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To get a natural feeling I work from just the edge out and if I feel like things are getting to normal I change the direction or flow of a road or look at some road maps for interesting patterns. Make each little block of roads a story. Edit: two snipes in a row for my low effort posts. i am going to bed.
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Feb 23, 2019 00:07
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For a natural city I like to start with the “bones” of the city that would have been there for a long time and then fill in the rest around those. Stuff like rail lines, ports, major buildings or complexes, and so on - the types of things around which the city would have naturally developed or had to fit. That way you end up with some constraints that prevent you from just doing a huge grid.
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Feb 23, 2019 00:20
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Parks are so hilariously broken when playing the game with the default resource limitations once you get a reasonably decent population in your town and design appropriately.
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Feb 23, 2019 06:15
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I am so bad at designing a city. I always end up creating a dull grid at the start right off the first interchange and then...my mind just seizes up. I can't make any decisions on how to make the city actually look good.
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Mar 6, 2019 15:17
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Oldstench posted:I am so bad at designing a city. I always end up creating a dull grid at the start right off the first interchange and then...my mind just seizes up. I can't make any decisions on how to make the city actually look good. I recommend Biffa Plays Indie Games YouTube channel for some practical examples of making nicer cities. No, they aren't examples of perfect cities, but they are accessible for most people.
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Mar 6, 2019 16:01
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Oldstench posted:I am so bad at designing a city. I always end up creating a dull grid at the start right off the first interchange and then...my mind just seizes up. I can't make any decisions on how to make the city actually look good. It's because the entire setup for starting a city in Skylines is unrealistic to begin with - the closest 'real-world' analogy I can think of where you have to build a modern settlement from the ground up in the middle of nowhere, requiring off-grid provision of power, water, sanitation etc., are those crazy libertarian seasteaders that make noise every few years about how it's happening for real this time. I suppose in its current set-up, a scenario-driven approach could work - you've been asked to create a self-sufficient settlement for 40,000 people who will be arriving in waves every few years, make sure your infrastructure is developed enough to cope, and then you've basically re-invented Banished. Otherwise, the only way you can make organic-looking cities is to have an existing population, bulldoze loving everything, and then build a fresh road network from scratch with designated residential/commercial/industrial zones that will immediately spring up overnight. That's Skyline's ultimate issue, to me: it's based around cultivating a population that goes up uP UP, and your only means of meeting that population's needs are 'do they have power and water, are they educated, are they on fire', and not 'is there a reason for these people to live here'. You can't simulate a fishing or farming village that ends up sprawling as trade increases when the transport links come, which is the root of modern settlements.
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Mar 9, 2019 13:31
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
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spincube posted:It's because the entire setup for starting a city in Skylines is unrealistic to begin with - the closest 'real-world' analogy I can think of where you have to build a modern settlement from the ground up in the middle of nowhere, requiring off-grid provision of power, water, sanitation etc., are those crazy libertarian seasteaders that make noise every few years about how it's happening for real this time. It's for precisely this reason why I tend to start my cities with some kind of specialized industry, typically oil or ore, and housing for the workers. As I expand the resource-producing zone there becomes a somewhat natural reason for an actual town to start to take shape.
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Mar 9, 2019 13:47
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From SC2000 to this, I've enjoyed creating an urban core with nearby villages and suburbs that are eventually consumed by the 'natural' sprawl of building block by block. I don't worry about the infrastructure of a large city until it's actually needed. The choices that I have to make around fitting a major junction or central train station into the existing city (what gets demolished, which areas get cut in half) and figuring out how to unfuck the traffic on a road network that is a shambles keeps me interested in the game. You might find that approach more relaxing. Edit: Obligatory picture of the mess. The pop is 300,000. 
