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Cities : Skylines

Keshik

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Mar 22, 2012
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https://www.citiesskylines.com







cities070414_0033_layer-31.png


Cities: Skylines
The Sky is no limit!

Inhabit a world where you define the rules. Cities: Skylines invites you to create the city of your dreams in a sprawling landscape dominated by cloud hugging structures and jaw dropping architectural marvels.

Developed by Colossal Order, Cities: Skylines offers sprawling landscapes and maps with endless sandbox gameplay and new ways to expand your city. Key to progression is the ability to influence your city’s policy by incorporating taxation into districts. All this including the ability to mod the game to suit your play style makes this the definitive city building simulation.

You’re only limited by your imagination, so take control and reach for the sky!

Main features:

  • City policies: Set policies to guide how the city and districts develop over the course of your playthrough.
  • City districts: Personalize city districts with names of your choice for variety and personality.
  • Road building and zoning
  • Unlock buildings and services
  • Taxation: Fine-tuning the city budget and services and setting tax rates to different residential, commercial and industrial levels and controlling what kind of areas are more likely to spawn in the zoned areas
  • Public transportation: Build transport networks throughout the city with buses and metros
  • Outside connections: Make industry and commercial districts flourish with new customers in the neighboring cities
  • Wonders: the ultimate end-game content that the players strive towards
  • Huge maps: Unlock new map tiles with unique possibilities to expand the city
  • Water flow simulation: Add new challenges to water services.
  • Polished visual style and core gameplay
  • Modding tools: Built in feature designed to encourage creative pursuits.
 
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mettalhed

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At first impression this gives me a CitiesXL vibe. I thought it was going to be by the same people based on the video, but then it turns out it's the people behind Cities in Motion that are making it.

Wasn't the general consensus that Cities in Motion sucked? I remember wanting to try it and reading some reviews, may have been in a thread here on the 'dex, and they weren't very favorable.

I'll keep an eye on it as it certainly looks like it could be good, although the video didn't say much about the gameplay mechanics. Neither did the description really. The idea of having more control over zoning and the division of the city into districts could be fun as long as it doesn't turn out to be SimCity Societies level crap.

If it turns out to be a CitiesXL clone then i'll probably pass. The newer versions where they ditched the multiplayer aren't horrible, i just don't like the gameplay. It also feels soulless; like SimCity 2013. I'm still fucking waiting for the next SimCity 4. So far nothing has topped it, and that's referring to the base game. With mods it's even better. There has always been something about the SimCity games that actually made the cities you were building feel alive. Haven't found anything like them yet.
 

Astral Rag

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Cities: Skyline is out to satisfy where SimCity couldn't

Do something constructive.

By Paul Dean Published Thursday, 4 September 2014


There's something of a size mismatch happening here. Colossal Order tells me it can give its players 36 square kilometres of space to build their cities in, 36 square kilometres in which they can expand and enlarge, spread and sprawl. That's enough space for suburbs, commuter towns and even arable land. In contrast, last year's SimCity only provided a couple of square kilometres and, in spite of the efforts of all the pages of team members listed in its credits (a number possibly higher if you consider that credits often only list staff present when a title ships), what happened within those city limits didn't always make sense. Colossal Order is confident it can make a larger, more coherent and more customisable city-building game with, well... nine people.

"To be fair, we are hiring!" says Mariina Hallikainen, Colossal's CEO, who also points out that many art duties have been outsourced. "But yes, we are nine people here and this is a really, really ambitious project for us." It's something of a passion project, too. Colossal, known for the Cities in Motion series of infrastructure management games, has long wanted to make a game about building more than just roads and railways. "We've always, always thought that this is what we'd end up doing," continues Hallikainen. "For years I've been telling Paradox [their publisher] that they needed to give us enough money to make a bigger game than Cities in Motion. Now, they finally have."

If you want some space to spread yourself out, Colossal Order say you'll have it.
While Cities: Skylines isn't just an attempt to exploit the hole in the market left by an irrational SimCity, both Colossal and Paradox are well aware of the failings of the latest in Maxis' usually polished series and know that there's an opportunity to be seized. The game's reveal trailer has that same perkiness to its music and that same romanticisation of suburbia that Maxis are known for, while a coy nod to SimCity's initial demand that players always be online is found in the simple, final boast "Play offline." Never one to equivocate, this point was driven home by Paradox's VP of acquisitions, Shams Jorjani in a recent Reddit AMA: "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 any more which, you know, was the ONLY way to do it a few years ago."

