New city-building game project (Cities XL Ultra)

I love seeing all those ambitions of "I may better make my own that and that"
Altiris is developing some kind of city sim, in addition, now another person do that too - Soltan.
Thinking back why/when I started modding - I felt the lack of (and was a bit unsatisfied with) some buildings in CXL, so I said to myself: Let's start doing something using my own hands, not waiting forever and ever for someboody who would have made particular mod.. So I am happy to see there are people with the same ambitions but a lot larger projects in their minds.
Good luck with that, Soltan.

 

Hey Soltan! Good to see you still have interest in city building!

 

Will it be 2D or 3D?

BTW, best of luck!

 

What about density levels and transport?

 

Sorry, but I gotta say that reads a lot like simcity4deluxe gameplay.
But I have to admit that I'm partial to the realistic landscapes and building aspects.

 

re: Health & Crime
I agree, these features can enhance gameplay in a realistic city simulator.
However, facing sim citizen death, collecting & disposing of scattered dead bodies that menace the "satisfaction" factor is the last thing I want to do while playing a city simulater.
I mean...realism...where do you draw the line, if you go all the way with it, you just as well include murder, starvation, epidemics, natural disasters and terroist attacks...the list is endless. I think not. Save that stuff for point/shoot and action games.
Personally, I play my favorite city simulater, CitiesXXL of course, partially to help escape these kind of realities for a brief moment in time.
One of the most common forum complaints I have seen, everywhere, is from players being forced to place hospitals and police stations every few blocks or so in their city creations.
Heck, the very first thing a community of players always does is create mods (thank goodness) to overcome or even eliminate these obstacles.
I'm just saying that close consideration and care should be//must be taken in the developement of a new city sim game to achieve a good balance between realism and fun, either through game tolerance, facility capacities or some other means. And please...please, let us omit any type of "body count" features.

 

Here are some suggestions for a good city builder game:

- Statistics instead of agents based game. Calculating single people and traffic wastes huge amounts of resources.
- I like that you want to use capacity instead of range
- Today, we only have three population classes: the lower class doing all the cheap work, the middle class that pays everything and the rich parasites. A city should never have a huge amounts of rich people.
- Realistic values for inhabitants and workers would be very appreciated

Zoning:
- Would it be possible to create a zoning tool that automatically creates several lots and fills them with appropriate buildings? The game Civitas wanted to realize something like that, but that project vanished without a trace. It would be great if both automatical and manual placement of buildings (for the perfectionists) would be possible.
- The player should be able to choose an architectural style for all or a single district.
- Wealth, available housing and other factors should influence land value which decides what kind of people will live in the city

Zones:
- Agriculture: farms/ranches, greenhouses, fish tanks etc.
- Forestry: forests dedicated for woodwork, sawmills, etc.
- Residential: small house, medium house, appartments, low skyscrapers, high skyscrapers
- Heavy Industry: the dirty ones
- Manufacturing: produces goods and foods
- High-Tech: computer chips etc.
- Offices: accounting, lawyers, tax experts etc.
- Leisure: cinemas, restaurants etc.
- Shopping: supermarkets, convenience stores, specialist stores etc.
- Special Resource Building: if you have an oilfield in your city, you can allow the private sector to build an oil well over that place. This usually generates quite some income and creates jobs, but also hurts the environment. Could also work with mines, gas fields etc.

Power plants:
- Coal and oil: very cost-efficient, but dirty
- Gas: a bit cleaner than oil and coal
- Solar panels and wind turbines: low cost-efficiency and only works during the day or when the wind is blowing, but clean
- Hydroelectric plant: a bit expensive to build, but clean and efficient
- Geothermal plant: clean geothermal energy
- Nuclear power plant: huge amounts of energy, dangerous
- Fusion power plant: gigantic amounts of energy (it would produce so much that you could sell it to many outside cities)
Electric should automatically be placed under streets, but in order to move them over great distances, you need transmission lines.

