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Cities: Skylines - Snowfall |OT| We Build This City on Mods and Poo

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Having played both games a lot, I prefer how education and tourism work in SimCity. It is much more direct and consequential than how it works in Cities Skylines. It had more purpose, and you could see a direct cause and effect of your actions in your education or tourism plans. As a GAMEplay mechanic, it was also fun to mess around with.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
For those who played SimCity 4 a lot, what do you think of its zoning and RCI mechanics (low/med/high residential, low/med/high commerical and commercial office, Ag/low/med/rich industry) compared to Skylines (low/high res, low/high com, industry, offices)?
 

Ranger X

Member
For those who played SimCity 4 a lot, what do you think of its zoning and RCI mechanics (low/med/high residential, low/med/high commerical and commercial office, Ag/low/med/rich industry) compared to Skylines (low/high res, low/high com, industry, offices)?

SimCity4 was crack for me. In that game, having 3 levels of everything helped the game feel progressive and it made it possible to us to actually earn money for real, a first in the series in my opinion. Money has always been to scarce in previous games.

Anyhow, not having 3 level of industries here it feels fine because of the specialisations. You forget easily that there's no low/med/high. Seriously. The progress feeling in the game is awesome and there's plenty money to make. I like how you have to look what's in the ground before laying down your building strategy.

The only thing that I feel is less representative and less accurate (fun?) than Simcity4 is the RCI meter itself. Sometimes I feel it doesn't represent the city needs. Sometimes you need more residential and the RCI doesn't tell that.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
The only thing that I feel is less representative and less accurate (fun?) than Simcity4 is the RCI meter itself. Sometimes I feel it doesn't represent the city needs. Sometimes you need more residential and the RCI doesn't tell that.

I tend to agree with this. The RCI meter in Skylines doesn't seem as responsive or accurate as in SC4.

I also feel like the RCI in SC4 had a much more "triangular" equilibrium feel, in that R, C, and I ALL affected each other to a degree. In Skylines, the "I" meter, for example, feels and acts more like an unemployment gauge rather than an actual "industrial demand" gauge.
 

Jintor

Member
I feel like there's a lot of problems with Cities that really bug me after I play more than 5 hours or so at a time, but it's still the best City-building game out there at the moment.

Part of it is a general dissatisfaction with all city-building games in that once you reach a certain level as long as you expand slowly there's pretty much no way to lose, or perhaps more accurately be challenged. This would be fine if I was more of a 'I just wanna build a big city' kinda person, and I kind of am, but I think I'm more goal orientated than that which is why I liked Banished (which is supremely difficult in comparison) or Tropico (which basically dumps you in a new sandbox every few hours). I think this is probably my main problem with the genre as a whole; I never feel like I'm managing chaos, it's more like I'm painting something and occasionally the painting will cause some trouble, but it's usually nothing major and won't destabilise me in any way. I wonder if I just want some kind of more involved political aspect to it? (Like Tropico but way more in detail).

Roads still bug me, but maybe that's because I don't really understand traffic so well, given that apparently it's intended design. It's stymied by the fact that slopes and stuff still make it really annoyingly difficult to put down roads, especially curved roads, the way you'd think you'd be able to and eventually you end up just giving in and doing whatever just so the damned thing works. I'm kind of annoyed that bike paths and taxis don't really have much use beyond the cosmetic at the moment.
 

spiritfox

Member
The problem is that most city builders lack the actual decisions real mayors have to juggle. You can't just bulldoze an entire neighborhood in real life without repercussions. Sure it's nice to sandbox and build the perfect city, but having to navigate roadblocks and balance the needs of the city with the wants of the individual groups would make the game more challenging and more fun. Politics would be a great idea for an expansion or for a future game.
 

Jintor

Member
The problem is the complexity probably increases by orders of magnitude.

I think if they had bothered updating Tropico past 3 (it seems to be stuck there in terms of gameplay systems) that could have been interesting. Unfortunately it seems to be stuck permanently in trying to be all things and thus failing to be any of them really.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
The problem is that most city builders lack the actual decisions real mayors have to juggle. You can't just bulldoze an entire neighborhood in real life without repercussions. Sure it's nice to sandbox and build the perfect city, but having to navigate roadblocks and balance the needs of the city with the wants of the individual groups would make the game more challenging and more fun. Politics would be a great idea for an expansion or for a future game.

