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SC4devotion is easily the weirdest and creepiest videogame community on the internet and those guys look like they'd fit right in.
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May 16, 2014 17:34
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Baggins posted:You better watch your back Anselm, a new challenger appears! What I really love about this is how under Risks and challenges they admit that they haven't even started making the game yet. But they have a Clear Plan!
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May 16, 2014 23:06
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Have you thought about what disasters you want to implement? 
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May 16, 2014 23:06
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I know I'm probably in a minority but I've never had any interest in disasters in any of these sort of games. Disabling them is always the first thing I do. They're rarely a challenge, just an interruption and then tedious re-building. To me a good disaster in a city builder is a traffic jam, an economic problem, a pollution problem, basically results of the systems of the game and your choices. Not just "there's an earthquake, now spend 10 min bulldozing and re-doing a bunch of your work" or "there's a fire, wait until the fire is out before you can keep playing"
Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 16, 2014 |
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May 16, 2014 23:08
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I'd agree that I'm not a fan of random disasters, but I do think having the option is great to just watch the world burn from time to time.
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May 16, 2014 23:14
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Baronjutter posted:I know I'm probably in a minority but I've never had any interest in disasters in any of these sort of games. Disabling them is always the first thing I do. They're rarely a challenge, just an interruption and then tedious re-building. To me a good disaster in a city builder is a traffic jam, an economic problem, a pollution problem, basically results of the systems of the game and your choices. Not just "there's an earthquake, now spend 10 min bulldozing and re-doing a bunch of your work". 
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May 16, 2014 23:19
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Baggins posted:You better watch your back Anselm, a new challenger appears! Wow, this is one killer feature to shoot for! I'm impressed they dare list something as advanced as this under key game aspects. quote:- Ability to turn off background game music / plug-in folder to place the music you'd like to have play in the background while playing.
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May 17, 2014 00:08
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Just a heads up for you as well: this week's update will be a couple days late. I've been really busy with real life (nothing serious though). Thanks for your understanding.
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May 20, 2014 22:25
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Baggins posted:You better watch your back Anselm, a new challenger appears! Certified in computers 
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May 20, 2014 22:40
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Baronjutter posted:I know I'm probably in a minority but I've never had any interest in disasters in any of these sort of games. Disabling them is always the first thing I do. They're rarely a challenge, just an interruption and then tedious re-building. To me a good disaster in a city builder is a traffic jam, an economic problem, a pollution problem, basically results of the systems of the game and your choices. Not just "there's an earthquake, now spend 10 min bulldozing and re-doing a bunch of your work" or "there's a fire, wait until the fire is out before you can keep playing" I forgot that SC4 even had them for a while, until I realized that meteorites are good for god mode sculpting. I never use them otherwise.
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May 20, 2014 23:45
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Shibawanko posted:I forgot that SC4 even had them for a while, until I realized that meteorites are good for god mode sculpting. I never use them otherwise. Meteorites are an awesome way to level buildings that have a high demolition cost, like the casino.  Also, please make it possible to recreate this: http://whereroadsmeet.8k.com/Interchange/il-i90-i290.htm  Placing on and off ramps less than 100 feet apart is dangerous and impractical. Make it happen, and put in me a dozen of them too.*edit* http://jalopnik.com/5106170/the-worlds-18-worst-intersections-and-interchanges/ Please use this for inspiration, most of those intersections suck balls, but they are beautiful. Also, just looking at the pictures does not convey the whole story. Why didn't they just take The Easy Option? Probably because there was a huge sink hole, right of way issue, or just a good old fashioned political scandal interfering with The Easy Option. Not Wolverine fucked around with this message at 18:07 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 03:22
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New Update: The Road to Alpha, Week 12 - Picking It Up Again
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May 28, 2014 02:48
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This sort of thing is a pain in the rear end to code, I know. I'm still curious how you plan to implement multilane intersections with respect to agents. Coordination might start to look like an appealing solution to downtown traffic issues too (but I'd understand if that's a bit daunting to even try to tackle).
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May 28, 2014 03:30
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Holy crap that solution to the road network issue is genius. So much better than the tile based NAM stuff in SC4.
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May 28, 2014 05:33
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Slow steady progress, good work. I'm glad you've got most of your other responsibilities in order so you can go at this full steam.
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May 28, 2014 05:46
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How big are your hands? Also, I can see myself just spending hours building roads once the tool becomes more developed and robust. I'm finding myself excited to build roads.
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May 28, 2014 07:03
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That road tool is looking more and more sexy as each update is posted.
