There is much demand for regions much like simcity4. However I found sc4 regions to be quite limiting and, in my personal opinion, not worth putting in without improvements. What improvements would you think benefit the region level?
Me:
Multiple people playing different cities simultaneously.
Autosyncronization (no need to load neighboring cities to sync demand)
Edge effects. Placing dirty industry at the edge of one city will spill over tot he neighboring one.
Well, there are quite some region play features that I miss in Sc4:
- I am not sure if autosnychronization would work but at least a static pic of the neighbours - where available - would be very helpful to smooth out transition!
- Some Infrasturctur could be region wide - airports, ports, universities, prisons, schools etc.
- Electricity could be created region wide and transported by HV lines with the need of trafo stations at the consumers.
just some points ... ;)
Quote from: Nardo69 on September 08, 2009, 09:45:44 AM
Well, there are quite some region play features that I miss in Sc4:
- I am not sure if autosnychronization would work but at least a static pic of the neighbours - where available - would be very helpful to smooth out transition!
- Some Infrasturctur could be region wide - airports, ports, universities, prisons, schools etc.
- Electricity could be created region wide and transported by HV lines with the need of trafo stations at the consumers.
just some points ... ;)
Ditto on all of the above, Autosyncronization and Edge effects does sound quite nice, as to the "Multiple people playing different cities simultaneously" I'd prefer a good AI to do that, as I definitely a single-player type of person :)
Well since, I'm working on the simulator, here's what I've planned so far
Quote from: Nardo69 on September 08, 2009, 09:45:44 AM
Well, there are quite some region play features that I miss in Sc4:
- I am not sure if autosnychronization would work but at least a static pic of the neighbours - where available - would be very helpful to smooth out transition!
- Some Infrasturctur could be region wide - airports, ports, universities, prisons, schools etc.
- Electricity could be created region wide and transported by HV lines with the need of trafo stations at the consumers.
just some points ... ;)
- Some relevant data will be compiled for each city and then used to represent it when player is not playing it
- That is definitively how it's gonna be..
- As for electricity, electricity will be provided through publicly owned electric companies. It is a concept I thought might be interesting. Players will be able to control certain number of companies. Companies can be region owned and city owned. Region owned companies are needed for big investments, which, cities on their own couldn't afford (power plants, airports, railroads). Any profit from these companies will go the region (this means shared between the cities) or to the owner city. Same for the losses. I'll perhaps elaborate on that in the topic on the economic model. It is a feature which is possible to be derived from the basic model I described on the aforementioned topic.
Quote from: Jonathan on September 08, 2009, 11:15:47 AM
Seeing CXL please don't make it a multiplayer.
Only make it a multiplayer once the single player has been totally finished for a year or so.
We don't need much of the effort to make multiplayer. It is just useful byproduct of the basic framework.[/list]
Multiplayer thread is opened, please move discussions on mp threads there :)
I think that people don't want Sim City 4 style regions, per se, but rather they want really large playing areas. EA's implementation was rather clever, in that they scaled the existing city/connection model to a larger grid, but you were in fact really only ever playing one city at a time.
Without thinking outside of the box on this topic, my thoughts on improving SC4 regions went like this: Assume computing capacity can handle this setup. Instead of loading a single city, load up to 9 (the city in the center and the adjacent eight). Only the one in the center would be editable, but events could happen in any of the 9. When the playable area moves to a new segment, then the unloaded adjacent areas are loaded, and the other ones are swapped out.
In addition, a second thread would be running which would determine the probability of some event happening in an unloaded city. The probability would eventually go to 1, forcing the load and update of cities which hadn't been loaded in a long time.
Thinking outside of EA's region box, I imagine a non cellular type model could work too, although I'm a bit less creative about it right now.
how about just having one budget for the hole region, and not have to bother with selling water and garbage to other cities, that really started to annoy me withy SC4.
1 Have one or two large power plants that feed the whole region, this allows us to have high Voltage power lines that acutely to something
2 Have 2 or 3 large pumps that feed the hole region.
3 having one large serge fram
4.haveing better travel form one city to any other city in the region
ummm I will think of more let me dust of some of my CXL suggestion
Quote from: mrdazza_460 on September 29, 2009, 03:42:18 AM
how about just having one budget for the hole region, and not have to bother with selling water and garbage to other cities, that really started to annoy me withy SC4.
We have to take think of situation where we have more than one player within the region.
