Cities : Skylines

[Astral Rag]

 

[Perkel]

i just gonna leave it here:

Traffic Report Tool (Beta)

 

[DwarvenFood]

Turjan you train-city looks pretty cool - putting this one on the wishlist.

 

[Infinitron]

Shamus Young calls this the best city builder EVAR: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=26174

Cities : Skylines

When I started playing I thought, “This is the game Simcity 2013 should have been.” After a few hours I thought, “This is better than any Sim City game in recent memory.” At this point I’m thinking it’s probably the best city builder ever designed. It’s been years since I had a game engrossing enough that I was still playing it in my head while I was trying to fall asleep. It really is that good.

Skylines is by Colossal Order, the team behind Cities in Motion. It shows. Cities in Motion is a game about regulating, planning, mitigating, and profiting from traffic. That game was all about designing mass transit in a fixed city. Skylines takes all of that traffic-flow strategy and brings it to a city you design yourself.

The result is Sim City, but with a really good, really engrossing traffic system. Every car is simulated, and you can watch the complex flow of traffic to get a feel for where people are coming from, where they are going, and how you can expedite that. Small changes to the street rules can make huge changes to the flow of traffic.

In the old Maxis games, you solved traffic problems by building wider roads or mass transit. Here you can solve congestion problems with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. Maybe making this side-street one-way will cut down on the number of people blocking traffic with left-hand turns. Maybe gathering all these side-streets into one street before you hit the main drag will cut down on the number of traffic lights everyone has to go through.

I’ve heard that a roundabout[1] is the best type of intersection for the purposes of keeping traffic flowing, but this game is a perfect illustration of why. You can take a clogged 4-way intersection and (provided you’ve got enough space) turn it into an effortless free-flowing roundabout. It’s not that the game way written with some kind of pro-roundabout bias. It’s just a natural emergent result of the way the cars behave. Like I said above: Every car is simulated. There’s no cheating here.

If there’s any fault I can find with Skylines its that it clings to the Sim City formula more than it really needs to. Stop me if you’ve heard this before[3]: You’ve got three main types of zones: Residential (green) commercial (blue) and industrial (yellow). You’ve got three bars that depict the demand for them. You have to lay down the color-coded zones while balancing city-wide utilities like water, electric, sewage, and garbage pickup. On top of this you’ve got city services like fire, police, and education. You boost land value through beautification and you unlock new and useful buildings as you reach various population milestones. And while all this is going on, you have to tame the ever-growing river of traffic flowing through your city streets.

They even retain a lot of the quirky stylistic conceits of Sim City: Coal-fired power plants can barely output enough juice to supply a neighborhood, and cause massively exaggerated levels of pollution. Green power is supernaturally compact and affordable once it becomes available[4]. Fires are ludicrously common. Every industrial building has massive smokestacks that belch black soot into the air like it’s 1930[5]. There are no churches. Traffic is a huge problem but parking is a non-issue. It’s okay to dump raw sewage in the river because sewage treatment is an advanced super-technology only available to large cities. Industrial density doesn’t keep up with residential density, so a mature city will end up with something like half its footprint devoured by industrial structures. And true to Sim City tradition, these structures are among the most repetitive and boring in the game

I don’t know that they needed to cling to the established formula quite that hard. It’s not like the Sim City mechanics are perfect or anything. If SimCity 2013 had been good, I’d fault Skylines from being an empty copycat. But since SimCity was a disaster on every level, this feels more like a calculated move to exploit EA’s massive blunder. And that makes me happy.

My biggest complaint about the game is Chirper, Skyline’s in-world Twitter analogue. Enumerating the countless faults with this feature would double the size of this review.There’s a mod on the Steam workshop to kill it. Just get rid of it and enjoy the rest of the game. I have no idea what the team was thinking.

The best part of Skylines is that it humiliates Maxis by delivering on all the failed promises of SimCity 2013. Remember when they claimed “every inhabitant is simulated”? And then when we got the game it turned out people just left their house in the morning, drove until they found a building with an open job slot, and then to go home they did the same, ending up at the first available house. It was beyond stupid, and probably worse than just treating people as an abstraction.

