New Cities: Skylines Video Wants to Introduce You to The Crew and Happy Feelings

[BuckyDee]

As Mariina and Karoliina mentioned in the video, I "could spend hours" just sightseeing in my city at street level as I develop it.

I REALLY REALLY hope that there will be "sightseeing" mode that let's me just jump in a car and drive around my city, be a part of the traffic, and enjoy the citizen activities. Can you imagine how cool it would be to see and hear a motorcycle pass you as you drive around?

And if you can name pigs, Karoliina, then SURELY you can assign street names to your major roads if you want to--- RIGHT??? RIGHT???

 

[sc4mp]

but why no love for carrier pigeons?

Too much poop to deal with at CO offices if we all used pigeons. They'd have to employ someone on poop patrol.

 

[Co_Karoliina]

Thanks for all the nice comments! It was super duper cold to film the video outside, but seeing that you enjoy it makes it all worth while

AKicebear, that's basically how the route selection is currently done! We have spent a lot of time making sure traffic flows nicely and making a pathfinding system that avoids huge traffic jams and silly routes. The citizens choose their routes based on time to travel, taking into account the traffic. For example if the city center is very busy with lots of traffic, like trucks bringing goods to shops, the citizens going there to shop can choose to use public transport even if they do own a car (not everyone does) because the traveling time with public transport is so much shorter. Also if an intersection becomes congested, the citizens leaving their home notice it and choose a different route if possible. This way the traffic is divided nicely around the map and traffic jams can and will change place if there are alternative routes.

 

[medopu]

Thanks for all the nice comments! It was super duper cold to film the video outside, but seeing that you enjoy it makes it all worth while

AKicebear, that's basically how the route selection is currently done! We have spent a lot of time making sure traffic flows nicely and making a pathfinding system that avoids huge traffic jams and silly routes. The citizens choose their routes based on time to travel, taking into account the traffic. For example if the city center is very busy with lots of traffic, like trucks bringing goods to shops, the citizens going there to shop can choose to use public transport even if they do own a car (not everyone does) because the traveling time with public transport is so much shorter. Also if an intersection becomes congested, the citizens leaving their home notice it and choose a different route if possible. This way the traffic is divided nicely around the map and traffic jams can and will change place if there are alternative routes.

Is this game going to make people complain about "long commute time" if they have to travel across half the map to their job destination?

I live in a country where people are known for being extremely unflexible about job-travel time. And even then, many of us drive at least 20 km to job + 20 km back home and not feel like we'd have to move because "travel-time" is killing us.

What i hated in simcity is, that often you would see building abandoned because residents got fed-up traveling a few region tiles else-where to work and moved out. (no traffic jams mind you) That's ridiculous. How will this game handle this issue?

 

[Co_Karoliina]

If there's a very, very long way from the residential areas to the workplaces, it can interfere with production by slowing it down, especially if there's only road connections available, but if there are workers available on the map an industry will always get them, long distances never stop your city from working. By using trains and subways the travel times shorten and help the city work better. It's a valid strategy to make smaller cities on the large map and have them dedicated to one zone, citizens are not afraid to travel.

 

[yuuzhantar]

Hi! I have a few questions

Are planing a buses only road. I think it's a very useful road type and permit to public transportation to avoid some traffic jams and congested roads
It can serve for ambulances and police too !

Will your modding engine permit to create new road types, with specialized things like 'bus only lanes', road with 2-3-4-5-6 ... lanes, 2 lane freeway connect ...

Another question, on freeways, does the trucks and the cars drive at same speed ? And does they choose the better (for destination and about congestion) lane to drive
or does they choose a random lane ?

 

[Domidragon]

They take the right line as soon as posible. One of the guys of paradox said this in a video.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

Are smoke signals moderated?

Yes

 

[AKicebear]

AKicebear, that's basically how the route selection is currently done!

Happy to hear it!

 

[Rik81]

Looking for this. Thanks for the video update.

 

[Hannodb]

Thanks for all the nice comments! It was super duper cold to film the video outside, but seeing that you enjoy it makes it all worth while

AKicebear, that's basically how the route selection is currently done! We have spent a lot of time making sure traffic flows nicely and making a pathfinding system that avoids huge traffic jams and silly routes. The citizens choose their routes based on time to travel, taking into account the traffic. For example if the city center is very busy with lots of traffic, like trucks bringing goods to shops, the citizens going there to shop can choose to use public transport even if they do own a car (not everyone does) because the traveling time with public transport is so much shorter. Also if an intersection becomes congested, the citizens leaving their home notice it and choose a different route if possible. This way the traffic is divided nicely around the map and traffic jams can and will change place if there are alternative routes.

I remember one of the video's showing this as well: You placed a new road to the harbour, but the trucks still took the longer road immediately after. That is immensely cool and realistic. Here in Pretoria, there was bridge crossing the N1 Highway. Recently, they build onramps for the bridge. It took people quite a while to realise: Oh, yeah - I can now go that way. I *love* the fact that it takes time for the traffic to respond to new roads.

 

[CalPolyFan]

The video is all touchy-feely- and great and all, but the city has way too many skyscrapers still.

If you guys love realism as much as you say you do, please reduce the crazy amount of skyscrapers, that just looks fake.

I have said it before, and you guys say you like listening, but you should have to work hard to get skyscrapers, they shouldn't be all over the place like that- and there doesn't appear to be any transition between low and high density built into the game engine. That doesn't seem like a realistic city simulation to me, sorry.

