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Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
Having the option to build with someone is a huge plus. Games like Anno are only fun because I play them with my wife. In a relaxing, "let's build stuff together"-way a lot of builders get much more. Sim City, as a shared project, is a cool concept.

I don't need leaderboards or competition, but I do want to share.

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The Deadly Hume
May 26, 2004

Let's get a little crazy. Let's have some fun.
For a while (I think it was about 2005-06, when SC4 was still reasonably fresh) there was a thing on the forums where each person took one neighbourhood in a region, build it as they saw fit (making use of an agreed set of plugins which included NAM and a bunch of cosmetic stuff), and then check it back in every few days.

Things got a little out of hand because you still had to grab the whole region to begin with to make sure the connections and that worked, and once things got developed a single region could get upwards of a gigabyte to download.

Still, it was quite interesting to play in, and of course you could have a good look at everyone else's parts of the city and check out their style.

Carlos Spicywiener
Sep 8, 2011

Moustache fart.

Shibawanko posted:

I agree that that would basically be cool, but for me the best part about SC4 was creating a giant interconnected region and looking at it from above like i was Zeus, and that aspect is more difficult to unite with multiplayer (since you're giving up control of things to somebody else), so if there's going to be any kind of multiplayer region, please make multiplayer only optional and also let the cities connect directly to eachother seamlessly like in Sc4, rather than having them be islands, like in SC2013.

That's something I could get behind. Similar to regions in SC5, where you can solo play and claim all regions or let others populate them as you wish.

EDIT: There is a lot in SC5 that could be lifted as they had good ideas, just shoddy implementation.

xergm
Sep 8, 2009

The Moon is for Sissies!
You could really go far into SimCity's history and dig up the land-buying concept from SimCity 2000 Network Edition. Real cities aren't in perfect square tiles, so maybe everyone builds on a giant map and they buy surrounding lots to expand their city into as they have the money or population to buy or unlock it.

Could tie into land value too, with lots located in more advantageous areas are far more expensive, have higher population limits to build on.

smr
Dec 18, 2002

Multiplayer shoehorned into the design has killed more good games...

I just want to make sure the "I don't give a red-headed step-gently caress about multiplayer" faction gets its say here :)

Sim City has always been, for me, about getting lost in the Zen Garden of city bonsai. Even having to think about another human player would ruin that vibe (plus, gently caress, man, I'm 40, trying to find buddies who aren't 13 year old strangers waiting to call me an improbable combination of ethnic slurs while robo-exploding my city's nuclear reactor is near-impossible). I rather enjoyed SC3K's system of extrapolating neighbors based on roughly your city's own performance and serving as an offmap set of inputs to your city. I enjoy SC4's region view, but would enjoy it much more if I could just treat the Region View as the actual playfield, and zoom into cities, heck, carve my own borders to make them more natural into the region itself.

Now, a killer AI for something like "I designate this area a Special Economic Zone. Anything goes, but I want x% of taxes remitted to me quarterly to use in my shining utopia over here to the west" and then the AI runs with that and I get the money but maybe also some unintended knock-on effects like crime creeping in or real estate crashing because everybody wants to go live with the whores and gamblers in Freedomtown would be neat, but probably beyond the scope of this.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

smr posted:

Multiplayer shoehorned into the design has killed more good games...

I just want to make sure the "I don't give a red-headed step-gently caress about multiplayer" faction gets its say here :)

Yeah, I have to agree with this. Multiplayer is not an appealing aspect of city builder sims for me. I don't want to start making my zen garden region and having my neighbor design his city in the shape of dickbutt.

tehsid
Dec 24, 2007

Nobility is sadly overrated.
I like playing with friends, and I liked SimCity's handling of it. I just think the rest of the game was absolute rubbish.

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



Volmarias posted:

Yeah, I have to agree with this. Multiplayer is not an appealing aspect of city builder sims for me. I don't want to start making my zen garden region and having my neighbor design his city in the shape of dickbutt.

That's not an argument against multiplayer city sims. That's an argument against your friends.