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May 28, 2014 08:08
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Iunnrais posted:This sort of thing is a pain in the rear end to code, I know. I'm still curious how you plan to implement multilane intersections with respect to agents. Coordination might start to look like an appealing solution to downtown traffic issues too (but I'd understand if that's a bit daunting to even try to tackle). This was actually something that I'm already considering. If I recall correctly, you were one of the guys worrying (rightfully) about an agent-based approach. I think another way to circumvent the limitations that come with a heavily sped-up agent simulation, is exactly coordination. All drivers and traffic lights are omniscient, so you can create unrealistically intelligent and efficient intersections as a counterbalance to the time pressure, while hopefully still preserving high-level traffic patterns and problems that are interesting for the player to work with.
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May 28, 2014 12:27
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anselm_eickhoff posted:This was actually something that I'm already considering. I'm hoping this is the sort of thing we'll be able to mod later. I like playing "traffic designer simulator" when playing city sims, so I want my drivers to behave like absolute morons. I understand that that in itself is a huge undertaking, however, and might in fact be so impossibly out-of-scope that it would bring the game to a halt under the processing load it would require. A guy can dream...
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Jun 3, 2014 06:42
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ExtraNoise posted:So I want my drivers to behave like absolute morons. Finding the right balance of moronic/intelligent is my goal. It should definitely look moronic. Anyways, here is the new update! The Road to Alpha, Week 13 - Just a Quick One
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Jun 4, 2014 02:10
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Your road system is better than anything I've ever seen in any city based sim, transport or otherwise. I'm stoked to see more, I think this is the game I kind of hoped SC4 would actually be!
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Jun 4, 2014 02:40
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Roundabouts! I can't wait to play around with this, it looks great.
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Jun 4, 2014 03:36
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Glad to see roundabouts in! I'm sure that as things progress, that'll be one of those things that there'll be a dedicated tool to make it easier. Sidewalks would likely be another road-type, correct? Would grassy areas like median strips also be a road-type? Maybe a grassy median strip could be coded like a sidewalk with lower speed limit so that pedestrians CAN walk on the grass, but prefer not to?
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Jun 4, 2014 14:09
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Iunnrais posted:Sidewalks would likely be another road-type, correct? Would grassy areas like median strips also be a road-type? Maybe a grassy median strip could be coded like a sidewalk with lower speed limit so that pedestrians CAN walk on the grass, but prefer not to? Yes they will just be different lane types. I like the idea that green strips can also be used as makeshift sidewalks. It will take a while until I will focus on pedestrians, though.
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Jun 4, 2014 22:45
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I'd love to see a system where we can simply set the right-of-way of a street and then fill in what's inside it later, or change it later. So imagine just defining a 20m road, you could do a "streetmix" style choice of what to fill that 20m with and any space not used is automatically assigned as sidewalk or green space. Then in future maybe you need to add a new lane, now you can do it and you don't have to demolish any buildings. You could have a simple right-of-way tool where you can lay out and plan all your routes without actually building any lanes. Buildings would grow/snap to the edge of this right of way. You'd then build your roads and networks inside of this allocated space. You could go in and demolish lanes and change them all you want, but the right of way would stay and all the buildings along the route would stay. This is a huge problem in 3d/spline based city builders where if you want to go from a 20m road to a 21m road suddenly all the buildings along it have to explode. Give us the ability to define a right of way, then we can put what ever we want inside. Often sidewalks do not function as a set lane but more of a "fill" between the lanes and the edge of the right of way. Take this for example. We use the "right of way" tool to define some spaces. We can draw them like roads, like polygons, or even use brushes like with zones.  Buildings snap to the edge of the right of way after zoning.  We place our networks within the right of way. We build some 2 lane and 3 lane roads and have a tram track. Any space in the right of way not used is treated as pedestrian space. It can be a sidewalk, it can be a square. But it's paved (or grassy) open space for pedestrian to circulate on, gather on. It could also be used for parking or a variety of uses.  Later on we want to change things around a bit. We want to close one road to cars and grow the tram system. So we just demolish the road and lay some new tram tracks as needed.  No buildings need to be demolished, the roads are adaptable within the right of way just like in real life. We could decorate the right of way by plopping down items or even "zoning" parts of the right of way to allow things like public markets or street vendors. Metro station entrances are easily placed within the right of way. It's basically a big nice flexible space for things that aren't cars. And of course if someone doesn't want to use right of ways they could just place roads and sidewalks and networks normally as the game would treat anything under a road as right of way. Can't grow those networks, but demolishing parts of them would not "disconnect" any buildings touching them since buildings snap to the right of way, not the network/lane its self.
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Jun 4, 2014 23:22
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Thanks for your detailed drawings, but my solution for the problem is even simpler than your system: While building lots will always go right up to the street, most of the lot area is actually not "critical" for the building. New roads/lanes can be built on top of this lot area (actually almost everything that is not the building footprint) and the building will stay and just reconfigure its lot "decorations" (parking spaces, gardens or even other stuff like food stands etc.) This will hopefully strike a nice balance between not frustrating the player too often/unrealistically, but still making high-density zoning a decision that might be costly in the future. If you really want to force an area to be left empty, you can just not zone up to the street (the resolution of the zoning bitmap is high enough for this). You could then zone the empty area with a park or plaza zone, that I already have in mind.
