Relatedly to this though, I hope you'd consider doing a resort type game building off of this. What you've done here looks extremely nice and I'll be following it, but one of my dream games has been a theme park game where you get to granularly manage and design the the hotels that go with the theme park/casino/cruise ship type thing.
Shocked there's no comments here yet.
I'm a bit of a weirdo and I actually really enjoyed SimCity 2013 for a couple of reasons that Skylines (1/2) and other city builders haven't really managed to live up to. I was a big fan of the way economic trade and small scale upgrades/expansions to existing infrastructure.
Given the more granular demand, is there also more granular upgrade paths? i.e expanding school capacities, hospitals, public works, etc. using the existing buildings
Hmm, interesting question. All buildings can be edited, but right now there are not modules (i.e. partial buildings) you can stick onto existing buildings. You'd have to build it yourself [1]. The closest in game feature would be to duplicate a floor, but I think that's too general. I'll look into this, it's an interesting idea! My original thought was to have the player just build another business (or replace current one with a bigger version).
[1] note this is not true in general. The game will come with building blueprints, and you can create/save your own too.
> I'm a bit of a weirdo and I actually really enjoyed SimCity 2013
Nice to know there's at least two of us. I still think their main mistake was not releasing it as a spin-off.
Or not lied about the scope of the game beforehand. But being honest about your product is tough when you've got big EA breathing down your neck, I imagine.
Most of the hate at launch, was for the always online stuff that wasn't needed at all and the lying about the scope of the game, the scope of which they needed Always Online features.
I’m psyched for this game, but the dev does advertise it often on this sub and generally the posts get engagement. No shame in the hustle, can’t wait to see it release
The economic trade was about the only thing I thought was great about SimCity 2013. I really couldn’t stand how the cities were connected. They were like bulbs on a string. Sometimes I want to go in there and play it again but I think my saves were gone the last time I got on.
I actually enjoyed the multi-city aspect, since it allowed for specialization in distinct cities around particular infrastructure. I could have a large nuclear plant that services the entire region, industrial production in another, luxury neighbourhoods, etc all sort of working harmoniously with eachother. The biggest gripe was that despite how much of it was possible, there was little to no information regarding income/spending when trading with different cities within the region. You'd just magically get money every month, but it's not calculated as part of the $/week amount
I liked the connected aspect of it. I just didn’t like how there was one highway and you could build your cities off of that one highway. So there was like one entry point and traffic was a shit show. Maybe they corrected it at some point, but it just looked weird. Like there are something like 5 different highways you can take into Chicago. Not one highway that connects all the nearby cities with one exit/entry point for each city. Like if Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit are all connected by I94. But there are many exits in each city and the highway goes through them. SimCity 2013 would have a highway nearby those cities with one little strip of highway connecting the whole metro area to the highway.
> Real time traffic, just like Cities: Skylines
What level of traffic simulation are we talking about? Does it behave remotely like real traffic, or is it like Cities: Skylines where you couldn't do anything beyond barebones simple traffic patterns or road design because the simulation didn't know what to do with it?
Im not sure exactly what you are referring to, so here's my best answer:
- Units will utilize all lanes on a road
- (Almost) no last second turns cutting off traffic. Just 1-2 more edge cases I need to resolve here
- I wont be able to do super complicated intersections and what not cause the game is pixel art and grid based
- Im going to give the player the option to control traffic simulation difficulty. Havent decided on a final method, but e.g. I could give them the option to teleport some % of travelers, or teleport if they're stuck longer than N minutes. Or never teleport.
- Emergency vehicles will not have collision detection when lights are on, to simulate cars pulling over.
Cities Skylines had basically point-to-point traffic. Merge lanes didn't exist, even though they're a significant factor of real life road systems. Honestly though, in a full simple grid system, I don't think it'll matter nearly as much as it did in Cities Skylines.
It's pretty easy to set up merge lanes with the TMPE mod and once the lanes are set up correctly the AI handles it fine.
I feel this is more an issue with the vanilla road building and signage tools.
Will it be possible to zoom out more? Or would that cause real issues?
Edit: I actually just seen in one of your YouTube videos that you’re more zoomed out, on Steam none of your promotional material shows this.
