[HN Gopher] SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago
___________________________________________________________________
SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago
Author : jdkee
Score : 302 points
Date : 2023-05-23 02:04 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
| kuon wrote:
| I have fond memories of simcity 1 and 2000. I currently play
| cities skylines but it has its cons. I hope cities skylines 2
| will have less central traffic and we can zone without road. It's
| our best hope to a modern simcity.
|
| But this article motivated me to play sc4 again.
| bombcar wrote:
| There are mods for CS that let you zone against the park paths,
| IIRC.
|
| You can make road-free portions of the city, but you need other
| mods to handle garbage, etc (basically dumpsters) because
| without roads you can't get the trucks in.
|
| The latest DLC seems to have some more on that area (roads that
| ONLY emergency/bus/service vehicles can use).
| kuon wrote:
| Yeah I tested a bit, but in the end you always feel that the
| game was designed around roads.
|
| I have not tested the latest DLC I think. I thought it was
| about airports only.
| bombcar wrote:
| It was the one after airports, Plazas and Promenades:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Q8RN9ut4s
|
| I've not played with it much, but I used similar mods that
| let the paths from the earlier Parklife and Campus DLC do
| similar tricks.
|
| I couldn't and didn't entirely get rid of roads, but I had
| 50+ utilizing non-car transportation.
| NBJack wrote:
| This is a stretch. 4 was alright, but it also marked the death of
| the series. 3 was great, 2 was legendary. There's a great reason
| Cities: Skylines became the spiritual successor.
| tjpnz wrote:
| If SimCity 4 marked the death of the series what was SimCity
| 2013?
| somat wrote:
| the death itself
| Mezzie wrote:
| A shambling zombie of the franchise?
| lodovic wrote:
| I'm still sad about that. They destroyed one of the best game
| franchises ever. It was such a disappointment after all the
| release hype.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Simcity 4 was the high point, it was its putrid and inbred
| successor that killed off the franchise.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| "Putrid and inbred" correctly describes the DRM scheme. The
| game underneath that crud was trying to go way more in-depth
| by building a sim game out of an RTS engine. They wanted to,
| say, have Sims in your SimCity actually _drive to work_ and
| back and get stuck in traffic jams. Problem is, the average
| computer in 2013 couldn 't actually handle simulating _that
| many units_. This isn 't inbreeding, this is being
| overambitious. Shooting for the moon, and landing not in the
| stars, but in the Salton Sea[0].
|
| [0] I have no clue if any viable launch trajectories from
| Cape Canaveral support such an emergency landing.
| mrfinn wrote:
| I kinda surprised that no one mentioned this game in this
| thread before, and the few mentions is to bash it. I
| enjoyed a lot SimCity 2013, don't know why they create a
| mess with the version number and DRM was a pain in the back
| for sure, but the game for me was beyond amazing,
| effectively it was possible to zoom in and follow any
| citizen in the daily routine, graphics and music were
| amazing as well, never seen after that nothing close in
| this genre.
|
| PS. Ok I saw that the problems were related with a buggy
| DRM system requiring Internet connection on top of that, I
| was lucky enough to begin playing when that was allowed to
| opt out.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| My gripe with SimCity 2013 was the ABYSMAL city plot
| sizes.
|
| I wanted to enjoy SimCity 2013, but being able to fill up
| your entire plot in an hour or two of gameplay made the
| game entirely unfun. Playing multiple cities in a region
| wasn't good enough.
| neals wrote:
| A time before micro payments. Games built by artisans that loved
| their product and gave it their everything. Great times.
| zokier wrote:
| 00s were imho the most corporate era of gaming, being after the
| 90s when the likes of Wright, Sawyer, Carmack et al managed to
| succeed with only small teams, and before 10s when "indie"
| gaming made its rise. Lots of good things can be said about
| SC4, but artisanal is not one of those.
| jordemort wrote:
| My only complaint about this game is that even the largest region
| size feels too dang small. I'd pay full retail price for a
| SimCity 5 that was just SimCity 4 with larger regions.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Are there mods?
| capableweb wrote:
| Basically that was what the entire community wanted + deeper
| gameplay, but instead EA chose to go the complete opposite
| direction, screwing the entire community and letting Cities:
| Skylines be the spiritual successor instead. Let's hope Cities
| 2 don't repeat the same mistake.
| jordemort wrote:
| Cities: Skylines seems like the kind of game I should love,
| but I bounce off of it every time I try it. I'm not sure what
| it's missing for me but I just can't get into it.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| C:S also has limitations, like the agent limit of 70k, which
| means even moderately large cities of 100k are not
| realistically simulated. Not to mention the nonsense of every
| building having essentially a single family. And the garbage
| system being gorked.
|
| Still better than Sim City in the long run though. The
| incredible building flexibility made up for shortfalls in the
| simulation.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| There's a simple cheat for it.
|
| Build bus stops. Don't build subways. Can't lose.
| yreg wrote:
| I might be a bit younger than the average commenter here, because
| for me the favourite citybuilder was SimCity 3000, not 2000.
|
| Anyway, I miss the isometric grid. Yes, it's less realistic, but
| it's so pleasing. The thing I'm most annoyed by in modern sim
| games is placing roads and paths. They never look quite right.
| It's the same with Rollercoaster Tycoon -> Planet Tycoon.
|
| I'd like to see some new games which embrace a grid.
| nilptr wrote:
| Eh... I loved SC4, but the peak of the franchise was 2000 and
| 3000 (either one is fantastic).
|
| SC4 trended heavily towards unnecessary complexity.
| lvl102 wrote:
| I'd really like to modernize Simcity 4. Throw some AI on it for
| simulation. Stable diffusion for one of kind buildings. I just
| realized you can do so much with AI to make old games interesting
| now.
|
| Who knows, maybe that will be a big trend in the near future.
| crashingintoyou wrote:
| I was a little surprised that they actually released an Apple
| Silicon version for it just a few months ago
| (https://support.aspyr.com/hc/en-us/articles/12168615035405-H...)