Though there's confidence in Colossal's words, the studio is not cocky and Hallikainen isn't keen for her team to run before they can walk. "It's very dynamic, working in a small team, and I think it's very important that everybody gets to pitch in in more than just their specific area, but the scope of the game is one of the biggest issues," she says. "Our competitors have had massive teams, massive budgets, and we don't have that luxury. We really have to focus our efforts on certain features, make sure those are polished and then expand later." The plan is for the team to first make sure that they have a solid base to build upon, a coherent, intelligent and comprehensible simulation that allows would-be mayors to manage their cities effectively. There's no plan yet to include in-game terrain modification or disasters, for example, though a map editor will allow players to create and import custom maps and lead designer Karoliina Korppoo says that the game's realistic water simulation does mean sadistic players could potentially find ways to flood their cities, "And will enjoy trying."

"The philosophy behind our design is, though it's based on the real world, we still want to make a game. It has to be fun," says Korppoo. "Skylines is lighter than Cities in Motion, to appeal to a wider audience. We're working hard to make an interactive tutorial, so less experienced players can master it, and the UI should be much easier to use and to understand." That said, the game she describes still sounds like it has considerable depth to its mechanics. Korppoo talks about "living cities" where "you can follow someone, see where they work and see where their home is." Individual citizens might move in or be born locally, but will also age with the passage of time and could become richer or poorer. Older citizens have different needs to families with school-going kids and the idea is that the changing demographics of your city will place different demands on the its public services. In the natural world, the movement of water though rivers, lakes and waterfalls might affect the movement of sewage, while surface water from the aforementioned flooding will gradually evaporate.

Though if you just want to pave over everything, you can do that too.
Within all this, Colossal plans to provide plenty of possibility for players to build the sort of towns, cities or villages they want to. Those could be a network of smaller towns, a collection of farming communities or a horrific megacity that tarmacs over every square metre. Public transport could be your priority, or private car ownership, and you can tailor your city's policies and industrial direction based on your preference. "If you want to go environmentally friendly, you can," says Hallikainen. "There's public transit and pollution is a big factor in city happiness. But if you want to go in a traditionally capitalist direction, you can do that too. There's a feature supporting this called Monuments where you get in-game achievements, special buildings, awarded depending upon how you're building."

For now, Colossal is going for a relatively generic, modern architectural style (think Dallas, rather than Paris), but the plan is to make Cities: Skylines as easy a game to mod as possible. Hallikainen hopes to give modders the chance to create and import a wealth of custom buildings, parks and other contributions and share these via the Steam Workshop. "We didn't achieve the level of modding we were hoping for in Cities in Motion 2, after having a really good modding community in Cities in Motion 1," she concedes. "Now, we really want people to be able to decorate their city."

It's one way that she sees the game developing after release and she's already anticipating changes players might make to both the game's assets and even its mechanics. It's also very likely that, with Paradox as its publisher, a variety of DLC will also follow, some adding new features, others simply cosmetics. Cities: Skylines is currently slated for a release some time between the first and second quarter of 2015 and Colossal hopes that, with additional content from both its team and the game's players, it will continue to grow for a long time after. The company certainly likes to think big.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-04-cities-skyline-is-out-to-satisfy-where-simcity-couldnt
 

felipepepe

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I was scared when they said it runs on Unity, BUT they also mentioned that it will be mod-friendly, with editors and the ability to import models, so I'm cool.

:thumbsup:

Also, those curved roads... man, I can finally build São Paulo!
 

Keshik

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Mar 22, 2012
Messages
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Hi there, you city builder aficionados! Once again it is the time for another exciting story from the pages of developer diaries. I am your humble host, Henkka, and I am here to talk about zoning. So, gather around by the fire and let your imagination fly...

Oh, and in case you missed the previous entry to the dev diaries, here it is: Dev Diary 1: Roads.

Basics of zoning (or "Why zoning instead of manually placing all buildings?")
If the roads are the bones of the city, then the zones are the meat around the bones. Very early on in the development process it was clear that we wanted the game to feature a zoning tool instead of placing the myriad of the regular buildings manually. With zoning the player's job is to rule where the different types of buildings appear but it is the citizens' (that is the game's) job to actually move in and build the new houses, shops and factories, all according to the different needs of the city. The player can determine what the city requires and when by using the RCI indicator in the GUI.