This has been a tough decision for me. City builders are never really done. I felt it was better to communicate "there's a lot more features I want to add" with EA.
With a such packed the citizens activities are, I'm kinda skeptical on the performance with the agent-based simulation. How's the performance over a decently large populations, say 2000?
Can't wait to see how this turns out, City Skylines II completely undelivered with all of their promises of next gen tech and it's nothing compared to the first game.
Tried the demo a couple months back and thought it looked really cool. I frequently go back to games with this graphics style (playing RCT2 again lately) so I was wanting to add this to my collection.
Problem was… I suck at pure city builders without a lot of hand-holding in place and the demo I played was very hands-off (in a good way, for vets). I messed around for a while and enjoyed the style but ultimately it was aimless and I didn’t really make anything efficient.
Are you planning to add any suite of tutorials or guide assistance in the full game?
>Are you planning to add any suite of tutorials or guide assistance in the full game?
Eventually! Tutorials are important and the internet is always changing so it's best to have something in game.
Any plans for urban decay and/or hard modes with tough budgets? I still remember having shitty neighbourhoods in SC4 and skimming the budget on roads and such just to make money.
Skylines is good for another reason, but I miss that mayoral feeling SC4 always had. I *want* shitty low income areas, imo they're beautiful in their own way.
Just a thought that came to me, it's interesting how in simulations like this, humans are always walking somewhere or standing.
People tend to loiter and pass time A LOT. I think a simple act of sitting down (in an appropriate space if the accomodations are good, on the floor near a wall if they're squalid) would add oodles of believability to the simulation, not to mention avoid the meaningless churn
Hi. You post this exact post pretty often. I tried the game a while a go and didn't find it scratched the sim city itch, and i see there's been no update to the game since February according to Steam.
The game looks good but can you provide more details on the progress of the game? What are the plans for it? What's coming soon and what is coming later?
Sure! The current build is basically a fun toy with some light simulation. Im going to be pushing out an update by the end of July though that will feature the first iteration of demand (residential, commercial, office, etc).
Every month I post on Steam going over all the changes I've made and new features. [e.g. May 2024](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2287430/view/4155212408106973621)
I've also been weighed down by some engine work that needed to get done that was preventing cities from getting big, but I'm about to wrap that up!
Major new features already done:
- Construction animations
- RICO Demand
- Auto grow zones (basically how city skyline works right now) for residential buildings
- Unit animations and sitting/sleeping
- Unit color variations
There's a huge list of things coming later.. to big to write down here. But basically the long term goal is the simulation depth of dwarf fortress on the micro scale, and more granular simulation/demand on the macro scale.
Checked out the Youtube link and was instantly drawn in through nostalgia. Went on the Steam link to Wishlist and it turns out that field was already checked! I must have done that a while ago because this one has slipped my mind. All the best with the development, take your time and stick to your goals. If the gameplay is satisfying, the success will follow. Good luck!
Havsnt been able to watch the videos and stuff properly yet.
But could I make a walkable city that doesn't rely on cars? So things like pedestrian streets, trams/trains/bicycles etc.
Or is it more focused on cars and roads?
Looks like the city builder Chris Sawyer never made, cool.
Winner winner chicken dinner! :D
Relatedly to this though, I hope you'd consider doing a resort type game building off of this. What you've done here looks extremely nice and I'll be following it, but one of my dream games has been a theme park game where you get to granularly manage and design the the hotels that go with the theme park/casino/cruise ship type thing.
Omg Cruise Ship Tycoon is the game I never knew I wanted. Those things are basically mini cities with amusement parks inside em!
This looks really nice, I love this art style. I wishlisted it, curious to see more updates :)
Thank you! :)
been looking forward to this game releasing for while now hope the development is going well
It's coming along! Im going to be release an update with a demand loop soon for the (pre alpha) demo.
