SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago(rockpapershotgun.com)
rockpapershotgun.com
SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/simcity-4-the-greatest-citybuilder-of-all-time-was-released-20-years-ago
253 comments
I thought 3000 was the best showing, though perhaps that's looking at it back later when performance is not as much of a concern. It felt like an upgraded SimCity 2000, rather than a big change in game mechanics that 4 was.
Age of Empires 2, Sim City 3000, Diablo2 and Red Alert 2. Released in the span of 3 years. What an incredible era. Can’t shake off the feeling that 3D took away as much as it gave gaming. Also can’t believe it’s just my age-based selection bias.
It's not an age-based bias. These games couldn't expand on graphics, so they expanded on the logic of the game. That made them interesting.
Very few games do that today (EU4, a favorite of mine, for example) but the trend now is to confuse the user with graphics while giving really little in term of content.
Very few games do that today (EU4, a favorite of mine, for example) but the trend now is to confuse the user with graphics while giving really little in term of content.
High content, big budget, games still exist, e.g. Elden Ring + Zelda (as someone mentioned) are two recent releases.
There's also plenty of sim games in the indie market, Factorio, Banished, Frostpunk. Then things that are close to the market like They Are Billions, Kenshi, etc. to name a few I've personally had time to play. Kenshi is a bit rough around the edges, but absolutely brilliant in terms of sandbox play.
There's also the Endless series from Amplitutde studios, Endless Legend, Endless Space 1 + 2, that are of a vein of Civ games, plus they've recently brought out Humandkind (though to mixed reviews unfortunately).
The popular sim genre in recent times has been more 3rd person building mixed with exploration, there was the wave of multiplayer ones like Minecraft, Rust, Arc Evolved, etc. And then single player ones like Subnautica, etc.
So there's stuff out there if you want it, it's just not a very popular genre at the moment.
There's also plenty of sim games in the indie market, Factorio, Banished, Frostpunk. Then things that are close to the market like They Are Billions, Kenshi, etc. to name a few I've personally had time to play. Kenshi is a bit rough around the edges, but absolutely brilliant in terms of sandbox play.
There's also the Endless series from Amplitutde studios, Endless Legend, Endless Space 1 + 2, that are of a vein of Civ games, plus they've recently brought out Humandkind (though to mixed reviews unfortunately).
The popular sim genre in recent times has been more 3rd person building mixed with exploration, there was the wave of multiplayer ones like Minecraft, Rust, Arc Evolved, etc. And then single player ones like Subnautica, etc.
So there's stuff out there if you want it, it's just not a very popular genre at the moment.
The difference with sim/4X/any genre that's fallen outside of the general "popular games" trend is that they ended up becoming overly specialized and inaccessible to newcomers.
Yes, technically you can still play a bunch of cool 4X games, but most people still making them (with the exception of like, CAs Total War, which also notably defocused the 4X part in favor of RTS combat) is copying the Paradox approach and Paradox is largely known for its absurd depth and mechanics... which unfortunately translates to the games devolving into spreadsheet simulators with fancy graphics.
Civilization was the right mix between "flavorful civilizations", "fun endgoals" and "reasonable to achieve victory against the computer". Most 4X games, because they copied the Paradox approach, kinda suffer from the fact that they pretty much demand immediate mastery of the systems if you want to succeed, unless you're playing with friends (in which case you have more control over each other's bumbling and one person can just hyperfocus on learning one system, while the other can focus on another.)
Its the difference between SimCity and Cities: Skylines. SimCity (before the final game) is a sandbox toy that lets you build a super dysfunctional city but y'know, as long as the taxes don't go in the red, you're doing fine! Cities: Skylines otoh has way harsher feedback tools if you don't build a highly functional city. That's fine if you're already tuned in on SimCity as a game and crave a higher challenge, but if you're new to these kinds of games, Cities: Skylines is just too much.
Yes, technically you can still play a bunch of cool 4X games, but most people still making them (with the exception of like, CAs Total War, which also notably defocused the 4X part in favor of RTS combat) is copying the Paradox approach and Paradox is largely known for its absurd depth and mechanics... which unfortunately translates to the games devolving into spreadsheet simulators with fancy graphics.
Civilization was the right mix between "flavorful civilizations", "fun endgoals" and "reasonable to achieve victory against the computer". Most 4X games, because they copied the Paradox approach, kinda suffer from the fact that they pretty much demand immediate mastery of the systems if you want to succeed, unless you're playing with friends (in which case you have more control over each other's bumbling and one person can just hyperfocus on learning one system, while the other can focus on another.)
Its the difference between SimCity and Cities: Skylines. SimCity (before the final game) is a sandbox toy that lets you build a super dysfunctional city but y'know, as long as the taxes don't go in the red, you're doing fine! Cities: Skylines otoh has way harsher feedback tools if you don't build a highly functional city. That's fine if you're already tuned in on SimCity as a game and crave a higher challenge, but if you're new to these kinds of games, Cities: Skylines is just too much.
I would love if Total War games had more complex strategic layer... The battles itself are great enough, maybe besides dumb AI sometimes and balance. On the other hand I had a lot of fun before campaign map economy became just balancing income and happiness. On the other hand, I never thought having armies a discrete entities on the map Heroes 3 style actually added any depth to the game.
Sim City 3000 was my most favorite sim game, while the sims (one) and zoo tycoon (one) follow close. That is until I tried Factorio, man that game got the title Cracktorio for a reason and elevated sim games to a new level. Since then I don't have any courage to try Rimworld, don't want my addiction to relapse.
Let’s not forget all the Paradox games: City Skylines, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron. Very much content over graphics.
The others help your point but Cities Skylines is memed because it's graphics over substance as it's basically a city painting game with shallow mechanics that most people use to make little city dioramas which is still fun but not deep gameplay.
The transportation mechanics in Skylines are quite complex and fun. The player can trace individual trips, and some of them matter quite a lot: the businesses need to get and ship their raw materials and finished goods, and the shops need customers.
The budget mechanics are a joke, before long the player has practically endless money.
The budget mechanics are a joke, before long the player has practically endless money.
I'm afraid I must disagree here. I enjoy C:S. But its mechanics are shallow compared to many other titles.
One rather unknown point that, while not directly related, highlights this is how in C:S your income depends on your current budget. I.e. you magically receive less income if you have 10 million in the bank, and receive more if you're in debt. That point alone makes objectively comparing and strategizing unnecessarily hard, and it feels like the game really does not want you to work with numbers instead of paint buckets.
One rather unknown point that, while not directly related, highlights this is how in C:S your income depends on your current budget. I.e. you magically receive less income if you have 10 million in the bank, and receive more if you're in debt. That point alone makes objectively comparing and strategizing unnecessarily hard, and it feels like the game really does not want you to work with numbers instead of paint buckets.
The core of the game clearly is urban planning - properly designing your city to avoid traffic jam and allow the ressource to flow where they need to go - not budgeting. The game doesn't want you to heavily work with numbers because, well, that's not very fun. The budget is mostly there to set the pace.
People mostly complain that it’s not SimCity but the gameplay is fine. It’s in no way shallow. Just different.
It has deeper micromanagement than, say, Planet Coaster, but it is not on the level of gameplay loop micromanagement as the like of SimCity or Roller Coaster Tycoon
My issue with the Paradox games is that they have gotten too complicated for their AI, which suuucks. Hearts of Iron's AI has no understanding of its own military strategies, and I don't know how I could have a multiplayer game lasting 80 hours with multiple friends.
just mentioning that Humankind got fixed up and it's a fantastic and innovative take on Civ. The reviews don't do it justice.
But everything is relative. I started gaming in the early 1980s and so those 1990s/early 2000s games had incredible graphics compared to what I was used to. And I'm sure people who grew up earlier on things like 1970s Pong would think my 1980s games had amazing graphics. The argument "Games back then cared about gameplay rather than graphics" ignores that every era has tried to make graphics as good as possible; I'm sure the future will look at our nearly-photorealistic graphics of current games and find them quaint compared to their holographic graphics or whatever.
What amazes the audience might be relative, but there are objective components to different styles of graphics.
Take clarity in communication. Pong is maximally clear: the background is black, an interactive object is white. Every white object is integral to the game. The further you move away from this ideal towards photorealism, the less clear this distinction becomes. You must add more UI elements on top to compensate for the loss of clarity, creating mounting tension between the functional and the ornate.
Take clarity in communication. Pong is maximally clear: the background is black, an interactive object is white. Every white object is integral to the game. The further you move away from this ideal towards photorealism, the less clear this distinction becomes. You must add more UI elements on top to compensate for the loss of clarity, creating mounting tension between the functional and the ornate.
Playing witcher 3, I don't think it'll be enjoyable for me without the witcher senses. It really emphasis the interact-able things over the environment.
It's why "just make everything have a billion polygons" is actually terrible game development. Scenes are so goddamn noisy nowadays that it's really hard to parse them.
Sure does suck to find that camouflage is actually effective in shooters.
When a bush has the gall to shoot you.
When a bush has the gall to shoot you.
> ... These games couldn't expand on graphics, so they expanded on the logic of the game. That made them interesting.
>
> Very few games do that today ...
