36 Km^2 cities with the option to go higher. I like everything these guys are saying, and the CiM games are an excellent pedigree for this.
Very encouraged.
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Paradox announces Cities Skylines
- Thread starter Labadal
- Start date
36 Km^2 cities with the option to go higher. I like everything these guys are saying, and the CiM games are an excellent pedigree for this.
Very encouraged.
How does that compare to SimCity 4? Also heck yeah, more city sims! We need more of these.
Interesting, had no idea there was an embargo.
A typical shoebox is approximately 0.0000001 km²
From the AmA (most of it copy/paste, some in my own wording):
City Sizes and geographics:
Roads and Transportation:
City Building(s)
Modding:
It's on the roadmap. We'll see when it's added. What kind of disaster would you like to see?
Economy:
Various:
External things:
City Sizes and geographics:
- The map consists of tiles. Each tile is 2 km x 2 km and one city can have nine of those. You get to choose the tiles from 25 tiles on the map. The area is all seamless so you can have a pretty huge city! There are no regions, but there is a world outside the map that buys excess goods and ships resources if your city needs something.
- (Will there be regions?) There is an outside world, but you don't see other cities. They will just conveniently buy any surplus goods your industrial area produces and ship out stuff you need.
- As the basic goal in the game is to build a city we haven't planned that you could generate in game maps (road networks etc). However with the map editor you'll be able to create a landscape of your choosing to start building the city on. Importing a height map makes the landscape pretty realistic starting point.
- In Skylines that would be done in the map editor. It will be included in the game and there's loads of nice tools for shaping terrain. You might enjoy our water system, where you can actually place water sources and they will act like real water, flowing to fill low areas.
- The other day I made a mountain and dropped a huge drop of water on it and spent the next 5 minutes watching that water spread and settle. good times.
- (Changing terrain outside the map editor when already building a city?) At the moment it's planned to be limited to map editor only. One of the reasons for this is the simulated water system Skylines has. If you would do a minor change in the terrain while in the city you might flood your city and it takes some time for the water to evaporate, which is boring because you have to wait.
- It's a lot bigger. About 36km2. We've optimized the game for cities of that size. BUT - The sweetest feature is that we'll have an option where you can uncouple the limitation and go bigger. but that's up to you and your hardware
I'd love to see what PCGamers Large Pixel Collider can do
Roads and Transportation:
- Potentially no underground roads.
- Apparently elevated roads are in.
- When the game comes out there will be airplanes, trains and ships for outside connections. Currently buses and metros are only planned for inner city transport, because we felt having two options for transport on the roads might be a bit too much. Maybe later then, I love trams ;D
- We don't have roads divided by geographical location, but there is a nice selection of roads, like decorated versions with lower noise pollution of each type, highways and special highway ramps.
- Transportation is made lighter and more streamlined, since Skylines in not about it but rather the cities. We do have many options, like planes, trains, metro and buses, but you don't have to go to ticket prices or setting schedules.
- (Metros: under- and overground?) Currently it's underground only. But then there's trains also
- (Bridges) Well, the one you see in the trailer was built by our trailer-guy Steven in-game in a few minutes, so you can make pretty weird roads/bridges
- [Airports and harbors currently fixed in size/look.] This is also one of the things we're not done with yet, so no definite answer. Most likely there will be an option to place the entire airport at once.
- Building roads creates grid. The roads themselves are not ties to a grid, so you can place the roads in any way you want, including curved, and plop buildings next to them.
- The player is allowed to make bus lines by placing drops and drawing lines, but the vehicles go to the lines automatically from their depots.
- Buildings do have lots, but there are buildings of all lot sizes so there won't be any weird looking empty space left. If you upgrade or downgrade an existing road, the zoning is preserved but if the road size changes, buildings are automatically destroyed (only zoned buildings! You can't accidentally destroy for example a hospital) and new ones spawn.
- Yes, there are some parking lots
- [No horse-drawn carriages at launch]
- There will always be a few trucks to take goods from the industrial areas to the commercial areas, but those are the only ones absolutely needed
City Building(s)
- At the moment there no street names planned. City districts can be created and named, and each building has a name automatically generated.
- We are working on a tool that actually lets you create unique parks with the game assets and place those. There are also pre-made parks, naturally. We want to give the player room to be creative with parks, just having the same few types is too boring!
- (In Cities in Motion 2 you employ a brush style to determine fare zones - will this concept be implemented in Cities:Skylines? In particular for zoning, parks/greenspace, and identifying cultural / business centers?) Yeah, this is done via the district tool where you can zone your city in different districts and set local policies and specialisations.
- Cities Skylines has a built in beautification tool where you can create parks and define their in-game stats and then simply add them to your city. I LOVE this tool, probably spend almost as much time there than in the actual game
. Building designed parks will be easy and fun - We have decorations objects that can be placed freely. Technically they are all the things you have in parks, but with the option to place them without any limitations. This way you can for example fill the inside area of a city block if there's some space left.
