5 ms·

It's tangential to the article, but if you like(d) SimCity, you should definitely check out Cities: Skylines [0][1], it's a really well designed game. Another

by iyn 11y ago

It's tangential to the article, but if you like(d) SimCity, you should definitely check out Cities: Skylines [0][1], it's a really well designed game. Another semi-related thing, I'm curious if/when we'll live in a time when every decision is run on some world simulation before being "implemented". Does anybody know how often/if Expert Systems[2] are used in politics/business? How would you approach designing such "simulation", what would be the hardest problems? [0] http://www.citiesskylines.com/ http://www.citiesskylines.com/ [1] Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJb7C2OE9xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJb7C2OE9xM [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system

patmcguire 11y ago
Yeah, Cities: Skylines is incredible. I had an oh shit moment when I realized that every car was a simulated independent actor, at it works.
- iyn 11y ago
  Yeah, it's incredible. But AFAIK, it's not only cars, agents are everywhere in this game. If I recall correctly, latest SimCity also was focused on agents, but it seems Skylines devs are better ;). Good discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2rm5k2/cities_skylines_dev_diary_6_simulation/cnh4tet https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2rm5k2/cities_skylin...
  - XorNot 11y ago
    SimCity used agents in places they're totally inappropriate though. Like power generation - that was simulated as agents which travelled along powerlines and jumped into the nearest empty building each tick. Which of course utterly fails to capture any of the detail of an electrical grid.
binarycrusader 11y ago
Don't get me wrong, Skylines is basically a good game to me, but as someone that has been playing the "Sim" series of games since the original SimCity, I think they missed many of the lessons learned by those games and really could have released a much better game. Most of my qualms with Skylines are sort of "nitpicking", but they are pretty glaring: 1) the annoying tweet bird with no option to disable (at last check) because the devs felt it was central to their design 2) terrible UI graphics (I know this is subjective, but...) seriously; the UI graphics are not very polished compared to SimCity 2000 or SimCity 3 even and look like they were made by a programmer 3) funky road placement; the road placement tools have a lot of the same "floaty" feeling that SimCity "5" did that has lead to much frustration (see the skylines subreddit for various complaints about this) Personally, I wish someone would create a modern version of SimCity 2000 instead using a voxel engine. I miss the precision of placement that it had and the simplicity of various systems. With that said, they did get a lot of things "right" as far as I can tell, such as traffic simulation, map size, and general performance (mostly thanks to Unity really....) and their friendliness to mods, no extra drm, etc.
- iyn 11y ago
  I agree that they have a lot of things to improve, yet I'd argue that Cities: Skylines is the best city simulation so far (disclaimer: I loved SC3000, I hated SC4 and 2013). But maybe I'll change my mind, I'm playing Skylines just to relax once in a while so I haven't had a chance to hate it yet ;). One thing that's great is the community (and Colossal/Paradox attitude towards people that mod the game). The game is pretty new and there is already tons of different mods, it'll be interesting to watch how this evolves over time. So, you say that you don't like Chirpy - you may be interested in this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=405791507 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=40579... (fun name, isn't it?). AFAIK, there are already multiple communities that build mods, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylinesModding https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylinesModding
  - binarycrusader 11y ago
    I was of a mixed mind with SimCity 4; there were certain things about it that were much better and other things not so much. I enjoyed the Rush Hour expansion more than the original SC4. One thing that SC4 did extremely well though was music and general presentation, although I'll admit to missing much of the original composer's music for SimCity 3000/2000. SimCity 2000 had a lot of great mechanics but a fairly terrible interface -- somewhat understandable given its original incarnation as a dos game and certain UI mechanics hadn't come along yet (such as being able to use the scroll wheel or panning around). But I'll always fondly remember when I upgraded to a SoundBlaster AWE32 just so I could get "real midi" music from SimCity 2000 :-)
    - iyn 11y ago
      I absolutely love SimCity 3000 soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkXOxLpdMds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkXOxLpdMds)! It's not only great in a game, but can help with programming/studying/focus.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  > general performance (mostly thanks to Unity really....) Except for the Linux version which barely goes above 30 fps even on monster GPUs. Thanks Unity :(
stdbrouw 11y ago
Most of these kinds of simulations aren't expert systems but microsimulations (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsimulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsimulation) and they are actually used quite a lot for certain kinds of problems, like figuring out the indirect effects of changes in taxation. It is often possible to check baseline accuracy (does it at least work in current conditions?) but as for predictive accuracy, well...
- iyn 11y ago
  Thanks for the link, I haven't heard of microsimulations.