| in spite of its age.
| harha wrote:
| Would be nice if they'd do the same for civ 6 - it's burning
| hot on my MacBook (not sure it would solve the issue but worth
| a try)
| izacus wrote:
| It wouldn't.
| bleep_bloop wrote:
| The minimum requirements for Civ 6 are far below the
| capability of the M1 series macbooks so I don't know why
| you'd think so.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I'll chip in that Civ 6 is kind of notoriously buggy and
| crash prone. I have a top of the line Windows PC and the
| game spontaneously crashes for me in full screen mode so
| I can only do windowed mode.
|
| It's still super fun (I have over 1,000 hours played) but
| it's not something I would call a reliable or stable
| piece of software.
|
| Porting it to a different CPU architecture sounds like a
| recipe for introducing even more bugs to an already
| unstable program.
| izacus wrote:
| Because that's not how games work - they don't run "at
| minimum capabilities" and they run their game loop
| constantly, rendering graphics. This means that it will
| almost certanly saturate at least M1s GPU and probably at
| least one of P cores. At that stage, even the M1 starts
| drawing a lot of power which needs disspiation.
|
| Also Civ 6s target GPU is much faster than any of the M1s
| (which, despite the marketing, are still mobile CPU/GPU
| SoCs, not high clocked 100W+ TDP desktop CPUs with a
| separate 100W+ TDP GPU) so you won't see it use less than
| maximum what GPU (and CPU) can handle.
|
| Don't mix performance profiles of games with performance
| profiles of bursty desktop browser software running
| Electron.
| badpun wrote:
| > Because that's not how games work - they don't run "at
| minimum capabilities" and they run their game loop
| constantly,
|
| Unless you VSync?
| afavour wrote:
| > they run their game loop constantly, rendering graphics
|
| Eh? Civ 6 is a turn-based game with really very little in
| the way of animation. It's not a first person shooter
| rendering whole screens at 30fps.
|
| Even leaving M1 aside, on my PC with a capable graphics
| card Civ 6 always thrashed the CPU a ton. I know there's
| a lot going on under the hood but I always suspected it
| was nowhere near as efficient as it could be.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Civ 6 graphics rendering is just really really poorly
| optimized. It's comparable to Flight Simulator in how
| hard it pushes my system.
| bleep_bloop wrote:
| I've played plenty of games on M1 that are graphically
| more impressive and have higher base requirements than
| Civ 6.
|
| Seems that others have pointed out that Civ is more CPU
| bound than GPU so I don't know if that's something that
| could be optimised without completely changing the
| mechanics of the game or if Civ is just an unoptimised
| beast but then again the M1 is way above the minimum
| required spec for Civ 6 so i don't think it's some
| unfeasible concept.
| harha wrote:
| Curious to learn more here: everyone was praising the M1
| so much, but here's a case that based on this wouldn't
| fit the bill.
|
| also how high do you think the penalty for running an
| intel binary is?
| aeonik wrote:
| Not the GP, but Civ is CPU bottlenecked. I don't know how
| their code is written under the hood, but games slow down
| as you get farther in the game. If you play too many
| turns the game can take minutes to process a single turn.
|
| I can saturate all my 16 cores, on my workstation, the
| only result is that the turns are processed faster. When
| you play multiplayer, everyone is going to be pinned to
| the slowest person in the lobby.
| Rury wrote:
| I think that's because surprisingly, it's still a
| marketable/profitable game. If only it weren't, then maybe it
| would eventually be open sourced. Only flaw I find is that due
| to it's age, it wasn't really designed with maximum concurrency
| in mind, and doesn't utilize the full capabilities of modern
| hardware, so the simulation slows to a crawl after a certain
| size.
| speeder wrote:
| The game actually does support decent threading, but it
| relies on old RDTSC behavior and will crash on modern CPUs if
| you allow all the threading to run. I nagged EA a lot to Open
| Source SC4 or allow fans to fix bugs on Windows version, but
| they are stubborn :(
|
| The Mac version is published by Aspyr that has rights to the
| source and to release updates. For example the Mac version is
| 64bit now. Windows version is 32bit thus heavily limited
| regarding mods.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Similar with the Sims 3, the Mac version is 64 bit the
| windows version is not and thus becomes unplayable after a
| given length of savefile.
| scrlk wrote:
| I'm hoping someone will consider starting an "OpenSC4"
| project, in the same tradition as OpenTTD or OpenRCT2.
| speeder wrote:
| There is such a project, but sadly I am not involved with
| it right now because I am spending all my time trying to
| get a new job.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's even more amazing because EA didn't do the port, Aspyr
| did, and they're still around to do an Apple Silicon port.
|
| I wonder how it affects mods, I might have to dive back in
| ...
|
| I also note it's on the Mac App Store so that's probably why
| they're upgrading it.
|
| Still, worth the buy at Steam for $2.
| mproud wrote:
| Incorrect. _Cities: Skylines_ is the best of all time.
|
| But _SimCity 4_ at its time is still quite good.
| tbm57 wrote:
| Nostalgia wave at seeing images from this game again
|
| I like Cities: Skylines but am a little turned off at how central
| the traffic management is to the gameplay. Maybe I just never
| figured out all the right optimizations, but it feels like after
| a certain city size you're just spending all your time reworking
| your roads
| CSMastermind wrote:
| There's a reason most people playing Cities: Skylines play with
| mods that do things like staggering the age of people moving to
| your city, allowing businesses to fire workers, patching the
| occupancy of buildings to be realistic, fixing truck drivers to
| work properly, etc.
|
| It's a little annoying that they chose to be super realistic
| with realism in some aspects then kind of fuzz the details on
| others. Hopefully the sequel corrects this.
| capableweb wrote:
| Is there any mod packs that contain all the mods that "fixes"
| the game in the way you mention?