- What we are aiming at from start are modern looking cities, these are cities being built today. This means that the cities often will look a bit "American" or "Middle Eastern (think Dubai) as they are generally built more recently. But we are looking into adding more classical building, maybe something we will throw up in the Workshop?
- Buildings level up, becoming more fancy. There's also low density zones for making places look more like suburbs and high density for creating a city center. It is possible to for example have an area of low level high density buildings that can look like a ghetto next to a city center of high level high density buildings. Abandoned buildings are there, and you can leave burned down buildings on the map if you like. There are also little things, like if garbage collection facilities are overburdened, the buildings start to pile full trash cans on the curb. Or the fact that when the ground gets polluted around an industrial area, the trees on the ground become dried up and brown. We really want the world to feel alive and are making many neat details to tell you who lives where and how they are doing!
- Buildings will be upgraded as an area become wealthier (or the other way around), changing appearances in the process
- Citizens work only inside your city. But with the large map size you can have smaller cities on the same map. I like to do a suburb, then a city center and a industrial area separately. People move around the map and you just have to make sure to have good highway connections between your towns.
- You can place decoration items freely. We want to help fill the odd gaps, so our grid system is made to not create many gaps and the decoration tools that are still being worked on will help with fixing the few there will be.
- Building is zone based, except for city services. Basically you mark zones for residential area, commercial area, industrial area and office area, and place things like hospitals, schools and police stations yourself.
- Districts - you paint districts with brush tools and then can change policies/rules for them specifically. What makes Soho soho? What makes harlem harlem? It's your policies and rules
- I'm not sure about the wall-2-wall building placement.
Modding:
- (Will there be Landmarks?) So, we are looking into that, but here is also where we really hope the community will go at it. The game will ship (according to plan) with built-in tools to import 3d objects, and to be able to share them easily on Steam Workshop.
- The game has an in-built asset importer that will allow you to create your own buildings and will use Steam Workshop to share them with other players
- We will reveal a bit more on the exact nature of the modding tools later, they are still in development
- (Regarding the economic model) I fully expect some modders to create some super hardcore version.
- (Modding in events like in Crusader Kings/Europa Universalis) From launch, that is quite uncertain, but we would love to see people try. If we implement it later in the game, yeah, sure!
- We'll look into the guides for modding later on and maybe can release them a little bit earlier. We'll have to see when we're closer to the actual release. But if you can save your 3D models in FBX format, you should be already well set.
It's on the roadmap. We'll see when it's added. What kind of disaster would you like to see?
Economy:
- Here is the thing, even simple supply-demand economies are actually really, really hard to get the balance right in. If we want to be specific, I guess we will build Cities: Skylines will operate in sort of a "perfect" pareto markets, where the cities are not large enough to have major effects on the world economy they are acting within.
- Taxation and budget are all there, how much you want to fine tune it is a bit up to the player.
- Policies is something we are really sinking our teeth into, and hope to be able to deliver toons, from the really important like industrial policies, to the more mundane like pet ban.
- The natural resources can be utilized by the industry if you as the mayor allow them to. Usually using a resource (pumping oil for example) pollutes more but brings more tax income, because it is highly valued and the industry makes more money as oil industry than general industry.
- The outside world will buy any surplus you city produces and offer goods for your commercial districts and resources for industry. Resource management as in the sense of Sierra citybuilders - no. We have a modern money based economy, but you can let your industry areas use natural resources that pollute more if they pay you more taxes. Agriculture is one on the industry specializations, so yes it's in the game
Various:
- The game timeline lets you go a little bit into the future, so there are plausible inventions like a fusion power plant.
- (Scenarios?) This is something we are looking into, but nothing is decided as of now. The devs can help me on exactly how much of this you will be able to mod.
- The buildings are handmade with love from our talented artists!
- (Events like in Crusader Kings/Europa Universalis?) Cities Skylines will not have events as such at release, we wanted to focus on making a really solid core game. However, this is on top of our wishlist as something to add later to the game!
- (Individual citizens) We're working on the information you will be able to see of each citizen at the moment. They all have a house, a job etc. Though the game really is more about the city than individual citizens. What kind of information would you like to see?
- The game will ship with three different climate zones: Northern European/Mid-west Southern European/California-isch Dessert
- Yeah, if you are talking proper weather and seasons (something Swedes and Finns know quite a bit about
) it is not in the game at launch. It is something that should be done properly and right and would require quite a lot of work. - It's a cool feature but not a focus are at launch. Like you say - it's often added to the games as an afterthought. If we add it we really want it to impact the game in a big way.
- (First person mode?) We have no current plans for this. But you'll be able to use the camera rather freely.
