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First of all Anselm, I'm been quite excitedly following your devblog since the first post, it's exciting because it's super ambitious. But ambition can lead to fiasco so I am trying to temper my optimism. I may have easily missed the discussion of your plans for traditional city sim mechanics because I  never go on reddit never go on reddit but I haven't seen anything about water, power and garbage infrastructure. I personally see these as growth-rate limiters on the budgetary side of gameplay, and it's never seemed to be implemented in a way that also added fun. It always seems to come down to having insufficient capacity, then paying to upgrade, while dedicating more real-estate. I was fortunate enough not to play Maxis most recent title, but I understand that they made it even worse: insufficient capacity, pay to upgrade, simulated power water and garbage agents get stuck in traffic and fail to work properly!  If anything, I'd say that the better solution would be abstracting those elements out of the game and giving the players micro-management time to other, more fun tasks (road lane configurations, zoned height and bulk tools, mixed use designation, mass transit route planning). I doubt most people would be happy with straight removing those mechanics entirely, but if they could be boiled down to a minimum, I sure wouldn't miss it.I'd also like to make an off the wall aesthetic suggestion: wood grain textures for everything. Little peg shaped people, silhouette extrusion cars, few but brightly-painted surfaces to add color. Different wood grain types could denote uses. Here is an example by way of lazy google image search:  I don't know if I'm all alone on this, but I think it would be a really neat visual approach to a fully 3D city sim, that would reward interesting yet simple building form, and de-emphasize visual realism. I personally think that realistic building designs in city sims get trapped with unrealistic scale problems, for example road lane widths compared to windows. Wood grain style also provides an opportunity for amazing fire disaster visualization. 
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Apr 29, 2014 22:41
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 04:44 |
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Totally agreed about scale issues being solved by consistent application and modeling, but then the dev has to commit way more time to artwork to get it right, and also be a pretty good artist (not saying Anselm isn't, but the stereotype attributed to developer art is not generally flattering!) Perhaps wood-town is better done as a mod anyway, because people would undoubtably decide the game is a simple toy instead of a deep and serious simulation if the style isn't realism. I contend that there could be an amazing result with the right art-direction. Another topic I'd like to hear the dev discuss is how he plans to deal with the way buildings and roads engage with sloping terrain. This is another thing I haven't seen a city sim handle cleanly, especially with regard to driveways.
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Apr 29, 2014 23:23
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BrassRoots posted:I'm not sure you guys are getting the use of utilities in SC4. Yes there can be a game aspect to it if you want but they are mostly used to generate different looks in a city. For example, if you want ghetto style areas you give them no utilities. This can lead to trailer parks etc at lower densities but then projects at higher densities. To move through middle class to upper class tiers and different styles of building you need to provide service so and parks etc. I think there are better ways to achieve a 'wrong side of the tracks' experience than no plumbing and no power. Like inducing high unemployment, for example. Poor policing, Perhaps if you were able to target individual roads for different levels of maintenance. Anselm, have you considered simulating different levels of upkeep on roads? A global slider that is used to control cost is fine, but the opportunity for innovation is there. Allocate more funding to problem intersections and they magically provide higher level of service, for example.
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May 3, 2014 00:10
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I am really impressed with the economic system that's beginning to take shape. The idea of imperfect knowledge introducing 'phantom' fluctuations in various demands is in my opinion a stroke of genius. I'm not sure if it's been tried before, but my early impression is that imperfect knowledge has the potential to give a path out of an otherwise stagnating city. I like the way neighboring cities feed and drive city development. I do wonder how these cities look as they develop. They can grow, but can they add zones and roads? Will players be able to visit them, and build in them? Or are they forever off-screen, off the edge of the map, over the horizon, as it were? Also, I've noticed in the videos that every example city is strictly trunk and branches. I'd like to see some grids and more complex street layouts. I'm guessing this is intentional because of buggy/unimplemented pathfinding? Another thing I've noticed is intentionally painting zones with frontage to only one street, always stopping just shy of the branch the street joins. To be clear, I'm not complaining or implying that things are broken and bad, it seems more likely that Anselm is building this way in his videos because he is showcasing the system he's working on. And that is fine and correct. But sometimes when designing things, we look at design problems from the angles where understand how its working, make all our decisions from that perspective and end up blind to the parts we don't understand fully. Can't wait for a switch in gears in the development to terrain generation and editing, whenever that may be. Seeing a new landscape always incites my imagination. If not hills and rivers anytime soon, a stand of trees here and there would be nice.
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Sep 9, 2014 00:56
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Zaodai posted:Geometry is for squares. Jamfrost posted:^^ Galaga Galaxian posted:I am diametrically opposed to this punnery. Baronjutter posted:That's a-cute pun. nimper posted:Let's not go off on a tangent of geometry puns. DarkSol posted:You two need to quit being so obtuse. Why can't all of you just be normal?
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Oct 1, 2014 21:56
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I'm full of Ire regarding my inability to guess where you've landed.
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Oct 7, 2014 22:19
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I don't understand why any of you would want to see parking modeled in Citybound. It'd be right up there with electricity getting stuck in traffic on the fun-o-meter. Yes, in real world cities, parking is a major determinate of the built environment. But the game environment does not have to respect every factor that shapes metro areas. Is every knock on effect of parking availability going to be included? If there is no parking available, will cars patrol and circle until spots open up? Are we going to have to dedicate a lane for on-street parking, set meter rates and have that influence mode choice for every trip, with price sensitivity checked against the wealth of the sim in question? Is every car going to be a persistent entity which belongs to a particular citizen? If not, why not merely pretend that excavation is a tiny fraction of its real world cost, assume every building has more than adequate subterranean parking, and not bother modeling parking space seeking? Even a very approximate model of parking space seeking is going to be a large increase in pathfinding computation, with no material benefit other than yet another factor which unless optimally managed creates congestion on the streets. Not to mention that from an aesthetic perspective requiring most land uses to take up additional space in the playing area is not the right choice in my mind. When seen from above, parking lots are loving ugly. I don't want to have all that asphalt diarrhea in my toy city. Too much verisimilitude with respect to vehicle behavior is as big a danger to gameplay as none at all. When real world accuracy advances gameplay mechanics, it's good to pursue that. I fail to see how accurately representing parking will enhance the city building experience. If what comes out of Citybound turns out to be a traffic engineering simulation, replete with user variable speed limits and signal timers, at the expense of a rewarding city builder, that would be a completely different experience from the one I'm hoping comes out of this. Hermsgervørden fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Oct 24, 2014 |
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Oct 24, 2014 00:08
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 04:44 |
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Dicky B posted:It's no deal breaker for me but I can imagine the joy of being able to spectate a citizen's entire journey right down to the parking lot space Would this experience be significantly worse if you just watched their car disappear into a garage door? Dicky B posted:Also IDGI?
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Oct 24, 2014 00:46
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