The big new Zelda that just came out does exactly this. They took the shell of the last game and spent six years just making things to flesh out the game much further.
The big new Zelda that just came out does exactly this. They took the shell of the last game and spent six years just making things to flesh out the game much further.
They spent 6 years making a game that is exactly the same at a high level with only slight changes to the details.
> but the trend now is to confuse the user with graphics while giving really little in term of content.
You'll be surprised, but gaming magazines used to say the same thing(s) even in the 80s. It's a platitude.
Fun thing: A famous game developer of that time, but can't remember which one, once said that "the name of game companies aren't creative enough". /shrug
You'll be surprised, but gaming magazines used to say the same thing(s) even in the 80s. It's a platitude.
Fun thing: A famous game developer of that time, but can't remember which one, once said that "the name of game companies aren't creative enough". /shrug
> Very few games do that today
I’d say quite a few. Just not AAA publisher shovelware.
I’d say quite a few. Just not AAA publisher shovelware.
Red Alert 2. That was such a fun game. One thing that has been majorly lost in games now is the ability to create levels too. I loved the creation part
Creating a competent and usable level editor that you can publicly release is a lot of work, and unless you can somehow turn it into a major selling point for the game, you will be hard pressed to afford it. Dev time for games is expensive and if you're hacking together levels using a bunch of disparate tools including some third-party ones it might not really be worth it to make a tool that you can release.
Level editing tools are created to build the levels by the devs. They just don't want to give them to players because they want to sell you additional content.
Talking specifically about the usual suspects but hell, even some indie games are doing it now, in indie games it seems more popular to release a new game entirely which is basically 1.0 with new maps but thankfully there are tons of passion projects that get new content for years and years who really deserve more support.
Talking specifically about the usual suspects but hell, even some indie games are doing it now, in indie games it seems more popular to release a new game entirely which is basically 1.0 with new maps but thankfully there are tons of passion projects that get new content for years and years who really deserve more support.
> Level editing tools are created to build the levels by the devs. They just don't want to give them to players because they want to sell you additional content.
This is probably true as well, but the internet editor map editors use are often very different than what they would offer the community, requiring a lot of polish compared to what's used internally (and we all know that the 20% last polish takes 80% of the time) Although there are some games that offer the very same experience, like what Crysis had (with the CryEngine Editor) and ARMA series.
This is probably true as well, but the internet editor map editors use are often very different than what they would offer the community, requiring a lot of polish compared to what's used internally (and we all know that the 20% last polish takes 80% of the time) Although there are some games that offer the very same experience, like what Crysis had (with the CryEngine Editor) and ARMA series.
I don't disagree with your assessment and if anything it really opens the door for someone else to step in and offer these tools because if Skyrim, Minecraft, Gary's mod etc have shown us anything it's that these tools can create vast communities that will keep growing and supporting your work and any future releases.
Just a shame to see so many companies prioritise profits over gameplay / replayability and community these days.
The ultimate "level editor" was released - Unity. It's infinitely moddable and you can even sell your mods for money.
There's a world of difference between making a new map/level and making a new game. The effort required for the former is measured in years, whereas the latter is mostly weeks to months (ignoring open world games where the level spans the whole game universe).
it's still kinda there. Halo forge, fortnite creative mode, starcraft 2, mario maker 1+2, etc.
I think Age of Empires 2 will always be in my top 10 list of favorite games. It's in a similar vein of just upgrading graphics, but I also really enjoyed the spin-offs built on the same game engine: Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds and Age of Mythology.
It's especially exciting that it's more popular now than it's ever been. With the 2019 re-release, it's pretty consistently been around #50 in top active players on Steam at any given time. And they keep updating it still. It's been a blast to get back into it and try to actually get decent at it. And the pro scene keeps getting bigger and bigger tournaments too.
That is also just a few years before World of Warcraft came out, which drove everyone to focus more on multiplayer games. Not that we didn't all do multiplayer at LAN parties, but that is when it really switched to being done across the internet.
FWIW, I have a pet theory that WoW took over at that point not because of the MMO concept (which already existed), but because their UX was so smooth. That was the first MMO that "just worked" to understand what you were trying to click. The others at that time would take multiple tries to click an object correctly.
In any case, the success of WoW is what changed the direction of gaming a few years after all those games came out, so I'm agreeing with you that it was an incredible era.
FWIW, I have a pet theory that WoW took over at that point not because of the MMO concept (which already existed), but because their UX was so smooth. That was the first MMO that "just worked" to understand what you were trying to click. The others at that time would take multiple tries to click an object correctly.
In any case, the success of WoW is what changed the direction of gaming a few years after all those games came out, so I'm agreeing with you that it was an incredible era.
You're right on the UX. But not just the UX, eeeeverything was polished with little details put into place around every turn. Nothing else was like it at that scale.
Homeworld, quake 2, Half-life, counterstrike, starcraft, diablo, 97 to '00.
I cannot think of a more revolutionary span of games over 3 years.
I cannot think of a more revolutionary span of games over 3 years.
85-88 is unrivaled. I am willing to fudge the 3 year span a bit because games were still released at significantly times in different countries, though you could sheer off either end and still have an extremely impressive list.
Super Mario Bros 3
Zelda II
Mega Man
John Madden Football
Battle Chess
Tetris
Contra
Double Dragon
Street Fighter
Castlevania
Metal Gear
Metroid
Mike Tyson's Punch Out
Final Fantasy
The Legend of Zelda
Dragon Quest
Super Mario Bros
Adventure Island
Paper Boy
GauntletQuake II was 1997 and Quake 3 1999 (!). Also, you mention Counterstrike, but the original Half-life and Unreal were pretty revolutionary too.
To this day my favorite game is still Total Annihilation (1997).
You're definitely onto something and it's not just an age bias. I can think of a few 2D games released in the previous decade that continued this trend: Terraria, Stardew Valley, Factorio, Rimworld, Celeste, Hades.
You can see how much of a challenge it is to go into interesting game mechanics in 3d by looking at the development of Satisfactory.
Yes Rimworld! was thinking exactly the same thing.
Hades is in my top 5 games of all time. Might even be #1.
Hollow Knight
The "best (according to me)" games are still 2D or 2.5D:
Roguelikes
Dwarf Fortress
Factorio
EU4
My theory is that deep gameplay and AAA 3D graphics are mutually exclusive because deep gameplay fundamentally requires "tile grids" of some kind, which don't lend themselves to AAA 3D graphics.
(Diablo 1 and 2 kind of railed against this by taking the approach, "Hey, what if we took a tile-based roguelike and rendered it in isometric 3Dsortof?" At the time, that isometric 3Dsortof was state of the art, I guess.)
Roguelikes
Dwarf Fortress
Factorio
EU4
My theory is that deep gameplay and AAA 3D graphics are mutually exclusive because deep gameplay fundamentally requires "tile grids" of some kind, which don't lend themselves to AAA 3D graphics.
(Diablo 1 and 2 kind of railed against this by taking the approach, "Hey, what if we took a tile-based roguelike and rendered it in isometric 3Dsortof?" At the time, that isometric 3Dsortof was state of the art, I guess.)
I have very similar opinion. Presenting things in perspective projection (where things closer to you are taking up more space on screen, and are potentially obscuring things farther from you) is a very peculiar approach, applicable only to FPS and TPS games, where seeing things from the eye of the camera is actually the main gimmick. For some reason they are immensely popular, but they're only a tiny minority of available genres. For everything but FPS/TPS, an orthographic projection creates a much better view of what the heck is actually going on in the game, and thus leads to better gameplay.
Depends on the genre. I think few people can seriously say Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn't have deep gameplay, and it is beautiful.
I tried RDR2 for an hour but I was completely bored the whole time. It felt like I was watching a movie that occasionally made me hit some buttons. Did not feel like a game to me at all.
When I talk to people older than me they think some of the NES games were the best ever released. But I look at the graphics and I just can’t get over it.
All game generations have their 'best of' games. Of the 1700+ NES games maybe 50 or so are actually classics and worth your time. Then you have the band of 'nostalgia and tough', only play if you are in for a challenges, or it is a game you grew up with. Then 'do not bother' which is the majority of the games.
The same is true for MSDOS games, Genesis, 2600, MSX, PS1/2/3/4, XBox, GB, GC etc etc etc. The majority of games out there are just not good or have aged poorly on the graphic/playability front. I personally would recommend only a very small handful of games on the NES. Also one issue with some of these older systems is they were meant to be played on a 15-20 inch PAL/NTSC screen with interlacing. You splat that across a 65 inch OLED they tend to look bad. Your brain is good at making up the detail.
The same is true for MSDOS games, Genesis, 2600, MSX, PS1/2/3/4, XBox, GB, GC etc etc etc. The majority of games out there are just not good or have aged poorly on the graphic/playability front. I personally would recommend only a very small handful of games on the NES. Also one issue with some of these older systems is they were meant to be played on a 15-20 inch PAL/NTSC screen with interlacing. You splat that across a 65 inch OLED they tend to look bad. Your brain is good at making up the detail.
I grew up with the NES and loved the hell out of it at the time. But today, there's not a single game I want to go back to. I'd rather play the SNES versions of many of the best series. Also emulation with CRT shaders is the best way to visually play older games these days. This includes PS1/2 games.