External things:
- We're looking at starting at $29.99 - that's HALF of some other management games. But we'll likely have some kind of Digital deluxe edition, or even a super collectors edition (if there's interest) - is there?
- Thankfully advances in technology have enabled us to do all city management calculations locally on your PC. We don't have to do them in the cloud anymore, which you know, was the ONLY way to do it a few years ago.
- (Using CiM2 Maps?) It's unlikely, I'm afraid. The system is so different. [But perhaps a tool to convert them]
- Linux will be supported (see PC requirements).
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
How did I miss this announcement? Looks great.
I called Origin support and got myself a refund for that.
LOL!!! this is a "feature" now?. Thanks EA.
Baron_Calamity
Member
Welp I'm sold. I'm not big on the other Cities games but this looks like it has potential. After all, I doubt we will get a decent Sim city game ever.
I'm hopin' that's not true...
ndawgdrake
Member
DAT AMA got me so hyped.
Let's hope the engine takes advantage of multi core. SimCity2013 ran on one core only.
Let's hope the engine takes advantage of multi core. SimCity2013 ran on one core only.
ndawgdrake
Member
high rez screens from the official website. looks a little "low detail" imo. hopefully we get some real uber graphics options
And here's the second and final part of the AmA (most of it copy/paste, some in my own wording):
City Sizes and geographics:
Roads and Transportation:
City Building(s)
Modding:
Disasters (why anyone would want them still eludes me):
Economy:
Various:
External things:
City Sizes and geographics:
- [For reference: Apparently max size in CiM2 was 64 km²]
- (Maximum citizens?) Great question - to be honest we can't answer that right now. A few more months of development when the simulation layer is more mature we'll be able to give you a more accurate answer. Is there a population size where you go: "Fuck I have to buy this game now" - that would be helpful for us to know.
- The game will be balanced for a certain experience but I don't think we will keep players from building bigger cities if they think their systems can support it.
- [apparently current target 1.000.000]
- The game will be optimized to run on the recommended hardware for the max city size. You can uncouple the city size limiter through an option - but you and your PC will be on your own.
- We're optimizing the game on the recommended hardware for the max city size (36km2) so it should run fine. IF you want to go bigger - you can remove the size cap in the settings - but then you and your PC are on your own The amount of objects visible on the screen is the heaviest on the framerate.
- Ponds, streams, waterfalls yes, also many tree types and gorgeous mountain textures (I'm very proud of our artists!). No animals planned at the moment, but they are a very good idea!
- It's difficult to foresee what the modders will come up with, but I would assume someone is crazy enough to try and build huge cities. We recommend staying in the tested area of 36km2 Which should be plenty of space to build your dream city!
Roads and Transportation:
- Upgrades for roads yes, for zones through increasing the land value.
- All the citizens are individuals, so each one has a destination.
- (manual placement of traffic lights?) Not at the moment, I'm afraid. The traffic lights come with certain sized roads to smooth the traffic. But hey, you can build roundabouts!
- You'll place the water/sewage pipes and underground metro. It will be very simplistic view for the underground to make it easy to build in.
- Pedestrians walk on sidewalks and cross streets at crossings. They also use pathways. Currently there are no bikes planned, but they'd be a really nice addition!
- Oh plazas we do have! I'm sorry, I forgot about them
People also walk in parks and go to see monuments, so for monuments that have area around them (like a statue) they can walk and stand near them also. - It depends what size of a road you are building, since the bridges are tied to the roads you build before hitting the water.
- (How many forms of transportation?) About 5. this is prime target for expansion if the game does well
- [Perhaps water canals]
- There's both freight transport and passenger (tourists and raw materials) moving to the city
- there will be pedestrian paths and squares!
- (Creating lines for public transportation like in CiM2?) You'll place the depot to the city and then separately "draw" the lines ply placing stops. We'll show you how later on
City Building(s)
- Things don't wear down in the game currently. But the different levels and zone types allow you to simulate ghettos, suburbs and places where rich people live.
- (I have another one - will pollution / traffic / development / parks / schools produce positive/negative influences on development? Additionally will NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard) occur?) Yes on the first part. Kinda to the second. You'll be able to create districts through policies. thus creating hipster/militant/business neighborhoods - they'll behave differently to different things. Some of them might not like change.
- (Sim City 2013 like expansion of public buildings like fire stations) The modular expansion of existing buildings we don't have, though some upgrade options are available for certain assets.
- There's two different zone densities to choose from. After zoning it's up to you to increase the land value and get the zoned area level up to better housing. We have a couple of different tools for zoning so you can do very specific stuff.