I honestly can't imagine a way to make that kind of politics fun as a game. It might just be a failure of imagination on my part though. It would be a challenge for some dev to get right.
 

scurker

Member
I'm sure I'm just missing something, but is there a bug with the way piers and other beach ploppables connect to roads? I can't seem to ever get the notification to go away.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
I'm sure I'm just missing something, but is there a bug with the way piers and other beach ploppables connect to roads? I can't seem to ever get the notification to go away.

What I do is have a main road running parallel to the shoreline a little ways off (about 10ish tiles away). Then I plop the pier things. Then I connect them to the main road with a single little line of dirt road.
 

spiritfox

Member
I honestly can't imagine a way to make that kind of politics fun as a game. It might just be a failure of imagination on my part though. It would be a challenge for some dev to get right.

The Tropico series did it pretty decently, though I can't see that model working in a SimCity style game. The problem is that you have too much power. Restricting your power would result in more challenges and thus make the game more interesting. As long as it is handled well and not too restrictive or too loose, but it's a tough thing to do, like you said. But I kind of like the sandbox nature of the game, since that's how I play SimCity.
 
A Hotfix has been released.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/255710/discussions/0/483366528904297860/
TotalyMoo [developer] 1 hour ago
Hotfix is live | Patch 1.2.1-f1 info
Greetings!

It's been a week since we launched After Dark and we are very satisfied with how it's been received so far.

Having that said we also encountered some quirks and issues that needed to be solved ASAP. We are working on a second hotfix to solve the bug where modders can not access leisure and tourism buildings and will update you with an ETA on this when we're able.

With no further ado we present patch 1.2.1-f1!

Major changes in bold.

- Fixed an issue where the game loading could get stuck if a custom asset created prior to the unique building category feature was subscribed.
- Asset editor: the offset of the car lights for night time caused the lights to always show from the center of the car. Now they are at the right position.
- Asset editor: the position of the car lights at night time are now exposed in the properties panel.
- Asset editor: the properties panel now support dragging of a float value so it is easier to visualize position. If an horizontal blue arrow appears when hovering the name of a field, click and drag to increase/decrease the value instead of typing it directly.
- Asset editor: the default category selection when selecting a car template was incorrect, now it is correct.

Regards,
The Cities Team
 

Mengy

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
For those who played SimCity 4 a lot, what do you think of its zoning and RCI mechanics (low/med/high residential, low/med/high commerical and commercial office, Ag/low/med/rich industry) compared to Skylines (low/high res, low/high com, industry, offices)?

I think the zoning and RCI in Skylines if just fine, even when compared to SC4. I now feel that Skylines is a better city builder than SC4, and I have hundreds of hours played with SC4, but the one thing I really miss is the farms. I hope some future patch / expansion includes much better farm design tools than what the game has now.


The expansion added a lot of good stuff, I love the new parks and marinas, but yeah I'm not really seeing a use for the roads with bus & bike lanes either, seeing how bikers will happily just pedal on sidewalks anyway. Same thing with bike paths, bikers use the old pedestrian paths and sidewalks just fine, and the pedestrian paths have the benefit of servicing both bikers and walkers, so I'm not seeing much point to putting down bike only lanes.
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
Even before I bought the xpac you can really see a vast improvement in the graphics. The buildings don't look samey anymore!

And now i Just bought AD, what am I in for?
 

Cocaloch

Member
Well unfortunately the DLC's patch made Skylines freeze my computer upon loading a map, and the hotfix didn't fix that issue for me. I guess I'll wait a couple more weeks and hope they put out some sort of fix for my issue, but I kinda doubt it.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Oh yeah. Not having to really care about air pollution is really weird

I tend to agree. I wish pollution was a little more impactful because in my view, it sort of unbalances the cost/benefit analysis for power generation in a gameplay context.

Fossil fuels: dirty but cheap

Green: clean but weak/expensive

Nuclear: clean, powerful, and expensive
 
3ffIqcv.jpg


I like how the docks can dress up the shorelines in this expansion. It's always been one of my least favorite parts of the game.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Reading some comments on the internet makes me think that some people are unconsciously undervaluing the DLC and thinking it's more expensive than it should be due to the fact the day/night cycle is free.

Sometimes it seems like you just can't win for being nice either :/
 
Reading some comments on the internet makes me think that some people are unconsciously undervaluing the DLC and thinking it's more expensive than it should be due to the fact the day/night cycle is free.

Sometimes it seems like you just can't win for being nice either :/

Gaming is full of very entitled people. It's much worse in gaming that any other enthusiast hobby I'm a part of.
 
Reading some comments on the internet makes me think that some people are unconsciously undervaluing the DLC and thinking it's more expensive than it should be due to the fact the day/night cycle is free.

Sometimes it seems like you just can't win for being nice either :/

Welcome to the fanbase of this types of games.