SuperTeeJay fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Mar 9, 2019 |
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Mar 9, 2019 21:36
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Yeah, this the same way that I've been able to keep interest in the game. I'm nowhere near the level of a DoNotEat style Franklin but I like to set things up as a series of small rural villages out in bum gently caress nowhere and then try and go and expand from there. I guess the challenge is in holding yourself back from building out mega blocks because money is trivial in this game, and instead "RPing" as a series of small real estate developers so you get interesting districts and detailed enclaves.
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Mar 12, 2019 12:34
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Zip! posted:DoNotEat style Franklin My heart aches eternally for a love that it has lost, unending in perpetuation of celebrating with my brothers in labor and city-building video games. O, to be reminded of this absence! The bitter emptiness had softened and I, in the fruits of life, had almost forgotten. seriously donoteat wtf i miss you 
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Mar 12, 2019 18:59
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He said on his Patreon that he's been having apartment issues but hopes to have the next video out this week.
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Mar 12, 2019 19:03
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It's gonna be about prisons, too, so he'll have some cool buildings to show off in addition to his great insightful commentary.
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Mar 12, 2019 19:40
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Has anyone tried the Soviet city builder?
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Mar 19, 2019 07:29
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Dodoman posted:Has anyone tried the Soviet city builder? This is a pretty good playthrough.
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Mar 19, 2019 08:26
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Dodoman posted:Has anyone tried the Soviet city builder? I'm trying to play it but it's been difficult  . I have been watching Raptor's plays but I can't figure out how you know what to build. I guess I'll watch Colonel Failure's walkthroughs and see if he makes it clearer. I've been playing Factory Town and enjoying that one quite a bit.
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Mar 19, 2019 12:21
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Thanks guys, I was hemming and hawing about buying it. I'll watch the linked video see what happens from there.
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Mar 19, 2019 15:08
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I picked it up out of boredom knowing it was rough around the edges and holy poo poo is it ever rough. It has potential but it needs a lot of work to make it actually enjoyable to play. At the moment if feels as though you're being fought every step of the way. Maybe that's just an authentic Soviet experience to go along with the game? Among my top complaints is the lack of a map, no overlays for things like resource deposits or power, having to issue orders to each vehicle individually instead of putting them on a route and no way to schedule workers properly so you just randomly run out of things (enjoy your nation wide black out because a shift at the powerplant just evaporated into thin air). The UI also provides next to no feedback and good luck trying to lay train tracks, roads, buildings... anything that touches the ground really. It can be very frustrating.
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Mar 19, 2019 15:26
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Psychotic Weasel posted:I picked it up out of boredom knowing it was rough around the edges and holy poo poo is it ever rough. It has potential but it needs a lot of work to make it actually enjoyable to play. At the moment if feels as though you're being fought every step of the way. Maybe that's just an authentic Soviet experience to go along with the game? I know people who have 20-30 hours in the game already so the level of enjoyment is probably tied to what aspects of the simulation you're most interested in.
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Mar 19, 2019 16:41
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I watched the video and my main takeaway was that road construction and scheduling is a real bitch. I'm not an electrician so forgive me if this a stupid question, why are there medium voltage and high voltage step down converters?
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Mar 19, 2019 18:08
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Dodoman posted:I'm not an electrician so forgive me if this a stupid question, why are there medium voltage and high voltage step down converters? Transmitting power over long distances has less transmission losses at high voltage, so the output of a power plant is typically 150 kV or more. That will get stepped down to maybe 15 kV at regional transformer stations, and then further down to residential levels of 120-250 V at local substations. Heavy industry will typically also have their own transformers in house, or even run right off the high voltage. E.g. railroad typically runs off 15 kV or 25 kV AC power, and a steel foundry might actually take 150 kV power directly.
