SimCity a disaster for you? Take a look at Cities: Skylines (not related to CitiesXL)

xAlias said:
Any discussions on the performance of the game? Skeptical on that since its the unity engine
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Some interesting quotes regarding performance/optimization in the AMA.
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.
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We use the GPU mostly for rendering. Animations are also GPU skinned. But we do not use GPU based technique, for example with the water, if this is what you are thinking about.
While very tempting, it is much too easy when walking that road to end up with a game which will only start on very high end machines, and we wanted as many people, even with lower end kind of computer to be able to enjoy the game.
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Adding 'proper' AA post launch.
We don't have MSAA since we use deferred rendering. We do have SMAA however.
[...]We would never say no to more proper AA solutions, but the scope to develop those needs to remain realistic for our team :)
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And Borderless, since people have been asking about it:
If you are talking about borderless fullscreen: Currently, we are a bit bound by the way Unity handles the fullscreen modes. We intend to support it but at the moment, it is not possible to switch exclusive to borderless just by a click in the Graphics settings. There is a good chance borderless window mode will be the official fullscreen mode but we are still looking into our options at this time.
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bjaelke said:
Some interesting quotes regarding performance/optimization in the AMA.


Adding 'proper' AA post launch.


And Borderless, since people have been asking about it:
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Thanks for the post! Getting excited that a proper successor to Simcity 4 seems to be possible here. Now to pre order or not? :)
 
animlboogy said:
I'm still terrified about performance. Cities XL ran like trash on two separate systems to the point that I never played more than a couple hours of it. SC5 was found to be single core, and the thing didn't work on release, so I just skipped it entirely, not playing it until I tried it for a few minutes on my brother's PC.

This is supposed to have multi core support but I keep getting burned with this genre. XXL sounds like the same old mess, too... This developer is not Maxis or the XL idiots, but I can't help but have this fear in the back of my head. SC4 was a LONG time ago.
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The thing with Cities XL is that the original developer (Monte Cristo) went bankrupt, so it's not even the same team working on the game anymore. The current owner Focus Interactive doesn't seem interested in fixing the game's core problems, instead they're taking advantage of the fact that there are so few options in the city builder genre, people will buy almost anything. So they're going to milk that old engine for as long as possible.

The SimCity debacle was multi-faceted, but basically stemmed largely from EA wanting to hedge as many bets as possible on a "big" PC only release. Online only when the game didn't need it to curb piracy, and of course single-thread only performance and tiny cities so that the game could run on as many shitty old laptops as possible (and so the fundamental flaws with their simulation were less noticeable).

It's understandable to be gun-shy about another entry into this troubled genre. However so far from what Colossal Order seems to be focusing on, I think they might have the right combination of talent and team size to build a sustainable franchise, and just maybe revitalize this genre and move it forward from where SimCity left off.

That said, it's fair to wait on reviews and reports from GAF and elsewhere to see if CO was really able to nail it, or if the same agent-based simulation problems rear their ugly heads again.
 
animlboogy said:
I'm still terrified about performance. Cities XL ran like trash on two separate systems to the point that I never played more than a couple hours of it. SC5 was found to be single core, and the thing didn't work on release, so I just skipped it entirely, not playing it until I tried it for a few minutes on my brother's PC.

This is supposed to have multi core support but I keep getting burned with this genre. XXL sounds like the same old mess, too... This developer is not Maxis or the XL idiots, but I can't help but have this fear in the back of my head. SC4 was a LONG time ago.
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Cities: Skylines is made by the people who made Cities in Motion. They're a different team from the XL people and this is not the same "series" either.
 
animlboogy said:
I'm still terrified about performance.
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Most people seem to be making confident noises about performance, but I have a few worries myself from the videos shown. Those could be older builds being demo'd but they certainly show a whole hell of a lot of slowdown at times.

tuxfool said:
They're just emulating tilt-shift photography. Sim City did it too. If you don't know what tilt-shift is you should google it; it is an interesting effect.
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I'll do that, thanks.
 
