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Cities: Skylines II

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Re: Cities: Skylines II

#211

Post by rishav_sharan »

satvikpendem wrote: post #83

I find it hilarious that EA had the concept down and just blew their opportunity with Simcity 2013 (always online (which by the way was actually not true, people cracked the online requirement within the first day or so), had to contract with other users for basic services like sewage and electricity), paving the way for competitors like Cities: Skylines to take the lead instead. This reminds me of the same thing tha…

> He's made over $300 million in revenue so far and might be the first solo game dev (or even regular software dev) to hit $1 billion in the course of the game's existence.

That would be Notch, who made Minecraft

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#212

Post by fy20 »

eetus wrote: post #209
dysoco wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder why a "The Sims" competitor hasn't appeared yet, would the lack of branding and general "charm" of The Sims(like Simlish) be a dealbreaker?

Actually, I want a Sims-like game with a real language instead of Simlish. It would be a great way to learn a language when immersion isn't possible.

I guess one reason they did this was because there would be a limited number of phrases and it would get repetitive quickly. LLMs could work around that today.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#213

Post by satvikpendem »

rishav_sharan wrote: post #211
satvikpendem wrote: post #83

I find it hilarious that EA had the concept down and just blew their opportunity with Simcity 2013 (always online (which by the way was actually not true, people cracked the online requirement within the first day or so), had to contract with other users for basic services like sewage and electricity), paving the way for competitors like Cities: Skylines to take the lead instead. This reminds me of the same thing tha…

> He's made over $300 million in revenue so far and might be the first solo game dev (or even regular software dev) to hit $1 billion in the course of the game's existence. That would be Notch, who made Minecraft

Was Notch a solo dev when he sold to Microsoft? I think he had a team already. The Stardew Valley creator still doesn't have a full time team, I believe.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#214

Post by donutmonger »

YesBox wrote: post #17

Well crap, I'm going to have some serious competition :D I've been developing a city builder myself over the last year (Metropolis 1998). I wanted to do a 3D version sometime in the future, but alas. Maybe people will be tired of purchasing $15 DLCs on top of a shallow base game (probably not). Time to get to work

Looks neat, added it to my wishlist!

I'm curious about some of the tech behind this if you don't mind me asking:

1. Is the top down view just rendering the same isometric assets from a different viewpoint, are they pre-baked sprites, or are they completely different and hand-tuned?

2. How are you doing the changing wall height for seeing inside buildings? Do you just have 4 pre-set wall heights that you're animating between globally, or is it dynamic?

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#215

Post by fy20 »

pavlov wrote: post #128
satvikpendem wrote: post #83

I find it hilarious that EA had the concept down and just blew their opportunity with Simcity 2013 (always online (which by the way was actually not true, people cracked the online requirement within the first day or so), had to contract with other users for basic services like sewage and electricity), paving the way for competitors like Cities: Skylines to take the lead instead. This reminds me of the same thing tha…

I posted this earlier [1] but it’s an interesting little twist to this story… While EA was busy destroying the SimCity brand with unadulterated capitalist greed, Cities: Skylines was created with public funding from the Finnish government. No VCs wanted to invest in such a niche company. They were only able to get off the ground thanks to money from Finland’s public startup funding and arts grants. Capitalism on its…

This is somewhat out of context. Colosal Order developed two niche games before C:S; a transport simulator series called Cities in Motion. They received government funding before the first game was released. Many European countries have grants, tax cuts or loans for new businesses, so it's not anything unusual.

CiM 2 is a really good game, and very beautiful (which I guess is how they got the idea to build C:S). The focus is on transportation, and it does a much better job of simulating it than C:S (no despawning for starts). It has a few bugs and performance issues which I guess will never be fixed now, but worth playing if you like games that are a bit more constrained.

https://youtu.be/Bkwbajm7nG8

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#216

Post by gorgoiler »

Terretta wrote: post #94
toasteros wrote: post #20

I have a hard time with freeform city builders like Skylines or SimCity. The amount of unrestrained freedom makes me question why I'm even playing. I have the same issue with The Sims or something like Planet Zoo. That and Skylines giving me a blank canvas paralyses me. How does one plan a city? Where do the roads go? It's the sort of game I want to love, but I just get so overwhelmed by the sheer number of options a…

> The amount of unrestrained freedom makes me question why I'm even playing. After a while, grownups lose what to do with a plastic bucket and shovel at the beach.