- Districts are painted with a brush (different sizes to cover larger areas and also very precise lines) and you are free to define the size and shape of them. The policies can be set for each district. I also plan to make a very tiny district around the villa and make my own laws
- Basically city services have buildings that the player can place. The buildings have an operational range that depends on the road connections they have, the budget and the size and type of the building. For example if I build a police station, I want to place it next to a large road so the police cars can move fast to nearby locations. The amount of cars the station has depends on the budget. If my neighborhood has a very high crime rate, I would up the budget until things are in control and then try to lower it a bit to see what's the optimal range. Patrol cars will leave the station and head out to a location where a crime is occurring. While traveling they affect the crime rate of the buildings around them. When they have gone to the crime and handled it, they will respond to the next call and lower crime rate while traveling there. So while services are affected by roads and traffic, the different road types help out a lot and it's not like the police have to visit each and every household to tell off the criminals.
- (How many neighborhoods?) As many as you want You can paint the area of the district yourself.
- [Refined brush tools from CiM2]
- In Skylines buildings level up if you provide them with good services and high land value. I'm not sure if you mean a building animation, but we will have scaffolding and cranes to show something new is being built.
- The idea is to be able to do really specialized cities. All public transportation for instance etc.
- (Can I choose the height of the buildings?) Yes - in a way. You can create cities that look like real cities. You can create Stockholm. Stockholm has very few highrises. One basically. That's were the Paradox HQ is located - COINCIDENCE? It depends how you zone and what the land value is.
- (Recreating real cities?) Yes - that's actually a big key pillar for the game "real cities"
Modding:
- First of all we will have a lot of built in tools: Map editor, 3d-importer with building editor, beautification tool. Besides that we also try to make the actual code, or at least bits of it, available. Unity is not the most open engine, so it required a bit of work, but we are trying as good as we can.
Disasters (why anyone would want them still eludes me):
- We to tell you the truth it will always be possible to flood the city if you try very hard ;D The water simulation allows water to accumulate in one place and over flow. What would happen if you flood the city is that the water eventually evaporates and you can go on playing as before. But we will make flooding a thing that does not happen easily, because it would suck if someone did it accidentally. And to do that on purpose you need a bit of skill
Economy:
- Resources can run out (like oil), but you will always have the option of import. So many things to talk about. Maybe we'll take some time and tackle this topic in a dev diary later on, would you be interested in that?
- Well this is a balancing question really. Oil and ore can theoretically run out. Trees and fertile land will renew. And we always have the wind and the sun!
- (I still play SC4 is because the city is always growing/changing and that means the city's finances must follow. So checking up on a particular elementary school's funding is almost necessary or your somebody (either the teachers or the city accountant) is going to eventually get ticked off. Is there going to be that level of micromanagement or will there be more of a Tropico approach with the three levels of funding?) We're aiming for that - cities shouldn't be static. It'll be deeper than Tropico's
- This feature is not fully implemented, so we'll look into it more closely. But the basic idea is that certain buildings attract tourists (like monuments, good transport options etc). Why not a proper commercial district?
- All the zoned areas pay tax. Industrial area pays tax for producing goods, commercial area pays tax when they sell goods and citizens pay tax based on their income. You can also gain money from public transport tickets.
- (Taxation depending on wealth level?) The happier the people are the more willing they are to pay the taxes, so as the level changes the taxation should be adjusted.
- Unfortunately you cannot sell power and water. What you could do if you produced too much is to lower the budget so the facilities produce just the amount you need and don't cost you extra. You can destroy waste in your city with an incineration plant so you won't end up drowning in it!
Various:
- I love the idea of proper climate and weather, getting the streets plowed, dealing with where to dump all the snow, getting ice skating rinks up in the parks. Adding all this is on the wishlist, and doing it properly, but it will not be part of the release
- (Graphical representation of things happening?) This is a super hard balance to strike. On one hand we've got 9 man/woman team working on the game - that's really small. But we definitely want to see some visual representation for schools etc. Maxis does this really great. They've put a ton of work into the visuals. Unfortunately the simulation depends on the visual stuff. In other words - if the fire truck doesn't drive up to the fire it never gets put out. We feel it's more important that the simulation works - that's our first priority - second is having a good visual representation.
- We are going for realism in a sort of "hard" sci-fi route, the game will push a few years in the future and some of that will be reflected in the game
- (Speed settings?) At the moment we have three and they feel quite sufficient. You can also pause the simulation but still build things
- Having subcultures and communities is one of my favs and something we will look into adding post-release, but it is not part of the release.
- Ok, so there are more city service buildings like fire stations, garbage collection, electricity and water sources. We don't have disasters or TV helicopters (cool idea!) or day/night cycle at launch. There will be different parks and children, though!
- (What is your health/crime/education model like? Anything similar to SC4 where education affects the kind of industry/crime you have?) Yep - SC4 is a good reference for what we're aiming for.
