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Cities: Skylines |OT| Not Related to Cities XL.

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MayMay

Banned
Lovely OT, cannot wait to play this game all week. Probably gonna neglect alot of other stuff for this.

I'm excited for the post launch support.. hope they hurry up and patch tunnels in the game soon.

Places not to build a dam.

LUYLIrq.gif


Source

So I don't even need to build fire departments? :D
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Yeah, I was thinking more of how multiple cities has been the standard way to implement multiplayer in this genre, and there probably aren't any mechanics in place to handle that sort of thing at the moment, right? Or are you able to import/export resources to "unseen" cities in this game?

No mechanics that I can think of. The nature of city builders makes it more conducive to single player, IMO. In SimCity 4 you could fake multiplayer by having a region saved on a cloud drive.

As for your second question, part of the industry mechanics involve exporting excess goods. You will need an outside connection to do so. Your industrial freight trucks will either take the freeway and drive off the map, or deliver goods to a cargo train station, and the train takes it off the map. Or, they deliver goods to a cargo harbor, and a cargo ship delivers the goods off the map.


Sorta like in SimCity 4, where all your freight trucks had to drive off the map too.
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Anyone else plan on using this for their first city? NYC recreaiton here I come!

No, my first few cities are going to use the included maps, I plan on experimenting a lot and testing things out while I get a grip on the game. Then I'll play with making maps from scratch with the editor, and THEN I'll play around with heightmaps.


All of this will happen within the next few days, of course!!!!!!
 
If I were to get this game, any significant gotchas and differences I should be aware of when compared to the 2013 SimCity (aside from traffic, city size, system requirements, and a lack of proper exclusive full screen at this point)?
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
If I were to get this game, any significant gotchas and differences I should be aware of when compared to the 2013 SimCity (aside from traffic, city size, system requirements, and a lack of proper exclusive full screen at this point)?

Here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=155127703#post155127703

Main Features

Price at launch:

SimCity - $60
Cities Skylines - $30


Maximum size of a city:


SimCity - 2km X 2km = 4 square kilometers
Cities Skylines - 6km X 6km = 36 square kilometers. There is already a mod out that will unlock even more space - 10km x 10km = 100 square kilometers.


Multi-threaded

SimCity - No
Cities Skylines - Yes


64-bit compatible (This means you can use more than 4GB of RAM to run the game)


SimCity - No
Cities Skylines - Yes


Always online:

SimCity - lol yes (but patched out a year later)
Cities Skylines - Fuck no. (One time Steam DRM activation, but that's it)


Map and asset editing:


SimCity - No
Cities Skylines - Yes


Mod support:

SimCity - Not at launch, but added in (a lot) later. With restrictions.
Cities Skylines - Yes. With a modding API and Steam Workshop support.​


Citizen Simulation

Both SimCity and Cities Skylines use an agent-based simulation to represent their citizens. SimCity, however, cannot handle as many citizen agents in as large a space as Cities Skylines can.

SimCity - 3 main types of citizens, workers, shoppers, and students. They would all go out en masse to the nearest workplace, store, or school, then all come back to any residence. Not very "realistic".

Cities Skylines - Each citizen is individualized and has a permanent residence and a permanent job. They will go about their day and work/shop/play as needed. Each citizen can be renamed. Pretty much anything can be renamed in Cities Skylines. Even pigs on a farm.​


Traffic and Mass Transit

SimCity: Traffic was a mess, and still can be if you don't know how to properly manage your citizens. Behavior was akin to citizens moving from any residence sink to any work/shop/school sink, then back to any home sink again.

Transit options included Buses, Streetcars, Trains, Planes, and Boats, but routes could not be assigned, and things like busses just move in a seemingly randomized and inefficient pattern that you have no control over.

Cities Skylines: For the most part, it models actual real life traffic a little better just because of how those work/shop/school mechanics work. There also isn't a deluge of agents vomiting out of buildings all the time, so it gets a little less congested.

Road options are much better, since you can use highways, onramps, and interchanges. There are more options to influence traffic than SimCity has. No tunnels, however, but the devs are planning on implementing that soon after launch.

Transit options include Buses, SUBWAYS, trains, planes, and boats. You can set your own routes, and sims will transfer and use the mass transit like you'd expect them to. MUCH improved over SimCity's mass transit.​


RCI system

SimCity: A slight departure from the RCI system of SimCity4. It was more like whether or not you have enough workers to work jobs, and enough goods to satisfy shoppers. Building more residential generated workers and shoppers, building industry generated jobs, and building commercial generated jobs and goods to be sold. It really didn't matter much. Stuff got build right as you zoned them, and they would either grow because they got their needs fulfilled, or die.

Residential buildings would grow because the workers went to a job sink, then came back to the building with money. Then, the shopper agents would go to a store, and buy a good (if available), then come back with happiness. Once the happiness reached a certain point, the building would upgrade in density.

Commercial buildings would get happier when a shopper agent or tourist would buy their goods. Or, if they got a freight shipment from an industry building. Once the happiness reached a certain point, the building would upgrade in density.

Industry buildings would start work once they received a minimum amount of workers, then they would periodically produce freight, which would get shipped to commercial zones. If they were able to drop off a freight shipment successfully, they get happier. Once the happiness reached a certain point, the building would upgrade in density.

It didn't really work all that well, and you were usually better off just ignoring industry alltogether.

