Support NeoGAF

[Rentahamster]

Oddly enough to me, Skylines seems to have the opposite problem that SC 2013 had in regards to the amound of citizens. It sure seems like that cities in Skylines should have many times more inhabitants than shown. It feels wrong to see a city of 7 tiles filled with 15+ story buildings only house around 150000 people. To me it feels a city like that of Etalyx ought to have about 20 times as many inhabitants as shown. And that'S pretty muc hthe feeling I get from any city.

Or in other words, and that has been an issure for me for ever with city builders: The scale of buildings feels wrong. Industry too should take more space than it does as in individual buildings being a whole lot bigger than 4*4 tiles maximum.

True, watching the Paradox stream yesterday when his city only had 16,000 residents but looked like a city that should've had around five times that.

In SimCity, when you looked at the population panel, you could see workers, shoppers, tourists, and students. Those were the actual hard numbers of the agents that were actually running around your city. The overall "population" number was a "fudged" estimate of what the population would be if it was an actual city. A lot of people got mad at them for doing this, so I can see why Colossal Order went with stating ONLY the actual number of the actual agents running around at any given moment.

 

[Armaros]

Well technically, couldn't they just show a statistical number instead of the number of agents? I mean, it's literally just a number. They could show 10+ million population to appease the "but my pop!" crowd and still "only" have 1 million agents on the streets.

I mean, would you REALLY notice? Can any of us actually visualize what 1 million or more people look like?

Because that is what Simcity 2013 did and they got slammed for it.

Edit: and I am sure a modder can apply a simcity 2013 style multiplier if people want the bigger populations.

I would rather have the base game be 100% true mechanics.

 

[Rentahamster]

Well technically, couldn't they just show a statistical number instead of the number of agents? I mean, it's literally just a number. They could show 10+ million population to appease the "but my pop!" crowd and still "only" have 1 million agents on the streets.

I mean, would you REALLY notice? Can any of us actually visualize what 1 million or more people look like?

People noticed in SimCity and got pissed off for it. I think, however, that most of the anger was due the feeling of being misled, rather than an opposition to statistical modeling.

First, the marketing of the game pre release made it seems like EVERY citizen was simulated. Also, in the code, it was actually called "fudgedpopulation" lol

 

[RayStorm]

It's a design decision. They've chosen to represent the actual number of agents being simulated rather than an inflated population estimate. Remember that SimCity got absolutely slammed for doing the latter.

I am well aware of that, but I guess I would rather have a number that matches my expectation / the visual representation. As it is right now it feels almost as hollow as the inflated SC2013 number did. In fact when I look at the buildings and then the number I get the feeling of having an investment bubble ruin of a town rather than a bustling small city or metropolis in front of me. I would very much prefer to see a citizen number that feels like it aligns to the buildings and the amount of traffic (which oddly enough feels like it matches the building size rather than the number).

And the scale is always going to be wrong with city builders. Cities with realistic densities would be incredibly tedious to build and maintain.

Since I don't believe this has ever been attempted I can't just dismiss the idea of better / more realistic scale on your authority alone I'm afraid.

 

[Basileus777]

The traffic does feel really out of scale with the population numbers. You have what would essentially be small towns needing crazy elaborate road and transportation systems that you would only see in a city.

 

[ibyea]

Well technically, couldn't they just show a statistical number instead of the number of agents? I mean, it's literally just a number. They could show 10+ million population to appease the "but my pop!" crowd and still "only" have 1 million agents on the streets.

I mean, would you REALLY notice? Can any of us actually visualize what 1 million or more people look like?

I would personally like that, but many other people didn't like it when Sim City 2013 did it.

 

[Rentahamster]

I would personally like that, but many other people didn't like it when Sim City 2013 did it.

I'm sure that a mod could be made fairly simply that does what you want.

 

[Chezzymann]

I am well aware of that, but I guess I would rather have a number that matches my expectation / the visual representation. As it is right now it feels almost as hollow as the inflated SC2013 number did. In fact when I look at the buildings and then the number I get the feeling of having an investment bubble ruin of a town rather than a bustling small city or metropolis in front of me. I would very much prefer to see a citizen number that feels like it aligns to the buildings and the amount of traffic (which oddly enough feels like it matches the building size rather than the number).