Quote from: mrdazza_460 on September 29, 2009, 03:42:18 AM
1 Have one or two large power plants that feed the whole region, this allows us to have high Voltage power lines that acutely to something
2 Have 2 or 3 large pumps that feed the hole region.
This is how it's going to be. One decent thermoelectric plant costs something of the order of 1bn$ and since we want to have realistic costs in game, that is far more than one city budget can handle.
Quote from: mrdazza_460 on September 29, 2009, 03:42:18 AM
3 having one large serge fram
We still have to sort out resource extraction economy (and yes, farms belong there)
IMO a unified regional administration, including a unified budget, and a unified region (i.e pollution travels intercity, power stations can power entire regions in a realistic fashion (you do not need a coal power plant for every town)) is a great idea. Also multiplayer within a region, and the idea of loading the entire region and only playing one city but being able to move between cities without going back to the region view is a good idea. Game speed aside that is, but i'm sure there are ways to alleviate that, and besides computers are getting more powerful.
A regional terrain editor would be good, and indeed what i think would be best is this: You start a region like in Simcity 4, at the same zoom level. You have, however, the god mode GUI. You edit regional terrain in this GUI. Next you switch to a regional Mayor Mode GUI, which, as you hover over a particular city, switches the data to that city's data, so for instance if this was the regional setup of four cities:
simtown-simville-simland-simmingdale
and you began play in simtown, if you moved over to simville the GUI would reflect that move and switch to simville data and editing. Thus a seamless transition between cities.
For multiplayer you'd simply block any editing input into the other player(s) cities but you'd still get data on them.
Regional transportation and COMMUTING. Sorry for capitalizing but i just can't get over the fact that in Simcity 4 travelling one mile to work is considered a 'long' commute. Seriously i know somebody who lives in Dapto and commutes to Sydney (that's like a hundred km train ride). Theres no excuse for not allowing regional commute imo, especially with faster modes of transport like trains.
Another possibility is a regional government that is ABOVE the local mayor administrations. This could be like 'simnation' or more correctly due to the average region size and average country size comparison, 'simstate' or 'simcounty'. It would be an AI administration like simnation that could do things like present you with rewards for your cities, compare average crime rates in simcounty to your presently active city, etc etc.
Just some ideas. Oh and beyond simcounty you would of course have other simcounties, like the neighbour cities of 2000 and 3000.
*auto-generated regions* like how you made cities in SC3k and SC2k.
Built in region terraforming.
Regions aren't limited to just a square, you can add cities to the edges of it to keep it expanding. eventually it will get too demanding for pc's to handle but that's the user's choice.
QuoteWe have to take think of situation where we have more than one player within the region.
Your not going to go all Cities XL on us are you, pleases don't
What's wrong with single player games, doesn't any one won't them anymore? Am I just living in the past?
Quote from: mrdazza_460 on October 01, 2009, 03:04:33 AM
Your not going to go all Cities XL on us are you, pleases don't
NO.
Elite, we have someone working on a random map generator.
Mr. Dazza, as I said here in many threads, there will be no difference between the single player game and the multiplayer game. The only difference between the two will be the presence of people and a few lines of code so city owners can manage who can touch their cities.
Do you honestly think that the Cities XL way of doing multiplayer is the only way?
Well no, I don't think that CXL is the only way to do thing.
There is a difference between the single player and multiplayer is cheating and in city building game I generally like to cheat, and I can do it with out people complaining.
I don't cheat because I won't to play the game quicker, I cheat because I don't won't to worry about money. I like to build every little detail as possible spend time designs road networks and where I wont certain building placed, with out a money cheat I can not do this, as I tend to places roads then delete them because I don't like the way they look. If I can't do this i cant get the satisfaction out of the game as I wont.
You are the one who decides if you want your region to be multiplayer or not.
I figure we are going to go for a sandbox mode where money is not an issue as well as a limited simulation.
it probably all be 'easily' configurable...
My dream would be for a region that is not blocked off with predetermined city sizes. Rather you go in and where you start your village you will be able to actually see that village's limits expand naturally....if you start another village a few kilometers away well, then maybe they will eventually bump into each other and either merge or become semi-rivals. I try to play my regions like that....I will look at a "large" city square and pick anywhere from 1 to 4 little areas that would have been logical for a settlement to start. Building each one seperatly and see how they interact.
I also "cheat" in the fact that I'm NOT playing a game, I AM trying to creat an area that is believable and that I would like to live in. I like a to have just a touch of the economic worries, but only enough to keep things semi-realistic.