|
| I'm also struggling with the same issues once I hit a certain
| size, and I don't want to spend 90% of my time trying to fix
| traffic issues.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| The Cities Skylines reddit has a pretty good guide:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/wiki/modlist
|
| There are four critical ones imo:
|
| - Lifecycle Rebalance Revisited
|
| - Realistic Population 2
|
| - Rebalanced Industries Revisited
|
| - You're Fired
|
| Those alone will make the game considerably more enjoyable
| to play. If you do a lot of public transport there are
| additional mods needed to make it work well but I normally
| stick to roads so it's not a problem for me.
| db48x wrote:
| That's actually why I like the game. Logistics is everything. A
| city is not merely a beautiful arrangement of buildings, it is
| a machine with many moving parts. If you neglect the movements,
| the city won't function and your people will move out. Unless
| it kills them first.
| tracyhenry wrote:
| The problem is that the traffic issue is nonstop and affects
| things, so you have to fix it. In reality at least the
| traffic will resolve itself overnight.
| bombcar wrote:
| There are mods that can do that (literally wipe every
| simulated traffic off the map) but you can handle traffic
| pretty easily if you plan ahead.
|
| My last few cities really had no traffic problems at all
| except for one old main road that I really didn't want to
| redevelop for some reason.
| db48x wrote:
| I'm not sure how that can be a problem. If traffic couldn't
| have any effect on your city, then why bother simulating
| it? The whole point is to make you think ahead and plan the
| capacity of your road network so that traffic jams are less
| likely and fixing them is easier.
| toadi wrote:
| Close to real life issues :) Traffic.
| Spastche wrote:
| I think that's the most common complaint about the game,
| hopefully they fix it in the next one.
| sidibe wrote:
| I enjoyed the first couple Sim Cities but at the time I really
| loved those city building games like Caesar and Pharaoh, so
| satisfying watching the houses level up and immigrants pour in
| troad wrote:
| "I've been kicked out of my home, and through no fault of my
| own!"
| bombcar wrote:
| Talk about walkable cities! I loved those games; spent hours
| _in class_ with graph paper working out optimal city blocks.
| midasuni wrote:
| Plebs are needed
| lazylion2 wrote:
| $2 (90% off) on Steam
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/24780/SimCity_4_Deluxe_Ed...
| guhcampos wrote:
| There's so much consensus in the community that Cities Skylines
| is the actual greatest, that I'm inclined to believe this is an
| intentional clickbait from RPS.
|
| They grabbed this thing which isn't even a thing and turned into
| some buzz.
| shmde wrote:
| It's currently on sale on steam.
| rubslopes wrote:
| When I was a kid I loved SimCity 2000, and then SimCity 4. I
| spent hours on them. Sadly I can't get myself to play them
| anymore, I just keep thinking these are games you need to invest
| too much time to have fun and I just have too much to do. I miss
| not worrying about that.
| ralphael wrote:
| I love SimCity, never forget the first time I played it on an
| Amiga 500.
|
| Then one day my friend lent me his 512KB ram upgrade and it was a
| different game :-)
| cheeselip420 wrote:
| The soundtrack to SC3000 is a straight banger. I wish they'd make
| an exact port to the iPad (instead of that gimped version they
| released years ago that didn't have subways or highways or
| anything like that)
| meerita wrote:
| I love SimCity 2000. I remember back then the most legendary
| build: MAGNASANTI (6 million residents, 2.523.010 commerce and
| 644.173 industry. 9172 million total population)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU
| jcarrano wrote:
| The only issue for me was that sims would choose the shortest
| path, not the fastest, leading to traffic problems which were
| very hard to solve. This I learned later from the Internet, at
| the time I didn't know it and I was just perplexed as to why they
| wouldn't take a newly built highway. Otherwise, excellent game.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| This was fixable with a very basic mod.
|
| There was a heuristic value which basically determined how far
| out of the way the traffic simulator would look when trying to
| find a path. But it was a trade-off for simulation speed.
|
| The mod changed this value and allowed the sim to try more
| paths, but made time move MUCH slower, even with the game speed
| set to max, once your city started getting large. It was worth
| it though to see your highways and public transit actually get
| used.
| hexane360 wrote:
| Anyone who has nostalgia for SimCity should definitely give a
| listen to its amazing soundtrack: https://youtu.be/PSv37HwwojU
|
| Jerry Martin, the composer for most of The Sims franchise, is a
| legend. The music is like vaporwave before vaporwave.
| q_andrew wrote:
| Along the same lines, the best thing to come out of Sim City
| 2013 is Chris Tilton's orchestral soundtrack. It uses musical
| tropes from 50s/60s Hollywood futurism and adds some modern
| atmosphere to it. Somehow the composer manages to keep the
| 'camp' of old movie soundtracks without it being cheesy. As
| with any good OST, music changes with the context. New
| skyscrapers will trigger sweeping full pit orchestra music.
| There are nighttime mixes for each song that lean into distant
| acoustic bursts. Also I love that when building hospitals, the
| music incorporates rattling pill bottles, jingling metal
| instruments, and clanging beakers. So fun!
| NikkiA wrote:
| Everyone always forgets SimCity Societies, it wasn't perfect but
| it was fun
| sclarisse wrote:
| The problem is they launched it in a miserable no-good
| borderline unplayable state without any budget challenges at
| all, and only spiffed it up later.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| SimCity (the original) had a big influence on me as a young
| budding game designer/programmer. In a way my latest game [SB] is
| a kind of simulation of our collective future, and how we try to
| live in the _absence_ of the modern US /Western-style city
| infrastructure and services we take for granted now. Of the kind
| which SimCity models and brings to life so well.
|
| ---
|
| [SB: welcome to look in my bio here if curious]
| awinter-py wrote:
| uhhh it has 4 fewer arcologies than simcity 2000 so it is hard to
| evaluate the truth of this statement
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Yes, the arcologies were fun, _but_ , they were also game-
| breaking, and building them completely changed the nature of
| the game into something unrealistic that frankly didn't really
| work. So not having them isn't a huge loss.
| lagniappe wrote:
| ah but placing that 301st arcology was so fun to young-me for
| some reason :)
| qball wrote:
| The exodus has begun.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| In a way they were a really neat way of ending the game.
| There's no natural stopping point in running a city, but once
| your entire city is covered in arcologies it's quite a nice
| way of saying "and this is done".
