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Using SimCity to diagnose my home town's traffic problem
- jstanley 14y agoHe should have built the town in mirror image so as to account for driving on the right. It may be that the interaction of various turns across the road have an impact.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoThat was my first thought too. It surely would make a difference as in one case a busy road moving to another via a left turn can simply filter in and in the other it has to wait for the opposite flow of traffic to clear. Is there a widely available traffic profiling tool like Sim City without the extraneous "fun" parts?? I assume there's some sort of gui based analysis prog that city planners use?
- uptown 14y agoI haven't been this excited for a game to come out in probably more than a decade.
- joeblossom 14y agoMe too. I had the chance to play the beta last weekend and even with reduced functionality the game was quite a lot of fun. I rarely if ever play games and I'm certain this will be a terrible time suck.
- undergroundhero 14y agoI agree, its simulation has depth that rivals Civilization V. And even better, the game's simulation is run on the Maxis servers so it doesn't lose speed with larger cities. Sim City 4 and Civ 5 both have problems with processing large maps. Totally worth the DRM for me.
- Yhippa 14y agoFTA: "...including the fact that once I'd built East Didsbury, the strip of shops in Northenden stopped making as much money as they once were, and some were even beginning to close down as my time ran out. Walk along Northenden high street, and you'll know that feeling." This is interesting. Urban planners out there, do these types of simulations occur before an area is zoned?
- waterlesscloud 14y agoThe problem with a lot of small to medium sized towns is that the people in charge of making zoning decisions are just local good ol' boys (or girls) who got voted in office because people knew who they were. They are in no way qualified to make these kinds of decisions. And so you get what you get.
- JoshTriplett 14y agos/voted/appointed/ in most cities.
- arrrg 14y agoMy uneducated opinion is that appointed/career people tend to do better. You do not want to get politics involved, that tends to screw things up.
- chrisu_de 14y agoHere is the first of 3 videos explaining the simulation engine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS0qURl_JJY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS0qURl_JJY
- brokentone 14y agoAnyone have info about the beta program? Simcity 2000 was my favorite game on my 486. 3000 and classic were flops... this looks really really good. As for the article, really interesting. Sounds like proof of the power of SimCity's engine. Would be more interesting to see him fix his issue.
- joeblossom 14y agoThe beta testing is all done. The game comes out in two weeks.
- potatolicious 14y agoI got into the final wave of the beta over the weekend. Absolutely buying this on release day - gorgeous game and IMO a large improvement over previous installments. The only things that bother me is the limited size of the map (unsure if it's a beta thing or not) - if I can't build a megacity I'm going to be sorely disappointed. Traffic model, economic model, new zoning model, and new utilities model are all IMO simplifications that make the game more fun, but does not remove depth. For those who haven't followed the game: power, sewage, and water no longer require power lines/pipes/etc, and travel along roads. They propagate along roads outwards from their generation source (water towers, power plants, sewage plants, etc) until their capacity is reached. There's a great animated overlay view that lets you monitor the state of each of these pretty easily. The biggest pleasant surprise was how well it ran. I pushed all settings up to max and it didn't even flinch. SimCity 4 in contrast got insanely slow when your city became even slightly large - even on today's hardware. The ability to monitor cashflow is also a welcome change. Instead of having to dive into your balance sheet to figure out your fiscal position it now shows a very clear flow rate (negative or positive) next to your balance.
- jmsduran 14y agoThe map size as seen in the beta is about the same size as what will be seen in the retail version. The argument for this is that the new SimCity runs a much deeper simulation compared to previous titles, and that bigger maps would drastically reduce game performance.
- specto 14y agoI had the opportunity to play through both betas, and I'm fairly certain we haven't even scratched the surface of the interesting "experiments" we can do with it. I'm still purchasing this game, but I do wish EA would consider not forcing you to connect to their servers at all times.
- justjimmy 14y agoSim City should be a recommended game for those taking Geography, especially in HS. When I first started playing, I was reacting to situations - fires, disasters, as they happened, which was already too late. Or I'd build all the fire stations in a nice row, or police stations all in a ordered block of land, then get frustrated when they all jammed each other trying to get out and answer calls. My tactics from Red Alert isn't going to work here. Can't wait for the latest SC!
- wlesieutre 14y agoJust so you're aware about the new SimCity, it requires a constant internet connection to play, and there's no way to save/load previous versions of a city. You can't mess around and experiment without doing irreversible damage, which was a big part of the fun.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoDoes this mean you also can't exchange cities? What sort of foolish design decision is that?
- taintlove 14y agosadly, EA is ruining what looks like an otherwise very promising game with DRM and DLC
- nicksergeant 14y agoI don't think they're ruining it. Some people don't care about DRM / DLC with gaming (like myself). I just want the best possible gaming experience.
- devcpp 14y agoThe last two sentences you wrote are incompatible.