That to me is one of the joys of the system, you the player can do what you want to do ...some create beautiful bats and lots, some do down to the cent budgeting, and others recreate exact duplicates of real life places, some can right moving and believable histories of their creations. Some want huge city scapes with vast oceans of skyscrapers. Others like myself make intimate little paintings of an idyllic lifestyle that can't be found in the real world anymore. All of this breaks down to the fact that any improvments are going to have to apeal to a very large cross section of players and as any elected official will tell you....somebody is always going to be irked at what you've done.....grin...
Oh, and as a post script, in a new region situation, I would be thrilled beyond belief if it were possible to climatize the region and to make sure that the native flora and agriculture reflected the climate..I hate seeing a bannana plantation pop up next to a strawberry patch or an apple orchard.
Ok, so I'm still going ;D If we are talking region wide, how about "hidden" natural resources? 1 area of the region might have coal or oil or whatever that can be exploited. That way town A can be built around a coal mine, town B around a shipping point, town C around a....you get the picture.
I'll shut up now.....temporarily
Lincity has resources such as coal and i would back the idea of resources in a city sim- if that is there is a mode where the region is self sustainable.
Resources is a good idea...just please don't make it too much like RTS games. It should be set so that while coal is handy (more $$ is always good), it isn't required for building.
I'm gonna take oldrogue's suggestions and run with them.
No predetermined city sizes: Unfortunately, there DO need to be limits on city AREA to aid the computer in processing. Squares are the easiest geometric shape to work with and still allow cities to be built in a grid. 1024 meters to a side is the largest size available as posited HERE. (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=9142.0) That's a lot of land to work with, 10.24 kilometers per side, which is about 104 km2. Keep in mind that the largest city in SC4 has an area of 8 square kilometers. The largest proposed city for CityMania is 13 times larger than the largest city in SC4.
Now, we all agree that in real life, naturally formed cities that are perfectly geometric are extremely rare. In nature, rectangles, squares, and other 4-sided polygons (quadrilaterals) are rare as well. Thus it can be assumed that squares are BAD. Why? Well, take a look at your nearest truss bridge.
In fact, here's one right now.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fc%2Fc5%2FRRTrussBridgeSideView.jpg&hash=e8695f8890648d9c791ee3b8a8b4f52722dce28d)
Image courtesy Wikipedia.
Note the central span. The outermost horizontal and vertical members together make up a rectangle. Alone, that rectangle would not be able to support the weight of a train and the bridge would break. BUT, the side is braced internally with triangles created by the center vertical member and the two diagonal members, as are the opposite side, top, and bottom. Triangles are the strongest and most-often occurring geometrical shape found in nature. Man figured this out and voila! Bridges that can hold tons of weight with no problem.
"But Patrick!" You say. "If that's right, why are buildings square?" And that's a good question. The thing is, the human mind thinks geometrically and squares and rectangles provide the most usable room for their shape. Ever stood up in a triangular room? It's not comfortable, but it's sturdy.
"OK, that makes sense." You say. "So why don't skyscrapers fall down? They're square, and don't have any triangular bracing."
Well, that's not entirely true. You see, skyscrapers DO have internal bracing, besides the beams in the walls. It's just not visible on our level of existence. Take a piece of concrete and use an electron microscope to zoom in. What you'll see is that the concrete's constituent parts are triangular pyramids. Sand is a crystal, and most crystals have a triangular structure at the molecular level. It's why diamond is so strong: all of it's molecules are triangular, and are arranged in triangular patterns.
Now, to get back to my original idea: Regions SHOULD be unlimited, at least to the point your computer can handle. However, cities do need limits, both because they have them in real life but also because your computer and the programming of the game needs a place where it can say "Stop here."
My suggestion is this: In Region mode, after you've used your God-level terraforming tools, you open a menu and pick a city size. Then, you can draw out the city limits using a line tool with splines available as well. Let's say for example I choose the smallest available size, which has an area of 0.4 km2. I choose to have my first city have a hexagonal shape. I am limited to a hexagon with an area of 0.4 km2, and thus draw lines that are 0.42 km long. We'll assume that there's an ingame tool or wizard to help with this and move on.
(I know what they say about assumptions, believe me.)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi234.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fee71%2FDragonshardz%2FIRP%2FCityBorders.png&hash=7e27648ba33bd6b01a0c11a481e5af665e70d427)
Rendering program courtesy Autodesk, Inc.