Tetris, snake rattle and roll, Mario 3, conquest of the crystal palace, legend of Zelda, Castlevania 3 - there are still some NES classics worth revisiting via emulator, especially with the benefit of modern usb controllers, and save states.
Ok, you got me at Mario 3 and Tetris!
The graphics were bad, but what really makes the games unapproachable now is a lot of the games were impossibly hard.
Anyone growing up in that era should have fond memories of arcade games that were far better than most NES games — there were still real arcades while the NES was current.
However, try playing the first level of Super Mario Bros on original NES hardware. The game mechanics basically still hold up.
All Atari 2600 games were worse than NES games, and primitive as anything. But try Breakout with paddles on an original 2600; again, the mechanics are good and it’s fun, at least briefly.
However, try playing the first level of Super Mario Bros on original NES hardware. The game mechanics basically still hold up.
All Atari 2600 games were worse than NES games, and primitive as anything. But try Breakout with paddles on an original 2600; again, the mechanics are good and it’s fun, at least briefly.
I don't know how to call this but the ratio of magic versus graphics resolution fascinates me. 8bit games were often very crude, but you got the essential for a gamer's mind to rejoin for hours.
This is super valid. I grew up with these games, and I have heavy nostalgia for them, but they were heavily limited by the hardware of the time. I think some series have had really good modern translations, like the New Super Mario Bros series which has a play-style very akin to the originals, but in a modern format and graphics. I would also consider Mario Maker an example of this as well. But these examples are generally rare and more often there has been a full shift to 3D gaming (Mario Galaxy/Odyssey etc) and side-scrolling is a thing of the past, because a lot of those traditional NES game styles are kind of limited and garbage compared to modern games. I still have my NES, and it still works, but I don't exactly find myself breaking it out all the time to play as opposed to playing a modern game in a modern format.
A game couldn't be pretty back then it had to sell itself on other merits.
I think we'll come full circle with generative ML tooling as games will have to compete in wider areas than just marketing & graphics.
I think we'll come full circle with generative ML tooling as games will have to compete in wider areas than just marketing & graphics.
No, I think looks have always mattered; the only thing that’s changed are where the goalposts are located.
Don’t forget StarCraft, blows AoE and RA2 out of the water in terms of asymmetric RTS (and I say this as a huge fan of both the others)
When these games came out, the PC game market was smaller with less competition. Programmers and game makers drew from what they grew up with which was table top board games. That's why the instruction manuals were thick (like a DnD manual), the rules were incredibly complex, and the learning curves were steep.
These games were a product of their time and you definitely do have an age based selection bias!
These games were a product of their time and you definitely do have an age based selection bias!
I don’t remember a thick manual for red alert. Or much of a manual at all.
http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/manuals/Red%20Alert%201/...
99 pages long my friend.
Checkout the manual for StarCraft, which gives you the entire backstory!
99 pages long my friend.
Checkout the manual for StarCraft, which gives you the entire backstory!
Later re-releases didn't have any. The red box one has a big manual.
There was definitely a manual, I remember that. I don't think it was huge though, but I remember reading it through on a car ride home (something like ~3 hours) so probably was around 100 pages.
All of which were very direct progressions on the gameplay depth and replayability. Also... grand theft auto 2 and gran turismo 2.
second that!
Same here— SimCity 3000’s the one that really hit the right spot gameplay-wise for me. Prettier and deeper and more polished than 2000 without departing too far from 2000’s core mechanics or simulation approach.
>without departing too far from 2000’s core mechanics or simulation approach
SC3K is similar enough in structure to SC2K that it can actually load SC2K city save files directly; SC3K being a relatively strict superset of SC2K in terms of available elements and their sizes certainly doesn't hinder that backwards-compatibility at all.
The only things that would actively break when you did this were related to maximum terrain steepness for underground elements (metro, water pipes), 90-degree rail connections would sever (at least, graphically), and hydroelectric power generators as they're the only power building not implemented.
The arcologies were also dropped from SC3K, but to be fair those were mostly just designed to be population boosters in SC2K- something that wasn't necessary in SC3K now that the simulator was allowed to keep track of more than 250 buildings (or at least, so the manual and the query tool say).
SC3K is similar enough in structure to SC2K that it can actually load SC2K city save files directly; SC3K being a relatively strict superset of SC2K in terms of available elements and their sizes certainly doesn't hinder that backwards-compatibility at all.
The only things that would actively break when you did this were related to maximum terrain steepness for underground elements (metro, water pipes), 90-degree rail connections would sever (at least, graphically), and hydroelectric power generators as they're the only power building not implemented.
The arcologies were also dropped from SC3K, but to be fair those were mostly just designed to be population boosters in SC2K- something that wasn't necessary in SC3K now that the simulator was allowed to keep track of more than 250 buildings (or at least, so the manual and the query tool say).
I wasn't aware of a 250 building limit. Is there anywhere I can read more about this? Searching turns up empty.
I misremembered; it's a 150-buiding microsimulator limit. The buildings still function, but if you query them you get the generic popup rather than the detailed one.
Earlier versions of SimCity 2000 are more limited in this regard as arcologies after the first 150 special buildings don't count towards the population count; the later versions do, however.
Earlier versions of SimCity 2000 are more limited in this regard as arcologies after the first 150 special buildings don't count towards the population count; the later versions do, however.
SC3K's soundtrack and art was magical. Especially the advisor portraits.
I still occasion play 3k!
Bought but almost never played 4. Simcity 2000 was pretty clunky and 3000 was the right amount of updated graphics and mechanics while maintaining the original fun. It seems impossible to get my original Simcity 3000 CD working on modern hardware...
GOG has sc3k that works on modern hardware. Also, wine runs the original afaik.
3000 was just a modernised and polished expansion of 2000. Maxis had plans to do a successor to 2k that was fully 3D but they kept hitting frustrations and setbacks. So they just stuck to what they knew and made a faithful successor.
> Maxis had plans to do a successor to 2k that was fully 3D but they kept hitting frustrations and setbacks.
Graphics hardware at the time wouldn't be able to handle a city builder with the depth and scale of SimCity 2000.
Heck, it wouldn't have been able to handle a 3D version of the original SimCity unless the draw distance was limited to like 300 feet.
For proof, check out SimCopter. I can't imagine trying to play a city builder with those graphics.
Graphics hardware at the time wouldn't be able to handle a city builder with the depth and scale of SimCity 2000.
Heck, it wouldn't have been able to handle a 3D version of the original SimCity unless the draw distance was limited to like 300 feet.
For proof, check out SimCopter. I can't imagine trying to play a city builder with those graphics.
>My beef with SimCity 4 is that it added a bunch of details that make it less fun, like micromanagement of the funding of individual hospitals and police stations. The added complexity didn’t bring any new profound shifts in thinking or strategy, it just created more busywork for the player.
You don't have to do that. Leaving the sliders at defaults work just fine. You only need to tweak them if you wanted to micro-optimize spending, which rarely needed given how easy it is to make a profitable city to start with.
You don't have to do that. Leaving the sliders at defaults work just fine. You only need to tweak them if you wanted to micro-optimize spending, which rarely needed given how easy it is to make a profitable city to start with.
100% agree. Fond memories of SC 2000.
The open creation of any layout you could think of was my favorite aspect of the game.
Anyone have a particular recommendation on how to play SC 2000 today on Windows 10?
The open creation of any layout you could think of was my favorite aspect of the game.
Anyone have a particular recommendation on how to play SC 2000 today on Windows 10?
If you can find the Win95 version it's preferable over the GoG DOS version. You need this guys patchers tho: http://www.krimsky.net/patchers.html
GOG has SC2k available and it should work just fine on Windows 10.
And it downloads AND installs in less time than it would take to insert the CD into the drive, not to mention finding the thing... Modern wonders :-) Gonna play some tonight!
I agree that 2000 was a cleaner overall design. Adding realism for the sake of it is a dead end.
That said, there are a lot of games where the details of the simulation compound on themselves in interesting ways (Dwarf Fortress, Dominions, DC:Barbarossa, Shadow Empire, Paradox games). I enjoy those sorts of games, more minimalism and abstraction isn't always more fun.
That said, there are a lot of games where the details of the simulation compound on themselves in interesting ways (Dwarf Fortress, Dominions, DC:Barbarossa, Shadow Empire, Paradox games). I enjoy those sorts of games, more minimalism and abstraction isn't always more fun.
100% agree, simcity 2000 will always he THE simcity for me.
SimCity 2000 is definitely my favorite. I'm surprised someone hasn't made a version of it with a larger map (or infinite map).
Take that one step further. Start with a virgin earth. With sufficient, but finite, number of players, and a modelled global population, you build cities that effectively compete with each other for population.
In other words an alternate history of population and human development.
A multi-player Sim Earth.
In other words an alternate history of population and human development.
A multi-player Sim Earth.
We already have OpenTTD and OpenRCT. Maybe someone somewhere is creating an C++ remake of our favourite isometric city simulator, with multiplayer support!
I've often dreamed of making a city builder MMO.