Since I don't believe this has ever been attempted I can't just dismiss the idea of better / more realistic scale on your authority alone I'm afraid.

I'm not sure if thats possible, because different people have different expectations of what a city size translates to actual population. Some large cities are sprawled out, others are incredibly dense. Honestly with the 36 KM^2 in my opinion the 1 million limit is fine. For example, the 9 tiles barely take up a fraction of Los Angeles, which has a population of 4 million.

 

[Jedi2016]

That was the point I was trying to make earlier, was that peoples' ideas of what a "big city" is are drastically smaller than the truth.

 

[PoweredBySoy]

Out of all the streams I've watched, so far I've yet to see anyone implement proper road hierarchy in their city. Zoning on boulevards everywhere. Everywhere :/

Could you explain?

I'm pumped as shit for this game, but I haven't played a city simulator in many years.

 

[ibyea]

I'm sure that a mod could be made fairly simply that does what you want.

That's what I was thinking. Even if there isn't, it's not a big deal.

 

[Tabris]

I disagree with the above statements.

While this is true for the urban sprawl of many American cities. Most international cities in the world are much more dense. And the top end skyline buildings are dense buildings, so it makes no sense for it to match the population per area of the sprawl when you are building a dense city.

 

[ibyea]

I'm not sure if thats possible, because different people have different expectations of what a city size translates to actual population. Some large cities are sprawled out, others are incredibly dense. Honestly with the 36 KM^2 in my opinion the 1 million limit is fine. For example, the 9 tiles barely take up a fraction of Los Angeles, which has a population of 4 million.

Wow, in terms of real cities, 36 km^2 is small. According to the wiki, the area of LA is 1300 km^2.

 

[Rentahamster]

Could you explain?

I'm pumped as shit for this game, but I haven't played a city simulator in many years.

One of the early lessons of SimCity was that you shouldn't zone on every single street that you can. What people did then, and what I see people doing now in Skylines is making a grid or grid like structure of straight up avenues and zoning every single square in it.

This causes buildings to pop up on some roads that are shared by everyone, and in doing, so, people cause traffic behind them to wait while they pull in or out of their house. Service vehicles also impede traffic.

Having a proper hierarchy or roads designates certain roads for primarily through traffic. Those are kept as free as possible since they have to move the most traffic. The side roads that branch out from the main boulevards are zoned. The local traffic is contained there, and that doesn't have much effect on the main boulevard traffic.

It's kind of like visualizing main roads as arteries in your body, and side roads as capillaries.

 

[The Real Abed]

I wonder if a traffic light system could be modded in. I can understand them being left out because they'd be a super complex system by itself. You'd need a whole subsystem just to do all the calculations.

Also street cars would be neat. I bet they could add them in as a sort of upgrade for roads that adds tracks to selected roads and offers stations and stops for them too. It'd be a neat addition. But not extremely needed. Still.

 

[Rentahamster]

I wonder if a traffic light system could be modded in. I can understand them being left out because they'd be a super complex system by itself. You'd need a whole subsystem just to do all the calculations.

Also street cars would be neat. I bet they could add them in as a sort of upgrade for roads that adds tracks to selected roads and offers stations and stops for them too. It'd be a neat addition. But not extremely needed. Still.

They've said that they want to add in more transit options later, and that the ones at launch are all the main ones that they had time to implement.

 

[Chezzymann]

I disagree with the above statements.

While this is true for the urban sprawl of many American cities. Most international cities in the world are much more dense. And the top end skyline buildings are dense buildings, so it makes no sense for it to match the population per area of the sprawl when you are building a dense city.

I dunno, the default city on terrain.party,Tampere, Is almost 20 times larger than the 9 tiles and is fairly dense yet only has a population of 213,000.

EDIT: Tampere is 689 KM^2. The limit in Cities: Skylines is 36KM^2.