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Great game, still remember spending countless hours on SimCity1.
| Shout out to SimAnt and all the other Sim-inspired games that
| followed.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| I'ma let you finish, but the Original SimCity by Maxis was the
| best citybuilder of all time
|
| _mic drop_
| zamadatix wrote:
| When I was growing up I obsessed over this game for a few years.
| Of course, being very young, I didn't quite understand how the
| game intended you to launch it... it was a 2 disc install (for
| the deluxe edition at least) and there was something about the
| disc order. It was either something like "1 -> 2 -> auto launch
| on completed install but 1 -> launch after" or the other way
| around "1 -> 2 -> auto launch on completed install but 2 ->
| launch from desktop after" or something silly for the DRM.
|
| Regardless, young me decided it would be easier to uninstall the
| game with "keep saved games" checked and re-install the game
| every time I wanted to play. And that's precisely what I did,
| hundreds of times. I'd come home from school, boot up the
| computer, start the install, go do other things, and then that
| night play Sim City 4. One day I came home and couldn't find the
| case the game came with, the case that held the product code.
| After searching around for a while I couldn't find it, and never
| did )it likely got tossed cleaning up one day). I figured I might
| as well try to remember what the key was and typed out: 25MM-
| TNK4-EH6A-6V6K-KHWN. At this point it's nearing 20 years and it's
| still living rent free in my head, albeit the last 2 groups may
| be swapped around... would have to try it to be 100% sure. Not
| too many months into doing this did I figure out what I was
| supposed to do with the discs, and then later how much easier it
| was to play a cracked version of the game in the first place. The
| rest of my history with the game was trying to fit far too many
| mods into 512 MB of RAM.
|
| All that history and love for the game aside, I do think either
| Sim City 4 or Sim City 2000 were the greatest city builders
| relative to when they came out. On the other hand, I think Cities
| Skylines is the greatest City Builder of all time as an absolute.
| The shear scale without having to hop between simulations in a
| region, the more freeform nature of what you can build, and the
| additional gameplay systems (like flowing water) all on top of
| being a more modern game with a more modern interface make it
| shine. Of course, no two city builders focus on exactly the same
| gameplay so some may feel differently depending if they e.g. want
| to care about details like transportation along the way or just
| want to see the city grow.
|
| Also, given this is HN, if any of the modding folks responsible
| for things like NAM/SAM/NWM/CAM/etc are around thanks for all the
| additional free fun those many years ago :).
| leononame wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, great story. Thinking back, for me it's
| incredible just how much more energy I spent as a kid with
| computers and games. That patience really allowed me to
| discover and explore much more than I do today.
|
| If I play a game today, I just get straight to it. I don't
| wander around too much in the open world or try to game the
| mechanics for some weird bugs or try the same thing over and
| over again.
| racl101 wrote:
| Is there a way to play this on Mac today?
| chillycurve wrote:
| Already mentioned in another comment, but they just released an
| Apple Silicon version: https://support.aspyr.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/12168615035405-H...
| [deleted]
| jcranmer wrote:
| Haven't seen it mentioned yet, so I also want to raise a toast to
| the wonderful music of SimCity 4.
| jordemort wrote:
| Yes, such an amazing soundtrack. When it was new, I mistook it
| for a new Aphex Twin album at least twice while my roommate was
| playing it.
| jphalimi wrote:
| If you love SimCity 3k/4 music, it is made by Jerry Martin and
| saxophonist Marc Russo.
|
| A few great links for you:
| http://jerrymartinmusic.com/music_demo.php On this demo page
| website, you can find some original jazz samples not included
| in SC3k even though they are quite amazing
|
| http://boombamboom.com/ Some website Jerry Martin opened a few
| years ago where you can download high-quality music from the
| games he worked on (Sims, Sim City etc)
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1467440/SimCasino_Soundtr...
| Sim Casino is a way more recent game, and Jerry Martin / Marc
| Russo came back together to write the OST! It has a lot of
| feels from SC3k/SC4 music, so you might want to look into it.
|
| You can also find one of their interviews here:
| https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1158420/view/4689895...
|
| As you can see I am quite the fan... :-)
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| ooooooh thanks for this, i "collect" video game OSTs, will have
| to check this one out
| bombcar wrote:
| I think SimCity 4 is the best city simulator game.
|
| Cities Skylines is an excellent city _painter_ ; however.
| dangrover wrote:
| Agree with this. There isn't really much challenge in managing
| the city itself after a certain point. You're just expanding.
| nkrisc wrote:
| CSL as a virtual model hobby is a great way to save space and
| money.
|
| The cool thing is you can paint your cities _and_ still play
| the traffic management game, down to timing the signals at
| individual intersections.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I want a VR version that supports mods
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Cities Skylines just turns into "transportation mode simulator"
| for me. Still fun, but it is not the same thing.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| There's a Tropico game, I think it's Tropico 4, that is very
| realistic in that you don't need to literally make roads and
| asphalt all the things, and roads don't need to be car-
| centered; you just make buildings and people will walk, and
| you add a road network to make things more efficient, but it
| isn't _required_
|
| Also curved roads and buildings don't need to be right
| besides the road, etc.
|
| Sim City 4 is more like a suburbia simulator imo
| bombcar wrote:
| I want free-form zoning, where it's not tile based; CS can
| do something kinda like it but it's still just tiles in the
| end, with empty space between.
|
| Emergent paths would be fun, too; if you don't make the
| sidewalks and paths good enough, people start cutting
| across empty areas.
| distances wrote:
| Free-form city blocks is also high on my wishlist for
| C:S2. Without it you can't make convincing European style
| cities.