But to do it right, I'd want it to be the scale of a moderately large nation like the USA. You'd buy plots of land one square mile as you expand. The game world would be seeded with a major highway and railroad system that you could not remove, just add connections to.
I'd want traffic to be simulated in the same depth as Cities: Skylines, and have freight have to move over a thousand miles to reach destinations.
But most importantly, I'd want the entire game world to be seamless. You should be able to pan from one side of the country to the other.
But such an ambitious game would require immense processing power. I don't know how I would scale it.
But to do it right, I'd want it to be the scale of a moderately large nation like the USA. You'd buy plots of land one square mile as you expand. The game world would be seeded with a major highway and railroad system that you could not remove, just add connections to.
I'd want traffic to be simulated in the same depth as Cities: Skylines, and have freight have to move over a thousand miles to reach destinations.
But most importantly, I'd want the entire game world to be seamless. You should be able to pan from one side of the country to the other.
But such an ambitious game would require immense processing power. I don't know how I would scale it.
How the multiplayer mode would look like? Do you think about competing against the other real player? Or maybe collaborating with some friend?
I am asking, because I think I haven't seen the multiplayer support in any railroad/transport-tycoon game. I remember in Railroad Tycoon 2 and then in Sid Meier's Railroads [0] we could play against NPC. Same as us, NPC is establishing a company and we may buy all his stocks to win.
[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/7600/Sid_Meiers_Railroads...
I am asking, because I think I haven't seen the multiplayer support in any railroad/transport-tycoon game. I remember in Railroad Tycoon 2 and then in Sid Meier's Railroads [0] we could play against NPC. Same as us, NPC is establishing a company and we may buy all his stocks to win.
[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/7600/Sid_Meiers_Railroads...
In OpenTTD, each player controls a rival transport firm and you compete against each other on the same map. AFAIK you can also arrange a buyout of your rival, similar to Railroads.
In OpenRTC, each player gets full control over managing the same park from a shared pool of funds. Mayhem may ensure if you set your game to public and don't configure permissions carefully.
In my mind, such an OpenSC2K's multiplayer would work like the latter. Each player managing the same city. Though if they removed game engine restrictions, it would be nifty if each player could manage his own city on one big shared map, similar to OpenRTC.
In OpenRTC, each player gets full control over managing the same park from a shared pool of funds. Mayhem may ensure if you set your game to public and don't configure permissions carefully.
In my mind, such an OpenSC2K's multiplayer would work like the latter. Each player managing the same city. Though if they removed game engine restrictions, it would be nifty if each player could manage his own city on one big shared map, similar to OpenRTC.
Railroad Tycoon 2 definitively had multiplayer support.
Probably a lot like Simcity 2000 Network Edition.
The problem with city building games is that they are far too gamified. In reality construction takes years, even decades for many infrastructure projects. Because of that, the challenge of solving the problems of 25 years in the future is not well represented in many such games.
They also make a lot of assumptions about how cities are designed. The first thing I noticed when I started up Simcity 4 again this week for the first time in 20 years is that it's all single-use zoning. The rest of the world outside the US says hello.
Try Workers & Resources, it's more about managing a whole supply chain and being self sufficient than spending money. You can tackle it at different levels but at the most complex you're making the cement then trucking it to the building site.
Yes, but what about the time involved, does it simulate the construction taking 15 years.
Absolutely! SimCity 2000 was a masterpiece, striking the perfect balance between the immediate grokability and comprehensible simplicity of the original SimCity "Classic", plus the judicious addition of rich immersive CD-ROM quality graphics and sound.
SimCity 2000, much like Hunter S. Thompson's description of mid-sixties San Francisco, represented a harmonic convergence of factors that established a high-water mark of game design.
It was a time when the energy of a whole generation of computer hardware and game developers came to a head in a round shiny disc, for reasons that were hard to fully grasp at the time and even harder to explain in retrospect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUgs2O7Okqc
Just as Thompson describes the sense of being alive in that corner of time and the world, there was a similar sense of knowing that you were part of something special when playing SimCity 2000, a testament to constructive expression and augmented imagination, instead of pre-scripted storytelling and showboating special effects.
It marked a technological zenith, fruitfully applying the latest technology in a way that later versions fell short. It was an inflection point in simulation game design and immersive production values, having reached a point where any further elaboration would only lead to diminishing returns. It struck the ideal balance of complexity by remaining true to the original SimCity Classic, while learning from the oversimplification of SimAnt and the overcomplication of SimEarth.
And just like the high-water mark described by Thompson, the peak of SimCity 2000's game design was a place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. Subsequent versions, despite their technological advancements, could not recapture the magic of that moment. They were like the Las Vegas of today, where with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high-water mark of game design that was SimCity 2000.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
In a 1996 talk, Will Wright dove into how the designs of SimAnt and SimEarth both influenced SimCity 2000. During a Q&A session, a student asked what he was making next, so he also gave a sneak peek into his current project, Dollhouse, which was later renamed The Sims.
Will Wright - Maxis - Interfacing to Microworlds - 1996-4-26
Video of Will Wright's talk about "Interfacing to Microworlds" presented to Terry Winograd's user interface class at Stanford University, April 26, 1996.
He demonstrates and gives postmortems for SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimCity 2000, then previews an extremely early pre-release prototype version of Dollhouse (which eventually became The Sims), describing how the AI models personalities and behavior, and is distributed throughout extensible plug-in programmable objects in the environment, and he thoughtfully answers many interesting questions from the audience.
This is the lecture described in "Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)": A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis.
https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
Use and reproduction: The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives ([email protected]).
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/yj113jt5999
SimCity 2000, much like Hunter S. Thompson's description of mid-sixties San Francisco, represented a harmonic convergence of factors that established a high-water mark of game design.
It was a time when the energy of a whole generation of computer hardware and game developers came to a head in a round shiny disc, for reasons that were hard to fully grasp at the time and even harder to explain in retrospect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUgs2O7Okqc
Just as Thompson describes the sense of being alive in that corner of time and the world, there was a similar sense of knowing that you were part of something special when playing SimCity 2000, a testament to constructive expression and augmented imagination, instead of pre-scripted storytelling and showboating special effects.
It marked a technological zenith, fruitfully applying the latest technology in a way that later versions fell short. It was an inflection point in simulation game design and immersive production values, having reached a point where any further elaboration would only lead to diminishing returns. It struck the ideal balance of complexity by remaining true to the original SimCity Classic, while learning from the oversimplification of SimAnt and the overcomplication of SimEarth.
And just like the high-water mark described by Thompson, the peak of SimCity 2000's game design was a place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. Subsequent versions, despite their technological advancements, could not recapture the magic of that moment. They were like the Las Vegas of today, where with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high-water mark of game design that was SimCity 2000.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
In a 1996 talk, Will Wright dove into how the designs of SimAnt and SimEarth both influenced SimCity 2000. During a Q&A session, a student asked what he was making next, so he also gave a sneak peek into his current project, Dollhouse, which was later renamed The Sims.
Will Wright - Maxis - Interfacing to Microworlds - 1996-4-26
Video of Will Wright's talk about "Interfacing to Microworlds" presented to Terry Winograd's user interface class at Stanford University, April 26, 1996.
He demonstrates and gives postmortems for SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimCity 2000, then previews an extremely early pre-release prototype version of Dollhouse (which eventually became The Sims), describing how the AI models personalities and behavior, and is distributed throughout extensible plug-in programmable objects in the environment, and he thoughtfully answers many interesting questions from the audience.
This is the lecture described in "Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)": A summary of Will Wright’s talk to Terry Winograd’s User Interface Class at Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked together on The Sims at Maxis.
https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
Use and reproduction: The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives ([email protected]).
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/yj113jt5999
Will Wright designed Sim games, and PP Don Hopkins implemented platform ports.
Who programmed the original games? Is that unimportant? Did Will Wright program?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Hopkins
Who programmed the original games? Is that unimportant? Did Will Wright program?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Hopkins
Agreed. A lot of simulation/strategy games seem to increase their fidelity over time, at the cost of fun. I’ve bought every Football Manager game for almost 30 years but these days it feels too much like an actual job. I’m intrigued what the best alternative is - I personally enjoy Paradox games, which generally expand with numerous DLCs so you can opt in to additional complexity on an incremental basis.
For me it's SimCity4. 3000 has a place in my heart always, but 4 wins out in replayability--even today--because of its dept and the neighboring cities. Making a thriving gigantic region of interconnected cities is forever satisfying.
2000 and SimTower. And SimCopter! Oh the good ol' days.
ahhh that brings me back
The ability to import a SimCity 2000 map in to SimCopter was amazing for the time, imo. I remember flying around cities I had worked really hard on thinking how the cross over between the two games was really cool.
Absolutely! I remember adding a bunch of rail to my cities just so I could do more train rescues or catching robbers on the trains. It was huge fun at the time…
I will always fondly remember the ridiculous SC2K maps I made for SimCopter + Streets of SimCity. Hills and road ramps everywhere.
I did the same with Streets of SimCity.
I was a little surprised that they actually released an Apple Silicon version for it just a few months ago (https://support.aspyr.com/hc/en-us/articles/12168615035405-H...) in spite of its age.
