Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

motherboard.vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 189 posts

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

#81

Post by SlashmanX »

icehawk219 wrote: post #30
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is encouragement from the game to build alternative transport options like light rail, trams, move jobs closer to residential districts or establish suburbs to lower city population, tax cars more, build bike lanes, build more sidewalks, etc. In real life, there's not usually a solution for traffic. If you build out more streets, people are incentivized to drive more. I'd love this game to be this realisti…

Im hesitant to say that's the intended result but it is what happens. I found myself planning new districts entirely around this problem with bus, metro, and pedestrian walkways (maybe its just me but right now commuter rail seems to be basically unused and doesn't seem to do anything). So it definitely does force you to think about how you're laying out your city and plan things out beyond then just tossing down a g…

You have to set "lines" for commuter rail just like metro and buses

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

#82

Post by SlashmanX »

hobs wrote: post #14

I don't know if it is just my incompetence, but I wanted to mention is that it can be unclear what the citizens want unless you cycle through all the available overlays and check things out. I feel like they could definitely summarize important counters for you so you don't always have to click 10 times to get all the information on your city. This is especially true early game when your city is expanding by leaps an…

That's what the Chirper is for. Although some of that stuff does get "diluted" with the other random "chrips"

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

#84

Post by GhotiFish »

voteapathy wrote: post #17
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…

True on the traffic. Sure, the game isn't perfect. However, one of the successes of Skylines has been the honest tone and communication with the developers. There's a sense of confidence that the game will be supported and improved over time. This didn't exist with Sim City 5, what with the always-online drama, the inability to play the game well for several months after release, and the early focus on producing larg…

I think a lot of the demerits in Skylines exist within the core game of Sim City 5. The problem is, as I see it, that the obvious marketing (buy more things, here, get this Nissan leaf station for your town for free!!!), and the lies (it has to be online, simcity wouldn't work any other way), made players unwilling and unable to forgive simcity's foibles in the game. It was obvious people were being treated like a resource to be extracted, not a demographic of people who want to have a need fulfilled.

All games have failings, how many failings, and the degree people are willing to forgive them is the thing that changes.

I think after the anger of simcity 5, people are willing to forgive a lot of foibles, and despite that, Skylines doesn't seem to have many, it's pretty solid.

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

#85

Post by robwilliams »

hobs wrote: post #14

I don't know if it is just my incompetence, but I wanted to mention is that it can be unclear what the citizens want unless you cycle through all the available overlays and check things out. I feel like they could definitely summarize important counters for you so you don't always have to click 10 times to get all the information on your city. This is especially true early game when your city is expanding by leaps an…

My side project is creating a mod that displays city vitals just like you want. Hopefully I can get it done in the next couple days.

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

#86

Post by robwilliams »

icehawk219 wrote: post #7
mosburger wrote: post #3

I adore Cities: Skyline, and I haven't even looked at the mod scene at all yet. I was always a fan of SimCity but it's been literally years since I've even played a computer game. Skyline brought me back. :)

The mod scene is great so far. Auto-bulldoze and changing the direction of one-way roads are fantastic things to have that I really hope they bring into the game as actual features. From what I've heard they haven't opened up too much of the API to modders yet though but do seem to be receptive to feedback and working with the community.

The code is not obfuscated so you can inspect Assembly-CSharp.dll through ILSpy to get a feel for the game logic.

There are no restrictions on what your mod can do - modders just have to figure out how to do it.

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

#87

Post by petercooper »

hashberry wrote: post #68

It's amazing what a small team with a great vision can do. They had the expertise and delivered what customers wanted. It's also sad how a large company can lose track of what made its previous products so great. EA tried to "innovate" SimCity 5, except they were "innovating" the game for themselves (e.g. get users online to make it easier to buy upgrades), not the end-user. Gamers did not want a multiplayer-based ci…

It's amazing what a small team with a great vision can do.

And even more amazing, for me, is they did it in Unity as well!

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

#88

Post by GhotiFish »

interpol_p wrote: post #32

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.

yup, I think you're in the minority here, I can't imagin anyone appreciating simcity for the music.

It had some pretty graphics, for sure, but I think most people view that as fluff.

You should hear me gush about factorio, and it looks like this: https://www.google.ca/search?q=factorio&tbm=isch&gws_rd=cr,s...

edit: ok, apparently not. apparently people really really really care that their games look pretty, color me surprised.

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

#90

Post by porker »

Goronmon wrote: post #48

Skylines is a great game, with great mod support... ...that retails for $30 (can get it for less on sites like greenmangaming.com). That part blows my mind.

Skylines is showing at £29.99 (equiv of $46) on greenmangaming for me atm...
Post reply on HN