- (Could I completely ban carbon emissions and cars forcing everyone to walk or take public transportation, or make other very extreme decisions?) Yes. Just like that. One of our philosophies for the game is "real cities". Each city has weird neighborhoods and blocks. We want you to be able to re-create that in the game. Go total liberal hipster or total right wing gun nut. It's your city!
- There is what we call an in-game guide. It's basically a system that tries to remind you if there's something wrong with your city. For example if there's an area that has no electricity, if you leave it that way for a few game weeks (a few minutes) the guide will ask if it's intentional or should you perhaps give the dudes living there some electricity. It's quite nice, it already reacts to the most common problems and tells what should be done about them.
- There's also the unlocking, so players can gradually easy into the game, you don't have to start with all tools and respond to all needs. The unlocking also makes the player set their own pace. A very skilled player unlocks everything very fast, but a less experienced one can take the time to get to know each city service as they unlock and only then proceed to unlock more.
- (Citizens forgetting where they live/work like that other game?) Well it remains constant unless they have a reason to move. For example when young adults start a family they need a bigger house.
- (AI playing by itself and the player just spectating?) Adding it to the roadmap - would be crazy cool.
- Religion sounds like a great idea for an expansion.
- (Different city styles like 1940s NY, 1890s Chicago etc.?) Yes and we expect modders to help.
- Realism is a key pillar in our game. Nuclear reactors seldom go boom. Nor will ours.
- Political setting is not planned, but is a great idea for an expansion!
- Your people will age, having different school needs in the process. Higher education will allow for more advanced industries and buildings, for an example
- (How did SC2013 influence C:S?) Some. I mean - we always set out to create a hardcore oldschool city builder. One thing that did influence was what we wanted in the driving seat for the game. in SC the visuals take priority over the simulation. If the fire truck doesn't arrive at the fire it doesn't get put out - despite having 40 fire stations around there. In our game a working simulation is more important than a pretty simulation.
- To be honest we feel SC is doing something else. They've got their whole sims angle, gameplay centered around online/multiplayer. And that's fine - but we're trying to create a more oldskool game. Big cities, deep systems for managing your city, singleplayer (offline), modability.
External things:
- Release date: currently planned for first half of 2015.
- (Multicore) Yes - up to four cores will be utilized in a bunch of nifty ways.
- (New media) Expect a slow trickle during the fall. We'll step up the media campaign during winter.
- The idea is to do other Cities-esque games if this goes fine. Any roman-period fans? Sci-fi city builders?
- (Brand confusion with Cities XL?) Cities is a fairly generic name - adding skylines makes it unique and thus ) according to our legal dept, one that we can use. Look, between you and me I agree. my suggestion for name was "Metropolis". But we've got a good thing going with the "Cities" franchise. We fully expect our crowd (smart city builder fans) to understand the differences between the games - names aside.
- Will it be available drm-free: Depends on what you consider Steam to be. In order to help modding and sharing the game is built around Steam Workshop, so it will require steam
- Unity doesn't support 64 bit yet (unity 5 does). That said we're optimizing/making the game perfectly playable in 32-bit. It's not a simple case of "oh 32bit -so we're fucked for RAM".
- Yes - multithreaded. (from the lead engineer): When available, we are using 4 cores in a rather optimal way (simplified explanation would be main/rendering thread, simulation, water and pathfinding run on a dedicated core when available, ephemeral threaded calculations will use extra cores if needed and when available but in most common cases, they will run with no additional performance costs using the idle resources of one of the 4 core).
- For dual cores, the load is distributed between those too and if powerful enough quite possibly wont cause noticeable performance hits.
- DX for windows (OGL is an option) - OpenGL for mac/linux
- Just to make it clear, the binary is 32bit. But the game requires Windows 64bit to run so it can have enough dedicated memory.
Poodlestrike
Banned
What, 1 million citizens? Is that all?
It'd be nice to be able to build 1-to-1 replicas of NYC, but that'd be pretty ridiculous on the hardware front. I'm sold.
Although, I would've like a multiplayer mode. Despite all its faults, Sim City 2013 actually worked pretty well when you were chatting and coordinating with others in your region. Still, no use complaining.
They're solid. Steep learning curve, tho.
/s
It'd be nice to be able to build 1-to-1 replicas of NYC, but that'd be pretty ridiculous on the hardware front. I'm sold.
Although, I would've like a multiplayer mode. Despite all its faults, Sim City 2013 actually worked pretty well when you were chatting and coordinating with others in your region. Still, no use complaining.
They're solid. Steep learning curve, tho.
Dragonborn
Member
Looks great. Are the city in motion games any good?
I assume it is what they aim for with their hardware goals, as in: You will probably be able to have many more citizens but it might slow the game down to a crawl.
Also please don't edit in replies to posts made after yours, that makes threads harder to read than necessary.