DEO3 said:
I noticed it with the new video they just released today, the game seems to stutter like crazy right here @ 41s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj2paF9IcqM#t=41
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The whole video is stuttering, even real stuff, but it's less visible as most of it moves slowly.

The trailer at 60 FPS looks way better, as well a most gameplay videos.

So I think it's definitely a problem with this video (issues with 25 FPS filming clips and 30/60 gameplay ?)
 
So it seems that unlocking the 25 tiles will not be easy, according to the ama. That and the limited modding variables unlocked right now makes me a bit worried how much can be modded.
 
spiritfox said:
So it seems that unlocking the 25 tiles will not be easy, according to the ama. That and the limited modding variables unlocked right now makes me a bit worried how much can be modded.
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They mean that unlocking the 25 is easy. Running it on something that's not a badass computer is hard. There will also not be any official support for anything over 9 tiles.
 
I'm concerned about performance too. It's natural with a game like this. Cities in Motion runs well, though it was noticeable how, especially in the second game, a lot of the default cities in the game only take up 20-30% of the map. In the end, we'll just have to wait for release to know for sure how well it runs.

Multi-core support is a damn good (and comically overdue for the genre) start though.
 
Rentahamster said:
They mean that unlocking the 25 is easy. Running it on something that's not a badass computer is hard. There will also not be any official support for anything over 9 tiles.
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Err no.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2x4mf9/we_are_colossal_order_the_team_behind_cities/coxbbgm

Long answer short: very. Short answer less short: unlocking additional map tiles is not just about increasing the number of tiles available. There is need to deal with the unlocking logic, the indexing, the area limitations, calculating the available resources and most likely many other things I am not thinking about right now. Some of these systems are part of the core foundation of the game and rely on very specific data structures, many of which are not intuitive nor logical in favour of performances. So unlocking more tiles would require to hijack some of those systems to replace them by your own which will deal with the criterias above. So while theoretically possible, in practise it will require some reverse engineering, a bulletproof patience and some pretty intense modding swag. :) On the bright side, it only takes one to figure it out.
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Doing copy and pasting on a phone sucks.
 
spiritfox said:
Err no.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2x4mf9/we_are_colossal_order_the_team_behind_cities/coxbbgm



Doing copy and pasting on a phone sucks.
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Oh I was going off of this comment:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2x4mf9/we_are_colossal_order_the_team_behind_cities/cox1cre

EDIT: Or perhaps she means that while modders can still unlock all 25 tiles, this is simply not something that will be supported by CO?
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Yes to your edit. We will not support this as the 9 tiles is already on the limit of a reasonable size for the city taking into account that most people don't own super computers.
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jtb said:
I'm concerned about performance too. It's natural with a game like this. Cities in Motion runs well, though it was noticeable how, especially in the second game, a lot of the default cities in the game only take up 20-30% of the map. In the end, we'll just have to wait for release to know for sure how well it runs.

Multi-core support is a damn good (and comically overdue for the genre) start though.
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Multi-core support in this game really doesn't sound different from SimCity 2013 though (main simulation on one thread, with other threads helping stuff like pathfinding, rendering, audio, etc.)

The performance is definitely still going to be limited by your CPU's single thread performance.
 
elelunicy said:
Multi-core support in this game really doesn't sound different from SimCity 2013 though (main simulation on one thread, with other threads helping stuff like pathfinding, rendering, audio, etc.)

The performance is definitely still going to be limited by your CPU's single thread performance.
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Actually SimCity 2013 ran all of the game logic (including pathfinding) on a single thread. Cities Skylines splits that into two and gives pathfinding on its own thread. It's still going to be pretty reliant on single thread performance but much less so than SimCity was.

edit: It splits it into 3:

SimCity 2013
1 - Main, Simulation, Pathfinding
Multiple - Audio, Rendering

Skylines
1 - Main
2 - Simulation
3 - Pathfinding
Multiple - Audio, Rendering, Water(?)
 