Ironically, my absolute favourite beach activity is road building. I head off to the edges where the rocks, sand, and shore meet where the sand is damp. I then compact damp sand onto the rocks to make little roads and try to build a network of roads that keeps road gradient below a certain threshold. It’s a fun problem solving exercise and almost on a par with Cities Skylines!

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#218

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

iso1631 wrote: post #91
dcchambers wrote: post #14

I have put many hours into Cities Skylines and I am really looking forward to this. The obvious thing people will want them to fix is traffic and vehicle pathfinding, put personally I hope they let us build more pedestrian-focused streets. I so desperately want to build walk and bike friendly cities with beautiful pedestrian malls and walking-only streets but the game kind of forces you to build out extensive car inf…

Be good if the cost of car parking was accounted for. Want to have cars? You've got to have large parking lots cluttering your space with low appeal, or your buildings cost far more to build / lower density etc

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-p...

Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of different real-world cities, did you discover any surprising patterns or spatial relationships?

Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don't think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store. That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.

Manaugh: You would be making SimParkingLot, rather than SimCity.

Librande: [laughs] Exactly. So what we do in the game is that we just imagine they are underground. We do have parking lots in the game, and we do try to scale them -- so, if you have a little grocery store, we'll put six or seven parking spots on the side, and, if you have a big convention center or a big pro stadium, they'll have what seem like really big lots -- but they're nowhere near what a real grocery store or pro stadium would have. We had to do the best we could do and still make the game look attractive.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#219

Post by jpetso »

nitwit005 wrote: post #190
legitster wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I similarly get bored of Skylines as soon as the game starts handing you near-infinite money. Making something aesthetically pleasing is only so interesting to me - I want the challenge of constraints. I actually have a similar problem with the Tropico remakes. Tropico 1 was hard . You could not survive a mission without dipping into the dictator toolsets. So striking a constant balance between economics and human ri…

Almost all simulation games suffer this problem of, well, winning. You'll see complaints that the late game of Civilization 6 is boring, as a sufficient advantage means a winner has been effectively determined. The only fix I can see is to have much better scenarios, or AI opponents, which I tend to think only the external communities around these games can produce. They generally don't allow that level of access for…

I haven't really spent much time on simulation games past SimCity 2000, but I find this odd. Even the most winsome cities and countries in the world are struggling.

Instead of scenarios or AI, why wouldn't it be the case that success invites more problems? You've got issues with immigration happening too rapidly for the population's taste, inflation devalues your accumulated resources at a more rapid pace, essential workers' pay isn't keeping up with FAANG, inequality is rampant, lots of homeless druggies appreciating your shelter & food bank infrastructure but locals are fed up, and also the next level up in government works against you out of envy or simple lack of appreciation for you contribution to the public purse. Power structures crumble because citizens get lazy and entitled, not knowing how good they have it, populism and self-interest rule the day.

Design success as the enemy of success, and you never run out of issues to solve. That said, it would be nice to see the winning endgame in real life for a change.

Re: Cities: Skylines II

#220

Post by nitwit005 »

jpetso wrote: post #219
nitwit005 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all simulation games suffer this problem of, well, winning. You'll see complaints that the late game of Civilization 6 is boring, as a sufficient advantage means a winner has been effectively determined. The only fix I can see is to have much better scenarios, or AI opponents, which I tend to think only the external communities around these games can produce. They generally don't allow that level of access for…

I haven't really spent much time on simulation games past SimCity 2000, but I find this odd. Even the most winsome cities and countries in the world are struggling. Instead of scenarios or AI, why wouldn't it be the case that success invites more problems? You've got issues with immigration happening too rapidly for the population's taste, inflation devalues your accumulated resources at a more rapid pace, essential…

> Design success as the enemy of success, and you never run out of issues to solve.

And a game almost everyone will hate, as it slaps you in the face and spits on you for succeeding.

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