This is the shape of my city limits. There are mountains to the north and a river to the east. I will be blocked by the mountains unless I wish to spend money to build a tunnel, but I can expand across the river should the need arise.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi234.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fee71%2FDragonshardz%2FIRP%2FCityBorderslandforms.png&hash=fd9179a145584a12fd2610df96364106d7240963)
Rendering program courtesy Autodesk, Inc.
In SC4, once I fill up the available space, that's it. Time for a new city. Not so according to my idea. If Jenress is surrounded on all sides by wilderness, I can simply expand the borders up to the next size, small, with an area of 1.6 km2.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi234.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fee71%2FDragonshardz%2FIRP%2FCityBordersExpanded.png&hash=7196eac9d6632659bf80e093de76a557acdc73f2)
Rendering program courtesy Autodesk, Inc.
Ah, but what if there is a city across the river? My city expands up to the river and stops there. A popup appears, explaining that my city has come in contact with another city (run by Player X) and cannot expand further in that direction. When I press OK, I am allowed to draw a polygon with an area the size of the blocked area.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi234.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fee71%2FDragonshardz%2FIRP%2FCityBordersExpanded2.png&hash=9ab4d7b4b7023dca045de53e6e9dc32cf2ab0bbe)
Rendering program courtesy Autodesk, Inc.
Now, at this point, I can do three things with the other city: Ignore it, trade with it (this is where resources comes into play), or fight it. Being a nice guy, I choose to trade with it.
I enter into a chat similar to this...
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi234.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fee71%2FDragonshardz%2FIRP%2FDIPLOSCREEN.png&hash=c6d76795107ed50d97a0d24699dc36b91caf8482)
Image courtesy Stardock, Inc.
...though not in real-time unless the other player is also playing his city. I choose trade and make an offer. My city has coal, so I offer to trade it.
When Player X next plays that city, my trade offer appears in a "While you were away" popup. He accepts, and we continue on our merry way. Eventually, Player X gets tired of the city and "sells" it to me. This allows for simulation of how real-world cities grow.
Selling: Player X enters his diplo menu and offers to give me the city. I accept, and the game downloads and installs the city's files on my PC and generates a list of plugins that the city depends on. I now have full rights to the city, and can decide to remove anything I don't want, like a transit plugin.
Obviously, selling cities would not be lightly-made decisions, as the seller loses all rights to the city. There would most likely need to be some sort of compensation, but I'll not be getting into that.
Now, at this point I continue growing both of my cities, eventually expanding them to the largest size of 104 km2. At this point, my cities must create more usable land within their limits or start growing up if they haven't already.
The idea is that the cities have a predefined size but not a predefined shape, which allows natural growth. In fact, you could even draw a city with circular limits. Also, in my illustrations, the city borders include mountainous areas. In SC4, if there's mountains in your city you're stuck with them, but with this system cities can avoid having useless space by drawing borders just up to where the land becomes unusable.
This does raise another question: What about intercity transit networks? One of the things I find most annoying about SC4 is having to load an entire city just to draw highways from point A to point B. A way that would work better is to have a regional government level of building, so transit networks can be built between cities without having to create cities. And of course, your city will just incorporate those networks into its borders as it grows.
Resources, as stated, are a great way to give meaning to the presence of a city. Acclimatization is also a great idea. I don't have any ideas on how to make those work at the moment, so I'll be ending this post.
As I said in the other thread there is one reason why computer games almost always have square maps.
Quad Trees (http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_tree"). Not only do they require a square map, but the map size must be 2^n. That limits the maps to 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048.... in dimensions. Quadtrees are a serious optimization tool programmers use to optimize the game both at the graphical level and at the simulation level. Non 2^n maps are possible, but you will be robbing the programmers of tools to make the larger maps playable.
Is it possible to to say add 2 maps together, so like a 32 map with(next to) a 2 map?
And still have the Quad Trees thing
This would then allow for almost any size map.
Also DragonShardz idea (which is exactly what I was trying to say in the other thread :)) would work with squares.
Yes, you can insert the custom poligon into a square
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi37.tinypic.com%2F2vtd5d2.jpg&hash=834cb1ac112fee1df454f7277df3fe5d7c3d6489)
Is it possible to add two different size maps next to each other? yes. however it requires two quad trees and the boundary would be terribly inefficient.
A custom polygon can be set in a larger square but that is a heck of a lot of wasted space. Every time the boarder of the square is crossed the square will have to quadrupedal in size. It might also makes the city boundary calculations a bit more messy (remember pollutiona nd other effects will spill over into neighboring cities). However I am becoming more tired so I don't know if that will be the case or not.