Water:
- Desalination plant: needs access to sea water
- Water pump/tower: needs access to ground water or a river
- Sewage Plant: cleans water
Pipes should automatically be placed under streets, but in order to move them over great distances, you need to build them manually.

Waste:
- Landfill, recycling center, waste treatment plant
What about sending waste via harbour/train to other countries?

Education:
- Elementary school
- Buildings above elementary school depend on the country's school system
- University of Applied Sciences
- University
Not everyone should be a PhD like in Skylines.

Culture:
- A central library and branch libraries: slightly increases education, provides culture
- Different kinds of museums: slightly increases education, provides culture, slight tourism bonus
- Event halls: provides culture

Sports & Leisure:
- Sports facilities, swimming pools and stadiums

Healthcare:
- Hospitals: has a certain capacity for patients, can be upgraded several times (real hospitals are constantly building new wings)
Medical practices and apothecaries should spawn in the service zone

Justice:
- Several police stations: can deal with a certain amount of crimes, has a certain capacity for prisoners, can be upgraded
- Prison: stores a huge amount of prisoners, tries to resocialize them (depends on the country)
- Local Court: punishes criminals and sends them into prison

Fire Department:
- Fire Watch: several vehicles, can be upgraded

Public Transportation:
- Bus, tram, metro, train, subway, ferries, harbours, airports, hyperloop

Ordinances:
- Plausible ordinances like in the old Sim City games would be great

 

Since graphics cards using the same geometry are making improvements every year, new geometries (the first die shrink in years) being developed, 5 GHz processors have existed for about a decade and hyperthreaded octacore processors are gaining popularity, why not plan to have a simulation game that uses agents? SimCity had 3 agents per household in 2013. Why not have 1 agent per household (that is usually inside a building as a statistic) carry the information for all the adults and 1 agent carry the information for all the children? Like in Cities: Skylines, few households will have children but unlike Cities: Skylines, 1 agent will always represent all 'Simizens' of the same age group and household. High density condominiums with capacities for thousands of apartments will hold 20 (the cap) households max but the households would consist of hundreds of adults (college students, single workers, and childless couples) and each agent would represent congestion from hundreds of 'Simizens;' a pedestrian agent would look like a mosh pit (or battalion) and a private car agent would look like several blocks of rush hour traffic (and function as such) so high density buildings would require mass transit within short walking distance. The calculation for commutes should be every other day/night cycle (which would run while the game is running but the sun could be superficially set to any of the 8 positions, while the props and animations would continue to sync with the simulated time--making midnight sunbathers, broad daylight muggers, night-glowing solar farms, midnight farmers' markets, late-morning raves, early afternoon bonfires, and other oddities rendered when the sun is superficially positioned by the player)

I further recommend that zones should get 5 density categories and that each category represents RL building restrictions (2.5 story detached, low rise, mid rise, high rise, and unlimited/skyscrapers) but you won't see low rises in Unlimited zones next to skyscrapers (the densest and smallest building in the same zone type with the same zone statistics cannot have capacities too different).

I also recommend having 2 types of zoned lots: 'standard' (normal zones sort of like in Cities: Skylines but with potentially deeper lots as well as some wiggle room in the front to allow for zoning to better conform along curved roads and possible filler when there are gaps between lots and infrastructure) and 'free form' (built/zoned like farms in Cities XL with a choice of 3 types of borders (farms would have wide & normal gravel roads, normal & narrow dirt roads, fences, and ditches) and only 1 building (that is always low density and snaps to the road like 'standard' lots but surrounded by vast grounds of fields (farms), plazas (malls), parking (generic light industry), dirt (anything low wealth or unoccupied), trash (land fills), trees (forestry), pits (mines and quarries), spaced-out oil wells/drills/pumps/jacks (petroleum), gardens (golf courses and Elite mansions), etc. This also means that I want the land to have deposits of natural resources including water, fertile land, trees, and mineral wealth. All zones should be possible in 'standard' zones but there should be special options for 'free form' zones with industry (extraction on deposits or distribution+storage on empty land), commerce (suburban malls), housing (elite mansion plots that could turn to trailer parks or chaotic slums if put in the wrong place), offices (sprawling 1-story complexes with warehouses and parking), waste treatment (landfills), leisure (golf courses), and parks. The standard zone types would be Residential, Hotels, Leisure (only cultural and sports), Commercial (retail, food and entertainment/services), Offices (with office services called 'Logistics'), and Industry. Like in Cities XL, there should be a pseudo free form zoning for standard lots where you draw the perimeter of a zone and choose the outer & inner road types, letting the game fill the space in optimally.