But here, every person is indeed simulated. They have families and relationships. They have a job and a specific house to live in. They’re born, grow old, and die. Which makes it possible to create emergent stories, kind of like playing the Sims and letting everyone run autonomously.

It really is the best city builder ever. Highest recommendation.

 

[Angthoron]

I wouldn't call it best city builder ever myself, but for non-hardcore players (and pre-mods) it's a very, very good one indeed. Seeing how modding seems to be very easy and seriously blooming, I'd say it has a good chance of becoming amazing, though.

Also, the article reminded me of something funny - the nuclear power plants are basically the best form of energy whatever way you spin it, in this game. I don't know if there's a chance of a meltdown (and if there is, that's awesome), but the description text is very positive - to contrast the current EU stance on nuclear power. Didn't expect that at all.

i just gonna leave it here:

Traffic Report Tool (Beta)

Fuck! YES! This, and the individual house report on crime/pollution etc are among the main things on my wishlist.

Also, what's that Camera Options thing you have in upper right corner?

 

[LeJosh]

It is the best city builder if Sim City '13 is your measuring stick...

 

[Perkel]

Well there isn't really any competition beside SC4 which even after all those years have some preatty shitty problems that can't be fixed with mods (since SC4 for most part is hardcoded).

Like some people said game isn't "perfect", far from it. Still "base game" and NEW game as it is first proper city builder game from CO it is fantastic. Compare it to base SC4 (which was 4 game in series) and then you need to add to that it was without Rush Hour expansion.
Base SC4 + Rushhour without mods is worse game than CS. NAM, Cam and other mods makes it currently the best city building game.

 

[Perkel]

In other news :

 

[baturinsky]

Changing lanes on highways is the main reason of jams for me now. Everybody want to be in the centre, even if they join the same side they are going to leave.

 

[Astral Rag]

Laid-off SimCity dev launches Patreon for creation of Cities: Skylines buildings

 

[Perkel]

This game has absolutely outstanding mod support. Look at this and tell me how much time it took since release of game and then imagine what will be available in next two weeks let alone months:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408209297

 

[Turjan]

Well there isn't really any competition beside SC4 which even after all those years have some preatty shitty problems that can't be fixed with mods (since SC4 for most part is hardcoded).

Like some people said game isn't "perfect", far from it. Still "base game" and NEW game as it is first proper city builder game from CO it is fantastic. Compare it to base SC4 (which was 4 game in series) and then you need to add to that it was without Rush Hour expansion.
Base SC4 + Rushhour without mods is worse game than CS. NAM, Cam and other mods makes it currently the best city building game.

Yup. SC4 is still the best, but that's because of 12 years worth of mods. This is a budget title. The asking price was a bit over €20, and the game has hardly any bugs, except from amusing stuff like the marauding cruise ships and some zoning shenanigans. I knew the thing about lane changes beforehand (making every driver "intelligent" seems to eat too much computing power), so that's nothing that surprised me, even if it is disappointing in general. I also knew that the variety of buildings would be very low, as the deveolpers always said so. Most of the development was done with 9 people (they just got a few more during the final stretch). It's better than I expected, and I hope that mods will make it better still.

Steam claims I spent an unhealthy time of 83 hours already on this game, so I guess I have my money's worth out of it, even if I suddenly lose all interest today.

 

[cw8]

Finally done with my UOB Plaza. As usual texturing is the pain in the ass. Few hours of modelling, several days after work of texturing. About 1100 polygons, iirc my Simcity 4 version had about 80-90k. Will probably upload tomorrow, to the usual Simtropolis as well. Need to check up on stats and stuff of other buildings. Now I can go back and fully concentrate on my puny city of 15K.