I also see no mention on how to prevent griefing.
Also plugins will be configured at the region level, not city.
my mind can't see obvious ways of griefing
examples?
Positioning a city to inhibit growth of another player.
Creating long, skinny shapes which results in 8192x8192 16384x16384 squares or larger taxing the server.
Creating odd shapes which access more resources.
Odd shapes intending to block players from accessing transportation resources
in this case the square is the most obvious solution, but angle limitation to maybe 90- 80 degree not smaller could fix this also and limiting the number of angles a polygon can make
Alright, time for some pros and cons.
In chat we've been discussing how to organize everything as far as cities and regions.
Right now it is set up to be a clone of SimCity 4. Why? Because it is a convention people are use to. It also makes multithreading very easy. Cities are spawn off as their own process.
Expandable and variable shaped cities are possible but will come at a cost. In order for the various issues to work out the coordinate system will be region based, as well as the quad tree. An active city will be a specific parts of the quad tree that is active. However multithreading will be much more difficult to implement as it will have to be simulation component based, not city based.
Unless other devs have an objection, I'm going to go with the expandable city option. It will be more easy to make each city feel like it is part of a larger region. It will also take up more memory and the size of the region will be limited by system memory.
That being said it will be more easy to revert to a sc4 system (mostly code deletion) vs attempting to add it down the road.
The things I disliked about the way SC4 did the region thing were:
1. The lack of intercity effects such as pollution
2. The terrible system for edge alignment
3. The lack of regional terrascaping tools
as to the city growth idea... i am not for or against it but if it is the best idea i see no real objection to it, although i am a fan of the square shape
I shared the same complaints as you do. In Simcity4 each city was completely isolated from one another. The region view was little more than screenshots of the cities stitched together. What this did allow for were massive regions independent of system performance. The problem is it can only go so far. Eventually it will become very complex to make intercity effects.
Intercity effects will be in, no doubt about that. Full region load will make that easy to do so. Edge alignment is something that will need to be considered more. We need to look at how it is implemented in multiplayer, especially in non cooperative settings. Having one giant mesh for the region terrain is also going to be problematic, especally on older and laptop systems. Perhaps the mayor of a city can set a flag for each neighboring city that will let any edge terrain adjustments spill over into this city. This means the mayor of the city trusts the other. Otherwise the mayor of the other city wont be able to do any terraforming that would spill over into the other city.
Having the whole region loaded will also enable regional level landscaping tools.
My current idea is to have squares (that are part of the quadtree for the same of simulation simplicity and programmer sanity) which cities can buy. Maybe something like 32x32 or 64x64 chunks of land. Max city size could probably be a variable that can be set by the player (with sane defaults) so the admin of a multiplayer game can prevent cities from getting too large and overwhelm the server. I also have code that parses the config.bmp from sc4, so simcity4 region cities can be made.
Quote from: croxis on October 27, 2009, 04:54:29 PM
(..) My current idea is to have squares (that are part of the quadtree for the same of simulation simplicity and programmer sanity) which cities can buy. Maybe something like 32x32 or 64x64 chunks of land (..)
Just 10m*10m (per tile buy like in Rollercoaster Tycoon (but of course, with a more user-friendly method to buy big chunks @ once).. I think we should use some kind of zoning tool like thing to buy land. (Change the zoning plan) let the player decide how much land he want to buy. Cities should be able to grow to eachother. In a 'state / provincial' way there should be the possibility to lay down (rail)roads to connect cities / towns in your region. So, for building new 'buildings' you have to buy land, but for connecting roads, you are free to go (to connect to other cities).
To prevent abuse in Multiplayer: when a city buys land where another city laid some road-network, the road can be destroyed (for free?). In realtime there is some national or provincial/state agency that makes the decisions but this is a city-sim game... so we have to invent some kind of solution.
You also should be able to create a new or annex a (suburb) town inside your current city region.
When you create a new region, maybe we should include
options (not required!) to let the computer create small towns 'randomly' for you. You then can pick a town/city to start with.. This will create some kind of scenario feeling ()stsfd()
It is possible to have cities buy in the 10x10m grid. What I am worried about will be the impact on performance crossing into so many different quad trees (again, depends on how much we use it in simulation (tom, any input on this?). For rendering it will definitely be important as we are using so many models). Thankfully the chunk size is easy to adjust. There is really no way to tell until we try it. In this case I would rather go conservative and have a positive first impression than people complaining about performance issues.
