The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by ijk » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 11:17 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #113

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…

I think you guys make it sound a whole lot more glamorous than it really is. I played those city-building games back then (Caesar, Pharaoh and later Zeus). And do note, I absolutely loved them. Caesar 3 basically had delivery "serfs" that would move stuff from one place to another. Each building had it's own unit to get supplies (materials to do it's thing), and it would simply retrieve it from the relevant store, so…

Technically, there was a walker that went from the place of employment searching for an occupied dwelling to source employees from. But you are correct that there weren't agents that tracked where each individual citizen was at any given moment.

Tropico, on the other hand, does have every employee individually modeled.

And I believe Children of the Nile, which is something of a spiritual sequel to Pharaoh, also tracked individual citizens as agents.

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

#172

Post by zeidrich » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 11:37 PM UTC

edias wrote: post #108

dsl wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look at Activision/Blizzard. They built essentially the same thing (Origin/Uplay) but being very customer friendly about it and have had crazy success with Battle.net.

You've never played their recent games then. Battle.net 2.0 is routinely called 0.2 and considered a step back in every single way, aside from FB integration I guess. It didn't even have chat channels until recently or clan support. Promises made for starcraft 2 5 years ago have yet to be delivered on. Diablo 3 was a terrible cash grab and mostly abandoned by players. After Activision purchased blizzard it has not be…

I'm not sure what you're getting at.

You're conflating the battle.net platform that they have built, which is the launcher, the updater, etc. with concerns that people had over matchmaking and chat support.

Uplay is a horrendous piece of junk that feels like a horrendous piece of junk that's horrible DRM. Nobody talks about chat channels and clan support in Uplay, because the only function Uplay has is to sell you games and stop you from pirating games.

Battle.net serves the same purpose, but it serves it much more gracefully. Apart from some complaints about no offline only mode for Diablo and Starcraft, it's been a pretty quiet system. Even with the new launcher it's pretty respectful to players.

I think it's pretty telling that you talk about specific functions like clan support and how Diablo 3 was a cash grab. It means you're talking about gameplay features, and not about the Battle.net platform at all.

The fact is, Battle.net is pretty quiet from a DRM perspective. You don't feel violated by installing the launcher like I did when I loaded Uplay. It feels like a tool for interoperability across Blizzard instead of an attempt to outsteam steam while screwing you over trying to lock down your games.

Battle.net's launcher got me playing hearthstone, it got me playing HOTS, it let me reconnect with people that I forgot I had on my friends list from when I played WoW. It was a useful tool. This is regardless of how long it took them to get clan support in SC2 or global chat channels or matchmaking concerns or whatever else your pet issue might be. Whatever the case, I didn't feel cheated just by installing it. Whether the games are good or not are different question.

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

#173

Post by vacri » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 12:14 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #91

mattmanser wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CK2 is made by a totally different developer.

Nope, Paradox. They also make Europa Universalis 4, another major time sink. Edit: You're right, Paradox is only the publisher in this case, not the developer as well.

Wikipedia says it's Paradox Development Studio, which is the design studio, where Paradox Interactive is the publisher, and both are under the same parent company. As far as I am aware, the 'clausewitz engine' used by these games isn't available to other developers.

Who are you seeing as the 'not-Paradox' developer for CK2?

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

#174

Post by vpeters25 » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 1:05 AM UTC

GhotiFish wrote: post #89

KhalilK wrote: post #45

Not to mention the fact that it's the first decent city building game that runs on Linux!

wait... what?! HOLY SH*^%

Confirming it works fine on ubuntu 14.04. Bought it on steam yesterday, been playing it since.

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

#175

Post by GhotiFish » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 5:29 AM UTC

vpeters25 wrote: post #174

GhotiFish wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait... what?! HOLY SH*^%

Confirming it works fine on ubuntu 14.04. Bought it on steam yesterday, been playing it since.

I'm actually having some issues starting games on it. Some kind of permissions issue I think.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?845038-de...

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

#176

Post by allochthon » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 5:35 AM UTC

This looks like a fantastic game. Two thoughts:

1. I bet hobbyists could come up with some garden city plans that would be genuinely pleasant places for real people to live, and perhaps city planners might take inspiration from them.

2. I wonder whether a game like this could produce a file format that could be used as input for a racing game or a game like Grand Theft Auto.

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

#177

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 9:05 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #173

oblio wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, Paradox. They also make Europa Universalis 4, another major time sink. Edit: You're right, Paradox is only the publisher in this case, not the developer as well.

Wikipedia says it's Paradox Development Studio, which is the design studio, where Paradox Interactive is the publisher, and both are under the same parent company. As far as I am aware, the 'clausewitz engine' used by these games isn't available to other developers. Who are you seeing as the 'not-Paradox' developer for CK2?

[deleted]

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

#178

Post by oblio » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 9:06 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #173

oblio wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, Paradox. They also make Europa Universalis 4, another major time sink. Edit: You're right, Paradox is only the publisher in this case, not the developer as well.

Wikipedia says it's Paradox Development Studio, which is the design studio, where Paradox Interactive is the publisher, and both are under the same parent company. As far as I am aware, the 'clausewitz engine' used by these games isn't available to other developers. Who are you seeing as the 'not-Paradox' developer for CK2?

Cities: Skylines. Wikipedia says it's made by Colossal Order, a Finnish company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities:_Skylines

EU4 and CK2 are made by PDS, part of Paradox Interactive, a Swedish company.

The confusion was because the thread is actually about Cities: Skylines. That's the game that's only distributed by Paradox, not also made by them, and the one I was confused about.

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

#179

Post by zo1 » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 9:12 AM UTC

ijk wrote: post #171

zo1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you guys make it sound a whole lot more glamorous than it really is. I played those city-building games back then (Caesar, Pharaoh and later Zeus). And do note, I absolutely loved them. Caesar 3 basically had delivery "serfs" that would move stuff from one place to another. Each building had it's own unit to get supplies (materials to do it's thing), and it would simply retrieve it from the relevant store, so…

Technically, there was a walker that went from the place of employment searching for an occupied dwelling to source employees from. But you are correct that there weren't agents that tracked where each individual citizen was at any given moment. Tropico, on the other hand, does have every employee individually modeled. And I believe Children of the Nile, which is something of a spiritual sequel to Pharaoh, also track…

> "Technically, there was a walker that went from the place of employment searching for an occupied dwelling to source employees from."

Thanks for the correction. It's been a while since I played those games. Now I'm all nostalgic and hankering to play them all over again.

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

#180

Post by sirtaj » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 9:25 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #127

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…

Tropico series has it as well, complete with political leanings, food & entertainment preferences, and a tolerance level for el dictator.

I'm surprised Tropico doesn't come up in these discussions about simulated-agent city builders more often. Maybe it didn't feel Sim City-ish enough because you have to place all the buildings yourself, or because of the comparatively low population limit.