Just the 9 tiles of the city:

Hell, even with London, the 9 tiles take up a fraction of the city's actual size (red circle represents rough city limits)

 

[ibyea]

I disagree with the above statements.

While this is true for the urban sprawl of many American cities. Most international cities in the world are much more dense. And the top end skyline buildings are dense buildings, so it makes no sense for it to match the population per area of the sprawl when you are building a dense city.

Even then, look at this:
Berlin-891 km^2, 3.5 million people
Paris-105 km^2, 2.2 million people
London-1572 km^2, 8.4 million people
Lagos-999 km^2, 7.6 million people
Beijing-16410 km^2, 21.5 million people
Tokyo-2187 km^2, 13.1 million people

Any multi million people city will at least be much larger than the allotted 32 km^2.

 

[Chezzymann]

Basically 36KM^2 is the size of a small town, heck you could make the argument that the numbers are actually inflated a little compared to real life cities haha. At the very least they're close to the point its not really an issue.

Edit: Okay maybe not a small town, but the numbers are pretty accurate to real life, more than people think.

 

[trinest]

Do we know how well the full title maps work yet? Old bud with his stream a few pages back basically loaded an existing map did nothing in any of the unlocked titles and then broke the game.

 

[Psykoboy2]

Do we know how well the full title maps work yet? Old bud with his stream a few pages back basically loaded an existing map did nothing in any of the unlocked titles and then broke the game.

They work, you just have to be careful. At 60K population I was pulling around mid-60% of my CPU...the pop cap in 1 Million. Then I destroyed the city, but if you go further and raise the population, I fear what will happen to your computer at that point.

 

[TekGryphon]

Anyone recommend a Skyline youtube series that isn't done by someone pants-on-head incompetent?

 

[Klyka]

They work, you just have to be careful. At 60K population I was pulling around mid-60% of my CPU...the pop cap in 1 Million. Then I destroyed the city, but if you go further and raise the population, I fear what will happen to your computer at that point.

I don't quite get why a larger map would take more CPU at the same amount of population.
Is there simulation in the map itself?

 

[-Deadpool-]

Got my pre-order in with GMG. Bodyisready.

Haven't been this hyped for a game in a long time.

 

[Psykoboy2]

I don't quite get why a larger map would take more CPU at the same amount of population.
Is there simulation in the map itself?

Actually, you're right. A larger map has nothing to do with, just the population. I was thinking the more tiles you have the better chance at getting the population cap of a million. But yeah it's all about population.

 

[Giever]

I don't quite get why a larger map would take more CPU at the same amount of population.
Is there simulation in the map itself?

Maybe it has to do more continuous water physics calculations because you're including more rivers and such with the additional tiles?

 

[The Real Abed]

Anyone recommend a Skyline youtube series that isn't done by someone pants-on-head incompetent?

Skye seems to know what he is doing. He started out just like everyone else but has something really nice now. He releases like 3 episodes a day or so.

Hey everyone, only one more full Cities: Skylines-less day to go until we're no longer Cities: Skylines-less!

Has anyone who has gotten a copy early tried to benchmark the game on multiple computers yet? I'd love to see someone take a large or medium city that they built up on a high end computer and see how it performs when taken to something a few years old.

 

[Rentahamster]

I don't quite get why a larger map would take more CPU at the same amount of population.
Is there simulation in the map itself?

Actually, you're right. A larger map has nothing to do with, just the population. I was thinking the more tiles you have the better chance at getting the population cap of a million. But yeah it's all about population.

Well, the pathfinding AI needs to take into account the valid space you are working in when it calculates its path. Given the same amount of people, a larger valid workspace would mean more potential paths, which means more pathfinding calculations for the AI.

 

[MUnited83]

Anyone recommend a Skyline youtube series that isn't done by someone pants-on-head incompetent?

quill18

 

[chrominance]

The highest density city in the world, according to Wikipedia, is Manila. 1.6 million people in ~38 square kilometres. The list only takes into account the actual city limits, not neighborhoods or districts within the city, so it's possible that larger cities have individual districts with much higher population densities.