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Mar 19, 2019 18:24
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turn off the TV posted:I know people who have 20-30 hours in the game already so the level of enjoyment is probably tied to what aspects of the simulation you're most interested in. I have about 10ish hours so far on this (I guess? I don't have Steam in front of me so I can't tell) and I've mostly figured out a solid opener that allows me to make a positive cashflow by setting up a mining town for coal then exporting excess power and coal. But growing beyond that is still troublesome as the level of micromanagement grows exponentially and the glitchy as hell simulation throws random problems at you with little/no feedback on what is actually wrong or what you need to do to fix it. This is made worse by the fact that there is virtually no visual feedback telling you a problem exists so you have to constantly check every building one-by-one to make sure. I hope the dev(s?) keep at it as this is a rather unique premise for a game but right now unless you love learning through trial and error I wouldn't recommend this. Dodoman posted:I watched the video and my main takeaway was that road construction and scheduling is a real bitch. In the real world high tension lines are used to transmit power over long distances. In the game I don't know if they're really necessary or not but they're there so why not use them? Power is only distributed to buildings using a substation that only accepts power from medium lines so you need to use step down transformers to get the right voltage then distribute it. At the moment the power system in the game is really wonky, so much so that they've even added a command that manually resets the system if something goes wrong since some buildings were showing demands of something like 2,000,000,000MW and other weird outputs. It's something they are still trying to chase and fix.
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Mar 19, 2019 18:34
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Soviet game is rough but fun and the dev seems pretty committed to continue making it, but it's early access so there's always a risk. Playing the game with power management turned off but everything else on the higher levels of realism/difficulty has been working out for me. I like the idea of having to produce power, but distributing it is an ugly fussy chore. Placing buildings and roads and terraforming couldn't be worse, I really hope he re-looks at all that. Transport Fever or even skylines has way better tools and controls for doing all that. The default single map with the game is very rough and hilly yet the game absolutely wants to murder your ability to feel human when building anything on hills. It's cheap and I've been having a blast with it though. I think once modding opens up and people can add their own buildings to fill in a lot of the content holes it will be rad. That plus maybe some loving minimap and overlays so you don't have to god drat manually hunt for resources. And oh god why do I need to manually re-plant trees for my forestry why isn't this automatic?!?!
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Mar 19, 2019 18:42
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Baronjutter posted:Soviet game is rough but fun and the dev seems pretty committed to continue making it, but it's early access so there's always a risk. Early Access Indie Games: Where the previous 4 decades of game development mean jack poo poo and you try to reinvent the wheel for each project.
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Mar 19, 2019 23:05
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Re: Power As has been stated already power is sent long distances over very high voltage transmission lines to reduce losses. Here the long distance runs are typically 250kv or 150kv lines. When these lines get into the city they are stepped down to about 50kv and those lines (still considered transmission lines by the utilities here) are used to get power to substations in neighborhoods. At the local substations the power is again stepped down, this time to 12,500 volts (all of these voltages vary from one utility to another). The lines you see on power poles in neighborhoods when there is only one set of three wires (or just a single wire) will be at this voltage. The transformers on poles or on the ground in neighborhoods or next to buildings will step down to 120/240/480 volts for consumption.
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Mar 19, 2019 23:34
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It's Los Angeles!!!
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Apr 2, 2019 17:04
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I really don't get how people get to that point with their cities, it has to be on purpose surely?
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Apr 2, 2019 17:46
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OwlFancier posted:I really don't get how people get to that point with their cities, it has to be on purpose surely?
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Apr 2, 2019 19:06
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God loving dammit. I watched a video of Skylines. Which means I have to play it again.
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Apr 2, 2019 19:10
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OwlFancier posted:I really don't get how people get to that point with their cities, it has to be on purpose surely? The author seemed to be trying to use tunnels to get around the gridlock so no?
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Apr 2, 2019 19:52
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Without a basic understanding of traffic flows the most logical way to alleviate clogged roads seems to be to add more road which is exactly what he did. And it did in fact the exact opposite of what he wanted by just adding more junctions and more routes for cars to get in each other's way and just rejoin the blockage a little further down the line.