Cities Skylines: Their RCI model appears to be more like SimCity4, but with elements of SImCity. Having one increases the demand for the other two, and so on. Industry also generates cargo, which is shipped to commercial stores to sell. Fairly straightforward. If there are enough places to work, and shop, residential is happy. If they can ship out enough goods, industry is happy. If they can sell enough goods, commercial is happy. If there are adequate services, everyone is happy.​

Services

Stuff like Police, Fire, Ambulances work fairly similar in both games. The AI in Cities Skylines appears to be better.​
 

Tunned

Member
Damn you Gaf, I've fallen into the hype and just bought this game on Steam.

It looks awesome, I have been wanting to play a good city simulator for a while now, and this will be it. Hopefully they will add a day-night cycle later.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
This is not correct, really. The main simulation in Cities: Skylines uses one thread and one thread only.

It depends what you define "simulation" as. If "simulation" is what SimCity was doing in its single simulation thread, then Skylines is definitely multi threaded. The fact that it uses Unity also means it can take advantage of that in rendering. Pathfinding is done separately, unlike in SimCity.

In SimCity, one thread was the simulation, and another was audio, with a few other things.

In Skylines:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2x4mf9/we_are_colossal_order_the_team_behind_cities/cowups4

The game is best optimized for a 4 cores CPU (being the most mainstream and quite fitted to our simulation needs), we have the main thread, audio, pathfinding, simulation & water flow. Unity does under the hood also use threads quite heavily (main and rendering) and we do use some extra worker thread during the loading/saving process, so 8 cores should yield a noticeable performance improvement but it will not be in the 2x faster figures.​
 

RP912

Banned
I think the only thing that's not clicking with me is the lack of reigns, this was a big thing for me in Simcity 4 and 2013. Other than that, tomorrow can't get here quick enough :(.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
This is not correct, really. The main simulation in Cities: Skylines uses one thread and one thread only.

I believe pathfinding and physics are separated into different threads while SimCity 2013 had pathfinding as part of the main simulation thread.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
I believe pathfinding and physics are separated into different threads while SimCity 2013 had pathfinding as part of the main simulation thread.

Yeah, it's almost as if they were hedging their bets to see if they could release it on mobile too. Normally I wouldn't give it a second though...but it's EA. lol.
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
This is not correct, really. The main simulation in Cities: Skylines uses one thread and one thread only.

You are not entirely correct either. CSL is definitely multi core and optimized for at least 4 core cpus. One for the main thread, one for pathfinding, one for the RCI sim, one for the simulation and water. Additonal cores will be taken advantage of to improve the game engine's performance.

Simicty 2013 did sound on one thread and everything else on another thread, no matter how many cores your cpu had. It's the largest reason for the small citiy sizes in SC5.
 

Nokterian

Member
Fantastic OT! Tomorrow is the day that i can finally do what i waited for so long after Simcity 4..build and trying to maintain a huge city.
 

Kabouter

Member
Anyone know if this is going to preload and/or if it will be available at midnight?

Expect it to be up at like 7PM CET (or actually maybe 8PM because the free world has already skipped ahead one hour) tomorrow, devs said they had no idea when on the 10th it would be released, so probably when Valve gets of its ass and can be bothered to put it online.
 

Tiu Neo

Member
Does anyone have experience pre-ordering with Nuuvem? I am wondering specifically about the timing of key delivery.

I normally get my keys a couple days before release. Worst case that happened to me was a few hours before it was out on steam.
 

marjo

Member
It is heeeeeeeeeeere.
The anticipation for tomorrow knows no bounds.

Reposting this roundabout walkway above a roundabout street with a park in the middle from GSY Miguel for the first page because its just too awesome:
9O5F6RZ.png

This picture makes me really want to build a city with no streets. Just pedestrian walkways and elavated monorails for people to get around, and underground tunnels for freight delivery. Something like Walt Disney had envisioned with his original E.P.C.O.T. plans.

Is something like that possible with this game?
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
This picture makes me really want to build a city with no streets. Just pedestrian walkways and elavated monorails for people to get around, and underground tunnels for freight delivery. Something like Walt Disney had envisioned with his original E.P.C.O.T. plans.

Is something like that possible with this game?

You can't zone buildings on pedestrian paths. Also, you need cars and trucks to at least make cargo deliveries.
 

Jisgsaw

Member
This picture makes me really want to build a city with no streets. Just pedestrian walkways and elavated monorails for people to get around, and underground tunnels for freight delivery. Something like Walt Disney had envisioned with his original E.P.C.O.T. plans.

Is something like that possible with this game?

There are no tunnels for now, so the answer is no.
Also from what I saw, even with good transportation and pedestrian ways, the freight carrying takes up a lot of traffic, so you'll need to have good road/railway infrastructures.

Edit: oh yeah, and as Rentahamster said, you can't build any RCI without roads, so...
 
So hyped.


It is heeeeeeeeeeere.
The anticipation for tomorrow knows no bounds.

Reposting this roundabout walkway above a roundabout street with a park in the middle from GSY Miguel for the first page because its just too awesome:
9O5F6RZ.png

Holy shit this is awesome.
 

Matt_

World's #1 One Direction Fan: Everyone else in the room can see it, everyone else but you~~~
I've just realised that I haven't once seen someone streaming this game build offices.
What I thought were offices turns out were high density commercial
I feel it's quite bad that the game is designed to make office space worse than industrial in terms of tax revenues even though it takes higher education to run
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
I've just realised that I haven't once seen someone streaming this game build offices.
What I thought were offices turns out were high density commercial
I feel it's quite bad that the game is designed to make office space worse than industrial in terms of tax revenues even though it takes higher education to run

The tradeoff is that they don't cause any pollution, and very little noise pollution. The higher education thing is good for a levelled up city because that gives your educated citizens somewhere to work. You want educated citizens if you want your residential to level up.
 
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