While discussing the possible ways to build a city a few ways emerged: placing buildings individually and zoning. While individual placing of buildings seemed interesting and in theory allowed the player to create the exact city they wanted it became clear that creating large cities would be difficult and cumbersome. The sheer amount of buildings needed to place would turn the game into an editor rather than a city builder. Also problems would arise with the needs of the city conflicting with the artistic visions of the player: the player would want to build 10 tenements in an area while the game calculated the city required only 3. Communicating this kind of information that is always changing as the game progresses would be impractical. And as the city grows and new technological levels are reached, the player would need to manually upgrade all the buildings in the city which in the end would mean going through thousands upon thousands of buildings.

Zoning on the other hand simulates more closely city planning on the higher level where the city planners lay down guidelines and rules for citizens and companies to work in. We decided that zoning is the way to go in a game of this scale. And clever city planners can take advantage of the various zoning tools and have more control over the zoneable buildings than just painting large areas if they so choose. For example, instead of zoning the full depth of the zone grid (4 cells) the player can zone thinner slices, like 2 cell deep areas, that spawn smaller building fitting the 2 cell deep restriction.

Zone types
Cities: Skylines features three main categories for zoning: residential, commercial and workplaces. All three are divided into two types, low and high density for residential and commercial, and industry and offices for workplaces.

3g80fay.png

Residential areas are the backbone of your city. Detached houses such as the ones on low density residential zones are inviting to older people and families with kids. High density residential apartment buildings on the other hand serve the needs of younger adults who value cheaper living costs among other things.

Each zone type serves different groups of citizens even though some overlapping occurs. For example, low density residential building are favored by families with young children and seniors while high density buildings are favored by young adults and families with no children. Low and high density commercial building work in a similar way: different citizen groups choose one zone type over the other if both are available in the city and can be accessed by good road connections.

While most of the workplaces are in the industrial and office zones commercial zones create workplaces as well even though their main function is to sell goods to citizens and accept goods deliveries from local industry. The first to unlock in the workplaces is the industrial zone which creates factories of all sizes according to workplace demand. Industrial efficiency is connected to the quality of workforce (workers' education) as well as their ability to ship goods they produce and if all the stores and shops in the city have full storages industry can stagnate until the issue is solved by providing new businesses or outside connections to ship their goods to. Offices, just like the high density residential and commercial zones, unlocks later in the game when the city is able to provide workers who are adequetly educated to perform in those jobs.

OtE3A1M.png

Zoning some high density commercial areas.

Zoning tools
In Cities: Skylines there are various tools for zoning, each having its uses.

Fill tool lets the player zone large areas on one click. This tool is especially useful with city blocks of small and medium sizes since it can fill them on one go.

Marquee tool allows the player to click and drag an area of their choosing and zone huge areas at once. The margquee tool aligns itself with the grid if the drawing of the area starts next to a zone grid.

The game also features two zoning brushes, a small and a large brush. With these brushes the player can paint zoned areas. The only thing that needs to keep in mind is that the zones have to reach the road or otherwise the buildings won't spawn.

0Fb4tz2.png

Large zoning brush in action.

Building leveling – Residential
Each zoned building has a level. This refers to the education level of the inhabitants, the land value in the neighborhood and the services available close by. As the citizens are educated and the overall quality of life increases with new city service offerings, the buildings gain levels. Lower levels have fewer requirements, for example they require only some of the city services. Lower levels on the other hand have bigger negative impact on the surroundings from polluting factories to residential buildings generating more garbage. The highest levels require full city service coverage as well as great commercial and workplace connections to keep up their standard of living.

Building leveling – Commercial
Similarly to residential buildings commercial buildings require that their neighborhood is at a suitable standard to level up and be able to offer services to higher level citizens (level 1 has general stores while level 3 has designer shops and so on). In most cases the bonuses granted by the presence of city services and the high enough land value will eventually lead commercial buildings to achieve conditions to level up. Unlike residential levels, commercial and industrial buildings with higher levels require workers with higher education. Almost every workplace has some level 0 jobs but in order to get the most out of a 3rd level workplace it requires staff with proper levels of education.