They are very good. I prefer the first one a little, it's more charming than the second one which is more dynamic and sort of showed the way Colossal Order would take with their next game.
Even more good news from my POV.And here's the second and final part of the AmA (most of it copy/paste, some in my own wording):
City Sizes and geographics:
- [For reference: Apparently max size in CiM2 was 64 km²]
- (Maximum citizens?) Great question - to be honest we can't answer that right now. A few more months of development when the simulation layer is more mature we'll be able to give you a more accurate answer. Is there a population size where you go: "Fuck I have to buy this game now" - that would be helpful for us to know.
- The game will be balanced for a certain experience but I don't think we will keep players from building bigger cities if they think their systems can support it.
- [apparently current target 1.000.000]
- The game will be optimized to run on the recommended hardware for the max city size. You can uncouple the city size limiter through an option - but you and your PC will be on your own.
- We're optimizing the game on the recommended hardware for the max city size (36km2) so it should run fine. IF you want to go bigger - you can remove the size cap in the settings - but then you and your PC are on your own
- Ponds, streams, waterfalls yes, also many tree types and gorgeous mountain textures (I'm very proud of our artists!). No animals planned at the moment, but they are a very good idea!
- It's difficult to foresee what the modders will come up with, but I would assume someone is crazy enough to try and build huge cities. We recommend staying in the tested area of 36km2
Roads and Transportation:
- Upgrades for roads yes, for zones through increasing the land value.
- All the citizens are individuals, so each one has a destination.
- (manual placement of traffic lights?) Not at the moment, I'm afraid. The traffic lights come with certain sized roads to smooth the traffic. But hey, you can build roundabouts!
- You'll place the water/sewage pipes and underground metro. It will be very simplistic view for the underground to make it easy to build in.
- Pedestrians walk on sidewalks and cross streets at crossings. They also use pathways. Currently there are no bikes planned, but they'd be a really nice addition!
- Oh plazas we do have! I'm sorry, I forgot about them
- It depends what size of a road you are building, since the bridges are tied to the roads you build before hitting the water.
- (How many forms of transportation?) About 5. this is prime target for expansion if the game does well
- [Perhaps water canals]
- There's both freight transport and passenger (tourists and raw materials) moving to the city
- there will be pedestrian paths and squares!
- (Creating lines for public transportation like in CiM2?) You'll place the depot to the city and then separately "draw" the lines ply placing stops. We'll show you how later on
City Building(s)
- Things don't wear down in the game currently. But the different levels and zone types allow you to simulate ghettos, suburbs and places where rich people live.
- (I have another one - will pollution / traffic / development / parks / schools produce positive/negative influences on development? Additionally will NIMBYism (Not In My Backyard) occur?) Yes on the first part. Kinda to the second. You'll be able to create districts through policies. thus creating hipster/militant/business neighborhoods - they'll behave differently to different things. Some of them might not like change.
- (Sim City 2013 like expansion of public buildings like fire stations) The modular expansion of existing buildings we don't have, though some upgrade options are available for certain assets.
- There's two different zone densities to choose from. After zoning it's up to you to increase the land value and get the zoned area level up to better housing. We have a couple of different tools for zoning so you can do very specific stuff.
- Districts are painted with a brush (different sizes to cover larger areas and also very precise lines) and you are free to define the size and shape of them. The policies can be set for each district. I also plan to make a very tiny district around the villa and make my own laws
- Basically city services have buildings that the player can place. The buildings have an operational range that depends on the road connections they have, the budget and the size and type of the building. For example if I build a police station, I want to place it next to a large road so the police cars can move fast to nearby locations. The amount of cars the station has depends on the budget. If my neighborhood has a very high crime rate, I would up the budget until things are in control and then try to lower it a bit to see what's the optimal range. Patrol cars will leave the station and head out to a location where a crime is occurring. While traveling they affect the crime rate of the buildings around them. When they have gone to the crime and handled it, they will respond to the next call and lower crime rate while traveling there. So while services are affected by roads and traffic, the different road types help out a lot and it's not like the police have to visit each and every household to tell off the criminals.
- (How many neighborhoods?) As many as you want
- [Refined brush tools from CiM2]
- In Skylines buildings level up if you provide them with good services and high land value. I'm not sure if you mean a building animation, but we will have scaffolding and cranes to show something new is being built.
- The idea is to be able to do really specialized cities. All public transportation for instance etc.
- (Can I choose the height of the buildings?) Yes - in a way. You can create cities that look like real cities. You can create Stockholm. Stockholm has very few highrises. One basically. That's were the Paradox HQ is located - COINCIDENCE? It depends how you zone and what the land value is.
- (Recreating real cities?) Yes - that's actually a big key pillar for the game "real cities"
Modding:
- First of all we will have a lot of built in tools: Map editor, 3d-importer with building editor, beautification tool. Besides that we also try to make the actual code, or at least bits of it, available. Unity is not the most open engine, so it required a bit of work, but we are trying as good as we can.