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- chrismealy 14y agoUnless you can build cycle tracks there's no point.
- elktea 14y agoYou can't. It's a super car-centric game. You can't even build pedestrian-only streets or lanes. Light rail is married to roads. There's no way to set bus routes, buses will visit every single stop in town. Oh and subways don't exist either. Hopefully there's a 'rush hour' style expansion that lets us simulate cities other than Los Angeles.
- Alphasite_ 14y agoThere is a pedestrian only road, but at the moment its tied to the university as a plopable. But a developer mentioned that he would have a look at it.
- unkoman 14y agoToo bad it has horrible DRM.
- rcfox 14y agoI wonder if adding toll booths on either end of the city would be a viable-enough source of income to make up for the terrible traffic in the city.
- dasloop 14y agoMicroscopic traffic simulation is a difficult problem to solve, it's not car movement, it's driver's behaviour. The model has to be good enough to reproduce the current situation and, what is the most important part, be able to test realistically future scenarios. In any case the new SimCity looks fantastic, maybe we can exchange our simulation model (Aimsun) for their graphic engine :)
- mcphilip 14y agoIn the original Sim City my brothers and I eventually figured out the solution to ALL traffic problems was to simply never build roads and only use rail lines. Apparently sims were much happier waiting for hours or even days for a train to finally pass their out of the way residential area.
- jlgreco 14y agoSubways can be even better, since they leave the surface clean for other things.
- tcdent 14y agoOriginal Sim City didn't have subways, just railways with very sparse commuter trains. I tried the all-rail town, too. There was a persistent alert to "build more roads".
- ihaveajob 14y agoYou could have a few sparse roads to get rid of that alert, and all things are good. Also, bulldozing congested roads was a net positive.
- flomo 14y agoThe train animation didn't reflect the underlying traffic simulator. And yep, that was the trick.
- lttlrck 14y agoThe Victorians figured that out when there were just horses...
- mratzloff 14y agoIt seems to me that they blundered when it comes to marketing. If they had just called it SimCity Online and promoted it as an MMO, no one would get upset about the persistent connection requirement and no save/load functionality.
- batiudrami 14y agoThat may do more damage than good. [Franchise] Online titles tend to be met with suspicion and disinterest from gamers who traditionally enjoyed the franchise.
- winthrowe 14y agoIt's already SimCity Online in everything but name, and many gamers who traditionally enjoyed the franchise are exceedingly sceptical about the changes. Might as well call a spade a spade.
- stretchwithme 14y agoI think the solution, at least where you create everything, is buses that go non-stop between major hubs. And with traffic lights synchronized to allow them to hit their top speed. And, where possible, set the speeds high. If every spoke is timed so it takes the same amount of time, you can minimize how long people have to wait. Make everybody get on at one end of the bus and exit at the other and hub stops can be short. You'd have to walk to the nearest hub and from the one closest to your destination. But you need the exercise anyway. And charge tolls for passenger cars that vary with demand, something that would work without recreating the roads.
- monkeypizza 14y agoI love simcity, but recently played it and noticed it is really paternalistic. The attitude towards development it has is very much like China - everything is controlled and all land is owned by the government, and the government's job is to manage zoning, roads, schools, education, in order to make people happy. Nobody actually has any property rights - even trees don't grow without government planting efforts. Farmers can't choose their own crops. This is actually really different than what happens in the real world. Really, if a community doesn't have a school, people get together and start one. Small civic organizations evolve into permanent buildings, training schools, etc. Pickup sports leagues evolve into organizations that commission their own stadiums. If there is no fire department, a volunteer one starts. People build churches, or start them at home, whenever they feel the need. But in simcity world, everything good comes from the government. I love simcity, but I do think it's weird that there isn't a mode where you can just let people build whatever they want. I love the built-in, realistic needs people in it have - but where are the entrepreneurs who will actually start a society, or borrow money to build a building on their own? Where are the rebels who start a revolution if the government doesn't meet their needs?
- mattquiros 14y agoI think you should be playing Civilization V.
- wybo 14y agoTrue to some extent. Though in many countries the government has to give planning/zoning permission at least. And notice how in all versions of Sim City most buildings do appear and 'grow' by themselves. So it is not as bad as you make it sound. Also in many European countries at least, schools and other educational institutions are commissioned and payed for by the government. The same for fire-departments. Sports-stadiums, and churches are an edge case, but in most cases at least part of the funding is provided by government, and in most, if not all cases (all stadiums, maybe less so for smaller churches in industrial zones) special planning permission is required (for health and safety, noise, transport considerations, etc). So yes, there is more paternalism in Sim City than in the real world, but it is not as far off as you suggest (not for Europe at least) (revolutions, or at least riots, would be a nice addition to the game)
- robbiemitchell 14y agoI would love to see someone do this with the Holland Tunnel traffic on both sides.