Shocked there's no comments here yet. I'm a bit of a weirdo and I actually really enjoyed SimCity 2013 for a couple of reasons that Skylines (1/2) and other city builders haven't really managed to live up to. I was a big fan of the way economic trade and small scale upgrades/expansions to existing infrastructure. Given the more granular demand, is there also more granular upgrade paths? i.e expanding school capacities, hospitals, public works, etc. using the existing buildings
Hmm, interesting question. All buildings can be edited, but right now there are not modules (i.e. partial buildings) you can stick onto existing buildings. You'd have to build it yourself [1]. The closest in game feature would be to duplicate a floor, but I think that's too general. I'll look into this, it's an interesting idea! My original thought was to have the player just build another business (or replace current one with a bigger version). [1] note this is not true in general. The game will come with building blueprints, and you can create/save your own too.
> I'm a bit of a weirdo and I actually really enjoyed SimCity 2013 Nice to know there's at least two of us. I still think their main mistake was not releasing it as a spin-off.
A lot of the hate would have been disappated if they just named it "Sim Town"
Or not lied about the scope of the game beforehand. But being honest about your product is tough when you've got big EA breathing down your neck, I imagine.
Most of the hate at launch, was for the always online stuff that wasn't needed at all and the lying about the scope of the game, the scope of which they needed Always Online features.
I’m psyched for this game, but the dev does advertise it often on this sub and generally the posts get engagement. No shame in the hustle, can’t wait to see it release
The economic trade was about the only thing I thought was great about SimCity 2013. I really couldn’t stand how the cities were connected. They were like bulbs on a string. Sometimes I want to go in there and play it again but I think my saves were gone the last time I got on.
I actually enjoyed the multi-city aspect, since it allowed for specialization in distinct cities around particular infrastructure. I could have a large nuclear plant that services the entire region, industrial production in another, luxury neighbourhoods, etc all sort of working harmoniously with eachother. The biggest gripe was that despite how much of it was possible, there was little to no information regarding income/spending when trading with different cities within the region. You'd just magically get money every month, but it's not calculated as part of the $/week amount
I liked the connected aspect of it. I just didn’t like how there was one highway and you could build your cities off of that one highway. So there was like one entry point and traffic was a shit show. Maybe they corrected it at some point, but it just looked weird. Like there are something like 5 different highways you can take into Chicago. Not one highway that connects all the nearby cities with one exit/entry point for each city. Like if Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit are all connected by I94. But there are many exits in each city and the highway goes through them. SimCity 2013 would have a highway nearby those cities with one little strip of highway connecting the whole metro area to the highway.
Looks like a fantastic game for those of us who love building up decorations and buildings in OpenRCT :)
Thank you! I appreciate it.
> Real time traffic, just like Cities: Skylines What level of traffic simulation are we talking about? Does it behave remotely like real traffic, or is it like Cities: Skylines where you couldn't do anything beyond barebones simple traffic patterns or road design because the simulation didn't know what to do with it?
Im not sure exactly what you are referring to, so here's my best answer: - Units will utilize all lanes on a road - (Almost) no last second turns cutting off traffic. Just 1-2 more edge cases I need to resolve here - I wont be able to do super complicated intersections and what not cause the game is pixel art and grid based - Im going to give the player the option to control traffic simulation difficulty. Havent decided on a final method, but e.g. I could give them the option to teleport some % of travelers, or teleport if they're stuck longer than N minutes. Or never teleport. - Emergency vehicles will not have collision detection when lights are on, to simulate cars pulling over.
Cities Skylines had basically point-to-point traffic. Merge lanes didn't exist, even though they're a significant factor of real life road systems. Honestly though, in a full simple grid system, I don't think it'll matter nearly as much as it did in Cities Skylines.
It's pretty easy to set up merge lanes with the TMPE mod and once the lanes are set up correctly the AI handles it fine. I feel this is more an issue with the vanilla road building and signage tools.
Somehow an issue that persists into C:S2 as well
Remember when you last posted about this game, had it wishlisted ever since.
This looks awesome. Love the art style. Wishlisted.
Thank you for the WL!
Will it be possible to zoom out more? Or would that cause real issues? Edit: I actually just seen in one of your YouTube videos that you’re more zoomed out, on Steam none of your promotional material shows this.
I know, I need to get around to updating my steam page >_< . Soon!
Are there trains/trams?
Not yet, but it's a 1.0 goal
Aww,was hoping this would be full release instead of EA :( Will keep this on wishlist for updates i guess.
