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Flesnolk posted:Whenever I look at screenshots of people's cities, their buildings and assets are all photorealistic and generally look like a real city, as opposed to the hyper cartoony look of vanilla CS. What mods in particular allow for that, without hand-placing every individual house? Sorry, there's no shortcut to that. To get it looking that good you have to hand-place every individual house. And then spend a lot of time using Move It! to slide them around juuuuuust so. The screenshots usually use an LUT that's designed specifically for making screenshots and carefully edited slooow moving videos look awesomely photorealistic but look pretty bad for actual gameplay, and are also taken using one of several mods specifically for making screenshots look more photorealistic.
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Jun 5, 2021 18:23
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Yea sorry the hyper realism either comes from understanding how city planning works or just outright copying something else that exists. It's the deepest of deep video game rabbit holes. I found it too tedious to persue, myself. I much rather watch the subways go round or build elaborate interchanges.
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Jun 5, 2021 20:11
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Another fresh start, but doing much better now that I've slowed myself down a bit. Not copying anyone's layout, but like the City Planner videos I'm trying harder to plan for things like paths, de-zoning the early industrial area and moving it somewhere more appropriate, attempting to work around issues instead of just bulldozing them.
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Jun 6, 2021 14:19
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The biggest change in “this is just a weird lego city” to “huh this looks passable” for me came when I started putting trees EVERYWHERE. Like I mean micromanaging trees in front of every house, on every corner, basically everywhere you’d see trees planted in real life. At the time I think the only mod I used was a tree randomizer brush to keep things random in large areas. E: Question, do you guys typically play with achievement milestones on, or just full sandbox everything unlocked from day one with unlimited dollars? I tend to play unlimited funds either way but I find myself playing full sandbox more and more.
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Jun 6, 2021 19:25
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Full sandbox, the actual milestones do not have the key to my endorphin vault anymore. I find it more satisfying making poo poo look a certain way then hammering the gameplay into the correct shape to work with the city.
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Jun 6, 2021 20:21
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You can still do a ton of growables, specially for more modern or suburban areas, and only need to plop and move-it when there's odd shaped lots. But for any remotely good looking pre-car era looking neighbourhood you pretty much have to hand plop every building and then go in and detail it.
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Jun 6, 2021 22:40
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Picked this game up last weekend and...is it normal for half your population to die and or move in two weeks?
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Jun 7, 2021 20:23
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I believe that, unmodded, everyone that moves in in a particular week or month or year are all the same age, and everyone dies at a specific age (maybe affected by healthcare at that time?). So if you build a huge section of town and 10,000 people move in, X years later those 10k people all die at the same time. There are mods that curve out both move in age and life expectancy.
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Jun 7, 2021 20:43
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Oooooooo nooooooooooo
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Jun 7, 2021 21:01
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Weird I thought it was just a plague that did it or something.
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Jun 7, 2021 22:17
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Duodecimal posted:I believe that, unmodded, everyone that moves in in a particular week or month or year are all the same age, and everyone dies at a specific age (maybe affected by healthcare at that time?). Yeah. This is why you want to avoid zoning huge swathes of neighbourhoods all at once. Do it maybe a couple blocks at a time or the death wave will overload your deathcare/roads
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Jun 7, 2021 22:25
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There is a mod to randomize the ages so you don't get death waves. Forget what it's called though
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Jun 7, 2021 22:34
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Lifecycle rebalance or something like that.
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Jun 7, 2021 22:36
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There's also a mod to remove the asinine deathcare mechanic and you should install it.
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Jun 7, 2021 22:44
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Hearing rumours about a sequel to this gene got me thinking of what I wanted to see. And I was thinking the whole agent system isn't very good. It's a very neat idea and adds novel gameplay, mostly in traffic management. But I don't like traffic management that much. And the CPU toll is pretty dire; it limits the size of your city fairly drastically. And the agents still hop and skip over supposed barriers in some situations anyway. Maybe a system that runs the simulation statistically and then puts cars on the road for looks would be better. What do you guys think? I mostly played the game when it was released so maybe my issues have been resolved since.