| textide wrote:
| Soviet Republic: Workers and Resources has this. It is an
| incredibly deep city builder and sim with very well
| modeled systems. The realistic mode requires fuel for
| vehicles and workers for construction. You don't simply
| plop buildings down or define zones that magically fill
| in.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| It sounds like it is biased towards micromanagement, but
| still might be tons of fun. Thanks for the
| recommendation.
| gdprrrr wrote:
| There's also Foundation, a medieval city builder that works
| like this.
| spideymans wrote:
| What's worse is that CS is a transport simulator that's
| _heavily_ biased towards cars; to the point where every new
| game starts off with a giant unsightly freeway in the middle
| of your town.
|
| I hope CS2 is more agnostic on transport mode. It would be
| nice to be able to create genuinely car-free cities in the
| game.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| It's possible to make a car-free city in CS. It just can't
| _start_ as one.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I actually found it the opposite. The more I intelligently
| laid out alternative transport the more that it got used,
| lessening traffic. But yes, the default mode is to just
| optimize traffic everywhere.
| Gigachad wrote:
| That was my problem with the game as well. You don't really
| have all that much freedom and there isn't that much
| emergent behaviour. You just replay the same road builder
| scenario where the only interesting part is designing
| intersections.
|
| I'd love to see a city builder game with an extremely
| powerful policy builder feature. Let me design new rules
| and see how the city responds. For example, let me
| implement congestion charges on roads, even if it's just a
| text input with its own DSL like you have with minecraft
| command blocks. Then you could really break out of what the
| developers designed and start actually doing simulations.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Cities skylines has the policy builder feature like you
| describe. One of the policies you can implement is
| congestion charges. You can set the policies city-wide,
| or in certain districts. In the latest builds with the
| newest DLC, you can even ban cars completely with
| pedestrian only districts/roads.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Huh interesting. I haven't really touched it since 2016
| so it's probably different now.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Imagine a city builder where you can't convincingly
| recreate the rebuilding of Tokyo after WWII
|
| This message brought to you by the "BreadTube[0] but its
| for cars[1]" gang
|
| [0] A segment of very left-wing, libertarian-leaning
| YouTubers named after _The Conquest of Bread_.
|
| [1] AKA Adam Something, Not Just Bikes, and a few other
| channels
| bombcar wrote:
| CS gets way closer to "car free" than anything but the
| original SimCity (where you could just use rails instead of
| roads everywhere) - you need to use the Parks and paths and
| some pretty sneaky design, but you can get upwards of 80%
| using walking/transit. Takes a lot of work, however, and
| some mods.
| piperswe wrote:
| It makes sense, given that its developer also developed
| Cities in Motion 1 & 2, which are _especially_ transportation
| mode simulators.
| carabiner wrote:
| All of these city games need to simulate bureaucracy. For
| example, if trying to demolish an apartment, you need to
| solicit 400 approvals and gain local support before doing so.
| Or to build to a railway you need to buy out all of the land
| and organize environmental studies for every square foot of it
| before laying track.
| dirtyid wrote:
| All in game achievements should be around negotiating
| bureaucracy. You should be able to look at a city and have
| fond / traumatic memories over all the compromised mess.
| Campaign mode should include trying to build new subway
| expansion downtown, ranked on time. Cheat code activates is
| maximum authoritarian mode for old school bulldoze everything
| / eminant eminant domain / rich petro state pay with migrant
| worker experience. Or maybe that's just easy mode.
| carabiner wrote:
| Bureaucracy slider should range from China (easiest) to New
| York City (hard) to San Francisco (nightmare).
| WJW wrote:
| City builder games explicitly don't try to be as realistic as
| possible. They are meant to be fun.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| While this would be more realistic the majority of players
| would stop playing the game. I would argue this is just like
| you not having to build each street in a 3d game by yourself
| you also don't need to fill out every form, etc. by yourself.
| I just image you have a lot of employees doing that for you.
| bombcar wrote:
| What you do is make the normal game play like CS or
| SimCity, but you have options to turn on "difficulties"
| that would basically enable different aspects/gameplay.
|
| For example, you could add "federal/state requirements"
| where a new freeway/rail line/whatever would appear on the
| edge of the map and you have to get it to the other side,
| making connections as appropriate.
| kcb wrote:
| Big disagree, I think that sounds super fun. Remember
| there's a significant enough number of people that play
| long haul truck simulators.
| philistine wrote:
| Yeah. I think people saying more realistic interactions
| would not be fun or popular are lacking in imagination.
| The real problem with those games is the divorce from
| reality of bulldozing.
|
| Imagine bulldozing is as expensive, complicated, and
| despised as in real life.
|
| Then imagine having to fight against infrastructure cost
| overruns. You play a city building game, and you don't
| have access to roads (cars haven't been invented) so you
| want to put rails everywhere. You do that, but then you
| realise later how expensive and complicated it is to
| remove some rails to put down roads.
|
| Imagine the game stopping, and telling you that the cost
| of roads will double when you unpause the game. You'd
| have to manage putting down more road than you need and
| the consequences of overreach.
|
| It could be super fun.
| bombcar wrote:
| I saw someone playing that way, they could ONLY bulldoze
| "city services" like roads (so they could replace a road
| with one with more lanes that fit in the same space, or
| one with bike/tram lanes) but they could NOT bulldoze
| zoned properties, and tried their best not to remove even
| things like police stations, etc.
|
| I think they had a rule saying they could rezone or
| bulldoze a building that was abandoned; but that of
| course led to accusations of intentionally forcing
| buildings to be abandoned (which is a real thing that
| happens).
| duped wrote:
| I'd rather have a city builder that doesn't involve starting
| a utopia from scratch, I want to show up to an existing rural
| area and industrialize it, convert an unwalkable nightmare
| dominated by highways into a medium density sprawl, etc.
| bombcar wrote:
| Most of them have some form of "scenarios" to play which
| are somewhat like that, but not exactly.
| bombcar wrote:
| IIRC there was a soviet sity simulator that had some of that;
| but the games usually just wash it away with "cost to
| bulldoze".
|
| It would be fun to have a game where you have about as much
| control as a "real" city and mainly what you do is pull
| levers behind the scenes to get people to do what you want.
|
| SimCity meets Dwarf Fortress, perhaps.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| > All of these city games need to simulate bureaucracy.
|
| hehe, I tried to do that, but with a walking sim:
| https://rafsters.itch.io/all-hands
|
| (inspired by a meeting being a retrospective to a meeting
| about a meeting)
| jtwaleson wrote:
| Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean with painter?