Would be nice if they’d do the same for civ 6 - it’s burning hot on my MacBook (not sure it would solve the issue but worth a try)
The iPad version worked surprisingly well until they released the leader pass and it broke. Hopefully they fixed it by now.
Only downside is no mods and the mods give serious quality of life improvements.
Only downside is no mods and the mods give serious quality of life improvements.
It burns pretty hot on my intel MacBook, I don’t think it’s the emulation.
It wouldn't.
The minimum requirements for Civ 6 are far below the capability of the M1 series macbooks so I don't know why you'd think so.
I'll chip in that Civ 6 is kind of notoriously buggy and crash prone. I have a top of the line Windows PC and the game spontaneously crashes for me in full screen mode so I can only do windowed mode.
It's still super fun (I have over 1,000 hours played) but it's not something I would call a reliable or stable piece of software.
Porting it to a different CPU architecture sounds like a recipe for introducing even more bugs to an already unstable program.
It's still super fun (I have over 1,000 hours played) but it's not something I would call a reliable or stable piece of software.
Porting it to a different CPU architecture sounds like a recipe for introducing even more bugs to an already unstable program.
It works almost flawlessly on the iPad. Paired with a stylus it’s the ultimate mobile game.
Because that's not how games work - they don't run "at minimum capabilities" and they run their game loop constantly, rendering graphics. This means that it will almost certanly saturate at least M1s GPU and probably at least one of P cores. At that stage, even the M1 starts drawing a lot of power which needs disspiation.
Also Civ 6s target GPU is much faster than any of the M1s (which, despite the marketing, are still mobile CPU/GPU SoCs, not high clocked 100W+ TDP desktop CPUs with a separate 100W+ TDP GPU) so you won't see it use less than maximum what GPU (and CPU) can handle.
Don't mix performance profiles of games with performance profiles of bursty desktop browser software running Electron.
Also Civ 6s target GPU is much faster than any of the M1s (which, despite the marketing, are still mobile CPU/GPU SoCs, not high clocked 100W+ TDP desktop CPUs with a separate 100W+ TDP GPU) so you won't see it use less than maximum what GPU (and CPU) can handle.
Don't mix performance profiles of games with performance profiles of bursty desktop browser software running Electron.
I've played plenty of games on M1 that are graphically more impressive and have higher base requirements than Civ 6.
Seems that others have pointed out that Civ is more CPU bound than GPU so I don't know if that's something that could be optimised without completely changing the mechanics of the game or if Civ is just an unoptimised beast but then again the M1 is way above the minimum required spec for Civ 6 so i don't think it's some unfeasible concept.
Seems that others have pointed out that Civ is more CPU bound than GPU so I don't know if that's something that could be optimised without completely changing the mechanics of the game or if Civ is just an unoptimised beast but then again the M1 is way above the minimum required spec for Civ 6 so i don't think it's some unfeasible concept.
> Because that's not how games work - they don't run "at minimum capabilities" and they run their game loop constantly,
Unless you VSync?
Unless you VSync?
> they run their game loop constantly, rendering graphics
Eh? Civ 6 is a turn-based game with really very little in the way of animation. It's not a first person shooter rendering whole screens at 30fps.
Even leaving M1 aside, on my PC with a capable graphics card Civ 6 always thrashed the CPU a ton. I know there's a lot going on under the hood but I always suspected it was nowhere near as efficient as it could be.
Eh? Civ 6 is a turn-based game with really very little in the way of animation. It's not a first person shooter rendering whole screens at 30fps.
Even leaving M1 aside, on my PC with a capable graphics card Civ 6 always thrashed the CPU a ton. I know there's a lot going on under the hood but I always suspected it was nowhere near as efficient as it could be.
Civ 6 graphics rendering is just really really poorly optimized. It's comparable to Flight Simulator in how hard it pushes my system.
Curious to learn more here: everyone was praising the M1 so much, but here’s a case that based on this wouldn’t fit the bill.
also how high do you think the penalty for running an intel binary is?
also how high do you think the penalty for running an intel binary is?
Not the GP, but Civ is CPU bottlenecked. I don't know how their code is written under the hood, but games slow down as you get farther in the game. If you play too many turns the game can take minutes to process a single turn.
I can saturate all my 16 cores, on my workstation, the only result is that the turns are processed faster. When you play multiplayer, everyone is going to be pinned to the slowest person in the lobby.
I can saturate all my 16 cores, on my workstation, the only result is that the turns are processed faster. When you play multiplayer, everyone is going to be pinned to the slowest person in the lobby.
I think that's because surprisingly, it's still a marketable/profitable game. If only it weren't, then maybe it would eventually be open sourced. Only flaw I find is that due to it's age, it wasn't really designed with maximum concurrency in mind, and doesn't utilize the full capabilities of modern hardware, so the simulation slows to a crawl after a certain size.
The game actually does support decent threading, but it relies on old RDTSC behavior and will crash on modern CPUs if you allow all the threading to run. I nagged EA a lot to Open Source SC4 or allow fans to fix bugs on Windows version, but they are stubborn :(
The Mac version is published by Aspyr that has rights to the source and to release updates. For example the Mac version is 64bit now. Windows version is 32bit thus heavily limited regarding mods.
The Mac version is published by Aspyr that has rights to the source and to release updates. For example the Mac version is 64bit now. Windows version is 32bit thus heavily limited regarding mods.
Similar with the Sims 3, the Mac version is 64 bit the windows version is not and thus becomes unplayable after a given length of savefile.
It's even more amazing because EA didn't do the port, Aspyr did, and they're still around to do an Apple Silicon port.
I wonder how it affects mods, I might have to dive back in ...
I also note it's on the Mac App Store so that's probably why they're upgrading it.
Still, worth the buy at Steam for $2.
I wonder how it affects mods, I might have to dive back in ...
I also note it's on the Mac App Store so that's probably why they're upgrading it.
Still, worth the buy at Steam for $2.
Haven't seen it mentioned yet, so I also want to raise a toast to the wonderful music of SimCity 4.
If you love SimCity 3k/4 music, it is made by Jerry Martin and saxophonist Marc Russo.
A few great links for you: http://jerrymartinmusic.com/music_demo.php On this demo page website, you can find some original jazz samples not included in SC3k even though they are quite amazing
http://boombamboom.com/ Some website Jerry Martin opened a few years ago where you can download high-quality music from the games he worked on (Sims, Sim City etc)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1467440/SimCasino_Soundtr... Sim Casino is a way more recent game, and Jerry Martin / Marc Russo came back together to write the OST! It has a lot of feels from SC3k/SC4 music, so you might want to look into it.
You can also find one of their interviews here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1158420/view/4689895...
As you can see I am quite the fan... :-)
A few great links for you: http://jerrymartinmusic.com/music_demo.php On this demo page website, you can find some original jazz samples not included in SC3k even though they are quite amazing
http://boombamboom.com/ Some website Jerry Martin opened a few years ago where you can download high-quality music from the games he worked on (Sims, Sim City etc)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1467440/SimCasino_Soundtr... Sim Casino is a way more recent game, and Jerry Martin / Marc Russo came back together to write the OST! It has a lot of feels from SC3k/SC4 music, so you might want to look into it.
You can also find one of their interviews here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1158420/view/4689895...
As you can see I am quite the fan... :-)
Yes, such an amazing soundtrack. When it was new, I mistook it for a new Aphex Twin album at least twice while my roommate was playing it.
ooooooh thanks for this, i "collect" video game OSTs, will have to check this one out
I might be a bit younger than the average commenter here, because for me the favourite citybuilder was SimCity 3000, not 2000.
Anyway, I miss the isometric grid. Yes, it's less realistic, but it's so pleasing. The thing I'm most annoyed by in modern sim games is placing roads and paths. They never look quite right. It's the same with Rollercoaster Tycoon -> Planet Tycoon.
I'd like to see some new games which embrace a grid.
Anyway, I miss the isometric grid. Yes, it's less realistic, but it's so pleasing. The thing I'm most annoyed by in modern sim games is placing roads and paths. They never look quite right. It's the same with Rollercoaster Tycoon -> Planet Tycoon.
I'd like to see some new games which embrace a grid.
When I was growing up I obsessed over this game for a few years. Of course, being very young, I didn't quite understand how the game intended you to launch it... it was a 2 disc install (for the deluxe edition at least) and there was something about the disc order. It was either something like "1 -> 2 -> auto launch on completed install but 1 -> launch after" or the other way around "1 -> 2 -> auto launch on completed install but 2 -> launch from desktop after" or something silly for the DRM.
Regardless, young me decided it would be easier to uninstall the game with "keep saved games" checked and re-install the game every time I wanted to play. And that's precisely what I did, hundreds of times. I'd come home from school, boot up the computer, start the install, go do other things, and then that night play Sim City 4. One day I came home and couldn't find the case the game came with, the case that held the product code. After searching around for a while I couldn't find it, and never did )it likely got tossed cleaning up one day). I figured I might as well try to remember what the key was and typed out: 25MM-TNK4-EH6A-6V6K-KHWN. At this point it's nearing 20 years and it's still living rent free in my head, albeit the last 2 groups may be swapped around... would have to try it to be 100% sure. Not too many months into doing this did I figure out what I was supposed to do with the discs, and then later how much easier it was to play a cracked version of the game in the first place. The rest of my history with the game was trying to fit far too many mods into 512 MB of RAM.