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Jun 6, 2014 00:31
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Anselm, as many others have already said, thank you so much for this! I toyed with the idea of creating my own simulator some time back but didn't have even a fraction of the talent and enthusiasm you've displayed so far. I guess the only question I really have is how you will handle intersections (if I've missed some earlier posts about this, apologies). I have always wanted a way to be able to, say, click on an intersection and designate it as either a round about, stop sign, give-way or traffic light. It frustrated me so much seeing my light residential suburbs with traffic lights on every corner.
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Jun 6, 2014 08:33
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anselm_eickhoff posted:Thanks for your detailed drawings, but my solution for the problem is even simpler than your system: How will the system know where the "front(s)" of the lot is?
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Jun 6, 2014 19:38
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Baggins posted:You better watch your back Anselm, a new challenger appears!  This is probably the creepiest thign I have seen all day. Jesus christ, who would give a man like that any money? Oh right noone.
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Jun 6, 2014 19:41
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anselm_eickhoff posted:While building lots will always go right up to the street, most of the lot area is actually not "critical" for the building. In planning language, this is called a setback and is something I've always wanted to see in a city builder.
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Jun 6, 2014 19:48
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Oh yeah @op I completely forgot what I actually wanted to say. If you need someone to translate the game to german, I am more than happy to help you. For free, of course. That goes without saying.
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Jun 6, 2014 19:50
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Michaellaneous posted:Oh yeah @op I completely forgot what I actually wanted to say. If you need someone to translate the game to german, I am more than happy to help you. Isn't the Op German himself?
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Jun 6, 2014 20:26
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WirelessPillow posted:Isn't the Op German himself? Bavarian I believe, so might need a little translating.
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Jun 6, 2014 20:40
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I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but are overpasses a thing that will be in the game? The worst part of the new Sim city was that everything, EVERYTHING, was an at grade intersection unless you did fuckery to force it not to be.
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Jun 8, 2014 13:08
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Volmarias posted:I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but are overpasses a thing that will be in the game? The worst part of the new Sim city was that everything, EVERYTHING, was an at grade intersection unless you did fuckery to force it not to be. Yeah he mentioned in the first road tool video that he'll obviously be adding a height option so that his cloverleaf example would actually function. Also I saw so many simcity cities that had crazy loving roller-coaster roads. I thought it was just a basic function of the tools to allow that? You had to do fuckery for that?
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Jun 8, 2014 20:57
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Ah yes, speaking of road building tools for making raised constructions: Make sure there are two modes for managing height of a control point: Terrain-relative and world-absolute. Terrain relative for cases of e.g. creating a rise for a bridge you want to be 5m above the ground, and then you switch to world-absolute mode to keep the bridge level instead of making it follow the terrain. Also, again, a planning mode and adjusting the planned construction without starting over. This is thinking back to the road construction tools in Cities in Motion 2: First because there is no world-absolute mode, only terrain-relative, you easily end up getting strange-looking rises and falls when making bridges and tunnels. Second, because each spline segment of a road has to be valid at the time of planning it, you can end up in situations where placing a segment is impossible even though the next segment would actually make the first one acceptable. Being able to go back and fix the geometry of things before committing money on it, and not having to completely re-build parts of a junction, overpass or whatever, would be a great boon. I know these are UI issues which are still not a major consideration, but I think that at least the ability to having planned-but-unbuilt networks that can be adjusted without rebuilding, would be something that influences the data and code structuring.
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Jun 8, 2014 21:14
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nielsm posted:Ah yes, speaking of road building tools for making raised constructions: Make sure there are two modes for managing height of a control point: Terrain-relative and world-absolute. Terrain relative for cases of e.g. creating a rise for a bridge you want to be 5m above the ground, and then you switch to world-absolute mode to keep the bridge level instead of making it follow the terrain. Seconding this. I know what it's like being a developer and getting constantly bombarded with a million ideas that you'll never have time to actually implement, but having a toggle like this would be great.
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Jun 8, 2014 23:05
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah he mentioned in the first road tool video that he'll obviously be adding a height option so that his cloverleaf example would actually function. Also I saw so many simcity cities that had crazy loving roller-coaster roads. I thought it was just a basic function of the tools to allow that? You had to do fuckery for that? They added a raise/lower road option in a later patch. But yeah, if I remember correctly there was no way to do it in the initial release without a lot of hassle.
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Jun 9, 2014 02:26
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The road system is looking neato. Definitely keeping an eye on this.
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Jun 9, 2014 04:02
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nielsm posted:Make sure there are two modes for managing height of a control point: Terrain-relative and world-absolute. I wasn't actually sure how I will do this, but just by the way you phrased this you made it clear
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Jun 9, 2014 12:43
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