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Jun 7, 2021 22:51
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Skylines is a traffic management game above and before anything else, and any sequel would certainly also be a traffic management game. Someday some indie will make a worthy sequel to Simcity 4 that abstracts traffic the way SC4 does in favor of a deeper/bigger simulation in other respects, and that person/team will get very wealthy, but Skylines isn't really the same kind of game.
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Jun 7, 2021 23:18
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Dream City Builder wishlist time? I would love the regions system, farmland tool and inter city connectivity from Sim City 4, combined with the modability, UI, zoning, theming and road systems of Cities Skylines. Basically, Skylines with the ability to make semi realistic growable farming villages, as well as being able to jump from region to region from the zoom out screen and have them remain in the horizon when working on other areas. Also, the ability to drop into any street and have at least rudimentary driving and first person controls to see the city at street level.
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Jun 8, 2021 03:24
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:Picked this game up last weekend and...is it normal for half your population to die and or move in two weeks? I haven't played in awhile, but to me this happens when i forget the water pumps require electricity, so by never plugging them i kinda accidentally pollute the drinking water causing a giant deathwave
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Jun 8, 2021 06:10
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Baronjutter posted:You can still do a ton of growables, specially for more modern or suburban areas, and only need to plop and move-it when there's odd shaped lots. But for any remotely good looking pre-car era looking neighbourhood you pretty much have to hand plop every building and then go in and detail it. Yeah growables are good for suburbs but the inner city areas you want to lay out yourself, fortunately the buildings are bigger so this is less tiresome and it stops you carpeting the place in skyscrapers too. Count Roland posted:Hearing rumours about a sequel to this gene got me thinking of what I wanted to see. I like the traffic management bit but I would like it if you could perhaps work on a block basis rather than a building basis. You define a block and it can have a bunch of entrances/exits and stuff is just abstracted within the block, but you can do stuff like add goods yards and transport stops and then the block basically functions like a building with the cumulative properties of all the stuff you built in it. Should hopefully cut down on simulation while also leaning into the building of cool city units. Also obviously the same system could apply for industries where you can freeform set up the traffic handling parts of them and place the industrial processing units and then the game treats a whole industrial site as a coherent thing, you set up the internal connections but the game doesn't need to worry about simulating them too precisely. Also good for things like malls and other major structures, you set out all the parking and stuff and a bunch of connected commercial space and then the game just attaches it all together and treats the whole thing like one massive structure. Would also be nice if there were more of a focus on walkability and such, if i have a complaint about skylines it's that everyone loving loves cars. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Jun 8, 2021 |
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Jun 8, 2021 09:33
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OwlFancier posted:Would also be nice if there were more of a focus on walkability and such, if i have a complaint about skylines it's that everyone loving loves cars. Agreed. The ability to zone off pedestrian-only paths/avenues would be great.
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Jun 8, 2021 12:16
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Count Roland posted:Hearing rumours about a sequel to this gene got me thinking of what I wanted to see. Agree 100% that the agent system is not really worth the CPU load. I enjoy the traffic management aspects of Cities but would be happy to sacrifice some of the fidelity there if it made it easier to build a really big city. But I think this is correct and it isn't going to happen: Eric the Mauve posted:Skylines is a traffic management game above and before anything else, and any sequel would certainly also be a traffic management game.
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Jun 8, 2021 15:04
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AttitudeAdjuster posted:Agreed. The ability to zone off pedestrian-only paths/avenues would be great.
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Jun 8, 2021 15:06
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The network extensions zonable pedestrian areas are pretty much fine for it, but morning deliveries would be nice if they could also drive at speed. That could also be the utility of a block system too, you could have a rear access area for commerical blocks that the deliveries go to and have them face onto pedestrianized areas.
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Jun 8, 2021 15:24
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I have a medium sized city that is mostly connected by trams. I am working on replacing the trams with underground Metro, but everyone still seems to prefer the trams, even along the same lines. The tram lines are completely overloaded but nobody uses the metro, which has nearly the exact same stop locations. Is the only solution to just remove the trams outright?
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Jun 8, 2021 15:41
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You could use the trams to run different lines, if you're running exactly the same lines with both services then that might be the cause of your problem.