All that history and love for the game aside, I do think either Sim City 4 or Sim City 2000 were the greatest city builders relative to when they came out. On the other hand, I think Cities Skylines is the greatest City Builder of all time as an absolute. The shear scale without having to hop between simulations in a region, the more freeform nature of what you can build, and the additional gameplay systems (like flowing water) all on top of being a more modern game with a more modern interface make it shine. Of course, no two city builders focus on exactly the same gameplay so some may feel differently depending if they e.g. want to care about details like transportation along the way or just want to see the city grow.
Also, given this is HN, if any of the modding folks responsible for things like NAM/SAM/NWM/CAM/etc are around thanks for all the additional free fun those many years ago :).
Regardless, young me decided it would be easier to uninstall the game with "keep saved games" checked and re-install the game every time I wanted to play. And that's precisely what I did, hundreds of times. I'd come home from school, boot up the computer, start the install, go do other things, and then that night play Sim City 4. One day I came home and couldn't find the case the game came with, the case that held the product code. After searching around for a while I couldn't find it, and never did )it likely got tossed cleaning up one day). I figured I might as well try to remember what the key was and typed out: 25MM-TNK4-EH6A-6V6K-KHWN. At this point it's nearing 20 years and it's still living rent free in my head, albeit the last 2 groups may be swapped around... would have to try it to be 100% sure. Not too many months into doing this did I figure out what I was supposed to do with the discs, and then later how much easier it was to play a cracked version of the game in the first place. The rest of my history with the game was trying to fit far too many mods into 512 MB of RAM.
All that history and love for the game aside, I do think either Sim City 4 or Sim City 2000 were the greatest city builders relative to when they came out. On the other hand, I think Cities Skylines is the greatest City Builder of all time as an absolute. The shear scale without having to hop between simulations in a region, the more freeform nature of what you can build, and the additional gameplay systems (like flowing water) all on top of being a more modern game with a more modern interface make it shine. Of course, no two city builders focus on exactly the same gameplay so some may feel differently depending if they e.g. want to care about details like transportation along the way or just want to see the city grow.
Also, given this is HN, if any of the modding folks responsible for things like NAM/SAM/NWM/CAM/etc are around thanks for all the additional free fun those many years ago :).
Thanks for sharing, great story. Thinking back, for me it's incredible just how much more energy I spent as a kid with computers and games. That patience really allowed me to discover and explore much more than I do today.
If I play a game today, I just get straight to it. I don't wander around too much in the open world or try to game the mechanics for some weird bugs or try the same thing over and over again.
If I play a game today, I just get straight to it. I don't wander around too much in the open world or try to game the mechanics for some weird bugs or try the same thing over and over again.
I think SimCity 4 is the best city simulator game.
Cities Skylines is an excellent city painter; however.
Cities Skylines is an excellent city painter; however.
All of these city games need to simulate bureaucracy. For example, if trying to demolish an apartment, you need to solicit 400 approvals and gain local support before doing so. Or to build to a railway you need to buy out all of the land and organize environmental studies for every square foot of it before laying track.
IIRC there was a soviet sity simulator that had some of that; but the games usually just wash it away with "cost to bulldoze".
It would be fun to have a game where you have about as much control as a "real" city and mainly what you do is pull levers behind the scenes to get people to do what you want.
SimCity meets Dwarf Fortress, perhaps.
It would be fun to have a game where you have about as much control as a "real" city and mainly what you do is pull levers behind the scenes to get people to do what you want.
SimCity meets Dwarf Fortress, perhaps.
While this would be more realistic the majority of players would stop playing the game. I would argue this is just like you not having to build each street in a 3d game by yourself you also don't need to fill out every form, etc. by yourself. I just image you have a lot of employees doing that for you.
Big disagree, I think that sounds super fun. Remember there's a significant enough number of people that play long haul truck simulators.
Yeah. I think people saying more realistic interactions would not be fun or popular are lacking in imagination. The real problem with those games is the divorce from reality of bulldozing.
Imagine bulldozing is as expensive, complicated, and despised as in real life.
Then imagine having to fight against infrastructure cost overruns. You play a city building game, and you don't have access to roads (cars haven't been invented) so you want to put rails everywhere. You do that, but then you realise later how expensive and complicated it is to remove some rails to put down roads.
Imagine the game stopping, and telling you that the cost of roads will double when you unpause the game. You'd have to manage putting down more road than you need and the consequences of overreach.
It could be super fun.
Imagine bulldozing is as expensive, complicated, and despised as in real life.
Then imagine having to fight against infrastructure cost overruns. You play a city building game, and you don't have access to roads (cars haven't been invented) so you want to put rails everywhere. You do that, but then you realise later how expensive and complicated it is to remove some rails to put down roads.
Imagine the game stopping, and telling you that the cost of roads will double when you unpause the game. You'd have to manage putting down more road than you need and the consequences of overreach.
It could be super fun.
I saw someone playing that way, they could ONLY bulldoze "city services" like roads (so they could replace a road with one with more lanes that fit in the same space, or one with bike/tram lanes) but they could NOT bulldoze zoned properties, and tried their best not to remove even things like police stations, etc.
I think they had a rule saying they could rezone or bulldoze a building that was abandoned; but that of course led to accusations of intentionally forcing buildings to be abandoned (which is a real thing that happens).
I think they had a rule saying they could rezone or bulldoze a building that was abandoned; but that of course led to accusations of intentionally forcing buildings to be abandoned (which is a real thing that happens).
What you do is make the normal game play like CS or SimCity, but you have options to turn on "difficulties" that would basically enable different aspects/gameplay.
For example, you could add "federal/state requirements" where a new freeway/rail line/whatever would appear on the edge of the map and you have to get it to the other side, making connections as appropriate.
For example, you could add "federal/state requirements" where a new freeway/rail line/whatever would appear on the edge of the map and you have to get it to the other side, making connections as appropriate.
City builder games explicitly don't try to be as realistic as possible. They are meant to be fun.
I'd rather have a city builder that doesn't involve starting a utopia from scratch, I want to show up to an existing rural area and industrialize it, convert an unwalkable nightmare dominated by highways into a medium density sprawl, etc.
Most of them have some form of "scenarios" to play which are somewhat like that, but not exactly.
All in game achievements should be around negotiating bureaucracy. You should be able to look at a city and have fond / traumatic memories over all the compromised mess. Campaign mode should include trying to build new subway expansion downtown, ranked on time. Cheat code activates is maximum authoritarian mode for old school bulldoze everything / eminant eminant domain / rich petro state pay with migrant worker experience. Or maybe that's just easy mode.
Bureaucracy slider should range from China (easiest) to New York City (hard) to San Francisco (nightmare).
> All of these city games need to simulate bureaucracy.
hehe, I tried to do that, but with a walking sim: https://rafsters.itch.io/all-hands
(inspired by a meeting being a retrospective to a meeting about a meeting)
hehe, I tried to do that, but with a walking sim: https://rafsters.itch.io/all-hands
(inspired by a meeting being a retrospective to a meeting about a meeting)
Cities Skylines just turns into "transportation mode simulator" for me. Still fun, but it is not the same thing.
What’s worse is that CS is a transport simulator that’s heavily biased towards cars; to the point where every new game starts off with a giant unsightly freeway in the middle of your town.
I hope CS2 is more agnostic on transport mode. It would be nice to be able to create genuinely car-free cities in the game.
I hope CS2 is more agnostic on transport mode. It would be nice to be able to create genuinely car-free cities in the game.
CS gets way closer to "car free" than anything but the original SimCity (where you could just use rails instead of roads everywhere) - you need to use the Parks and paths and some pretty sneaky design, but you can get upwards of 80% using walking/transit. Takes a lot of work, however, and some mods.
That was my problem with the game as well. You don’t really have all that much freedom and there isn’t that much emergent behaviour. You just replay the same road builder scenario where the only interesting part is designing intersections.
I’d love to see a city builder game with an extremely powerful policy builder feature. Let me design new rules and see how the city responds. For example, let me implement congestion charges on roads, even if it’s just a text input with its own DSL like you have with minecraft command blocks. Then you could really break out of what the developers designed and start actually doing simulations.
I’d love to see a city builder game with an extremely powerful policy builder feature. Let me design new rules and see how the city responds. For example, let me implement congestion charges on roads, even if it’s just a text input with its own DSL like you have with minecraft command blocks. Then you could really break out of what the developers designed and start actually doing simulations.
Cities skylines has the policy builder feature like you describe. One of the policies you can implement is congestion charges. You can set the policies city-wide, or in certain districts.
In the latest builds with the newest DLC, you can even ban cars completely with pedestrian only districts/roads.
Huh interesting. I haven’t really touched it since 2016 so it’s probably different now.
I actually found it the opposite. The more I intelligently laid out alternative transport the more that it got used, lessening traffic. But yes, the default mode is to just optimize traffic everywhere.
It's possible to make a car-free city in CS. It just can't start as one.
