorealism, the less clear this distinction becomes. You must add more UI elements on top to compen…

Playing witcher 3, I don't think it'll be enjoyable for me without the witcher senses. It really emphasis the interact-able things over the environment.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#130

Post by capableweb »

bleep_bloop wrote: post #115
genocidicbunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating a competent and usable level editor that you can publicly release is a lot of work, and unless you can somehow turn it into a major selling point for the game, you will be hard pressed to afford it. Dev time for games is expensive and if you're hacking together levels using a bunch of disparate tools including some third-party ones it might not really be worth it to make a tool that you can release.

Level editing tools are created to build the levels by the devs. They just don't want to give them to players because they want to sell you additional content. Talking specifically about the usual suspects but hell, even some indie games are doing it now, in indie games it seems more popular to release a new game entirely which is basically 1.0 with new maps but thankfully there are tons of passion projects that get…

> Level editing tools are created to build the levels by the devs. They just don't want to give them to players because they want to sell you additional content.

This is probably true as well, but the internet editor map editors use are often very different than what they would offer the community, requiring a lot of polish compared to what's used internally (and we all know that the 20% last polish takes 80% of the time) Although there are some games that offer the very same experience, like what Crysis had (with the CryEngine Editor) and ARMA series.

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