Disasters (why anyone would want them still eludes me):
- We to tell you the truth it will always be possible to flood the city if you try very hard ;D The water simulation allows water to accumulate in one place and over flow. What would happen if you flood the city is that the water eventually evaporates and you can go on playing as before. But we will make flooding a thing that does not happen easily, because it would suck if someone did it accidentally. And to do that on purpose you need a bit of skill
Economy:
- Resources can run out (like oil), but you will always have the option of import. So many things to talk about. Maybe we'll take some time and tackle this topic in a dev diary later on, would you be interested in that?
- Well this is a balancing question really. Oil and ore can theoretically run out. Trees and fertile land will renew. And we always have the wind and the sun!
- (I still play SC4 is because the city is always growing/changing and that means the city's finances must follow. So checking up on a particular elementary school's funding is almost necessary or your somebody (either the teachers or the city accountant) is going to eventually get ticked off. Is there going to be that level of micromanagement or will there be more of a Tropico approach with the three levels of funding?) We're aiming for that - cities shouldn't be static. It'll be deeper than Tropico's
- This feature is not fully implemented, so we'll look into it more closely. But the basic idea is that certain buildings attract tourists (like monuments, good transport options etc). Why not a proper commercial district?
- All the zoned areas pay tax. Industrial area pays tax for producing goods, commercial area pays tax when they sell goods and citizens pay tax based on their income. You can also gain money from public transport tickets.
- (Taxation depending on wealth level?) The happier the people are the more willing they are to pay the taxes, so as the level changes the taxation should be adjusted.
- Unfortunately you cannot sell power and water. What you could do if you produced too much is to lower the budget so the facilities produce just the amount you need and don't cost you extra. You can destroy waste in your city with an incineration plant so you won't end up drowning in it!
Various:
- I love the idea of proper climate and weather, getting the streets plowed, dealing with where to dump all the snow, getting ice skating rinks up in the parks. Adding all this is on the wishlist, and doing it properly, but it will not be part of the release
- (Graphical representation of things happening?) This is a super hard balance to strike. On one hand we've got 9 man/woman team working on the game - that's really small. But we definitely want to see some visual representation for schools etc. Maxis does this really great. They've put a ton of work into the visuals. Unfortunately the simulation depends on the visual stuff. In other words - if the fire truck doesn't drive up to the fire it never gets put out. We feel it's more important that the simulation works - that's our first priority - second is having a good visual representation.
- We are going for realism in a sort of "hard" sci-fi route, the game will push a few years in the future and some of that will be reflected in the game
- (Speed settings?) At the moment we have three and they feel quite sufficient. You can also pause the simulation but still build things
- Having subcultures and communities is one of my favs and something we will look into adding post-release, but it is not part of the release.
- Ok, so there are more city service buildings like fire stations, garbage collection, electricity and water sources. We don't have disasters or TV helicopters (cool idea!) or day/night cycle at launch. There will be different parks and children, though!
- (What is your health/crime/education model like? Anything similar to SC4 where education affects the kind of industry/crime you have?) Yep - SC4 is a good reference for what we're aiming for.
- (Could I completely ban carbon emissions and cars forcing everyone to walk or take public transportation, or make other very extreme decisions?) Yes. Just like that. One of our philosophies for the game is "real cities". Each city has weird neighborhoods and blocks. We want you to be able to re-create that in the game. Go total liberal hipster or total right wing gun nut. It's your city!
- There is what we call an in-game guide. It's basically a system that tries to remind you if there's something wrong with your city. For example if there's an area that has no electricity, if you leave it that way for a few game weeks (a few minutes) the guide will ask if it's intentional or should you perhaps give the dudes living there some electricity. It's quite nice, it already reacts to the most common problems and tells what should be done about them.
- There's also the unlocking, so players can gradually easy into the game, you don't have to start with all tools and respond to all needs. The unlocking also makes the player set their own pace. A very skilled player unlocks everything very fast, but a less experienced one can take the time to get to know each city service as they unlock and only then proceed to unlock more.
- (Citizens forgetting where they live/work like that other game?) Well it remains constant unless they have a reason to move. For example when young adults start a family they need a bigger house.
- (AI playing by itself and the player just spectating?) Adding it to the roadmap - would be crazy cool.
- Religion sounds like a great idea for an expansion.
- (Different city styles like 1940s NY, 1890s Chicago etc.?) Yes and we expect modders to help.
- Realism is a key pillar in our game. Nuclear reactors seldom go boom. Nor will ours.
- Political setting is not planned, but is a great idea for an expansion!