Imagine a city builder where you can't convincingly recreate the rebuilding of Tokyo after WWII
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There's a Tropico game, I think it's Tropico 4, that is very realistic in that you don't need to literally make roads and asphalt all the things, and roads don't need to be car-centered; you just make buildings and people will walk, and you add a road network to make things more efficient, but it isn't required
Also curved roads and buildings don't need to be right besides the road, etc.
Sim City 4 is more like a suburbia simulator imo
Also curved roads and buildings don't need to be right besides the road, etc.
Sim City 4 is more like a suburbia simulator imo
I want free-form zoning, where it's not tile based; CS can do something kinda like it but it's still just tiles in the end, with empty space between.
Emergent paths would be fun, too; if you don't make the sidewalks and paths good enough, people start cutting across empty areas.
Emergent paths would be fun, too; if you don't make the sidewalks and paths good enough, people start cutting across empty areas.
Free-form city blocks is also high on my wishlist for C:S2. Without it you can't make convincing European style cities.
Soviet Republic: Workers and Resources has this. It is an incredibly deep city builder and sim with very well modeled systems. The realistic mode requires fuel for vehicles and workers for construction. You don’t simply plop buildings down or define zones that magically fill in.
It sounds like it is biased towards micromanagement, but still might be tons of fun. Thanks for the recommendation.
There's also Foundation, a medieval city builder that works like this.
It makes sense, given that its developer also developed Cities in Motion 1 & 2, which are _especially_ transportation mode simulators.
Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean with painter?
At a certain point in Cities Skylines you stop having any real challenge to make money or to keep your city running, so it becomes pretty much a sandbox. You can make the city look pretty much however you like instead of being bound by the needs of the city. In effect, you can just paint whatever kind of city you like onto the terrain. There's still a little challenge to deal with transportation but its fairly trivial to solve when you have effectively unlimited money in the game.
Exactly this - the "how do I not keep going bankrupt" part of the game is relatively short (similar to the "how do I not starve the first winter" in Dwarf Fortress) and with a bit of care you have so much money rolling in you can just do whatever you like.
Pocket City is a much simpler City Painter with practically no gameplay at all, except for an annoying drag through "quests" to build 1 of everything.
Ah, right, that’s pretty recognizable from my gameplay, thanks :)
Agree with this. There isn't really much challenge in managing the city itself after a certain point. You're just expanding.
Anyone who has nostalgia for SimCity should definitely give a listen to its amazing soundtrack: https://youtu.be/PSv37HwwojU
Jerry Martin, the composer for most of The Sims franchise, is a legend. The music is like vaporwave before vaporwave.
Jerry Martin, the composer for most of The Sims franchise, is a legend. The music is like vaporwave before vaporwave.
Along the same lines, the best thing to come out of Sim City 2013 is Chris Tilton's orchestral soundtrack. It uses musical tropes from 50s/60s Hollywood futurism and adds some modern atmosphere to it. Somehow the composer manages to keep the 'camp' of old movie soundtracks without it being cheesy. As with any good OST, music changes with the context. New skyscrapers will trigger sweeping full pit orchestra music. There are nighttime mixes for each song that lean into distant acoustic bursts. Also I love that when building hospitals, the music incorporates rattling pill bottles, jingling metal instruments, and clanging beakers. So fun!
Nostalgia wave at seeing images from this game again
I like Cities: Skylines but am a little turned off at how central the traffic management is to the gameplay. Maybe I just never figured out all the right optimizations, but it feels like after a certain city size you're just spending all your time reworking your roads
I like Cities: Skylines but am a little turned off at how central the traffic management is to the gameplay. Maybe I just never figured out all the right optimizations, but it feels like after a certain city size you're just spending all your time reworking your roads
There's a reason most people playing Cities: Skylines play with mods that do things like staggering the age of people moving to your city, allowing businesses to fire workers, patching the occupancy of buildings to be realistic, fixing truck drivers to work properly, etc.
It's a little annoying that they chose to be super realistic with realism in some aspects then kind of fuzz the details on others. Hopefully the sequel corrects this.
It's a little annoying that they chose to be super realistic with realism in some aspects then kind of fuzz the details on others. Hopefully the sequel corrects this.
Is there any mod packs that contain all the mods that "fixes" the game in the way you mention?
I'm also struggling with the same issues once I hit a certain size, and I don't want to spend 90% of my time trying to fix traffic issues.
I'm also struggling with the same issues once I hit a certain size, and I don't want to spend 90% of my time trying to fix traffic issues.
The Cities Skylines reddit has a pretty good guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/wiki/modlist
There are four critical ones imo:
- Lifecycle Rebalance Revisited
- Realistic Population 2
- Rebalanced Industries Revisited
- You're Fired
Those alone will make the game considerably more enjoyable to play. If you do a lot of public transport there are additional mods needed to make it work well but I normally stick to roads so it's not a problem for me.
There are four critical ones imo:
- Lifecycle Rebalance Revisited
- Realistic Population 2
- Rebalanced Industries Revisited
- You're Fired
Those alone will make the game considerably more enjoyable to play. If you do a lot of public transport there are additional mods needed to make it work well but I normally stick to roads so it's not a problem for me.
That’s actually why I like the game. Logistics is everything. A city is not merely a beautiful arrangement of buildings, it is a machine with many moving parts. If you neglect the movements, the city won’t function and your people will move out. Unless it kills them first.
The problem is that the traffic issue is nonstop and affects things, so you have to fix it. In reality at least the traffic will resolve itself overnight.
There are mods that can do that (literally wipe every simulated traffic off the map) but you can handle traffic pretty easily if you plan ahead.
My last few cities really had no traffic problems at all except for one old main road that I really didn't want to redevelop for some reason.
My last few cities really had no traffic problems at all except for one old main road that I really didn't want to redevelop for some reason.
I'm not sure how that can be a problem. If traffic couldn’t have any effect on your city, then why bother simulating it? The whole point is to make you think ahead and plan the capacity of your road network so that traffic jams are less likely and fixing them is easier.
I think that's the most common complaint about the game, hopefully they fix it in the next one.
Close to real life issues :) Traffic.
uhhh it has 4 fewer arcologies than simcity 2000 so it is hard to evaluate the truth of this statement
Yes, the arcologies were fun, but, they were also game-breaking, and building them completely changed the nature of the game into something unrealistic that frankly didn't really work. So not having them isn't a huge loss.
In a way they were a really neat way of ending the game. There's no natural stopping point in running a city, but once your entire city is covered in arcologies it's quite a nice way of saying "and this is done".
I enjoyed the first couple Sim Cities but at the time I really loved those city building games like Caesar and Pharaoh, so satisfying watching the houses level up and immigrants pour in
$2 (90% off) on Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/24780/SimCity_4_Deluxe_Ed...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/24780/SimCity_4_Deluxe_Ed...
My favorite SimCity 4 bug:
There were several minigames where you would drive vehicles around in your city. If you drove a train, you would have to get from one point to another in a certain amount of time. Drive fire trucks to a fire to put it out. Stuff like that.
Emergency vehicles had sirens that you could turn on that caused other cars to drive towards the shoulder and stop so you could pass them, which worked great... except at intersections, which caused cars driving at right angles to your path to dart forward and come to a complete stop, blocking the road. Making the siren totally useless, oops!
There were several minigames where you would drive vehicles around in your city. If you drove a train, you would have to get from one point to another in a certain amount of time. Drive fire trucks to a fire to put it out. Stuff like that.
Emergency vehicles had sirens that you could turn on that caused other cars to drive towards the shoulder and stop so you could pass them, which worked great... except at intersections, which caused cars driving at right angles to your path to dart forward and come to a complete stop, blocking the road. Making the siren totally useless, oops!
> except at intersections, which caused cars driving at right angles to your path to dart forward and come to a complete stop, blocking the road.
Sounds like real driver behavior to me.
Sounds like real driver behavior to me.
The train minigames were also somewhat annoying because trains couldn't reverse and the game just picked a random selection of stations you had to visit without regards to your network topology.
My only complaint about this game is that even the largest region size feels too dang small. I'd pay full retail price for a SimCity 5 that was just SimCity 4 with larger regions.
Basically that was what the entire community wanted + deeper gameplay, but instead EA chose to go the complete opposite direction, screwing the entire community and letting Cities: Skylines be the spiritual successor instead. Let's hope Cities 2 don't repeat the same mistake.
C:S also has limitations, like the agent limit of 70k, which means even moderately large cities of 100k are not realistically simulated. Not to mention the nonsense of every building having essentially a single family. And the garbage system being gorked.
Still better than Sim City in the long run though. The incredible building flexibility made up for shortfalls in the simulation.
Still better than Sim City in the long run though. The incredible building flexibility made up for shortfalls in the simulation.
Cities: Skylines seems like the kind of game I should love, but I bounce off of it every time I try it. I'm not sure what it's missing for me but I just can't get into it.
Are there mods?
I have fond memories of simcity 1 and 2000. I currently play cities skylines but it has its cons. I hope cities skylines 2 will have less central traffic and we can zone without road. It's our best hope to a modern simcity.
But this article motivated me to play sc4 again.
But this article motivated me to play sc4 again.