Shepard said:
Can't wait for this game, preordered it on Nuuvem. The only thing bothering me is the small number of different building structures. You can see almost in every shot 3-4 building of the same type right next to each other. That kinda breaks the immersion. :\
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Is it still safe to pre-order games on Nuuvem and sites like it if you are in the USA?

I read there was a crackdown on that sort of thing

i will order from there if i know it's safe, otherwise where else can i order it for a bargain price?
 
Okay. I notice a great many people from this thread are ordering from there. This is my first time. Just ordered the digital deluxe edition :)

Despite being very excited for the most recent Sim City when it was unveiled, I ended up not buying it after hearing about all of the substantial shortcomings it ended up having. To this day, I still have not picked it up.

Going to support this instead!
 
Heh, they issued an official apology about the whole 25 tiles modding issue:

TotalyMoo said:
Greetings community!


It seems like we've failed in communicating with you, which has created a misunderstanding about how easy it is to mod the game outside the supported 9 tiles. There's a series of things that has let this happen, some from our end and others via YouTubers like Arumba and journalists that attended PDXCON. Alas, when it comes down to it we're to blame here as we have not been clear enough in the difficulty levels of doing such a mod.

Basically;

* We knew that unlocking more than 9 tiles is possible via modding.

* As details about modding were not public yet, we assumed that possible would not imply easy. This was not the interpretation of most people, community and journalists alike. As we all know, assumption is the mother of all f*ckups.

* An initial reply by Shams in our first AMA 6 months back led users to believe it was a "checkbox" option (this has been previously rectified, though)

* Modding to 25 tiles is possible. It's not easy, it requires skill, but it is possible.

Mariina gave a statement about this yesterday.

"I apologize for the confusion. We at CO have been trying to be very clear on the fact that we do not support bigger map size than the 9 that is offered as default. It is possible to unlock more tiles as co_damsku described in Reddit, which sounds like cracking the game to me, but I'm not a programmer. This is however not easy and again, we at Colossal can't help you with this unfortunately. We feel the 9 map tiles is plenty of room to build the city in and going over that causes multiple issues.

It seems that I have failed in the communication. We were asked if unlocking more than 9 map tiles is possible to which we answered that we will not officially support it as it is dangerous in terms of performance and can cause multiple other issues. But indeed, it it possible yet very very difficult. I believe some people picked only the "it is possible" part, which I should have more actively tried to correct, but I didn't take the time. I'm very sorry for that and any false expectations that have risen due to this."

Damien, programmer at CO, has this to say.

"Unlocking additional map tiles is not just about increasing the number of tiles available. There is need to deal with the unlocking logic, the indexing, the area limitations, calculating the available resources and most likely many other things I am not thinking about right now. Some of these systems are part of the core foundation of the game and rely on very specific data structures, many of which are not intuitive nor logical in favour of performances. So unlocking more tiles would require to hijack some of those systems to replace them by your own which will deal with the criteria above. So while theoretically possible, in practice it will require some reverse engineering, a bulletproof patience and some pretty intense modding swag."


Tl;dr: We're very sorry for not being clear enough on this and understand your frustration. This was a mistake in communication from our end. We will strive to better ourselves.

Thank you for reading!


Best,
John
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It does suck that it's not easy to unlock the tiles but at least it's still possible. Hopefully the modders would get to it when the game launches.
 
So I thought last night "it'd be fun to go back and play Sim City 2013 some more before Cities: Skylines." Nope, that game is still completely broken on a fundamental level... Ah well.
 
Wow, this looks genuinely promising, here's hoping it won't turn out to be a disappointment (like SimCity)
Also, since they're probably planning to release many DLCs like in every other Paradox game, I would very much welcome a European or Asian themed expansion, especially considering they did a nice job with non-american cities in Cities in Motion.
 
