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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

#181

Post by blueskin_ »

shostack wrote: post #114
bentcorner wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me they're a mixed bag. I've enjoyed many titles from them (Dragon Age, Titanfall, Dead Space, NFS: HP, Mass Effect, Bulletstorm, BF: BC2, and countless other titles from older gen consoles and even older PC games like Archon and Kings of the Beach). I think that when expectations are set high (most any recent BF release), disappointment is sure to follow.

It's not that expectations are high. It's that the games would be outstanding if EA hadn't crappified them. Many of these games have very player-hostile elements designed purely to suck more money out of people. Maybe it's just me, but for all people like to point out how expansion packs back in the day used to be bad, I don't remember ANYTHING on the level we're seeing with how aggressively they try to milk their cu…

Exactly this.

I liked proper expansions where you got a good proportion of a whole game's extra content. I hate DLC where you are encouraged to buy large numbers of small items, because it's a 'death by a thousand cuts' model of sucking way more money out of the player with far less dev effort.

I never buy DLC for any game, on principle. If a game has a lot, I'll reconsider buying the game at all.

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

#182

Post by vacri »

oblio wrote: post #178
vacri wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, I misread what the thread was about. Thanks for the clarification.

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

#183

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

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…

I'm surprised the Tropico series isn't getting much love here, I discovered it on personal recommendation after the disappointment of SimCity 5 and it's really a fantastic substitute.

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

#184

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

allochthon wrote: post #176

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.

Ooh, I used to love flying around my SimCity 2000 cities in SimCopter, good call!

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

#185

Post by robwilliams »

burger_moon wrote: post #111
robwilliams wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be great. It is a little annoying having to click around to make changes and click back to check it again after say adjusting your power budget. If it was semi transparent when not in focus and solid when in focus that could be a good way to make non intrusive. anyways I will keep an eye out for it.

Here's the mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410151...

Transparency and minimize/maximize buttons coming in an update tonight.

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

#186

Post by hobs »

robwilliams wrote: post #185
burger_moon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be great. It is a little annoying having to click around to make changes and click back to check it again after say adjusting your power budget. If it was semi transparent when not in focus and solid when in focus that could be a good way to make non intrusive. anyways I will keep an eye out for it.

Here's the mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410151... Transparency and minimize/maximize buttons coming in an update tonight.

Looks like you are already at 700 subscribers, nice! Thank you for making this, this is exactly what I wanted.

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

#187

Post by creshal »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #183
ijk wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm surprised the Tropico series isn't getting much love here, I discovered it on personal recommendation after the disappointment of SimCity 5 and it's really a fantastic substitute.

I found the games to be not challenging enough, and they seem to crank out sequels far too quickly with too little changes to justify the price tag. This just rubs me off wrong, with sim titles like that I expect to sink several years into them.

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

#188

Post by burger_moon »

robwilliams wrote: post #185
burger_moon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be great. It is a little annoying having to click around to make changes and click back to check it again after say adjusting your power budget. If it was semi transparent when not in focus and solid when in focus that could be a good way to make non intrusive. anyways I will keep an eye out for it.

Here's the mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=410151... Transparency and minimize/maximize buttons coming in an update tonight.

Just saw your comment. I'll check it out tonight.

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

#189

Post by burger_moon »

conwaytwitty wrote: post #115
burger_moon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's good to know. I bought it for my pc but wouldn't mind getting a copy for my mb air.

copy? unless you want to play on two machines at the same time, you don't need it, it's steam after all

Good point. I've never played a steam game on anything but my pc so I wasn't aware I could just log into my steam account on a different computer.
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