A realism argument can be thrown in as well. Most cities annex land in chunks.
Tom said that the economy model will require a road connection to outside the region to start things off. I do not see why this can't be expanded so the region is also populated with some rural houses and farms.
The random start option is a great idea. We can combine this with importing sc4 region maps to make existing, but empty, cities like sc4.
Another idea is the option to buy land from other cities.
Quote from: croxis on October 27, 2009, 09:21:03 PM
It is possible to have cities buy in the 10x10m grid. What I am worried about will be the impact on performance crossing into so many different quad trees (again, depends on how much we use it in simulation (tom, any input on this?). For rendering it will definitely be important as we are using so many models). Thankfully the chunk size is easy to adjust. There is really no way to tell until we try it. In this case I would rather go conservative and have a positive first impression than people complaining about performance issues.
A realism argument can be thrown in as well. Most cities annex land in chunks.
Tom said that the economy model will require a road connection to outside the region to start things off. I do not see why this can't be expanded so the region is also populated with some rural houses and farms.
The random start option is a great idea. We can combine this with importing sc4 region maps to make existing, but empty, cities like sc4.
Another idea is the option to buy land from other cities.
these 'tiles' are already there while rendering the terrain. Add a parameter to that specific tile "OWNER=" I think every computer can handle it as long you keep the camera pointing to the ground, and let the program only 'draw' what should be drawn inside that viewport.. Our solution using 'billboards' for static content will be one of the most performance lifters.
Quote from: croxis on October 27, 2009, 09:21:03 PM
It is possible to have cities buy in the 10x10m grid. What I am worried about will be the impact on performance crossing into so many different quad trees (again, depends on how much we use it in simulation (tom, any input on this?). For rendering it will definitely be important as we are using so many models).
Ah, I have a few things to say on that but we have to decide first whether we're going with 3D terrain + billboards for buildings or we're going SC4 way: bunch of bitmaps with alphas in the memory.
sc4 is a 3d engine with billboards technique
Not exactly. Read this
http://simcity.ea.com/about/inside_scoop/3d1.php
Quote from: tomkeus on October 28, 2009, 08:03:39 AM
Not exactly. Read this
http://simcity.ea.com/about/inside_scoop/3d1.php
"
In fact, SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 internally are entirely 3D; only the user's view of the city is limited to certain positions and angles." ;)
Maybe i shouldn't say 'billboards'. I think we have to stick with the SC4 way. We can use the remaining resources that are saved using this method for the simulation engine / special effects
But we need to split something here. Static = pre-rendered, dynamic (roads are dynamic because you want to make nice flexible corners) = rendered by engine. Not everything needs the same approach. Efficiency comes in ;D
Right. SC3k used billboards (prerendered image slapped on a quad) while SC4 used full 3d objects but an interesting buffer system. The latter is the better option as we can still use shadows. I also plan on maintaining an unoffical full 3d client branch, but that is something for my own time. Because each building might be at a different angle it is possible that there could be a separate render for each building. With different zooms and rotations, a lot of video cards may run out of memory. Many video cards only have 128, 256, or 512 megabytes. Laptops usually have less. But that is something we can also test and should be too difficult to switch.
I'm sorry but i think there is no reason to step off the squared terrain. There are no 'reasonable' benefits. We also shouldn't limit the computer with a 'city life' way gameplay (buying pre-defined chunks of land.. thats so limited). Let the city only buy what it needs. Very simple. (this makes zoning cheaper as you already purchased the land)
We still have one major problem. Connectivity with other cities. Even with cities that lies 3 'blocks' away.
In SC4 buildings are not full 3D, they are cuboids with an image of the building on it taken from the correct angle etc. Only cars and networks are full 3D.
and to add to that point, I think that the performance and detail in games like city life and citiesXL shows that, in contrast with what some people claim, it is still impossible to create a full 3D city simulator with a level of detail close to that of SC4 - a "free camera" SC4, so to speak.
Ahh, the dev blog made it sound like the buildings were fully modeled 3d. So in this they are billboards, just a little more fancy!
I had a fairly lengthy post on the gameplay and optimizations of squaring off the terrain. But apparently everything I said so far (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=9209.0) was unreasonable (which irritates the crap out of me, partly because of the insult, and partly my lack of experience inhibiting me on articulating my views better). I'll just ask you a gameplay question.
How do you intent on preventing a griefer from surrounding a neighboring city with a road to prevent the neighbors expansion?