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Jun 8, 2021 15:49
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OwlFancier posted:Would also be nice if there were more of a focus on walkability and such, if i have a complaint about skylines it's that everyone loving loves cars. I mean they kinda don't. Once you offer bike lanes and transit and even pedestrian paths that cut through neighborhoods, people will vastly prefer them to cars. The real problem is that zoning is defined by roads. You can't zone an area based off just pedestrian paths for example.
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Jun 8, 2021 18:33
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Region play for sure. I think computers are powerful enough you can do something SC4 scale with regions and agents, maybe the agents would need to be slightly abstracted. But without regions you can never overcome the fact that SC4 lets you build cities at any scale you want. Skylines can never really replace it unless I can do this: I don't see any reason why it couldn't. It's not like the other cities are actively simulated while you're playing one, having 100 tiles or one tile is the same as far as computer power is concerned. Mainly I want the ability to not have such a car focus. Actual mixed-use zoning, people who will walk places and use public transit, zoning that's more flexible than just being stuck to roads. I haven't played Skylines in years so I don't know if they ever fixed the tiny zoning too, I want arbitrarily large zones and buildings like SC4.
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Jun 8, 2021 18:50
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My main wish list item is for sliplanes to be properly implemented in the base game rather than being something you have to finesse with mods and have it still look wrong. When a 3 lane highway turns into a 4 lane it looks like this code:code:AttitudeAdjuster posted:Agreed. The ability to zone off pedestrian-only paths/avenues would be great. You can do that with TMPE vehicle restrictions. Entropic fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Jun 8, 2021 |
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Jun 8, 2021 19:06
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Going in the complete opposite direction, I'd give up a whole bunch of complexity to bring back a feature from SC2K that I sorely miss: the ability to fiddle with sliders, then roll the dice on a randomly-generated terrain. Maybe throw in a generated 'village' to expand upon from there, as well - like a company town with a single road/rail/sea transport link to start off with - anything to avoid that 'begin new game -> stare at featureless terrain -> quit' thing. ...in fact I think there's a lot of crap that could be cut from the game as-is, that's there simply because it's expected of a city builder game, rather than a Zen bonsai garden: does the budget matter other than 'you are making/losing money'? Can we finally link utilities to transport infrastructure and stop caring about them, beyond 'they exist and are funded'? Etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi9Zpx2dkxM
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Jun 8, 2021 19:30
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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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The only way budget would be interesting or important is if the political simulation was more in depth at the expense of the bonsai tree aspect of the genre. Elections / a city council, department heads that are vying for funding and whose support is meaningful. Basically a city government sim where you've gotta sp horse trading to get anything vaguely controversial accomplished.
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Jun 9, 2021 01:21
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OwlFancier posted:You could use the trams to run different lines, if you're running exactly the same lines with both services then that might be the cause of your problem. My lines weren't teed correctly. Works great now thanks!
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Jun 9, 2021 06:25
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Infidelicious posted:The only way budget would be interesting or important is if the political simulation was more in depth at the expense of the bonsai tree aspect of the genre. Yeah, but the trick then is making simulated municipal politics interesting and fun. I'm not saying it can't be done, but....
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Jun 9, 2021 07:18
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Ripper Swarm posted:Yeah, but the trick then is making simulated municipal politics interesting and fun. It would be something akin to Crusader Kings, with less incest and murder... So yeah, now that I think of it, boring 
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Jun 9, 2021 08:25
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Now I want an elaborate multiplayer built for casual play where observers take on the role of various factions, get assigned conflicting agenda items and compete against each other for points based on getting the mayor to do what they want. Not so much city council, but like Chamber of Commerce, Ag Commission, Union boss, crime lord, etc. Give each faction some unique buildings that they can place, buffs they can bestow when they're happy, and disasters they can spawn if they're unhappy. Only one person would be playing the game proper, everyone else would shooting the poo poo and occasionally calling general strikes
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Jun 9, 2021 15:17
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I don’t actually want simulated city council politics, I just want to bring back this guy
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Jun 9, 2021 15:23
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Infidelicious posted:The only way budget would be interesting or important is if the political simulation was more in depth at the expense of the bonsai tree aspect of the genre. My bright idea was to replace currency with political capital - so instead of twiddling around with tax percentages or CUTTING FUNDING AND REGRETTING IT or whatever, you'd simply auto-generate an income of capital based on who likes you at any given moment. Pass industry-friendly legislation and factory owners will end up making up your voter base, with more and more capital flowing in as you crush the proletariat beneath your Italian loafers, etc. Or, you could end up with a city that's more of a dormitory town, so although your residential voters were happy to fund your leafy suburban sprawl of a city, the 'price' of a highway overpass being built nearby is through the roof (as it would remove nearby voters from your capital income, thus making it uneconomical).