Obviously nobody sane would make multiplayer compulsory either.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I'd loving love some chill multiplayer to play with some chill friends. I used to do the whole region-swap thing with friends with sc4. So much work, such massive files. But that said, as a one-man project I'd really prefer to have a solid game than a lovely game with multiplayer. Cities XL couldn't figure it out, Simcity couldn't figure it out. Netcode and poo poo is a lot of work. If he could design the game so that "one day" he could release some multi-player region expansion pack I'd buy the poo poo out of that. But right now if it multiplayer means "no trams" or "didn't have time to model bikes" or "no form based zoning" then gently caress multiplayer.

ExtraNoise
Apr 11, 2007

Baronjutter posted:

I'd loving love some chill multiplayer to play with some chill friends. I used to do the whole region-swap thing with friends with sc4. So much work, such massive files. But that said, as a one-man project I'd really prefer to have a solid game than a lovely game with multiplayer. Cities XL couldn't figure it out, Simcity couldn't figure it out. Netcode and poo poo is a lot of work. If he could design the game so that "one day" he could release some multi-player region expansion pack I'd buy the poo poo out of that. But right now if it multiplayer means "no trams" or "didn't have time to model bikes" or "no form based zoning" then gently caress multiplayer.

gently caress multiplayer.

If I want to build cities with friends I can just have each of us build a city and we can both pretend they are neighbors.

Elentor
Dec 14, 2004

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
My friends and I would love a city-building game with multiplayer, as long as there are no compromises in order for it to be possible.

Definitely not the priority here.

Jamfrost
Jul 20, 2013

I'm too busy thinkin' about my baby. Oh I ain't got time for nothin' else.
Slime TrainerS
If there is co-operative multiplayer, we should definitely be able to mash x in order to help our friend's city up a ledge.

Vahakyla
May 3, 2013
Has anyone here played Anno 2070? What does the coop "share every button, build together" take away from the game?

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co
Amazing discussion here again, soon I will also chime in regarding multiplayer.

But first, here is the new update:

The Road to Alpha, Week 18 - No Voice, No Problem

Space Kablooey
May 6, 2009


That city cize. :swoon:

Tytan
Sep 17, 2011

u wot m8?
Not sure what I'm more impressed with, the progress (the zoning tool looks fantastic) or the fact you managed to record a video after the Brazil/Germany match.

The Deadly Hume
May 26, 2004

Let's get a little crazy. Let's have some fun.
Obviously early days (and I concur that you shouldn't rush the alpha) but drat, once you loaded up the one you prepared earlier.

drunkill
Sep 25, 2007

me @ ur posting
Fallen Rib
I like the improved zoning tool, similar to the Simcity tool except you get ti choose the depth of zone. Also the eraser tool looked to be the perfect width of a street wuthin a zoned area.

Carlos Spicywiener
Sep 8, 2011

Moustache fart.

drunkill posted:

I like the improved zoning tool, similar to the Simcity tool except you get ti choose the depth of zone. Also the eraser tool looked to be the perfect width of a street wuthin a zoned area.

I like it too, but if I could make a suggestion - a toggle key to allow you to increase the width by moving the mouse instead of doing so by relying on the snap. For large farm spaces, I think it would be better.

In action, this would be:

- get close enough to the road to activate snap and click
- hit X (or any key you like) to toggle size change
- move mouse to capture area of road
- ret/enter to confirm placement

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co

Carlos Spicywiener posted:

I like it too, but if I could make a suggestion - a toggle key to allow you to increase the width by moving the mouse instead of doing so by relying on the snap. For large farm spaces, I think it would be better.

In action, this would be:

- get close enough to the road to activate snap and click
- hit X (or any key you like) to toggle size change
- move mouse to capture area of road
- ret/enter to confirm placement

I don't completely understand this, how does it help?

Avenging Dentist
Oct 1, 2005

oh my god is that a circular saw that does not go in my mouth aaaaagh

anselm_eickhoff posted:

Amazing discussion here again, soon I will also chime in regarding multiplayer.