There are mods for CS that let you zone against the park paths, IIRC.
You can make road-free portions of the city, but you need other mods to handle garbage, etc (basically dumpsters) because without roads you can't get the trucks in.
The latest DLC seems to have some more on that area (roads that ONLY emergency/bus/service vehicles can use).
You can make road-free portions of the city, but you need other mods to handle garbage, etc (basically dumpsters) because without roads you can't get the trucks in.
The latest DLC seems to have some more on that area (roads that ONLY emergency/bus/service vehicles can use).
Yeah I tested a bit, but in the end you always feel that the game was designed around roads.
I have not tested the latest DLC I think. I thought it was about airports only.
I have not tested the latest DLC I think. I thought it was about airports only.
It was the one after airports, Plazas and Promenades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Q8RN9ut4s
I've not played with it much, but I used similar mods that let the paths from the earlier Parklife and Campus DLC do similar tricks.
I couldn't and didn't entirely get rid of roads, but I had 50+ utilizing non-car transportation.
I've not played with it much, but I used similar mods that let the paths from the earlier Parklife and Campus DLC do similar tricks.
I couldn't and didn't entirely get rid of roads, but I had 50+ utilizing non-car transportation.
A time before micro payments. Games built by artisans that loved their product and gave it their everything. Great times.
00s were imho the most corporate era of gaming, being after the 90s when the likes of Wright, Sawyer, Carmack et al managed to succeed with only small teams, and before 10s when "indie" gaming made its rise. Lots of good things can be said about SC4, but artisanal is not one of those.
I love SimCity 2000. I remember back then the most legendary build: MAGNASANTI (6 million residents, 2.523.010 commerce and 644.173 industry. 9172 million total population) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU
Pretty sure that Magnasanti is 3000, not 2000.
My bad, I thought it was 2000. I saw the video long time ago.
When I was a kid I loved SimCity 2000, and then SimCity 4. I spent hours on them. Sadly I can't get myself to play them anymore, I just keep thinking these are games you need to invest too much time to have fun and I just have too much to do. I miss not worrying about that.
There's so much consensus in the community that Cities Skylines is the actual greatest, that I'm inclined to believe this is an intentional clickbait from RPS.
They grabbed this thing which isn't even a thing and turned into some buzz.
They grabbed this thing which isn't even a thing and turned into some buzz.
I don't know - the Cities series is taking the next steps on what a city building sim should have progressed as. The last SimCity game was an afront to the series and should never have been released in that state. I say this as someone who's early commandline experience was typing sc2000.exe from dos.
I have hope that there is an online massive Sim world where Sims and SimCity players can co-play and create some amazing real-world scenarios.
I agree that SimCity 4 was the peak of the series but there are many hardcore simcity players that claim 3000 was peak SimCity. Just look at Magnasanti city for some proof of the dedication.
I have hope that there is an online massive Sim world where Sims and SimCity players can co-play and create some amazing real-world scenarios.
I agree that SimCity 4 was the peak of the series but there are many hardcore simcity players that claim 3000 was peak SimCity. Just look at Magnasanti city for some proof of the dedication.
This is a stretch. 4 was alright, but it also marked the death of the series. 3 was great, 2 was legendary. There's a great reason Cities: Skylines became the spiritual successor.
Simcity 4 was the high point, it was its putrid and inbred successor that killed off the franchise.
"Putrid and inbred" correctly describes the DRM scheme. The game underneath that crud was trying to go way more in-depth by building a sim game out of an RTS engine. They wanted to, say, have Sims in your SimCity actually drive to work and back and get stuck in traffic jams. Problem is, the average computer in 2013 couldn't actually handle simulating that many units. This isn't inbreeding, this is being overambitious. Shooting for the moon, and landing not in the stars, but in the Salton Sea[0].
[0] I have no clue if any viable launch trajectories from Cape Canaveral support such an emergency landing.
[0] I have no clue if any viable launch trajectories from Cape Canaveral support such an emergency landing.
I kinda surprised that no one mentioned this game in this thread before, and the few mentions is to bash it. I enjoyed a lot SimCity 2013, don't know why they create a mess with the version number and DRM was a pain in the back for sure, but the game for me was beyond amazing, effectively it was possible to zoom in and follow any citizen in the daily routine, graphics and music were amazing as well, never seen after that nothing close in this genre.
PS. Ok I saw that the problems were related with a buggy DRM system requiring Internet connection on top of that, I was lucky enough to begin playing when that was allowed to opt out.
PS. Ok I saw that the problems were related with a buggy DRM system requiring Internet connection on top of that, I was lucky enough to begin playing when that was allowed to opt out.
My gripe with SimCity 2013 was the ABYSMAL city plot sizes.
I wanted to enjoy SimCity 2013, but being able to fill up your entire plot in an hour or two of gameplay made the game entirely unfun. Playing multiple cities in a region wasn't good enough.
I wanted to enjoy SimCity 2013, but being able to fill up your entire plot in an hour or two of gameplay made the game entirely unfun. Playing multiple cities in a region wasn't good enough.
I played many of them up to that point (even the SNES version), and 4 left a discernable source taste in my mouth. I could see the potential, and it was at times fun. But, for me personally, it just never hit the right notes to harmonize all of the good mechanic additions. I think part of it also was the more realistic progression you would follow (i.e. start with farms, work up to towns, etc.), but maybe I just never gave it a chance. I just expected a better version of 3.
But yeah, the successors to 4 were undoubtedly a dumpster fire.
But yeah, the successors to 4 were undoubtedly a dumpster fire.
[deleted]
I love SimCity, never forget the first time I played it on an Amiga 500.
Then one day my friend lent me his 512KB ram upgrade and it was a different game :-)
Then one day my friend lent me his 512KB ram upgrade and it was a different game :-)
Great game, still remember spending countless hours on SimCity1. Shout out to SimAnt and all the other Sim-inspired games that followed.
Eh... I loved SC4, but the peak of the franchise was 2000 and 3000 (either one is fantastic).
SC4 trended heavily towards unnecessary complexity.
SC4 trended heavily towards unnecessary complexity.
I’d really like to modernize Simcity 4. Throw some AI on it for simulation. Stable diffusion for one of kind buildings. I just realized you can do so much with AI to make old games interesting now.
Who knows, maybe that will be a big trend in the near future.
Who knows, maybe that will be a big trend in the near future.
SimCity (the original) had a big influence on me as a young budding game designer/programmer. In a way my latest game [SB] is a kind of simulation of our collective future, and how we try to live in the absence of the modern US/Western-style city infrastructure and services we take for granted now. Of the kind which SimCity models and brings to life so well.
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[SB: welcome to look in my bio here if curious]
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[SB: welcome to look in my bio here if curious]
It's quite amazing that Aspyr did a intel 64-bit version and a version for Apple Silicon; it's great to keep it alive
The only issue for me was that sims would choose the shortest path, not the fastest, leading to traffic problems which were very hard to solve. This I learned later from the Internet, at the time I didn't know it and I was just perplexed as to why they wouldn't take a newly built highway. Otherwise, excellent game.
This was fixable with a very basic mod.
There was a heuristic value which basically determined how far out of the way the traffic simulator would look when trying to find a path. But it was a trade-off for simulation speed.
The mod changed this value and allowed the sim to try more paths, but made time move MUCH slower, even with the game speed set to max, once your city started getting large. It was worth it though to see your highways and public transit actually get used.
There was a heuristic value which basically determined how far out of the way the traffic simulator would look when trying to find a path. But it was a trade-off for simulation speed.
The mod changed this value and allowed the sim to try more paths, but made time move MUCH slower, even with the game speed set to max, once your city started getting large. It was worth it though to see your highways and public transit actually get used.
Here to add my voice to the 3000 crew. My first and only deep foray into the Sim genre, and man did I sink countless hours into that game. I've tried other games of that ilk and none capture the kind of magic that 3000 evoked. Dat soundtrack...
I'ma let you finish, but the Original SimCity by Maxis was the best citybuilder of all time
mic drop
mic drop
The soundtrack to SC3000 is a straight banger. I wish they'd make an exact port to the iPad (instead of that gimped version they released years ago that didn't have subways or highways or anything like that)
[deleted]
Is there a way to play this on Mac today?
Already mentioned in another comment, but they just released an Apple Silicon version: https://support.aspyr.com/hc/en-us/articles/12168615035405-H...
It's currently on sale on steam.
There’s a simple cheat for it.
Build bus stops. Don’t build subways. Can’t lose.
Build bus stops. Don’t build subways. Can’t lose.
Incorrect. Cities: Skylines is the best of all time.
But SimCity 4 at its time is still quite good.
But SimCity 4 at its time is still quite good.
Back on topic though. My beef with SimCity 4 is that it added a bunch of details that make it less fun, like micromanagement of the funding of individual hospitals and police stations. The added complexity didn’t bring any new profound shifts in thinking or strategy, it just created more busywork for the player.
SimCity 2000 has almost none of that. It’s just a really solid and super fun game. It’s quite balanced (when you resist the temptation to use cheats) without being overly hard. So you can sit back (with a cold beverage of your choice) and enjoy a nice relaxing time playing mayor and seeing your little city develop before your eyes!