New city-building game project (Cities XL Ultra)

Is this still an on going project or is it dead, if its still on going we will see cars moving and people etc or not.

 

I don't like the building idea where we only get the base building without any parking lots or trees. I don't like the filler idea either, just give us done buildings where we don't have to worry about space for fillers. I don't want to micromanage making buildings and then having to dress them up. I do like the idea of more realistic sizes for big shopping malls, don't forget to include the parking lots. Some interesting ideas about citizens as well but I wonder if this will cause more problems than it solves. I don't think agents is a good idea, saw how they limited Skylines in too many ways.

 

First off I wanted to say I loved the mods you made for Cities XL. I used them in pretty much every map I made.

I had some ideas for your game, and anyone else who was thinking of making one. I was thinking that a really good way to handle all sorts of objects would be to use a buffer pool for their resources. Most resources would be money but some could use electricity, water, or raw resources. Let me give some examples.

Citizen - Money, Happiness
Citizens would earn money from working at a job, this would drain money from the Job's buffer but would add it to the Citizen's. One their way home from work they would stop by a store or some recreation place and spend some money from the buffer. This would drain money from the Citizen's buffer and place it in the stores buffer. This would also increase their happiness buffer. Driving to and from work would slowly reduce their happiness buffer. When the citizen finally reached their home they would place the money from their buffer into the home's buffer.

There is even the possibility to add a basic psych profile to citizens. Maybe one citizen is very money conscious and they spend less on happiness and takes home more money, but they would get more happiness from going to a park. An other citizen might be bad at managing money and spend a lot more at stores and take home a lot less. They may never reach the monetary level to level up their home.

Other buffers for citizens could be Health, or Education.

Industry/Offices - Labor, Money, Goods/Services
Labor would be provided by citizens. You could have this generated out of thin air or possibly link it to the Health pool on the citizen, healthier citizens generate more labor. Industry/Offices would convert Labor into either Goods if they are industry or Services if they are offices. Once a citizen has provided his Labor to the job place he is rewarded with Money from the Industry/Offices's Money buffer. Industry/Offices would sell their Goods or Services to retail or industry in the city, lowering their Goods/Services buffer but increasing their Money buffer.

Other buffers could be things like Electricity, Water, Networking, and Materials.

Things that could affect the Industry/Office's buffers are things like traffic preventing citizens from reaching work and hampering delivery of Goods. Poor electricity or water systems lowering output or shutting them down completely. Poor networking infrastructure hampering delivery of Services. Importing materials would lower the Money buffer but increase their Materials buffer. Materials bought from outside the city would cost more than stuff produced inside the city.

Stores - Labor, Goods, Services, Money
Stores would require Labor as well but they would use significantly less than Industry or Offices. They would convert Labor and Goods into Happiness and sell that to citizens in exchange for Money. This would lower their Labor and Goods buffers and increase their Money buffer. Money would be exchanged to citizens for Labor and to Industry and Offices for Goods and Services.

Other buffers could be things like Electricity, Water, and Networking. Things that affect Stores buffers would be the same as Industry/Office above.

Residences - Money, Fire, Health, Security, Networking
The primary buffer here would be money taken from the citizen once he reached home after work. This would be used to control the wealth level of the building. Fire, Health, and Security would be tied to Fire Stations, Clinics/Hospitals, and Police Stations. These buffers would slowly deplete on their own and once they got below a certain point would cause an incident. These should also be tied to the level of the building, and could also be applied to Industry/Offices and Stores. Fire, Health, and Security could provide an increase in the citizens Happiness buffer as well. Networking is the representation of the Internet and could provide a small amount of happiness or e-commerce from Offices in the form of Services.

Other buffers could be things like Electricity, or Water.

Fire, Health, Security - Labor, Money
These three buildings would have an affect radius and also a dispatch radius that are affected by their funding level. Within the affect radius they would passively increase the buffers of their respective service in all building around them. The net effect would be that buildings close to them would be at much less risk of incident than buildings far away. The dispatch radius would be for sending out agents once an incident did occur. These buildings would trade Labor for Money just like other Jobs but possibly at a higher rate due to the dangerous work they represent. Money would be added to the buffer from the cities coffers at a set rate based on the current funding level. Labor would be removed from the buffer every time an agent is dispatched to deal with an incident. If there are too many incidents happening then the labor buffer will be depleted faster than it can be filled. Likewise if funding is set to low there won't be enough Money buffer to pay for the Labor required to dispatch agent.

Other buffers could be things like Electricity, or Water. Traffic would affect dispatch speed and possibly the affect radius. You could also have things like volunteer fire departments. They would require significantly less funding but have slower response times and less of an affect radius.

There are many more things you can apply this to like schools that would trade Money and Labor for Education, Parks that would trade Money and a small amount of Labor for Happiness. You could design an Industry tree to run from Raw Materials > Processed Materials > Manufacturing > Hightech Manufacturing like cities XL does. You can add a food buffer to citizens so you have to worry about farms. I also added in Internet/Networking as a new infrastructure. It is about time something like that was added to a game.