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| At a certain point in Cities Skylines you stop having any
| real challenge to make money or to keep your city running, so
| it becomes pretty much a sandbox. You can make the city look
| pretty much however you like instead of being bound by the
| needs of the city. In effect, you can just paint whatever
| kind of city you like onto the terrain. There's still a
| little challenge to deal with transportation but its fairly
| trivial to solve when you have effectively unlimited money in
| the game.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Pocket City is a much simpler City Painter with practically
| no gameplay at all, except for an annoying drag through
| "quests" to build 1 of everything.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly this - the "how do I not keep going bankrupt" part
| of the game is relatively short (similar to the "how do I
| not starve the first winter" in Dwarf Fortress) and with a
| bit of care you have so much money rolling in you can just
| do whatever you like.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| Ah, right, that's pretty recognizable from my gameplay,
| thanks :)
| sbierwagen wrote:
| My favorite SimCity 4 bug:
|
| There were several minigames where you would drive vehicles
| around in your city. If you drove a train, you would have to get
| from one point to another in a certain amount of time. Drive fire
| trucks to a fire to put it out. Stuff like that.
|
| Emergency vehicles had sirens that you could turn on that caused
| other cars to drive towards the shoulder and stop so you could
| pass them, which worked great... except at intersections, which
| caused cars driving at right angles to your path to dart forward
| and come to a complete stop, blocking the road. Making the siren
| totally useless, oops!
| iggldiggl wrote:
| The train minigames were also somewhat annoying because trains
| couldn't reverse and the game just picked a random selection of
| stations you had to visit without regards to your network
| topology.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| > except at intersections, which caused cars driving at right
| angles to your path to dart forward and come to a complete
| stop, blocking the road.
|
| Sounds like real driver behavior to me.
| kome wrote:
| It's quite amazing that Aspyr did a intel 64-bit version and a
| version for Apple Silicon; it's great to keep it alive
| tgtweak wrote:
| I don't know - the Cities series is taking the next steps on what
| a city building sim should have progressed as. The last SimCity
| game was an afront to the series and should never have been
| released in that state. I say this as someone who's early
| commandline experience was typing sc2000.exe from dos.
|
| I have hope that there is an online massive Sim world where Sims
| and SimCity players can co-play and create some amazing real-
| world scenarios.
|
| I agree that SimCity 4 was the peak of the series but there are
| many hardcore simcity players that claim 3000 was peak SimCity.
| Just look at Magnasanti city for some proof of the dedication.
| chongli wrote:
| I prefer SimCity 2000. I feel like it hit a pretty good sweet
| spot between simulation and fun (which is to say, not even a
| vague gesturing at anything remotely realistic). Realistic
| simulation in games is almost universally less fun than simple,
| predictable game logic. Probably the most extreme example of this
| is chess: way more enjoyable than real warfare.
|
| Back on topic though. My beef with SimCity 4 is that it added a
| bunch of details that make it less fun, like micromanagement of
| the funding of individual hospitals and police stations. The
| added complexity didn't bring any new profound shifts in thinking
| or strategy, it just created more busywork for the player.
|
| SimCity 2000 has almost none of that. It's just a really solid
| and super fun game. It's quite balanced (when you resist the
| temptation to use cheats) without being overly hard. So you can
| sit back (with a cold beverage of your choice) and enjoy a nice
| relaxing time playing mayor and seeing your little city develop
| before your eyes!
| billfruit wrote:
| The problem with city building games is that they are far too
| gamified. In reality construction takes years, even decades for
| many infrastructure projects. Because of that, the challenge of
| solving the problems of 25 years in the future is not well
| represented in many such games.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Try Workers & Resources, it's more about managing a whole
| supply chain and being self sufficient than spending money.
| You can tackle it at different levels but at the most complex
| you're making the cement then trucking it to the building
| site.
| billfruit wrote:
| Yes, but what about the time involved, does it simulate the
| construction taking 15 years.
| alerter wrote:
| I agree that 2000 was a cleaner overall design. Adding realism
| for the sake of it is a dead end.
|
| That said, there are a lot of games where the details of the
| simulation compound on themselves in interesting ways (Dwarf
| Fortress, Dominions, DC:Barbarossa, Shadow Empire, Paradox
| games). I enjoy those sorts of games, more minimalism and
| abstraction isn't always more fun.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Absolutely! SimCity 2000 was a masterpiece, striking the
| perfect balance between the immediate grokability and
| comprehensible simplicity of the original SimCity "Classic",
| plus the judicious addition of rich immersive CD-ROM quality
| graphics and sound.
|
| SimCity 2000, much like Hunter S. Thompson's description of
| mid-sixties San Francisco, represented a harmonic convergence
| of factors that established a high-water mark of game design.
|
| It was a time when the energy of a whole generation of computer
| hardware and game developers came to a head in a round shiny
| disc, for reasons that were hard to fully grasp at the time and
| even harder to explain in retrospect.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUgs2O7Okqc
|
| Just as Thompson describes the sense of being alive in that
| corner of time and the world, there was a similar sense of
| knowing that you were part of something special when playing
| SimCity 2000, a testament to constructive expression and
| augmented imagination, instead of pre-scripted storytelling and
| showboating special effects.