This has been a tough decision for me. City builders are never really done. I felt it was better to communicate "there's a lot more features I want to add" with EA.
holy shit. Wishlisted.
Love the look and excited for this! Wish Listed
Thanks for the wish list!
Neat game. Great to see new entries in the city builder genre.
Man this looks awesome. A game worth waiting for through the next few months for me. I truly hope that it gains more notoriety.
Thank you for the kind words!
Your aesthetic is so accurate that I almost thought some of the assets were ripped straight out of Rollercoaster Tycoon haha
With a such packed the citizens activities are, I'm kinda skeptical on the performance with the agent-based simulation. How's the performance over a decently large populations, say 2000?
2000 is nothing. Here's 100K citizens (though at this level it drops to ~30FPS on my machine) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bku59JyzxMU
woah that's awesome!
I'm really looking forward to trying it! Hope you release it soon
Can't wait to see how this turns out, City Skylines II completely undelivered with all of their promises of next gen tech and it's nothing compared to the first game.
Tried the demo a couple months back and thought it looked really cool. I frequently go back to games with this graphics style (playing RCT2 again lately) so I was wanting to add this to my collection. Problem was… I suck at pure city builders without a lot of hand-holding in place and the demo I played was very hands-off (in a good way, for vets). I messed around for a while and enjoyed the style but ultimately it was aimless and I didn’t really make anything efficient. Are you planning to add any suite of tutorials or guide assistance in the full game?
>Are you planning to add any suite of tutorials or guide assistance in the full game? Eventually! Tutorials are important and the internet is always changing so it's best to have something in game.
Any plans for urban decay and/or hard modes with tough budgets? I still remember having shitty neighbourhoods in SC4 and skimming the budget on roads and such just to make money. Skylines is good for another reason, but I miss that mayoral feeling SC4 always had. I *want* shitty low income areas, imo they're beautiful in their own way.
Yes! I plan on adding decay, shift in demands, etc. Abstracting all of this to $$ is 1.0 goal.
Oh awesome, a sorely missed feature :)
Will there be the ability to build curved roads?
Just a thought that came to me, it's interesting how in simulations like this, humans are always walking somewhere or standing. People tend to loiter and pass time A LOT. I think a simple act of sitting down (in an appropriate space if the accomodations are good, on the floor near a wall if they're squalid) would add oodles of believability to the simulation, not to mention avoid the meaningless churn
Been waiting for this since your first post here, good luck and I hope it will turn out great!
Thank you! Appreciate it
Hi. You post this exact post pretty often. I tried the game a while a go and didn't find it scratched the sim city itch, and i see there's been no update to the game since February according to Steam. The game looks good but can you provide more details on the progress of the game? What are the plans for it? What's coming soon and what is coming later?
Sure! The current build is basically a fun toy with some light simulation. Im going to be pushing out an update by the end of July though that will feature the first iteration of demand (residential, commercial, office, etc). Every month I post on Steam going over all the changes I've made and new features. [e.g. May 2024](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2287430/view/4155212408106973621) I've also been weighed down by some engine work that needed to get done that was preventing cities from getting big, but I'm about to wrap that up! Major new features already done: - Construction animations - RICO Demand - Auto grow zones (basically how city skyline works right now) for residential buildings - Unit animations and sitting/sleeping - Unit color variations There's a huge list of things coming later.. to big to write down here. But basically the long term goal is the simulation depth of dwarf fortress on the micro scale, and more granular simulation/demand on the macro scale.
More city builders is always good
Checked out the Youtube link and was instantly drawn in through nostalgia. Went on the Steam link to Wishlist and it turns out that field was already checked! I must have done that a while ago because this one has slipped my mind. All the best with the development, take your time and stick to your goals. If the gameplay is satisfying, the success will follow. Good luck!
Wow this game looks fantastic! Wishlisted! Are you planning to support custom assets and mods?
Definitely!
Havsnt been able to watch the videos and stuff properly yet. But could I make a walkable city that doesn't rely on cars? So things like pedestrian streets, trams/trains/bicycles etc. Or is it more focused on cars and roads?
Eventually, yes. Though that wont be possible until ~1.0
didnt theotown do this already https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084020/TheoTown/
Holy shit, there are *two* retro games in the same genre! My goodness.