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Jun 9, 2021 15:37
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Local politics sim would be a huge turnoff for me unless it involved the devs inadvertently creating predictive psychohistory or something. My biggest frustration with city builders is that they almost universally take postwar Californian assumptions about RCI and car culture as gospel to begin with; bodging local ideas about the structure of local governance and which interest groups are significant/what they want on would either devolve into randomized filler quests for ten I'd like to see a hybrid agent-statistical model, with areas (whether on a regional map or just calculated by distance from housing) only popping agents if their demands can't be met by an underlying capacity pool. Agents' dumb fixations make a lot more sense for long commuters or tourists than locals anyway, I think most of us know the back ways out of our development or the local alternate transit lines and don't rate the minute or two they add during high traffic or construction, but are far less likely to do anything but sit in traffic getting more frustrated when we're out of town or on our way to non-walkable work or shopping. I'd also like to see meaningful seasons (speaking of SimCity's regional assumptions...) impacting road speed and capacity, power use in the summer and power use or pollution in the winter, tourism based on geography, etc. With Cities (and SimCity if they ever revive it) covering RCI and Workers and Resources covering a planned economy model, I'd love to see a game take on Japanese-style maximum-nuisance-allowed zoning from anything but the A-Train angle where you're just handling transit and ploppables in a small area that's specifically being developed in a way advantageous for a rail operator. Replace direct RCI control with a series of zones that have gradually increasing infrastructure demands but also varying max capacities for each; give it gameplay rather than just being a self-adjusting terrarium by making redevelopment take years rather than hours, requiring the player to deal with demand shifts by spinning up new development, with a bias within its potential capacity range based on which developer it's handed to, on a months scale instead (and eventually renewing the old development as it continues to decline in desirability.) spincube posted:My bright idea was to replace currency with political capital - so instead of twiddling around with tax percentages or CUTTING FUNDING AND REGRETTING IT or whatever, you'd simply auto-generate an income of capital based on who likes you at any given moment. Pass industry-friendly legislation and factory owners will end up making up your voter base, with more and more capital flowing in as you crush the proletariat beneath your Italian loafers, etc. Like, to illustrate, the problem with this (apart from the death spiral of losing the support you need to fully push through a switch of patrons as a result of beginning to switch patrons, probably quite accurate but not a very fun game) is that even in the extremely restrictive 1900-to-2000 American window the bourgeois are going to start wanting industrial support and transition to wanting high-land-value urban housing, the professionals are going to start wanting commerce and end wanting industry, the proles are going to start wanting low-land-value urban housing and end wanting rural housing and commerce, and so on. You could make an interesting scripted game but it would be pretty railroaded into meta builds, and directly in conflict with the planning and building based on terrain aspect; on the other hand, going ahistorical is just random missions except that occasionally sound really absurd. Mandoric fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 15:54
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:Now I want an elaborate multiplayer built for casual play where observers take on the role of various factions, get assigned conflicting agenda items and compete against each other for points based on getting the mayor to do what they want. This would be fun, just don't make it a city building game. The game has pre-built or procedurally cities. The players control different factions with committing interests within the city. The city is an organic thing, which will evolve (for better or worse) as the game progresses. I'd play it, especially if it had somewhat realistic elements to it.
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Jun 9, 2021 16:15
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If we're just throwing ideas up for city builder games, I really want to try somewhere where planning matters. You can't just build 10 km of road and 3 schools overnight, you have to plan that and then wait for it to build, subject to the available workforce and materials supply. And while things are building, the surrounding circumstances might change, so you may need to adjust plans.
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Jun 10, 2021 09:37
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That's very much what workers and resources is about.
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Jun 10, 2021 10:13
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