Anyone else waiting for this game - I know I am? SimCity 2013 was so disappointing.
Cities: Skylines
- Thread starter Shortbread
- Start date
Can't believe there was no discussion on this. It's been on my wishlist since it was released and finally picked it up and damn it's fantastic. Graphics are gorgeous, though the built-in AA and that DSR doesn't work caused some major aliasing. This was soon fixed by a fantastic mod from the Workshop which renders at incremental higher resolutions, basically what DSR does but I can use it windowed as well! Another addon gave ambient occlusion so now it's perfect.
The tools are very simple and allow a lot of freedom to build the roads etc. exactly how you want. Traffic and general AI is everything EA dreamed they could have done and was achieved by a much smaller developer.
This is a must for any SimCity fan.
The tools are very simple and allow a lot of freedom to build the roads etc. exactly how you want. Traffic and general AI is everything EA dreamed they could have done and was achieved by a much smaller developer.
This is a must for any SimCity fan.
I play it with my son as well, though he's 4 years old. He loves sitting with me building roads and watching new things get constructed. He's apparently very picky about making sure roads go somewhere, especially when I had a road end at a cliff and he was very worried the people would drive off the end. 
Really fantastic game. Last 3 nights I've ended up going to bed after 4am from just doing a little bit more of my city before I turn in! It's exactly what a modern sim city should be / should have been. It's quite easy to beat the game and hit the largest city size to be rewarded, then more challenges to unlock buildings, and then using those unlocked buildings to get monuments that have huge perks. I've not unlocked everything yet so not sure if there's more beyond that.
The early game is largely faultless and looks fantastic. Good transitions between high level overviews and zooming right in to see all the little people running around and driving their vans with doughnuts on the roof, etc. Nice tilt shift lens effect up close to give scale. Only real visual "issue" I've seen is the reflections in the building windows aren't actually a reflection of what's in front of them but rather a standard view. eg: if I put a park in front of a skyscraper office block it reflects more office blocks rather than the park.
After the early game the micromanagement it pretty good. Getting really big/efficient is interesting in itself and I suspect you can keep tweaking one city forever (rather than starting new cities each play through). Managing traffic to avoid bottlenecks in a dense city isn't easy and it isn't always clear when you've set a one way road poorly until you zoom in but can't fault the rest of the sim. It's amazing to be able to click on any person in a traffic jam, know where they're going, where they've come from and then optionally follow them on their route to work out where they're getting snarled up or followed a weird path. Correct that and then watch the city rebalance itself.
I suspect public transport is potentially another never ending mini game for tweaking everyone getting around but haven't really used it / footpaths, etc yet.
The early game is largely faultless and looks fantastic. Good transitions between high level overviews and zooming right in to see all the little people running around and driving their vans with doughnuts on the roof, etc. Nice tilt shift lens effect up close to give scale. Only real visual "issue" I've seen is the reflections in the building windows aren't actually a reflection of what's in front of them but rather a standard view. eg: if I put a park in front of a skyscraper office block it reflects more office blocks rather than the park.
After the early game the micromanagement it pretty good. Getting really big/efficient is interesting in itself and I suspect you can keep tweaking one city forever (rather than starting new cities each play through). Managing traffic to avoid bottlenecks in a dense city isn't easy and it isn't always clear when you've set a one way road poorly until you zoom in but can't fault the rest of the sim. It's amazing to be able to click on any person in a traffic jam, know where they're going, where they've come from and then optionally follow them on their route to work out where they're getting snarled up or followed a weird path. Correct that and then watch the city rebalance itself.
I suspect public transport is potentially another never ending mini game for tweaking everyone getting around but haven't really used it / footpaths, etc yet.
Have you guys installed the GTA V mod? It's pretty good... however, it's expensive as hell on supporting it. lol
That makes a lot of sense. The level of sim is very much appreciated but if it's actually doing it as deeply as it seems to I'm not surprised other devs haven't bothered. There's a lot going on under the hood. It's impressive how quickly the cars recalculate a route when you just wipe out a major road and they still get to their desitnation.
Not played with mods yet. Huge community by the looks of it though. Seen the GTA cities but not a GTA V mod. What does it do? On steam workshop?
It certainly spins up the fans on my old 2010 Macbook Pro (i7) to the point I wouldn't want to play it locally. I do play it on this machine but use steam streaming from desktop PC.
The game's a little clunky without easy access to a right mouse button on macbooks as it's used a lot in the game. You can bind keys to work around it but it's a nicer experience with a mouse or a dedicated right mouse button on trackpad.
The game's a little clunky without easy access to a right mouse button on macbooks as it's used a lot in the game. You can bind keys to work around it but it's a nicer experience with a mouse or a dedicated right mouse button on trackpad.
It's Los Santos in Cities: Skyline reproduced in amazing detail. The upkeep on it requires a lot of money.
It a recreation of Los Santos from GTA V (download link in video description). It's pretty cool...
D
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davis.anthony
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Crazy!!!
hoom
Veteran
It always felt a bit 2nd class somehow but Cities:Skylines really became the go-to city builder.
Haven't really followed the II development too much but seems like a good sequel incorporating a lot of the quality of life improvements the first got in mods & DLC, albeit they do appear to have some serious launch teething issues.
I'll probably only get it after its had some time to mature.
Haven't really followed the II development too much but seems like a good sequel incorporating a lot of the quality of life improvements the first got in mods & DLC, albeit they do appear to have some serious launch teething issues.
I'll probably only get it after its had some time to mature.
D
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For many it has since launch. You may have forgotten but EA changed SimCity's 2013 release to make it very unappealing, particularly
regards what the game technology required, i.e. always online for what was still a single-player game. That quickly back-pedalled on that but it was already too late.
Cities Skylines launched in 2015 and has been premier city builder ever since, with good mod support and ongoing DLC expansions.
Paradox have made the classic mistake with the sequel not being well optimised and also not including a bunch of features added in DLC for the original game. To a lesser degree they repeated the mistake they make with Crusader Kings III, which like CS2, was mechanically a better game than CK II, but which lacked a ton of features introduced in CKI II over the DLCs.
It feels like gamers are fatigued with getting a new version of a game that is feature-wise worse than the previous game.
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My take on C:S2 is that the community has been spoiled by the available mods. CO hired a couple of the best mod devs AFAIK which was a good move. And yeah you are right @DSoup that the new game is clearly missing some of what was in DLC in the old game (no bikes, WTF?!).
The C:S1 community has been moaning about the performance of the old engine, lack of scalability, etc. and hoping that the new iteration solves all of those. Maybe it achieves that but it clearly introduces new performance problems somewhere else. Which is a shame. It obviously could have done with another six months of polish and optimisation.
My hope is that this is just a new foundation for something that can grow as C:S1 did. I've bought it anyway because TBH much of the landscape in gaming right now is just so downright depressing. I am so sick of YAFFPS dominating and micro-transactions and all the other stuff.
The C:S1 community has been moaning about the performance of the old engine, lack of scalability, etc. and hoping that the new iteration solves all of those. Maybe it achieves that but it clearly introduces new performance problems somewhere else. Which is a shame. It obviously could have done with another six months of polish and optimisation.
My hope is that this is just a new foundation for something that can grow as C:S1 did. I've bought it anyway because TBH much of the landscape in gaming right now is just so downright depressing. I am so sick of YAFFPS dominating and micro-transactions and all the other stuff.