 

[OmegaDL50]

Main Features

Price at launch:

SimCity - $60
Cities Skylines - $30

Maximum size of a city:

SimCity - 2km X 2km = 4 square kilometers
Cities Skylines - 6km X 6km = 36 square kilometers. There is already a mod out that will unlock even more space - 10km x 10km = 100 square kilometers.

Always online:

SimCity - lol yes (but patched out a year later)
Cities Skylines - Fuck no. (One time Steam DRM activation, but that's it)

Map and asset editing:

SimCity - No
Cities Skylines - Yes

Mod support:

SimCity - Not at launch, but added in (a lot) later. With restrictions.
Cities Skylines - Yes. With a modding API and Steam Workshop support.​

Citizen Simulation

Both SimCity and Cities Skylines use an agent-based simulation to represent their citizens. SimCity, however, cannot handle as many citizen agents in as large a space as Cities Skylines can.

SimCity - 3 main types of citizens, workers, shoppers, and students. They would all go out en masse to the nearest workplace, store, or school, then all come back to any residence. Not very "realistic".

Cities Skylines - Each citizen is individualized and has a permanent residence and a permanent job. They will go about their day and work/shop/play as needed. Each citizen can be renamed. Pretty much anything can be renamed in Cities Skylines. Even pigs on a farm.​

Traffic and Mass Transit

SimCity: Traffic was a mess, and still can be if you don't know how to properly manage your citizens. Behavior was akin to citizens moving from any residence sink to any work/shop/school sink, then back to any home sink again.

Transit options included Buses, Streetcars, Trains, Planes, and Boats, but routes could not be assigned, and things like busses just move in a seemingly randomized and inefficient pattern that you have no control over.

Cities Skylines: For the most part, it models actual real life traffic a little better just because of how those work/shop/school mechanics work. There also isn't a deluge of agents vomiting out of buildings all the time, so it gets a little less congested.

Road options are much better, since you can use highways, onramps, and interchanges. There are more options to influence traffic than SimCity has. No tunnels, however, but the devs are planning on implementing that soon after launch.

Transit options include Buses, SUBWAYS, trains, planes, and boats. You can set your own routes, and sims will transfer and use the mass transit like you'd expect them to. MUCH improved over SimCity's mass transit.​

RCI system

SimCity: A slight departure from the RCI system of SimCity4. It was more like whether or not you have enough workers to work jobs, and enough goods to satisfy shoppers. Building more residential generated workers and shoppers, building industry generated jobs, and building commercial generated jobs and goods to be sold. It really didn't matter much. Stuff got build right as you zoned them, and they would either grow because they got their needs fulfilled, or die.

Residential buildings would grow because the workers went to a job sink, then came back to the building with money. Then, the shopper agents would go to a store, and buy a good (if available), then come back with happiness. Once the happiness reached a certain point, the building would upgrade in density.

Commercial buildings would get happier when a shopper agent or tourist would buy their goods. Or, if they got a freight shipment from an industry building. Once the happiness reached a certain point, the building would upgrade in density.

Industry buildings would start work once they received a minimum amount of workers, then they would periodically produce freight, which would get shipped to commercial zones. If they were able to drop off a freight successfully, the get happier. Once the happiness reached a certain point, the building would upgrade in density.

It didn't really work all that well, and you were usually better off just ignoring industry alltogether.

Cities Skylines: Their RCI model appears to be more like SimCity4, but with elements of SImCity. Having one increases the demand for the other two, and so on. Industry also generates cargo, which is shipped to commercial stores to sell. Fairly straightforward. If there are enough places to work, and shop, residential is happy. If they can ship out enough goods, industry is happy. If they can sell enough goods, commercial is happy. If there are adequate services, everyone is happy.​

Services

Stuff like Police, Fire, Ambulances work fairly similar in both games. The AI in Cities Skylines appears to be better.​

I think another big point to bring up is that Cities: Skylines is 64-bit enabled to handle more then the 4GB ram limits of a 32-bit application, this means it won't run into memory issues.