- Your people will age, having different school needs in the process. Higher education will allow for more advanced industries and buildings, for an example
- (How did SC2013 influence C:S?) Some. I mean - we always set out to create a hardcore oldschool city builder. One thing that did influence was what we wanted in the driving seat for the game. in SC the visuals take priority over the simulation. If the fire truck doesn't arrive at the fire it doesn't get put out - despite having 40 fire stations around there. In our game a working simulation is more important than a pretty simulation.
- To be honest we feel SC is doing something else. They've got their whole sims angle, gameplay centered around online/multiplayer. And that's fine - but we're trying to create a more oldskool game. Big cities, deep systems for managing your city, singleplayer (offline), modability.
External things:
- Release date: currently planned for first half of 2015.
- (Multicore) Yes - up to four cores will be utilized in a bunch of nifty ways.
- (New media) Expect a slow trickle during the fall. We'll step up the media campaign during winter.
- The idea is to do other Cities-esque games if this goes fine. Any roman-period fans? Sci-fi city builders?
- (Brand confusion with Cities XL?) Cities is a fairly generic name - adding skylines makes it unique and thus ) according to our legal dept, one that we can use. Look, between you and me I agree. my suggestion for name was "Metropolis". But we've got a good thing going with the "Cities" franchise. We fully expect our crowd (smart city builder fans) to understand the differences between the games - names aside.
- Will it be available drm-free: Depends on what you consider Steam to be. In order to help modding and sharing the game is built around Steam Workshop, so it will require steam
- Unity doesn't support 64 bit yet (unity 5 does). That said we're optimizing/making the game perfectly playable in 32-bit. It's not a simple case of "oh 32bit -so we're fucked for RAM".
- Yes - multithreaded. (from the lead engineer): When available, we are using 4 cores in a rather optimal way (simplified explanation would be main/rendering thread, simulation, water and pathfinding run on a dedicated core when available, ephemeral threaded calculations will use extra cores if needed and when available but in most common cases, they will run with no additional performance costs using the idle resources of one of the 4 core).
- For dual cores, the load is distributed between those too and if powerful enough quite possibly wont cause noticeable performance hits.
- DX for windows (OGL is an option) - OpenGL for mac/linux
- Just to make it clear, the binary is 32bit. But the game requires Windows 64bit to run so it can have enough dedicated memory.
I know, kinda picky, but I really don't like the look of this. Something about the colors, the style of the buildings, the lack of density even in the downtown area. It just bugs me...
Still interested in the concept though, which obviously sounds exactly what everyone wanted from the start.
Still interested in the concept though, which obviously sounds exactly what everyone wanted from the start.
Poodlestrike
Banned
I was joking, thus the
/s
And thanks for the second thing; still learning the ropes.
I imagined as much, still I have never seen a "/s" and am still confused about its meaning. And also I wanted to make sure someone just browsing through the thread did not get the wrong impression.
Can't get to this (at work). Any updates or just more of the same?
These two paragraphs are interesting:
This idea was immediately demonstrated by a very intuitive looking road building tool. It was completely freeform and allowed you to build all kinds of crazy road structures. But a city is nothing if it just consists of streets, you have to have some room for people to live and commercial areas. Well how do you do that in this game? In the trailer you might have seen that roads have these squares on the sides to them. These are basically your city blocks. You can easily mark a side of the street as a residential area or a commercial one, but it doesnÂ’t end there. In this game you have different brush tools which let you mark areas however you want. So you think it might be a great idea to have a residential area with one little square in it which is commercial, you can totally do that.
Another interesting tool was the district brush. With that you could basically just draw on the map to create different districts within your city. From there it was possible to then go in and actually give each district different policies. If crime is lower in one district compared to another maybe you want to adjust how much money is being spent on it there. All their tools seemed to be this easy and intuitive with lots of options for the player to customize their city.
Another interesting tool was the district brush. With that you could basically just draw on the map to create different districts within your city. From there it was possible to then go in and actually give each district different policies. If crime is lower in one district compared to another maybe you want to adjust how much money is being spent on it there. All their tools seemed to be this easy and intuitive with lots of options for the player to customize their city.
Katzenjammer
Member
They are saying all the right things in that AmA summary! Let's hope the game lives up to it, I only played the first CiM and it was very entertaining (though a bit unpolished) so my hopes are up. The only thing I dislike so far is how uncharming the cities in those screens look, compared to for example SC4.
Oh man that totally is Pricedown! Bwahaha good catch. Holy cow.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Poodlestrike
Banned
Not all the way through, but hot damn it looks great.
EDIT: wish they'd give a better picture of the overviews. That's probably the one thing SimCity 2013 absolutely nailed.
KillerKlown
Banned
They seem to be putting Sim City to shame and that is sad.
Yeah, I saw this last night, and I was impressed with how far they've gotten. I was a little worried a full city sim might be a lot for them to bite off, but they appear to definitely be getting it done.