Actually, as far as I know the plan is to have roads be free-owned, IE, the individual city does not own roads that are outside it's borders, SimNation does.
You do raise a point, what is to prevent griefers from, well, griefing? Perhaps a reporting system?
yeah, I wouldnt suggest it a good idea that roads are owned by a player...maybe roads are owned by the city thats closest...
well if the concept of war was introduced into the game, you could just fight griefers, but cities fighting each doesn't sound right. <<< sorry didn't intend for this line to be taken seriously, though I can see how it could
Also another suggestion involving regions, being able to have like make Countries (in other games called and alliance), and then each city can vote to have a capital (not being able to vote for themsleves though) and like the city has to pay taxes to the capital, and then these can go to cities that have airports and ports(so not every city will have an airport, most will use the airports in their country) and such to help then pay for it, and goes towards like regional transport (There has to be other non-transport related regional things), to get workers from city to city.
Jonahtan
I am going to state a few obvious statements that I hope we can agree on.
This is a city simulation game, not a war game or a nation simulation.
The game has multiplayer (multiple cities and multiple players per city) but NOT massively multiplayer.
Multiplayer ideas so far:
- Mayor can restrict who can play the city
- Mayor can restrict tools the players can use on a player by player basis (transportation manager, utility manager, etc)
- Mayor can restrict different construction layers on a player by player basis.
When designing a game the objective is to remove chances of griefing. This is done by having non griefable mechanics, not by adding more. Having a way to report a player, or adding an additional mechanic (war) is managing the problem not preventing it. In the most extreme players wont be able to do a thing. That is no fun. But we can make sure the game mechanics keep people from making other lives miserable.
It also sounds like people want to abolish the city boundary. There are gameplay and technical ramifications to this. How do we define what parts of the simulation are running or not? How do we define ownership?
It is a bad, bad direction this is going.....
I play Simutrans which I realize is a
QuoteYour goal is to establish a successful transport company. Transport passengers, mail and goods by rail, road, ship and air. Interconnect cities, districts, public buildings, industries and tourist attractions by building a transport network you always dreamed of
But it does have something which might be worth looking into and that's how it does its regions, you can randomly create a region or you can import an existing place, you then have a set of options for that region
How many starter cities?
How many industries ie a coal mine etc?
How many landmarks?
and so on
you can add new cities and industries once you begin playing and you can link all the cities up by road or rail
http://simutrans.com/index.html
http://en.wiki.simutrans.com/index.php/Main_Page
http://maps.simutrans.com/
:)
Well I meant in RL cities get help for managing airports, by the government or pirvate organistion. And intercity transport is also funded not by cities. It then makes it more realistic, to have someone spending on the bigger intercity things. And as always when I post on this board I'm only throwing in a sugestion.
The idea for a randomly generated region with pre existing or without pre existing cities is great imo. it reminds me of simutrans and simcity 2000, two of my favorite games in the simulation genre
it could perhaps be incorporated with a game difficulty so that instead of just affecting initial money amount and adviser messages game difficulty affected everything?
croxis, no one ever suggested abolishing the city boundary, just the fixed shape and size.
Well, I was having a little think yesterday, and came up with an idea:
You know how in SC4 you can create any city you want to, be it an industrial powerhouse, commercial centre or a tiny town, an you were only influenced by the geography in that the was a river/mountain/hill that you built a bridge/dug a tunnel/built around, and that was as much interaction with the landscape as was possible.
I was thinking, when CityMania is released, in the startup regions, which could be made from RL places, that the geography and location will do something more than that.
Eg: Say you're playing a map of the Rhine river in Germany. Now most people might create a huge megalopolis, or a few tiny towns, but that's not how it's like in RL. The Rhine is a very busy waterway, with lots of industries in it. So, in order to maybe recreate the Rhine river accurately, the region could have like a 10x multiplier added onto the demands of commercial and industrial?
I suppose I'm saying let the cities be influenced by location and resources, say if you were to create a region and could choose what kind of bonuses you could have, say a 5x commercial multiplier, and a 0.5x industrial multiplier for the whole region, but the 0.5x multipier could be cancelled by the fact that in a city tile in which you play, there could be coal, which increases industrial demand by 2x. Resources could be divided up into easy medium and hard categories, with trees being the easiest say, and oil being the hardest. Then if you were to give your region a difficulty rating, easiest would have up to 3 types of resource a tile, and hard would have 0 to 1 resource a tile. This would then influence your city building, determining what you could build. If you were creating a region, your choices would also help you to build a certain type of city.