But first, here is the new update:

The Road to Alpha, Week 18 - No Voice, No Problem

One thing that might be nice would be for the new zoning brush to snap to the width of nearby zones, like around 2:43 in the video where you make an industrial zone next to the commercial zone. That would make it easier to keep everything the same width, or to paint a given zone (say, residential) in two separate steps.

Carlos Spicywiener
Sep 8, 2011

Moustache fart.

anselm_eickhoff posted:

I don't completely understand this, how does it help?

For those of us who like to be very precise with zoning, it allows precision. I may not be explaining the mechanic properly though.

EDIT: And I'm also making the assumption that zones are intrinsically linked to (main) roads.

Carlos Spicywiener fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Jul 10, 2014

WhiskeyJuvenile
Feb 15, 2002

by Nyc_Tattoo
a zoning bucket tool would be good for those of us who like to place roads first and then zone inside them

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



Carlos Spicywiener posted:

For those of us who like to be very precise with zoning, it allows precision. I may not be explaining the mechanic properly though.

EDIT: And I'm also making the assumption that zones are intrinsically linked to (main) roads.

I'm pretty sure that Citybound doesn't have zones be attached to roads the same way they are in SC 2013. They are just areas painted onto the terrain, and the follow-road mode is a convenience for making zones that match the roads well. On the other hand, buildings spawned in zones probably do link to the roads in some way.

*PUNCH*
Jul 8, 2007
naked on the internet
Was I right in seeing different types of zoning (in the vid, commercial and industrial) overlapping? Because that's awesome. Don't get rid of that, make it a feature. Mixed-use areas are interesting, true to life and also haven't really been done in city-building games to my knowledge. They would also make tons of sense in a truly urban area.

Subyng
May 4, 2013
What's the song at the beginning of the video?

Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

This is looking really cool so far, can't wait to see more options like ploppables and services.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I'll be most impressed if the game:
-Has good looking road-conforming wall to wall buildings.
-Actually somewhat models the influences that make people decide what mode to take to their destination.
-Actually models bikes, hopefully not as "slow cars" or "faster pedestrians".
-Has some sort of believable moderately realistic economic system to decide what sort of buildings to grow as well as their shape/size.
-More advanced zoning options to let us set things like density, height, setbacks, and (if they exist) general architecture styles to let us really shape our city how we want it to look.
-Leaderboards and hats.

Mayor Defacto
Apr 21, 2010

The new zoning tool looks fantastic. Your updates continue to blow my mind and I can't wait to see how far you can take this project.

Space Kablooey
May 6, 2009


Baronjutter posted:

-Actually models bikes, hopefully not as "slow cars" or "faster pedestrians".

Can you explain this one, please?

Baggins
Feb 21, 2007

Like a Great Wind!
You mentioned in the video that you was considering not implementing an undo feature because the quicksave/quickload feature could work as one. That's a VERY bad idea and please do include one if you can. For instance, if I'm trying to place a fiddly road or want to do some creative zoning it's going to be a pain to constantly hit Ctrl+S/Ctrl+L in stead of being able to just undo the last action with Ctrl+Z. I would suggest to try and have a rolling log of the last 5-10 actions that can be reverted through.
Please also implement rolling autosaves every 5-10 minutes so you won't lose an evening's progress by inadvertently loading the save you made several hours ago. We've all lost effort in our games through bad save game management, so now that you have a save game system implemented I would strongly suggest you make this a priority before you release the alpha.

On that note, I would also like to give some kudos for the structured save game files. This will make modding the game a whole lot easier and make it a lot easier to work with several mods. Great thought!

Supraluminal
Feb 17, 2012

HardDisk posted:

Can you explain this one, please?

I was thinking the same thing. Bikes are cool, but abstracting them out as faster pedestrians (or maybe slower cars that don't collide with other cars?) seems like a reasonable compromise between model complexity and video game simplicity. So what are the special considerations that make bikes interesting enough to handle explicitly in the game?

