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The Colossal Order team, in my opinion was very lucky! There were three games - 1. SimCity 4 with the statistical simulation model, big maps (region-wise) and

by intull 12y ago

The Colossal Order team, in my opinion was very lucky! There were three games - 1. SimCity 4 with the statistical simulation model, big maps (region-wise) and plenty of features. 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. And, 3. Cities XL having a HUGE map, few unique features like bus routing, etc and amazing graphics! All these games had flaws in their respective models but worked well nonetheless. SimCity 5 is a success IMO; for venturing into a much realistic simulation that you could connect with. Though we all love to complain about the map size. Cities: Skylines had the advantage of picking up the good pieces of each of these games! On the other hand, the last good game was SimCity 4 in 2003, more than a decade! We badly needed Cities: Skylines. It's also very elating to see the support the team is giving to us! The Map Editor, the Asset Editor, the water dynamics, a mixture of agent and other simulation models (as they call it - "complex"). Though this game has its own share of flaws, they're quite tiny; except for the traffic (which is being fixed)!

mlieberman85 12y ago
Did it actually have much of a "realistic simulation" though? One of the main reasons I didn't buy the game is because people tore it to shreds for utilizing the same exact algorithm for determining traffic as they did water and other utilities. Also people pointed out that like people themselves weren't actually simulated in anyway they just woke up in the morning found the first open commercial job to work at and at night left and found the first house to live in.
- intull 12y ago
  Well, maybe not "real" as in the "real world", but "real" enough to have fun. SimCity 5 faced an ordeal in trying to be too real; they traded off other vital entities (map size, gameplay features) for getting this simulation right! It's also been stated that this game has, by default, a very "easy" gameplay which may have contributed to siding to being a bit less realistic but sufficiently real for playing and having fun. The traffic is a mess, true. They'll patch it up with a better algorithm hopefully. It's still fun though. I recently had a couple of industrial buildings burn to ashes because the firetrucks were caught up in a jam! Now that's quite possible!
  - true_religion 12y ago
    But I'm curious what actual 'realism' did it have? Like the above poster said, the agent model may have been intended to be more realistic, but in practice you couldn't follow a single sim and see a facsimile of reality: they would go to the nearest workplaces and return to the nearest house even if it wasn't 'theirs'. So where did Sim City 5 succeed that no others have?
- creshal 12y ago
  If you have a Windows XP VM lying around somewhere, take a look at Caesar III (should be on GoG). Agent based simulation done right, in 1998.
- TheCoelacanth 12y ago
  It was a realistic simulation of a dystopian society in which people had no long term jobs or housing but were simply assigned to one each day based on proximity.
  - lightbritefight 12y ago
    The task rabbit economy model. If they had leaned into that dystopia, it might have been a fascinating city building syndicate game.
creshal 12y ago
> 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. It irks me how SimCity 5 is praised for that. The Caesar series had pure agent-based simulations in the 1990s, and somehow had none of the agent routing bugs SimCity 5 had. How can being worse than your competition 20 years ago be considered an accomplishment?
- intull 12y ago
  Ah but the level of detail and graphics? I could see the contrusction workers actually working, moving vans with families, kids boarding coming out of the house, boarding the school bus (actually walking/climbing), going to the school, playing on the swings, the sand, the slides, people actually walking in the park, a car actually owned by a sim being parked at work, etc. SC5 is praised for this level of detail in its model.
  - interurban 12y ago
    Games like Pharoah (a direct descendant of the Caesar series) also had agent modeling in the late 90's where you could see what the agents were doing. That said, the computing power and storage capacities of the time limited the set of possible animations. The LOD and graphics are incremental improvements on a feature that has existed for decades (not to say they aren't welcome improvements).
  - creshal 12y ago
    Take a look at Caesar 3. It's "only" hand-drawn, high-resolution 2D, but the amount of detail is impressive. People enter the map carrying their belongings on hand-drawn carts, erect tents, go to work, walk around on the streets, the building slowly grow all the way up to small palaces… or a mob with torches and pitchforks assembles and razes everything, only to be mauled by the local amphitheatre's lions (or wild wolves). Kids run through the streets, food is carried from the farms to the silos, to markets, to homes, … It's similar for other games of the time, like Settlers II. Only in the 2000s the detail level was massively cut down.
  - 12y ago

by intull 12y ago

mlieberman85 12y ago

Did it actually have much of a "realistic simulation" though? One of the main reasons I didn't buy the game is because people tore it to shreds for utilizing the same exact algorithm for determining traffic as they did water and other utilities. Also people pointed out that like people themselves weren't actually simulated in anyway they just woke up in the morning found the first open commercial job to work at and at night left and found the first house to live in.

intull 12y ago
Well, maybe not "real" as in the "real world", but "real" enough to have fun. SimCity 5 faced an ordeal in trying to be too real; they traded off other vital entities (map size, gameplay features) for getting this simulation right! It's also been stated that this game has, by default, a very "easy" gameplay which may have contributed to siding to being a bit less realistic but sufficiently real for playing and having fun. The traffic is a mess, true. They'll patch it up with a better algorithm hopefully. It's still fun though. I recently had a couple of industrial buildings burn to ashes because the firetrucks were caught up in a jam! Now that's quite possible!
- true_religion 12y ago
  But I'm curious what actual 'realism' did it have? Like the above poster said, the agent model may have been intended to be more realistic, but in practice you couldn't follow a single sim and see a facsimile of reality: they would go to the nearest workplaces and return to the nearest house even if it wasn't 'theirs'. So where did Sim City 5 succeed that no others have?
creshal 12y ago
If you have a Windows XP VM lying around somewhere, take a look at Caesar III (should be on GoG). Agent based simulation done right, in 1998.
TheCoelacanth 12y ago
It was a realistic simulation of a dystopian society in which people had no long term jobs or housing but were simply assigned to one each day based on proximity.
- lightbritefight 12y ago
  The task rabbit economy model. If they had leaned into that dystopia, it might have been a fascinating city building syndicate game.

creshal 12y ago

> 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. It irks me how SimCity 5 is praised for that. The Caesar series had pure agent-based simulations in the 1990s, and somehow had none of the agent routing bugs SimCity 5 had. How can being worse than your competition 20 years ago be considered an accomplishment?

intull 12y ago
Ah but the level of detail and graphics? I could see the contrusction workers actually working, moving vans with families, kids boarding coming out of the house, boarding the school bus (actually walking/climbing), going to the school, playing on the swings, the sand, the slides, people actually walking in the park, a car actually owned by a sim being parked at work, etc. SC5 is praised for this level of detail in its model.
- interurban 12y ago
  Games like Pharoah (a direct descendant of the Caesar series) also had agent modeling in the late 90's where you could see what the agents were doing. That said, the computing power and storage capacities of the time limited the set of possible animations. The LOD and graphics are incremental improvements on a feature that has existed for decades (not to say they aren't welcome improvements).
- creshal 12y ago
  Take a look at Caesar 3. It's "only" hand-drawn, high-resolution 2D, but the amount of detail is impressive. People enter the map carrying their belongings on hand-drawn carts, erect tents, go to work, walk around on the streets, the building slowly grow all the way up to small palaces… or a mob with torches and pitchforks assembles and razes everything, only to be mauled by the local amphitheatre's lions (or wild wolves). Kids run through the streets, food is carried from the farms to the silos, to markets, to homes, … It's similar for other games of the time, like Settlers II. Only in the 2000s the detail level was massively cut down.
- 12y ago