|
| It marked a technological zenith, fruitfully applying the
| latest technology in a way that later versions fell short. It
| was an inflection point in simulation game design and immersive
| production values, having reached a point where any further
| elaboration would only lead to diminishing returns. It struck
| the ideal balance of complexity by remaining true to the
| original SimCity Classic, while learning from the
| oversimplification of SimAnt and the overcomplication of
| SimEarth.
|
| And just like the high-water mark described by Thompson, the
| peak of SimCity 2000's game design was a place where the wave
| finally broke and rolled back. Subsequent versions, despite
| their technological advancements, could not recapture the magic
| of that moment. They were like the Las Vegas of today, where
| with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high-water
| mark of game design that was SimCity 2000.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxoZXaYJSk
|
| In a 1996 talk, Will Wright dove into how the designs of SimAnt
| and SimEarth both influenced SimCity 2000. During a Q&A
| session, a student asked what he was making next, so he also
| gave a sneak peek into his current project, Dollhouse, which
| was later renamed The Sims.
|
| Will Wright - Maxis - Interfacing to Microworlds - 1996-4-26
|
| Video of Will Wright's talk about "Interfacing to Microworlds"
| presented to Terry Winograd's user interface class at Stanford
| University, April 26, 1996.
|
| He demonstrates and gives postmortems for SimEarth, SimAnt, and
| SimCity 2000, then previews an extremely early pre-release
| prototype version of Dollhouse (which eventually became The
| Sims), describing how the AI models personalities and behavior,
| and is distributed throughout extensible plug-in programmable
| objects in the environment, and he thoughtfully answers many
| interesting questions from the audience.
|
| This is the lecture described in "Will Wright on Designing User
| Interfaces to Simulation Games (1996)": A summary of Will
| Wright's talk to Terry Winograd's User Interface Class at
| Stanford, written in 1996 by Don Hopkins, before they worked
| together on The Sims at Maxis.
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/designing-user-interfaces-to-s...
|
| Use and reproduction: The materials are open for research use
| and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an
| attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact
| the Stanford University Archives
| (universityarchives@stanford.edu).
|
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/yj113jt5999
| hgsgm wrote:
| Will Wright _designed_ Sim games, and PP Don Hopkins
| implemented platform ports.
|
| Who programmed the original games? Is that unimportant? Did
| Will Wright program?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Hopkins
| thom wrote:
| Agreed. A lot of simulation/strategy games seem to increase
| their fidelity over time, at the cost of fun. I've bought every
| Football Manager game for almost 30 years but these days it
| feels too much like an actual job. I'm intrigued what the best
| alternative is - I personally enjoy Paradox games, which
| generally expand with numerous DLCs so you can opt in to
| additional complexity on an incremental basis.
| gruez wrote:
| >My beef with SimCity 4 is that it added a bunch of details
| that make it less fun, like micromanagement of the funding of
| individual hospitals and police stations. The added complexity
| didn't bring any new profound shifts in thinking or strategy,
| it just created more busywork for the player.
|
| You don't have to do that. Leaving the sliders at defaults work
| just fine. You only need to tweak them if you wanted to micro-
| optimize spending, which rarely needed given how easy it is to
| make a profitable city to start with.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| 100% agree. Fond memories of SC 2000.
|
| The open creation of any layout you could think of was my
| favorite aspect of the game.
|
| Anyone have a particular recommendation on how to play SC 2000
| today on Windows 10?
| nilptr wrote:
| If you can find the Win95 version it's preferable over the
| GoG DOS version. You need this guys patchers tho:
| http://www.krimsky.net/patchers.html
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| GOG has SC2k available and it should work just fine on
| Windows 10.
| Moru wrote:
| And it downloads AND installs in less time than it would
| take to insert the CD into the drive, not to mention
| finding the thing... Modern wonders :-) Gonna play some
| tonight!
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I thought 3000 was the best showing, though perhaps that's
| looking at it back later when performance is not as much of a
| concern. It felt like an upgraded SimCity 2000, rather than a
| big change in game mechanics that 4 was.
| JonathonW wrote:
| Same here-- SimCity 3000's the one that really hit the right
| spot gameplay-wise for me. Prettier and deeper and more
| polished than 2000 without departing too far from 2000's core
| mechanics or simulation approach.
| rl3 wrote:
| SC3K's soundtrack and art was magical. Especially the
| advisor portraits.
| ido wrote:
| I still occasion play 3k!
| qball wrote:
| >without departing too far from 2000's core mechanics or
| simulation approach
|
| SC3K is similar enough in structure to SC2K that it can
| actually load SC2K city save files directly; SC3K being a
| relatively strict superset of SC2K in terms of available
| elements and their sizes certainly doesn't hinder that
| backwards-compatibility at all.
|
| The only things that would actively break when you did this
| were related to maximum terrain steepness for underground
| elements (metro, water pipes), 90-degree rail connections
| would sever (at least, graphically), and hydroelectric
| power generators as they're the only power building not
| implemented.
|
| The arcologies were also dropped from SC3K, but to be fair
| those were mostly just designed to be population boosters
| in SC2K- something that wasn't necessary in SC3K now that
| the simulator was allowed to keep track of more than 250
| buildings (or at least, so the manual and the query tool
| say).
| xixixao wrote:
| Age of Empires 2, Sim City 3000, Diablo2 and Red Alert 2.
| Released in the span of 3 years. What an incredible era.
| Can't shake off the feeling that 3D took away as much as it
| gave gaming. Also can't believe it's just my age-based
| selection bias.
| tgtweak wrote:
| All of which were very direct progressions on the gameplay
| depth and replayability. Also... grand theft auto 2 and
| gran turismo 2.
| csomar wrote:
| It's not an age-based bias. These games couldn't expand on
| graphics, so they expanded on the logic of the game. That
| made them interesting.
|
| Very few games do that today (EU4, a favorite of mine, for
| example) but the trend now is to confuse the user with
| graphics while giving really little in term of content.
| mattmanser wrote:
| High content, big budget, games still exist, e.g. Elden
| Ring + Zelda (as someone mentioned) are two recent
| releases.