 

[medopu]

The video is all touchy-feely- and great and all, but the city has way too many skyscrapers still.

If you guys love realism as much as you say you do, please reduce the crazy amount of skyscrapers, that just looks fake.

I have said it before, and you guys say you like listening, but you should have to work hard to get skyscrapers, they shouldn't be all over the place like that- and there doesn't appear to be any transition between low and high density built into the game engine. That doesn't seem like a realistic city simulation to me, sorry.

there is a reason why developers made underpopulated skycrapers in this game. It is because it's easy to grow them. For a casual player.

now you might ask yourself, why will developers probably not listen to my personal demand of making the game harder and reducing the amount of skyscrapers?

If you listened to the video, you'd hear they talk about making game realistic as possible while still being fun. That's a big red flag. It's a major indication that developers are after the casual market
And they're sort of right in doing so. If this game wants to break a 6-digit revenue, they have to call out the casuals. Simcity 2013 sold a million copies in the opening two weeks. I know it did so well sales-wise due to good reputation of the gaming genre, but still...

...It took comparably more realistic and comparably more complex "simcity 4" more than 5 years to sell the same ammount of copies.


One of the most common complaints about Simcity 4 by casual players was: "I can't build skyscrapers, wtf".
And the same complaint would proclaim a pretty bad reputation on a game, that literally has "skylines" in the title.
I say be happy with what you've got, no point in wasting time, convincing developers against the game design idea that was set 18 months ago already, and just wait for some mods that might balance the skyscrapers out a little bit more sensibly. This is what i will do anyway.

 

[AKicebear]

The video is all touchy-feely- and great and all, but the city has way too many skyscrapers still.

If you guys love realism as much as you say you do, please reduce the crazy amount of skyscrapers, that just looks fake.

I have said it before, and you guys say you like listening, but you should have to work hard to get skyscrapers, they shouldn't be all over the place like that- and there doesn't appear to be any transition between low and high density built into the game engine. That doesn't seem like a realistic city simulation to me, sorry.

Some cities in Asia are incredibly dense in their cores, which can be as massive as the entire C:SL map. I appreciate that it will be possible to build a variety of city styles, including the very dense/tall.

I say Cim satisfaction (via service quality/coverage) should be what determines potential density, not your perception of what a large city is. Note that this could incredibly difficult from a gameplay perspective (we don't know) - although reality says it isn't!

I do think it is reasonable for low-wealth, high-density to be much easier to manage than high-wealth, high-density, given the relatively demands of each demographic. My impression is this is how the game will function...

 

[NinoRivera]

Spanish subtitles from www.simcitycoon.com

[video=youtube;KSVg3Tn1PZ8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSVg3Tn1PZ8[/video]

 

[Torv]

Thank you, NinoRivera.

 

[Wolfcoyote]

As Mariina and Karoliina mentioned in the video, I "could spend hours" just sightseeing in my city at street level as I develop it.

I REALLY REALLY hope that there will be "sightseeing" mode that let's me just jump in a car and drive around my city, be a part of the traffic, and enjoy the citizen activities. Can you imagine how cool it would be to see and hear a motorcycle pass you as you drive around?

If you mean like the Ultimate Camera Control Mod for the first CiM, that would be so awesome. Especially when going into walking simulation mode and just staring at a busy intersection and watching the traffic flow as the signals change.

It's things like that which eliminate my buyer's remorse from purchasing this iMac (even if they wouldn't implement this feature, the chance that a modder would or even having a machine powerful enough to play it the way it's meant to be played speaks volumes). Until this game gets released though, I'll continue annoying Steam followers with first-person screenshots of CiM Paris traffic.

 

[co_martsu]

there is a reason why developers made underpopulated skycrapers in this game. It is because it's easy to grow them. For a casual player.

now you might ask yourself, why will developers probably not listen to my personal demand of making the game harder and reducing the amount of skyscrapers?

If you listened to the video, you'd hear they talk about making game realistic as possible while still being fun. That's a big red flag. It's a major indication that developers are after the casual market
And they're sort of right in doing so. If this game wants to break a 6-digit revenue, they have to call out the casuals. Simcity 2013 sold a million copies in the opening two weeks. I know it did so well sales-wise due to good reputation of the gaming genre, but still...

...It took comparably more realistic and comparably more complex "simcity 4" more than 5 years to sell the same ammount of copies.


One of the most common complaints about Simcity 4 by casual players was: "I can't build skyscrapers, wtf".
And the same complaint would proclaim a pretty bad reputation on a game, that literally has "skylines" in the title.
I say be happy with what you've got, no point in wasting time, convincing developers against the game design idea that was set 18 months ago already, and just wait for some mods that might balance the skyscrapers out a little bit more sensibly. This is what i will do anyway.

Let's see how it goes, we have a background in rather challenging games, but this is all very subjective. Cities: Skylines will have different mods to adding to or taking away from the challenge.

 

[medopu]

Let's see how it goes, we have a background in rather challenging games, but this is all very subjective. Cities: Skylines will have different mods to adding to or taking away from the challenge.

yes, co_martsu, i'm sorry if you understood me the wrong way:

i didn't mean to say this game will be an easy game in every possible way.

what i wanted to say was, that a novice city-builder will perhaps not be as challenged by growing skyscrapers as he might be in Simcity 4.
I might be wrong, but this is what i assumed was going on, when you announced high density apartments will not feature that many families. It's the only explanation that makes sense to me