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I was more thinking bike lanes, cycle tracks, dutch stuff. Also I guess more about mode selection, people will bike more if it's pleasant/safe to bike, and good bike infra is key there. Bikes are unusual in that they can ride on the street like a car, even taking up a whole lane like a car (and loving over traffic) if there's no lane of path. At the same time they can also ride on the sidewalk or instantly convert to a pedestrian and back again to a cyclist when needed. The "parking" needs for bikes is also a fraction of that of cars. They can also have entirely dedicated networks for just bikes. So a person can start their commute at home as a bike, get on their local road and drive as a "slow car" then hit a cycle track and zip safely and pleasantly to close to their destination downtown, then walk their bike through the dense pedestrian-only block adjacent to their workplace.

They basically need their own network and rules.

If no bike infra exists, people most likely won't ride their bikes other than the most hard-core lycra-clad fantatics willing to brave mixing in traffic or even lane-taking, so you get a situation like most of north america where cycle mode-share is insignificant. Here bikes function as "slow cars", slowing down traffic and pissing off drivers.


We could slap a bike lane onto our road that can make cycling a little more safe and pleasant. At least the bikes won't slow down traffic and, if enough safe network exists between destinations, actual normal people may start to ride their bikes. Still, it's nothing more than a bit of paint on the road and there's still major safety and flow issues at intersections.



Beyond this we start to get into serious bike infra. Dedicated cycle-paths, separated from the road by a curb or median, intersections designed with bikes in mind that let all 3 modes (car, bike, pedestrian) exist safely and efficiently. Sometimes these paths may not even be next to a road and instead be their own dedicated right of way, often being adjacent to a pedestrian path. At this level, cycling becomes very attractive.


All of the above generally applies to pedestrians as well, but with a little more psychology involved. If there's no sidewalks, that's a huge impediment for people to decide to walk to their destination. But even when sidewalks exist, if the area in unpleasant people don't choose to walk. People don't like walking right next to very busy traffic. A narrow sidewalk next to a high-speed and high-volume road is going to be very unpleasant for pedestrians, specially if they need to cross it. Healthy commercial areas need very wide sidewalks as there are often crowds of people, sidewalks can get jammed just like roads can. I would so love to see some sort of "mode attractiveness" overlay map that maps your network and its attractiveness to various modes. Traffic jams on a street would lower it's attractiveness to driving, while fast free flowing traffic would increase it. Safe bike infrastructure increases attractiveness for bikes, while having to mix unprotected in traffic is a big detractor. For pedestrians it's the most complex and fussy, they don't want to be near fast traffic (volume oddly isn't that important), they don't like crossing wide streets, they don't like crime or unsafe feeling areas.


In gameplay terms I don't think these sort of factors would be too hard to implement. When building a road you can specify the sidewalk width/style as well as include options such as bike lane or cycle track. If you have a long block you can plop down mid-block crossings, very important for pedestrians! Intersection design for roads with bike lanes and roads with cycle-tracks are all standardized and not very complicated, not too difficult for the game to auto-generate when needed.

Speak of good intersections, here's a cycle-friendly roundabout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEXD0guLQY0

General junction design
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpQMgbDJPok

Bonus: Bike parking (I hope we include parking, it's absolutely a key land-use and perhaps the most important factor in deciding modes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2i_pN4BKco

Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Jul 10, 2014

WhiskeyJuvenile
Feb 15, 2002

by Nyc_Tattoo
Yeah, model parking

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
I'd really love being able to micro-manage stuff, or at least have the option to. I just know I'd spend hours and hours fiddling with fare prices on the bus line, the hourly cost of parking meters, and various city ordinances. Having different sorts of traffic -- pedestrian, bike, rail, and car, like Baronjutter proposed-- would be really interesting!

ExtraNoise
Apr 11, 2007

I love the idea of providing public services in building my cities but I absolutely hate finagling with fare rates. Ugh.

Also I really love the idea of adding bike lanes as sort of a road "upgrade". Would be really awesome to have in the game.