Roller Coaster Tycoon fanbase is even worse, as its full of 13 year olds who cant grasp the most basic concepts of game design.
 
You'd think they'd be older what with RCT2 already being thirteen years old itself :p

The older fans are te most calm, although theres still the old ones that still shout everything was better in their time (the rct1 and rct2 jump into 3).
I know its surprising, and even more after rct3 was released more than 10 years ago, but all those 13 yo at the forums im talking about is kids that just started playing rct3 some years ago (the game is still played a lot). Those and the kids that were 10 in RCT3's big years and now are lile 19, but still act in the forums like they are 13 lol
In all seriousness, more than being older or younger is that a very big part of the fanbase only plays this type of "building" games, and nothing more, and they dont understand how impossible or time consuming (or just simply how shitty it would be for the game's design) their complaints of not having this or that in the game are.
From what ive been experiencing cities skylines (and sim cities) fanbase are more understandable than the folks at the rct and planet coaster official forums.
 

Copons

Member
I like how the docks can dress up the shorelines in this expansion. It's always been one of my least favorite parts of the game.

I started plopping them down on my river shores after seeing your pic and I must agree, now they look much better.

From a bird's eye view.
Because when you zoom in, and start noticing the marina docks 50m above the water level, they kinda suck.

I really hope they'll fix how these new waterside buildings work, because right now they're just too wonky.
And ok, part of the problem is on me, trying to place them on a super high vertical cliff instead of a beach, but still, they just never really feel good.
They're as frustrating as when you set up an entire district to have a big building right in the middle of it, just to discover that your roads are half a degree curved and you can't place it anywhere.
 
I started plopping them down on my river shores after seeing your pic and I must agree, now they look much better.

From a bird's eye view.
Because when you zoom in, and start noticing the marina docks 50m above the water level, they kinda suck.

I really hope they'll fix how these new waterside buildings work, because right now they're just too wonky.
And ok, part of the problem is on me, trying to place them on a super high vertical cliff instead of a beach, but still, they just never really feel good.
They're as frustrating as when you set up an entire district to have a big building right in the middle of it, just to discover that your roads are half a degree curved and you can't place it anywhere.


Absolutely. I spend a lot of time fucking with the terraform mod to make the shoreline work with my already in place buildings and to make a road work as well.

I wish the game would auto "urbanize" the riverfront areas or provide tools to make things more realistic.

Approaching%20the%20Loop%20from%20the%20North.jpg


Every non-village type town I've ever lived in has artificially shaped the rivers that run through them in one way or another. Even simple stuff like this would be fine with me.

3rxsd69a7mrpmkeohth3kzbtik42qki


(not the best illustrative photo, but just a basic sea wall, I guess)
 

Cocaloch

Member
Absolutely. I spend a lot of time fucking with the terraform mod to make the shoreline work with my already in place buildings and to make a road work as well.

I wish the game would auto "urbanize" the riverfront areas or provide tools to make things more realistic.

Approaching%20the%20Loop%20from%20the%20North.jpg


Every non-village type town I've ever lived in has artificially shaped the rivers that run through them in one way or another. Even simple stuff like this would be fine with me.

3rxsd69a7mrpmkeohth3kzbtik42qki


(not the best illustrative photo, but just a basic sea wall, I guess)

We need a Nature's Metropolis expansion.


Yeah, it didn't help though.
 
Absolutely. I spend a lot of time fucking with the terraform mod to make the shoreline work with my already in place buildings and to make a road work as well.

I wish the game would auto "urbanize" the riverfront areas or provide tools to make things more realistic.

Approaching%20the%20Loop%20from%20the%20North.jpg


Every non-village type town I've ever lived in has artificially shaped the rivers that run through them in one way or another. Even simple stuff like this would be fine with me.

3rxsd69a7mrpmkeohth3kzbtik42qki


(not the best illustrative photo, but just a basic sea wall, I guess)

What we need is some kind of wall-floor (that people coul change easily its texture) where the wall goes infinitely into the ground, so you can put it in top of the cliff terrafomed, and just changes it into a reallistic wall. Of fourse that piece need to have also diagonal and curved versions, so you could build any type of river.
There are some japanese mods of Sim City 4 that actually do that to make reallistic city rivers and channels.

You could make something similar with one highway wall mod in cities skylines, but it didnt work if you tried to put water into the terrafomed river and had a bunch of other problems.
 

Jintor

Member
I would love to see a Chinese, Japanese or otherwise SE asian take on the citybuilder genre... or at least just the aesthetic.
 
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