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Apr 2, 2019 20:27
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I hate myself but one of the effective methods of unclogging an on ramp that has an off ramp shortly after it is adding an additional on ramp on the opposite side in the passing lane entrance (left side for Americans, right for others) and restrict the passing lane entrance from exiting and restricting the normal on ramp from using the highway. Stupid but because the way traffic is simulated in game this works better than any other method I've seen.
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Apr 2, 2019 20:35
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I think there's definitely something wonky with the volume of traffic that this game generates compared to the real world, and also the drivers are stupid. I see people on youtube making very sophisticated chains of roads where specific lanes can only go in specific directions to force the AI to actually spread the cars out, and you never see stuff like that in real life.
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Apr 2, 2019 20:40
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So now it's been out for a while and has had time to maybe get some workshop assets and whatever. Is the Industries DLC worth it? "This has been answered in detail on [some page] you retard" is an acceptable answer.
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Apr 3, 2019 00:40
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Sex Robot posted:So now it's been out for a while and has had time to maybe get some workshop assets and whatever. Is the Industries DLC worth it? "This has been answered in detail on [some page] you retard" is an acceptable answer. I personally really enjoyed the Industries DLC stuff. Set up an oil production area and figure out a way to not have it crush your traffic, and you never have to worry about money again!
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Apr 3, 2019 00:42
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It doesn't have many workshop assets really, but I enjoyed it from the start. I would like it if it had more transport options rather than everything being road based, but you can generally fettle something together with train depots to ship goods around, and having actual production chains gives you more transport challenges tosolve.
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Apr 3, 2019 23:13
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OwlFancier posted:It doesn't have many workshop assets really, but I enjoyed it from the start. I would like it if it had more transport options rather than everything being road based, but you can generally fettle something together with train depots to ship goods around, and having actual production chains gives you more transport challenges tosolve. I went to completely isolating my industry area from my city and transporting everything to/from it by rail to off-map. All my little sim people have to take the metro to work, as it's the only way to get there. Yet somehow they appear to park their cars in the area unless I mark it 100% no parking zone. It worked well, but long-term not having industry connected to your city starts causing goods issues with all the commercial, or at least I think that was the cause.
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Apr 4, 2019 00:07
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Commercial needs goods transporting to it as well, so you would generally want to include a rail depot or other cargo connection in the commerical hubs as well. I generally find if you put enough rail depots down you can still connect by road but the game will prefer to use rail where possible to haul cargo. But that of course presents the additional issue of rail depots being kinda crap to connect up because of the stupid one entrance/exit stuff.
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Apr 4, 2019 15:32
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Due to my city having heavy traffic restrictions in every district it seems industries have opted to heavily relying on cargo ports to transport goods internally. It's cool that there are also internal cargo flights too from one cargo airport to another although for such short distances it would be very unrealistic I guess. My train lines are packed to capacity mostly with passenger trains so I've had to expand to include cargo only lines. For some reason my cims just prefer the ship alternative however. Anyways: Is the monorail just destined to be ignored by most cims for meme purposes (seems that way for real life monorails too) or have any of you managed to make their monorail be actually utilised? My monorail serves both directions in a loop that goes around the downtown and city apartment block areas but nope, seems people would rather walk or use buses. I might try to insert a longer line from the city centre out to one of the airports or beyond and see how that functions.
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Apr 7, 2019 15:27
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Fancy_Breakfast posted:Anyways: Is the monorail just destined to be ignored by most cims for meme purposes (seems that way for real life monorails too) or have any of you managed to make their monorail be actually utilised? In the past I haven't had any issues with monorails, but I had them run direct cross-city routes that circulating bus lines fed into.
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Apr 7, 2019 16:09
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Fancy_Breakfast posted:Anyways: Is the monorail just destined to be ignored by most cims for meme purposes (seems that way for real life monorails too) or have any of you managed to make their monorail be actually utilised? I don't understand; I put them in my last three cities (Buttsville, Alex Jonestown, and North Buttston) and by golly it put them on the map
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Apr 7, 2019 19:51
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