Building leveling – Industrial / Office
Workplaces like industrial buildings and offices level up when the surrounding conditions are met. Land value plays an important role for achieving higher levels and worker education levels are equally important to be able to run the businesses after said leveling has happened. Industry in particular experiences drastic changes when reaching highest level: goods produced are of the highest quality and pollution which is a trademark of lower level factories and such is a thing of the past.

IGBc7W7.png

Offices don't create pollution which is why they can be safely zoned next to a residential area.

Offices unlock at a later stage since they require even more educated personnel to be functional. Once the player reaches this level and is able to really start educating their citizens with the higher level of schools they can choose to switch to office workplaces instead of industry on the expense that it might not create as much tax income as the more polluting yet profitable regular industry.

- Henkka also known as an artist, designer and level designer at Colossal Order

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...y-2-Zoning&s=fb6337749d2b3d21d2532cdd3a4cdfe5
 

Norfleet

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I'm getting a "SimCity 4, but fun" vibe.
It looks impressive, but it also looks very fake. While it is a very pretty demo, I cannot help but notice it is characterized by the continuing absence of an actual game. I remain highly skeptical as a result.
 

Norfleet

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If it only covers HALF of Simcity 4, then why not just keep playing SimCity 4 to get the ENTIRE SimCity 4, with far less bloatware? It has to be BETTER than SimCity 4. However, I suspect this is physically impossible, since the Decline is inexorable. Incline belongs in the same category as perpetual motion.
 

Stokowski

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As much as I enjoyed it, ultimately I did find SimCity 4 too proscriptive in what it considered functional layouts, and - for something aiming at serious simulation - subject to too many annoying high-end flaws (e.g. inter-region travel leading to lost commuters). Mods helped loosen (and pretty) things up, but it was never quite the fun sandbox I had hoped for. Nor, when so much of its simulation workings were so opaque, could it fully succeed as a sim.

Skylines does look like it will be more 'toy', less 'rigid sim', and that's OK by me. Consider that decline if you will; that's fine. (But, hey, it's still gotta be better than the last SimCity debacle.)
 

vonAchdorf

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Looks promising, though the more I see, the less excited I am at the moment. I hope Focus Interactive will be able to salvage the engine for the upcoming Cities XXL, which could be a good release again.
 

Turjan

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I'm getting a "SimCity 4, but fun" vibe.
It looks impressive, but it also looks very fake. While it is a very pretty demo, I cannot help but notice it is characterized by the continuing absence of an actual game. I remain highly skeptical as a result.
It's probably the consequence of what people did with their prior games. For instance, I had been playing Cities in Motion 2 for quite a while, but never bothered much with the "game" part and had much more fun with constructing a road network and cityscape. Which is the reason why this should work for me, although they really have to work on their algorithms, which had some annoying outcomes in CiM 2.

Then again, I found SimCity 4 much fun. It's my most played game on Steam.
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Is Paradox financing this game? If that is so I'm a bit concerned.
But it looks good though
 

Mr. Pink

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
One thing that worries me about Cities Skylines is that it suffers the same problem as Cities XL: the bland oatmeal and cardboard atmosphere. The thing that made Maxis games so great was its sense of humor and design. When you zoomed in on a street in SC4, what you saw was dependent on how you managed your city. A happy and wealthy area had kids riding bikes, freshly mown grass and adults commuting to work in limousines. A poor slum or too low transportation/garbage budget had piles of trash, potholes and graffiti. Sims cheered whenever new buildings were plopped, picketed when the budgets were too low and panicked when disasters happened. Even though it was pretty much just animated sprites, it breathed life into the game, and the lack of it was what made Cities XL so bland.
 

cw8

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When you zoomed in on a street in SC4, what you saw was dependent on how you managed your city.

Yeah, that's the best thing I like about the Simcities. You had to manage your city well to get what you want. High tech industries only appear after certain conditions. High rise residentials and commercial skyscraper also only appear after certain conditions. Since RCI is zoned, random buildings will appear according to the conditions of the city and demand. Skylines uses zoning as well, hope it has the charm of what Simcity had.
 

cw8

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Oct 7, 2014
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Asset creator, design your own ploppables. Hope it's able to import custom 3D models to make buildings and props like BAT in Simcity 4.



Wish they texturise the roads more, still looks like they're made of smooth clay.
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Only ploppables? Will houses grow like in simcity in this game?
 

cw8

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Only ploppables? Will houses grow like in simcity in this game?

Check the earlier videos or the screenshots above. The game uses RCI zoning like Simcity.
 

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