I hope that down the road (expansion pack), you add the Elite, ultra-wealthy 5th wealth level, who have extremely high demands to spawn (already at maximum education, health, wealth, giant piece of land on desirable real estate) and remain. Your proposal has Rich Executives, White Collar Managers, Skilled Workers, Unskilled Laborers, and Homeless Vagabonds, which I suggest you call Rich, White Collar, Skilled, Unskilled, and Homeless or Executives, Managers, Workers, and Laborers (and use the term 'Elite' for the eventual elites).

 

I really like your idea for multi-purpose buildings! However, I think it would be best (for the sake of the simulation) for zones to only have either 1 or 2 categories (out of the 5 categories of Residential (4 wealth levels because Homeless and Elite Simizens are special), Commercial (retail, food, services, and entertainment), Hotel (business and tourism), Office (logistics, media/PR, government/services), Industrial (extraction/growth, processing/refining, and manufacture) but allow as many subcategories as desired. A zone might be designated Commerce + Hotels but it can hold any combination of shops, restaurants, [warehouse] stores, commercial services (health, beauty, entertainment), and hotels (business and tourism) of any wealth levels. Some RL resorts have all the above. Industry + Offices would try to maintain a neutral logistics balance while producing the most profitable quantity and quality (durability, luxury, and technology) of goods possible. Offices + Hotels would likely be logistics and business hotels but could be any combination of logistics, office services, media, business hotels, and holiday hotels. This zone could be full of office services, media and holiday hotels if you designated such a zone in your resort area instead of your Central Business District. Hotels+Residential would yield timeshares, condominiums with hotel rooms/short-term apartments, and hotels with condos and worker housing. Commerce + Industry would likely consist of warehouses, light industry, and factory stores. Housing + Industry would have workers' housing near to the factories.

Multi-purpose buildings would have the full statistics of everything going on but only send out agents from the difference in needs (commute by elevator always favored over a real commute), with each building sending out agents every other day (to halve routing calculations).

I propose the following when it comes to time:
Each season should have 6 days (so each year would have 24 days)
The absolutely slowest speed should complete a day/night cycle in 12 minutes, with the sun rising at 5 AM every day and setting at 9 PM every night
Different businesses should operate at different times (offices and factories having 1 9-hour shift with a 1-hour lunch break; commerce having morning (5-11), afternoon (11-18), evening (18-24) and night owl (midnight-5) shifts worked by different workers if worked at all)
Speeds should include 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 10x, 12x, and maybe up to 20x

 

More ideas:
- Administration: the bigger the city (and the town hall), the higher the administration costs. This prevents the player from quickly becoming insanely rich like in Skylines (which doesn't even have a town hall!).

- Countries: choosing a country alters many variables, vehicles and building choices.
USA: US school system, US roads and speed limits, more crime and prisoners than other countries, US citizens need more electricity and water (it should of course depend on the city map's climate).
Germany: three-tiered school system, German roads with German speed limits, lower crime than USA, Germans waste less electricity and water than people from the USA.
In the beginning, one country should suffice. Modders can take care of the other ones.

- Blueprint mode: I would love to lay down roads and lots without actually building them. Only when I'm content and by pressing a button should the game initiate the construction efforts.