Galileo said:
Wow, this looks genuinely promising, here's hoping it won't turn out to be a disappointment (like SimCity)
Also, since they're probably planning to release many DLCs like in every other Paradox game, I would very much welcome a European or Asian themed expansion, especially considering they did a nice job with non-american cities in Cities in Motion.
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Once the game is released they'll start working on tunnels and European buildings to update the game for free :)

As for Asian and other themes, if it's not from an official DLC/patch, it will certainly come from mods, and it fully supports Steam Workshop.
 
Galileo said:
Wow, this looks genuinely promising, here's hoping it won't turn out to be a disappointment (like SimCity)
Also, since they're probably planning to release many DLCs like in every other Paradox game, I would very much welcome a European or Asian themed expansion, especially considering they did a nice job with non-american cities in Cities in Motion.
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European buildings (and tunnels) will be part of a free update post-launch.

edit: beaten, so here's a new picture

Vc9MNwB.jpg
 
spiritfox said:
Heh, they issued an official apology about the whole 25 tiles modding issue:



It does suck that it's not easy to unlock the tiles but at least it's still possible. Hopefully the modders would get to it when the game launches.
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I have to give them a huge amount of credit for clearing this up before release. Most devs would have kept quiet on this to increase sales, and then address the complaints after release when people had already bought the game on a false assumption.
 
GSY Miguel said:
Once the game is released they'll start working on tunnels and European buildings to update the game for free :)
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Not sure if this was widely known. She mentioned it during our interview yesterday morning and I brought it up again during the AMA.

I don't know but I'm pretty sure that AMA covered almost everything I asked yesterday morning during our 37 minute interview - which airs Saturday, by the way and I'll link it here when it's done.
 
More than happy with the response. It's still vastly improved over SC13 and they addressed it as soon as they realised it had been misconstrued. Also the devs have pretty much set a modding challenge there, they might as well make an achievement for unlocking all 25 tiles. :D
 
Rentahamster said:
You have to have a differential in demand in workers/jobs.

If City A has lots of available jobs, but not enough workers to staff them, other cities that have a surplus of workers will send them over to work in City A.

This, however does not work on a completely 1:1 comparative basis. Any given city with a surplus of workers will only be able to send 1/4 of those eligible to work. So like, if City A has 100 low wealth jobs available, and City B has 100 unemployed low wealth workers, you will only ever see about 25 of those workers from City B come over to work in City A over a period of time.

It's kinda dumb; I don't know why they made it like that. I mean, I sorta do, but I sorta don't.
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Soooo only 10% of the population works and of that only 25% are ready to move their asses to a different city if there is no work in theirs? lazysimcity
 
Mad Season said:
FYI, I contacted the developers of this game and they said they are watching this thread :)
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Neat.

1. *waves* I like the communication and openness towards the community so far. It impressed me enough to preorder. I'm optimistic that your game isn't terrible!

2. Mariina, you are totally sexy <3
 
Sevenfold said:
More than happy with the response. It's still vastly improved over SC13 and they addressed it as soon as they realised it had been misconstrued. Also the devs have pretty much set a modding challenge there, they might as well make an achievement for unlocking all 25 tiles. :D
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This.

Like a lot of people, the extent of the maximum size is one of my biggest concerns (same with max pop size) for this game. I don't even mind if it requires a monstrous rig because if this game is good and requires one, I'll build one
(please make me have to build one!)
.

I'm one that thinks the problems with the Cities XXL series are quite overblown, but they definitely get the city size thing right. I'm more likely to get bored with a city before I run out of space which is the only city-builder out there I can think of like that.
 
TimeEffect said:
So, max pop size shouldn't be too big of an issue right?

I mean, were Sim City 2's population size real time?
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I think there is a hard limit of 1M maximum population. That sounds reasonable based on having 36km^2 available, but if we can expand it modded to 100km^2, I think that 1M cap will quickly become a problem.
 
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