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The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

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Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#31

Post by _mtr »

zrail wrote: post #16

This looks awesome! Does anyone know if it plays acceptably on a new Macbook Pro 13"? The spec sheets for the game say it doesn't support Intel integrated graphics, but maybe that means it just can't run full resolution?

I've put about 12 hours in on my late 2013 13" mbp. For a decently sized-city (10k+), there aren't noticeable performance issues at full-screen and mostly 'medium' display options. Your fans will get a workout and you get about 30 minutes of battery life off the charger, though.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#32

Post by interpol_p »

I'm probably in the minority here, but for me the biggest appeal of the SimCity series was the aesthetic and music. The music in particular.

I absolutely love what I have seen of Skylines so far, but it seems to be missing the SimCity charm — that urban soundtrack, the way the buildings light up at night, the unique architecture and art style. I'm hoping mods will fill in all these areas.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#33

Post by intull »

creshal wrote: post #27
intull wrote: post #13

The Colossal Order team, in my opinion was very lucky! There were three games - 1. SimCity 4 with the statistical simulation model, big maps (region-wise) and plenty of features. 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. And, 3. Cities XL having a HUGE map, few unique features like bus rout…

> 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. It irks me how SimCity 5 is praised for that. The Caesar series had pure agent-based simulations in the 1990s, and somehow had none of the agent routing bugs SimCity 5 had. How can being worse than your competition 20 years ago be considered an ac…

Ah but the level of detail and graphics?

I could see the contrusction workers actually working, moving vans with families, kids boarding coming out of the house, boarding the school bus (actually walking/climbing), going to the school, playing on the swings, the sand, the slides, people actually walking in the park, a car actually owned by a sim being parked at work, etc. SC5 is praised for this level of detail in its model.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#34

Post by isaacdl »

zrail wrote: post #16

This looks awesome! Does anyone know if it plays acceptably on a new Macbook Pro 13"? The spec sheets for the game say it doesn't support Intel integrated graphics, but maybe that means it just can't run full resolution?

I'm wondering the same thing - does the spec saying that it doesn't support Intel graphics just mean that I'd have to dial down the resolution, or is it a hard stop?

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#35

Post by TheCoelacanth »

mlieberman85 wrote: post #19
intull wrote: post #13

The Colossal Order team, in my opinion was very lucky! There were three games - 1. SimCity 4 with the statistical simulation model, big maps (region-wise) and plenty of features. 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. And, 3. Cities XL having a HUGE map, few unique features like bus rout…

Did it actually have much of a "realistic simulation" though? One of the main reasons I didn't buy the game is because people tore it to shreds for utilizing the same exact algorithm for determining traffic as they did water and other utilities. Also people pointed out that like people themselves weren't actually simulated in anyway they just woke up in the morning found the first open commercial job to work at and a…

It was a realistic simulation of a dystopian society in which people had no long term jobs or housing but were simply assigned to one each day based on proximity.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#36

Post by steveklabnik »

zrail wrote: post #16

This looks awesome! Does anyone know if it plays acceptably on a new Macbook Pro 13"? The spec sheets for the game say it doesn't support Intel integrated graphics, but maybe that means it just can't run full resolution?

I have a ThinkPad 440s, which is a beefy machine in other respects, but has integrated graphics. I can't currently play the game due to rendering glitches :/

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#37

Post by rmxt »

Erwin wrote: post #12
icehawk219 wrote: post #5

Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator. Which itself wouldn't be a problem if…

The current proposed hack to encourage them to use all the lanes is this: https://i.imgur.com/F8eKjp5.jpg -- periodic narrowing of the lanes so those that don't need to turn stay in the middle.

Interestingly enough, while it looks bizarre in a video game, this is functionally how left/right turn bays work in some large urban one-way streets in real-life. See, for example, this NYC intersection: https://goo.gl/maps/SCFrQ . The left turn lane is a parking lane until one is within half a block of the intersection in question. While it isn't as extreme as 2 lanes to 6, it's very similar. So... is it a hack for the game, or is it a hack for real-life, or neither?

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#38

Post by interurban »

intull wrote: post #33
creshal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. It irks me how SimCity 5 is praised for that. The Caesar series had pure agent-based simulations in the 1990s, and somehow had none of the agent routing bugs SimCity 5 had. How can being worse than your competition 20 years ago be considered an ac…

Ah but the level of detail and graphics? I could see the contrusction workers actually working, moving vans with families, kids boarding coming out of the house, boarding the school bus (actually walking/climbing), going to the school, playing on the swings, the sand, the slides, people actually walking in the park, a car actually owned by a sim being parked at work, etc. SC5 is praised for this level of detail in it…

Games like Pharoah (a direct descendant of the Caesar series) also had agent modeling in the late 90's where you could see what the agents were doing. That said, the computing power and storage capacities of the time limited the set of possible animations. The LOD and graphics are incremental improvements on a feature that has existed for decades (not to say they aren't welcome improvements).

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#39

Post by true_religion »

intull wrote: post #26
mlieberman85 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it actually have much of a "realistic simulation" though? One of the main reasons I didn't buy the game is because people tore it to shreds for utilizing the same exact algorithm for determining traffic as they did water and other utilities. Also people pointed out that like people themselves weren't actually simulated in anyway they just woke up in the morning found the first open commercial job to work at and a…

Well, maybe not "real" as in the "real world", but "real" enough to have fun. SimCity 5 faced an ordeal in trying to be too real; they traded off other vital entities (map size, gameplay features) for getting this simulation right! It's also been stated that this game has, by default, a very "easy" gameplay which may have contributed to siding to being a bit less realistic but sufficiently real for playing and having…

But I'm curious what actual 'realism' did it have?

Like the above poster said, the agent model may have been intended to be more realistic, but in practice you couldn't follow a single sim and see a facsimile of reality: they would go to the nearest workplaces and return to the nearest house even if it wasn't 'theirs'.

So where did Sim City 5 succeed that no others have?

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#40

Post by li-ch »

icehawk219 wrote: post #5

Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator. Which itself wouldn't be a problem if…

It's a hard problem to solve, and it might be a good crowd-sourcing opportunity. They need to expose some API for managing traffic, so that the community can experiment with new routing and scheduling strategies.
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