 

I really like your effort.

Here is a piece of my mind about a citybuilding game:
The thing I miss in every citybuilding game is: good transportation. Transportation is THE most important thing of an economy. While cities skylines added some extra functions with mods like traffic++ (which adds trafficlights and lane-management) is almost impossible to build a realistic roadsystem which uses lanes the right way. Roads are only there for looks of the city and never do function properly in city building games.

---In CXL we have 8 lane roads with only 2 trafficlights and zebracrossing for pedestrians which are 50m (no granny could cross this road in time!)
-would like to see (for example) a 50m wide road but with variable lanes, maybe only 2 lanes (5m per lane) and the rest (40m)have grass or pavement something so upgrading doesnt destroy your city. Its called easy planning ahead. Maybe in a different pop up screen called lane-editor-mode to edit the road. Editing can be done by pointing to a certain point of a road, holding shift and selecting another part of the road so that highlighted part can be edited.
This way you can edit if you want a a grass median or something, the colour of the road, add parking to it, buslanes, bicycle lanes, pedestrian paths, commercial signs, trees, statues,soundbarriers whatever you want.
Instead of adding modded roads people can now add modded lanes. with your own type of stripes on it, road properties (bus, right only, trucks only, open only during rush hour)
-Also on a 50m wide variable-lane road you would be able to edit a piece of road by selecting a part of the road so u could add lanes for upcoming crossings, roundabouts,exits, etc. I mean, a 2 lane oneway road could have 4 lanes at the trafficlight crossing so you could have 1 to the right, 1 to the left and 2 going forward, just like in real life. Also I think the AI would react better to this than.
-road editing and beautification is a whole game itself I think but is very important since its the most important thing of an economy, without proper roads NOTHING functions. Thats why low-economy countries have almost no roads with asphalt.

---Over and underpasses take up so many space its almost a waste to build them, in the game "A-train 9" you just had simple heightlevels of building which allowed you to build the same type of road (railtrack) on every level you wanted.

---In every real city you get smashed with trafficsigns, electronic trafficsigns, roaddirections. Miss one in real life and you will be driving for ever without getting anywhere, but the roadsystem in these games simply ignore them and claim to be realistic.

---A UDI (U drive it) system would be supreme, there is nothing like driving in your city and really enjoying the things you build from a normal human perspective. Im not talking need for speed car physics of course. SC4 had it from a skyview but driving your train around your city was really cool, CXL had it a little with your own character which could walk and be edited. I think there was a separate driving game from maxis in the 90's which allowed you to load your SC2000 cities to drive in, but im not sure about that.

---Highway system dont go through centers of cities like I see in many gamecities build by us gamers. But if they are added in a game, please give us some variation. We all thank God that he send us a programmer which made RHM for us but why has no developer ever gave it thought? Why no lane editing? Why does every game has the highwaysection made out of 5 pieces: 2 types of intersections (3 or 4 way), the highway itself, a on/off ramp and a highway to roadconnector? Is this even close to realism?

---Multitrack trainstations... I dont have to explain this one, 'A-train 9' had a system where you could just choose a station and select the amount of tracks with the station. Looked very simple to me.
---Underground(multilevel) building of things: so parking and malls can be added underground in crowded cities, these can connect to underground roads and metrosystems.
---Also there are LODs, why not have a optional LOD 0 for buildings when you in a UDI/pedestrian mode when u enter a specific zone of a building (like the door or gate) when you enter that zone it will load the building and you enter the building itself. This way you can really 'live' in your city and design your own house in your city (this way, move over san andreas!)
--- Variable buildings, where you have a bottom, middle and a top floor. Fill in the amount of floors for the middle section and have a bigger/smaller building (can be used for hospitals also). This way a type of building can house the amount of citizens you would like.

Well, these are my 'complaints' and ideas about the games, maybe you will use some tips, maybe not. Either way, good luck with your game!