by iyn 11y ago

patmcguire 11y ago

Yeah, Cities: Skylines is incredible. I had an oh shit moment when I realized that every car was a simulated independent actor, at it works.

iyn 11y ago
Yeah, it's incredible. But AFAIK, it's not only cars, agents are everywhere in this game. If I recall correctly, latest SimCity also was focused on agents, but it seems Skylines devs are better ;). Good discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2rm5k2/cities_skylines_dev_diary_6_simulation/cnh4tet https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2rm5k2/cities_skylin...
- XorNot 11y ago
  SimCity used agents in places they're totally inappropriate though. Like power generation - that was simulated as agents which travelled along powerlines and jumped into the nearest empty building each tick. Which of course utterly fails to capture any of the detail of an electrical grid.

binarycrusader 11y ago

Don't get me wrong, Skylines is basically a good game to me, but as someone that has been playing the "Sim" series of games since the original SimCity, I think they missed many of the lessons learned by those games and really could have released a much better game. Most of my qualms with Skylines are sort of "nitpicking", but they are pretty glaring: 1) the annoying tweet bird with no option to disable (at last check) because the devs felt it was central to their design 2) terrible UI graphics (I know this is subjective, but...) seriously; the UI graphics are not very polished compared to SimCity 2000 or SimCity 3 even and look like they were made by a programmer 3) funky road placement; the road placement tools have a lot of the same "floaty" feeling that SimCity "5" did that has lead to much frustration (see the skylines subreddit for various complaints about this) Personally, I wish someone would create a modern version of SimCity 2000 instead using a voxel engine. I miss the precision of placement that it had and the simplicity of various systems. With that said, they did get a lot of things "right" as far as I can tell, such as traffic simulation, map size, and general performance (mostly thanks to Unity really....) and their friendliness to mods, no extra drm, etc.

iyn 11y ago
I agree that they have a lot of things to improve, yet I'd argue that Cities: Skylines is the best city simulation so far (disclaimer: I loved SC3000, I hated SC4 and 2013). But maybe I'll change my mind, I'm playing Skylines just to relax once in a while so I haven't had a chance to hate it yet ;). One thing that's great is the community (and Colossal/Paradox attitude towards people that mod the game). The game is pretty new and there is already tons of different mods, it'll be interesting to watch how this evolves over time. So, you say that you don't like Chirpy - you may be interested in this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=405791507 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=40579... (fun name, isn't it?). AFAIK, there are already multiple communities that build mods, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylinesModding https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylinesModding
- binarycrusader 11y ago
  I was of a mixed mind with SimCity 4; there were certain things about it that were much better and other things not so much. I enjoyed the Rush Hour expansion more than the original SC4. One thing that SC4 did extremely well though was music and general presentation, although I'll admit to missing much of the original composer's music for SimCity 3000/2000. SimCity 2000 had a lot of great mechanics but a fairly terrible interface -- somewhat understandable given its original incarnation as a dos game and certain UI mechanics hadn't come along yet (such as being able to use the scroll wheel or panning around). But I'll always fondly remember when I upgraded to a SoundBlaster AWE32 just so I could get "real midi" music from SimCity 2000 :-)
  - iyn 11y ago
    I absolutely love SimCity 3000 soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkXOxLpdMds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkXOxLpdMds)! It's not only great in a game, but can help with programming/studying/focus.
ekianjo 11y ago
> general performance (mostly thanks to Unity really....) Except for the Linux version which barely goes above 30 fps even on monster GPUs. Thanks Unity :(

stdbrouw 11y ago

Most of these kinds of simulations aren't expert systems but microsimulations (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsimulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsimulation) and they are actually used quite a lot for certain kinds of problems, like figuring out the indirect effects of changes in taxation. It is often possible to check baseline accuracy (does it at least work in current conditions?) but as for predictive accuracy, well...

iyn 11y ago
Thanks for the link, I haven't heard of microsimulations.