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co

nielsm posted:

I'm pretty sure that Citybound doesn't have zones be attached to roads the same way they are in SC 2013. They are just areas painted onto the terrain, and the follow-road mode is a convenience for making zones that match the roads well. On the other hand, buildings spawned in zones probably do link to the roads in some way.

Correct.


*PUNCH* posted:

Was I right in seeing different types of zoning (in the vid, commercial and industrial) overlapping? Because that's awesome. Don't get rid of that, make it a feature. Mixed-use areas are interesting, true to life and also haven't really been done in city-building games to my knowledge. They would also make tons of sense in a truly urban area.

No, they don't overlap... yet. There is mixed use commerical/residential, but that is its own zone type.
Maybe freely overlapping zones like you describe are a nicer solution, but I have to come up with a non-annoying UI for that.

Subyng posted:

What's the song at the beginning of the video?

It's an early draft for a track of Citybound's soundtrack, made by Chris Kukla, one of the two musicians/composers I took on board :)

Baronjutter posted:

I'll be most impressed if the game:
-Has good looking road-conforming wall to wall buildings.
-Actually somewhat models the influences that make people decide what mode to take to their destination.
-Actually models bikes, hopefully not as "slow cars" or "faster pedestrians".
-Has some sort of believable moderately realistic economic system to decide what sort of buildings to grow as well as their shape/size.
-More advanced zoning options to let us set things like density, height, setbacks, and (if they exist) general architecture styles to let us really shape our city how we want it to look.
-Leaderboards and hats.

All of these are goals of mine, except leaderboards, how would that work?
Hats I can get behind, but leaderboards?

Baggins posted:

You mentioned in the video that you was considering not implementing an undo feature because the quicksave/quickload feature could work as one. That's a VERY bad idea and please do include one if you can. For instance, if I'm trying to place a fiddly road or want to do some creative zoning it's going to be a pain to constantly hit Ctrl+S/Ctrl+L in stead of being able to just undo the last action with Ctrl+Z. I would suggest to try and have a rolling log of the last 5-10 actions that can be reverted through.
Please also implement rolling autosaves every 5-10 minutes so you won't lose an evening's progress by inadvertently loading the save you made several hours ago. We've all lost effort in our games through bad save game management, so now that you have a save game system implemented I would strongly suggest you make this a priority before you release the alpha.

On that note, I would also like to give some kudos for the structured save game files. This will make modding the game a whole lot easier and make it a lot easier to work with several mods. Great thought!

Ok, convinced, but it might take a while since actual undo will complicate the code quite a bit.
(I have to keep stuff that is destroyed, and everything dependent on it, isntead of just forgetting about it, for example)

Baronjutter posted:

<Wall of text about bike infrastructure>

We actually have very nice bike infrastructure here in Munich,
only recently through some longer bike trips I learned to appreciate it.
Definitely a goal for the game as well!

Spooky Bear Ghost
Sep 17, 2010

lets get spooky
Do you have any plans for playermade/natural disasters? One of the things I didn't like about banished is that I couldn't crash a meteor into my town.

anselm_eickhoff
Mar 2, 2014

aeplay.co

Spooky Bear Ghost posted:

Do you have any plans for playermade/natural disasters? One of the things I didn't like about banished is that I couldn't crash a meteor into my town.

Desire yes, plans not yet.

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Brainbread
Apr 7, 2008

anselm_eickhoff posted:

We actually have very nice bike infrastructure here in Munich,
only recently through some longer bike trips I learned to appreciate it.
Definitely a goal for the game as well!

A big interest of mine in city building games is... well. Modeling the city I live in. We're just now trying to implement bike lines, but the problems being... 0.7% of our citizens bike as their daily mode of travel, compared to 76% of citizens driving their own personal vehicle.

So, games like this are a huge interest to me because I like to see "what could have been" for different modes of transport. Bizarro-world Edmonton. So. I'm super excited to see if you go with bike lanes!

E: We're going with integrated bike lanes on main streets. Also snow on the ground for 4-5 months of the year. So its not exactly working out.

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