This is all a suggestion, but I hope you like it!
A campaign type gameplay is something to really look into.
By this I mean special maps with a starting situation, some special settings like raised crime or industry multipliers, and maybe even some infrastructure already built up. It would give a great starting point.
about regional play... how about making city size tiles standard.
Create a square
"brush selection tool" in regional view with an option to select its size via a box menu or mouse scroll, then hover the mouse to select the tiles you want to play. Depending on your computer resources, you could play 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 etc.
It's like playing small, medium or large cities in SC4 without being confined to preexisting regional city seperations... a bit like playing 1/4 of a large city (i.e. medium city), or play half/half medium cities at the same time, or 4 corner mediums. You could even scoll to the next city tiles, saving the data of the exiting tiles and loading the ones you're scrolling to (a bit like Grand Theft Auto) without changing the current size of tiles you're playing simultaneously. This way, people with low-end computers could still play region-wide cities seamlessly and people with powerful computers could play big chunks at the same time...
I don't know how you guys want to implement the overlapping data such as pollution, civic radius, commuters and other forms of data but the option of having municipalities (or borough, district, chunk of city, whatever the name suit you) would make managing civic funding better in the case of dealing with underfunding or, for example, teacher strike. The municipality could overlap to the next city tile that is
"frozen in time" because it is not simulated, but the access to it's services remains from the next tile, kind of like just importing the data of the municipality in the adjacent city and render it real-time. Selecting the right civic and the right building by naming the schools (now naming stuff would have a real use!) Same here applies with radius. You could always re-size your municipality if the services are overcapacity.
I have no idea how you guys want to implement multi...
- either split the region equally so everyone has their own turf and leave a separation between cities with overlapping ownership so that any development must be agreed by both parties (or plan ahead and agree to transit connection if there are no separations).
- total coop: region revenue split between players and they do anything they want, even destroy, rezone etc. (no whining, not for playing with strangers, may break relationships, etc) but the ability to use multiple computers to simulate more tiles at the same time and create weird original cities.
What ability I would like to see is the ability to plan development, just like building roads and zoning normally but
"on hold" and grayed and/or 50% transparency, then
accepting the development by buying it. Basically, you could plan out everything first and then buy a zone there, a road here, or whole chunks of planning at once. The single player would benefit alot from this, multi-playing would be way more dynamic.
Players could plan their stuff, then must be accepted by other players to enable that development, either in a unanimous fashion of democratic fashion (needs majority). Each player could have their own color, plan a development, then
propose so other players could see (otherwise it just becomes a jumbled mess of overlapping plans), could base their own development on their colleague's and modify the original plans (and applying their own color to it) if they don't like it... so you could have multiple players making the same city, while at the same time running the simulation with their computer to make the city grow by chunks or the whole city if enough players are there at the same time...
Or simply split the city into municipalities with each player having their own to do his will.
That's pretty much it. A lot more than I originally wanted to say... hope you read it.
You will be happy to know that most of the stuff you listed is planned or implemented.
The region is divided into tiles, and the tile have an owner flag, 0 is no owner, or a number representing the city id. Cities can acquire unclaimed tiles or negotiate for them with other cities. The simulation processes the stuff in the active tiles, but spatial data, such as pollution, will affect inactive tiles. The region itself will also be simulated like a city, but at a very infrequent rate.
Multiplayer will be competitive/cooperative. Players can set their cities to be view only, or inaccessible, or set permissions on who can do what allowing multiple people to participate in building their city.
Construction will also be similar to as you describe. Construction is planned first, and then committed and construction begins.
wow very cool! &apls
thanks for the reply! can't wait to see this in action.
i wish i could participate, but i have no knowledge in programming, though i am learning python. if you wish, you could send/direct me to learning resources. i intend to use this knowledge to help you guys out as best i can as i always wanted to program my own games. this could be an great learning experience for me.
Totally. The source code is up on my github (the post should be somewhere... like here: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?board=365.0 ). It is probably quite daunting for someone new, but feel free to ask questions about it as you learn stuff. It will also help me keep my code cleaner and as simple as needed.
Some resources
How to think like a computer scientist: http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/
Dive into python (more for experienced programmers, but some examples may be more clear): http://www.diveintopython.org/
And of course the tuts and docs on the python website: http://docs.python.org
If you have questions about it feel free to make a new thread (I am trying to keep this one on topic :) ), contact me by google wave, forum pm, or catch me in the chatroom.