 

[Turjan]

By the way, it's the little things this game does right that hardly anyone talks about. Like the very easy way to set up lines. You just move stops when you need them somewhere else. Extending a train line is also easy: just move the last stop to the new destination, then add all intermediate stops with with short drags on the line. Takes a few seconds.

Or this here, at the orignal freeway entry to my city:

The way the game built these buildings on the asymmetrical center island looks pretty good for a building grid based on squares.

 

[Angthoron]

Looks like someone's already modded in a day/night cycle. Too bad the city isn't illuminated by night though, so it's kinda pointless, but still:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=407264196

Oh and fudged population mod:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406841580

And a Slum City mod (disables lot abandonment):

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=406233587

 

[Makabb]

Muh improved roads, no traffic jams !

 

[Astral Rag]

I'm experiencing an audio problem with this game, the audio "crackles" randomly, it even happens during loading.

Looks like I'm not the only one:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/610574394240127389/
http://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/610574394239557427/
http://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/610574827762271646

 

[Perkel]

just tried first person mod and it is awesome:

dead:

Transport Lines Manager 0.1β
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408875519

 

[Perkel]

ok another good mod:
realistic colors

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408932281

edit:

i wonder what NAM folks are doing. I think it is pretty safe to say they will soon do something for CS

 

[Astral Rag]

So far I'm using these graphic mods:

disable film grain effect
more natural colours



and Cursor jail

 

[Snorkack]

Although I'm not yet enjoying the game as much as I had wished, I genuinely think that the overwhelmingly positive resonance it receives is one of the best things that happened to the gaming industry in the last few years. I hope some AAA studio marketing douches take this as an example for the future and start developing games for their customers, not against them.

 

[Mr. Pink]

I think the game still has a few worrying traffic simulation problems that might not be able to be solved:

merge lanes don't exist, all intersectiond must have traffic lights. this breaks roundabouts
aesymmetric streets with dedicated turn lanes need to happen
two one way into four lane transition needs to exist
highway acceleration ramps need to exist
sims need to use multiple lanes.

 

[Turjan]

I think the game still has a few worrying traffic simulation problems that might not be able to be solved:

merge lanes don't exist, all intersectiond must have traffic lights. this breaks roundabouts

This is not true as an absolute statement. Two-lane roads and two-lane one-way roads dont't have traffic lights. Obvsiously, off-going one-way roads don't have any from larger streets. Roundabouts need to be built from highway pieces, and in that case, even the six-lane two-way road won't produce traffic lights. You can construct smaller roundabouts yourself and don't have to rely on the big one that comes with the game, although the size obvously helps with congestion.

aesymmetric streets with dedicated turn lanes need to happen
two one way into four lane transition needs to exist
highway acceleration ramps need to exist

Turning lanes won't help much with congestion, so they are more in the "nice to have" category. As to more roads, CiM2 had a huge variety (10 times as many?), so I'm optimistic we will see many more for this game, too.

sims need to use multiple lanes.

That's the biggy at the very end. At the moment, you can only solve this by finding a solution at the destination of the traffic that files up. Give them a reason to drive somewhere else. The developers have problems with Sims changing lanes all the time, as this caused even more congestion. I think fifty percent of the traffic changes lanes at the moment, while the other 50% chooses their path at the start of their journey. Let's hope someone has a good idea here.

 

[Mr. Pink]

the problem with six lane roundabouts is that cars wont use the inner lanes, clogging up the outer lanes anyways.

i think dedicated turning lanes help tremendously with traffic, moving from a country with no turn lanes ever to one obsessed with turning lanes (japan). there are ways to force turn lanes in cities skylines, (transition a 4 lane road into a 2 lane road at an intersection to force the outer lane to turn or merge) but it looks terrible.

i wonder just how heavy it would be to make sims factor in lanes in their routes rather than just roads. the way it is right now is "realistic, but not realistic enough to have actual traffic designs work".

 

[Metro]

Being published by Paradox I'm amazed this doesn't have 20 DLC yet. By all accounts it's the Sim City that the past Sim Cities should have been.