Cities XL biggest problem was it's memory leaks, in that once your city reaches a certain population threshold the entire game comes to complete halt, even if you use a 64-bit aware patch. This problem was never fixed in ether the XL Platinum or XXL re-releases either.

Colossal Order is making a very smart decision to make their city builder game to be 64-bit ready, this means any future expansion packs or large mods won't bust the games memory limit compared to a 32-bit limit application.

 

[motorised mallard]

I dunno, the default city on terrain.party,Tampere, Is almost 20 times larger than the 9 tiles and is fairly dense yet only has a population of 213,000.

EDIT: Tampere is 689 KM^2. The limit in Cities: Skylines is 36KM^2.



Just the 9 tiles of the city:



Hell, even with London, the 9 tiles take up a fraction of the city's actual size (red circle represents rough city limits)

Check the google maps beyond the dead center of the city, not exactly high density grid design here is it? Yes, I live there too.

Might give some insight why the devs went for the smaller numbers also, it's not like there are any "real" cities here beyond Helsinki and her surroundings.

 

[DEO3]

quill18

The video he uploaded today regarding how different roads work when intersecting with each other was pretty fascinating, I'm looking forward to his next stream when he attempts to use that knowledge in an actual city.

 

[Jedi2016]

The video he uploaded today regarding how different roads work when intersecting with each other was pretty fascinating, I'm looking forward to his next stream when he attempts to use that knowledge in an actual city.

He already did. And traffic flow's pretty good right off the bat, too, although he did tweak it a bit here and there.

While it's good on paper, I can't really plan ahead based on that, it won't really sink in until I actually start playing.

 

[Chezzymann]

Check the google maps beyond the dead center of the city, not exactly high density grid design here is it? Yes, I live there too.

Might give some insight why the devs went for the smaller numbers also, it's not like there are any "real" cities here beyond Helsinki and her surroundings.

I'm just saying that 36 km^2 is very small for most cities. New York, a city with 8 million people and a high density grid design, has a city size of 1,200 KM^2.

The highest density city in the world, according to Wikipedia, is Manila. 1.6 million people in ~38 square kilometres. The list only takes into account the actual city limits, not neighborhoods or districts within the city, so it's possible that larger cities have individual districts with much higher population densities.

Hmm, interesting, so basically the visual representation of the 'maxed out' grid city designs in Cities: Skylines would be incredibly dense, by far denser than any city in the world? And they would be like the much higher density areas of the largest cities in the world but evenly spread out across the 36 KM^2 map? I think I'm starting to see why Maxis had inflated numbers in Sim City 2013, you can't really simulate something that dense, with literally millions of cars and people walking around, on consumer level computers.

 

[theepicoftyler]

The densest parts of Chicago would fit in a 36km^2 area. There's around 2.7 mil there.

If you could the suburbs, you're around 10 million, and that's much more spread out obviously.

I did enjoy creating regions in Sim City 4 where I could have my giant megacities surrounded by surburbs and far flung small towns. I'm not getting hung up on that though. I can't wait to play this game.

 

[motorised mallard]

I'm just saying that 36 km^2 is very small for most cities. New York, a city with 8 million people and a high density grid design, has a city size of 1,200 KM^2.



Hmm, interesting, so basically the visual representation of the 'maxed out' grid city designs in Cities: Skylines would be incredibly dense, by far denser than any city in the world? And they would be like the much higher density areas of the largest cities in the world but evenly spread out across the 36 KM^2 map? I think I'm starting to see why Maxis had inflated numbers in Sim City 2013, you can't really simulate something that dense, with literally millions of cars and people walking around, on consumer level computers.

I think I saw on steam a picture of something like 940k(?) people in a 2x2 km square, but that was nothing besides high density residential and roads.

I guess my point was more about the city size vs population not feeling really "off", so to speak.

- edit -

Tomorrow the my torture ends...and the real torture test of my cpu begins.

 

[AxeMan]

I just did a 36km^2 of my city and it would be lucky to have 100,000 people in it

 

[Smash88]

I'm sure someone will mod to break the 1 million person barrier. There is already a 25 tile mod, and I'm sure higher ones will modded in as well.