Good luck on your game designing, I look forward to playing it one day.

 

Hi there,

I'm not sure how are you planning this... just read your 1st post and some of the others. I think it's a great idea and many suggestions here after. But if this project needs to have an upstart, there must be something more solid... Are you planning using Python as the core code of the game? Do you already have an UML project for the game. As you won't be working alone, that's the very basic for building an application, that will save you from writing thousands of lines of code until you realize you have to go backwards to add a new feature/module to the project. It will also help you and other programmers to decide what tools/language they will use. Second, but crucial, you'll need a game engine. It can be proprietary (designed by your own team) or you can use one of the several available in the gaming market, such as Unreal, Cryengine, Unity and so much more. If you choose to go for the ready made engines, you must decide what kind of game engine and what version you want. I believe that for the game you'll choose a game engine that supports 3D environments and scripting - that's where your knowledge in Python will fit - and versions vary from very expensive, with source code (so you can modify it as you like), to middleware (no source code) and free SDK, with limited features and the licensing only for non-commercial games. Most of those engines uses C++ as the core language, so expect to have experienced programmers with you.
The UML project will help you to understand the need of a game engine. Follows a definition from wikipedia:
"The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine (“renderer”) for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, scene graph, and may include video support for cinematics. The process of game development is often economized, in large part, by reusing/adapting the same game engine to create different games,[1] or to make it easier to "port" games to multiple platforms."

Don't get me wrong... I just want to help. Your game project needs a "FACE", something to show people not just write down ideas, then you (or all of us) can get a StartUp Project to get things going !!

All the best and good luck !

 

I really like OBXandos's idea. Might I add an by saying I recommend for industry to use production chains that follow this flow chart:


Storage and distribution buildings would be the ones to import and export to maintain net 0 surplus/deficit of goods.

 

Shopping Centers with spaces for Rent,Lease,Sale or so on.
Exit Signs to say what's off Exit like Exit 4 Jim's Street/434 like Miami Subs,7-11,Bob's Taco's,Arkz Pointe Shopping Center,Wava,We Super Buffet,Arkz Commons,Burger King,so on and like to Hansville,58 to Toddsport.

 

Here are Lots Of Greats suggestions for a great city builder game:

Ordinances:
- The Game Should Support With Mac and Linux
- Adding More Expansion Packs (Like Sims 3 Pets, Cities Skyline After Dark)

City Service:
- City Hall
- Post Office
- City Public Service

Charges:
- Turns Lines (Road Addon)
- Railroad Crossing
- Fix Game Shader

Skybox:
- Weather: Rain, Snowfall, Sunny, Hails, Cloudy
- Season: Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter

industrial:
- Lot More Warehouse
- Paper Plant
- Plastics Plant
- Paint Plant
- Wood Plant
- Meat Plant
- High Tech Plant
- Steels Plant

Farms:
- Flower Farm
- Apple Farm
- BlueBarry Farm
- Dairy Farm

Retail:
- Lot More Fast Foods
- Lot More Superstores
- Lot More Car Dealership
- Lot More Mobile Shops

Power plants:
- Cell Tower
- TV Tower
- Radio Tower

Water:
- Desalination plant
- Water Pump
- Sewage Plant
- Sewage Dump

Waste:
- Landfill
- Recycling Center
- Garbage Dump
- Waste Treatment Plant
- Bottle Recycling Depot

Education:
- Elementary school
- Middle School
- High School
- School Boards
- University of Applied Sciences
- Pre-School
- Daycare
- City Library
- Private School
- Police Academy

Culture:
- beach: So People Can Play In The Beach

Sports & Leisure:
- Sports facilities
- swimming pools
- stadiums
- Parks

Healthcare:
- Eye Care Centre
- Vet: For Only For Pets

Justice:
- Several police stations
- FBI
- Prison
- Local Court

Fire Department:
- Several Fire stations
- Fire Watch
- Fire Airbase

Public Transportation:
- Bus and Bus Depot
- Tram
- Metro and Metro Stations
- Train and Train Crossing
- Subway
- Ferries
- Harbours
- Airports
- Hyperloop
- Bike Roads and Farm Roads
- Turning Lines
- Road Signs
- Brand New Highways and Highway Tools
- SkyTrain and SkyTrain Stations
- SeaBus
- Taxi and Taxi Depot

 

This new game idea is amazing. I really like the citizen satisfaction states, slums, and upgrading levels. The planning mode and W2W buildings sound... This game sounds like the best of both worlds. I really hope someone can make it (I am willing to beta test).

Anyway, though, to whomever may work on this game: Please make more defult US buildings, and more road options (parking roads with turn lanes, more roads with grass between the sidewalk and street, etc).

WAAHHHH! This is going to be SO awesome!

 

One feature I wish all city building games had is select rectangle and cut or copy and paste.
On paste any structure that couldn't be put on the terrain like water or cliffs is discarded.

 

Still working on it?