Regardless, I'm happy that the devs aren't lying about how many actual people are in the game.

 

[Rentahamster]

I'm sure someone will mod to break the 1 million person barrier. There is already a 25 tile mod, and I'm sure higher ones will modded in as well.

Regardless, I'm happy that the devs aren't lying about how many actual people are in the game.

Even if someone does, you're gonna need a beastly computer just to run it over a million.

 

[The Real Abed]

Question. When you delete a road and the cars that were on it disappear, what happens to them internally? Do they teleport back home or to their destination or to the nearest road?

What about train tracks?

Edit: Also, since it's possible to accidentally draw one-way roads in the wrong direction, is there a way to maybe right-click a segment that's backwards and flip it? If not, if you pause the game, delete the roads, and put them back the right way, will buildings and zones that were already connected to it attach themselves to the new road instead of disappearing?

 

[tim_pkmn89]

Even if someone does, you're gonna need a beastly computer just to run it over a million.

And the gamers of 2020 will love it

 

[Wolf Akela]

And the gamers of 2020 will love it

Or beyond. I still play SimCity 4.

 

[Suikoguy]

I love following my Cims to see how they use my public transports.

I made several bus and metro lines, and most of my Cims now use them instead of taking their car.

I'm preparing a little video for Gamersyde showing this.

I could find a Cim that wanted to take the Red Bus line, but the Yellow one came first to the stop, so she took it instead and left at the next stop to pick the Red line, as the Yellow one does not go where she wanted to.
Another example is an elder, he took the metro to cross the river, then took another line in the same station, and then walked a little bit to take the bus.

I also have a metro line going from residentials to industries, traffic is now low on roads as it has a 100% efficiency.

This game is incredible, I love it.

This part is in thanks to their experience and pedigree with Cities in Motion 1 and 2.
From a development perspective, it was genius to start with those two games and then move on to this all encompassing game.

 

[Armaros]

This part is in thanks to their experience and pedigree with Cities in Motion 1 and 2.
From a development perspective, it was genius to start with those two games and then move on to this all encompassing game.

Its incredible considering they had one dev for the first Cities in Motion and 5 people at the end of the second, working towards Cities:Skyline.

Now currently around 13 IIRC.

 

[AppleMIX]

Man, I hope I can play this right away at midnight.

 

[The Real Abed]

Man, I hope I can play this right at midnight away at midnight.

I think someone mentioned it won't be available until 1PM Eastern on the 10th?

I'd love for it to be midnight Eastern though. I'd play all damn night. Go to work at 4PM the next day and spend the next 42 hours playing until work on Thursday.

 

[SneakyStephan]

Its incredible considering they had one dev for the first Cities in Motion and 5 people at the end of the second, working towards Cities:Skyline.

Now currently around 13 IIRC.

13 people made this? woah

It's like natural selection 2 then(only they took 10 years to make it with 10 people xD)

 

[Grief.exe]

Game is now #1 seller on Steam....got damn!

Been that way for a while. Was the fourth best seller for the last week on Steam, likely will take one of the top three spots this week.

I think another big point to bring up is that Cities: Skylines is 64-bit enabled to handle more then the 4GB ram limits of a 32-bit application, this means it won't run into memory issues.

Cities XL biggest problem was it's memory leaks, in that once your city reaches a certain population threshold the entire game comes to complete halt, even if you use a 64-bit aware patch. This problem was never fixed in ether the XL Platinum or XXL re-releases either.

Colossal Order is making a very smart decision to make their city builder game to be 64-bit ready, this means any future expansion packs or large mods won't bust the games memory limit compared to a 32-bit limit application.

I believe Skylines is also designed as a multi-threaded engine, while Simcity 2013 was single core. Unless I am mistaken.

 

[dejay]

Looking at this picture of an applied colour correction filter...

...makes me want a Mirror's Edge filter with appropriately modeled and skinned buildings.

That's "Blockbuster" filter by the way put out by Colossol Order.

Their "Fall" filter is also quite nice.