|
| There's also plenty of sim games in the indie market,
| Factorio, Banished, Frostpunk. Then things that are close
| to the market like They Are Billions, Kenshi, etc. to
| name a few I've personally had time to play. Kenshi is a
| bit rough around the edges, but absolutely brilliant in
| terms of sandbox play.
|
| There's also the Endless series from Amplitutde studios,
| Endless Legend, Endless Space 1 + 2, that are of a vein
| of Civ games, plus they've recently brought out
| Humandkind (though to mixed reviews unfortunately).
|
| The popular sim genre in recent times has been more 3rd
| person building mixed with exploration, there was the
| wave of multiplayer ones like Minecraft, Rust, Arc
| Evolved, etc. And then single player ones like
| Subnautica, etc.
|
| So there's stuff out there if you want it, it's just not
| a very popular genre at the moment.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Let's not forget all the Paradox games: City Skylines,
| Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron.
| Very much content over graphics.
| Sargos wrote:
| The others help your point but Cities Skylines is memed
| because it's graphics over substance as it's basically a
| city painting game with shallow mechanics that most
| people use to make little city dioramas which is still
| fun but not deep gameplay.
| massysett wrote:
| The transportation mechanics in Skylines are quite
| complex and fun. The player can trace individual trips,
| and some of them matter quite a lot: the businesses need
| to get and ship their raw materials and finished goods,
| and the shops need customers.
|
| The budget mechanics are a joke, before long the player
| has practically endless money.
| mafuy wrote:
| I'm afraid I must disagree here. I enjoy C:S. But its
| mechanics are shallow compared to many other titles.
|
| One rather unknown point that, while not directly
| related, highlights this is how in C:S your income
| depends on your current budget. I.e. you magically
| receive less income if you have 10 million in the bank,
| and receive more if you're in debt. That point alone
| makes objectively comparing and strategizing
| unnecessarily hard, and it feels like the game really
| does not want you to work with numbers instead of paint
| buckets.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| People mostly complain that it's not SimCity but the
| gameplay is fine. It's in no way shallow. Just different.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| It has deeper micromanagement than, say, Planet Coaster,
| but it is not on the level of gameplay loop
| micromanagement as the like of SimCity or Roller Coaster
| Tycoon
| philistine wrote:
| My issue with the Paradox games is that they have gotten
| too complicated for their AI, which suuucks. Hearts of
| Iron's AI has no understanding of its own military
| strategies, and I don't know how I could have a
| multiplayer game lasting 80 hours with multiple friends.
| VadimPR wrote:
| just mentioning that Humankind got fixed up and it's a
| fantastic and innovative take on Civ. The reviews don't
| do it justice.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Sim City 3000 was my most favorite sim game, while the
| sims (one) and zoo tycoon (one) follow close. That is
| until I tried Factorio, man that game got the title
| Cracktorio for a reason and elevated sim games to a new
| level. Since then I don't have any courage to try
| Rimworld, don't want my addiction to relapse.
| noirscape wrote:
| The difference with sim/4X/any genre that's fallen
| outside of the general "popular games" trend is that they
| ended up becoming overly specialized and inaccessible to
| newcomers.
|
| Yes, technically you can still play a bunch of cool 4X
| games, but most people still making them (with the
| exception of like, CAs Total War, which also notably
| defocused the 4X part in favor of RTS combat) is copying
| the Paradox approach and Paradox is largely known for its
| absurd depth and mechanics... which unfortunately
| translates to the games devolving into spreadsheet
| simulators with fancy graphics.
|
| Civilization was the right mix between "flavorful
| civilizations", "fun endgoals" and "reasonable to achieve
| victory against the computer". Most 4X games, because
| they copied the Paradox approach, kinda suffer from the
| fact that they pretty much demand immediate mastery of
| the systems if you want to succeed, unless you're playing
| with friends (in which case you have more control over
| each other's bumbling and one person can just hyperfocus
| on learning one system, while the other can focus on
| another.)
|
| Its the difference between SimCity and Cities: Skylines.
| SimCity (before the final game) is a sandbox toy that
| lets you build a super dysfunctional city but y'know, as
| long as the taxes don't go in the red, you're doing fine!
| Cities: Skylines otoh has way harsher feedback tools if
| you don't build a highly functional city. That's fine if
| you're already tuned in on SimCity as a game and crave a
| higher challenge, but if you're new to these kinds of
| games, Cities: Skylines is just too much.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I would love if Total War games had more complex
| strategic layer... The battles itself are great enough,
| maybe besides dumb AI sometimes and balance. On the other
| hand I had a lot of fun before campaign map economy
| became just balancing income and happiness. On the other
| hand, I never thought having armies a discrete entities
| on the map Heroes 3 style actually added any depth to the
| game.
| jhbadger wrote:
| But everything is relative. I started gaming in the early
| 1980s and so those 1990s/early 2000s games had incredible
| graphics compared to what I was used to. And I'm sure
| people who grew up earlier on things like 1970s Pong
| would think my 1980s games had amazing graphics. The
| argument "Games back then cared about gameplay rather
| than graphics" ignores that every era has tried to make
| graphics as good as possible; I'm sure the future will
| look at our nearly-photorealistic graphics of current
| games and find them quaint compared to their holographic
| graphics or whatever.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| What amazes the audience might be relative, but there are
| objective components to different styles of graphics.
|
| Take clarity in communication. Pong is maximally clear:
| the background is black, an interactive object is white.
| Every white object is integral to the game. The further
| you move away from this ideal towards photorealism, the
| less clear this distinction becomes. You must add more UI
| elements on top to compensate for the loss of clarity,
| creating mounting tension between the functional and the
| ornate.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Playing witcher 3, I don't think it'll be enjoyable for
| me without the witcher senses. It really emphasis the
| interact-able things over the environment.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's why "just make everything have a billion polygons"
| is actually terrible game development. Scenes are so
| goddamn noisy nowadays that it's really hard to parse
| them.
| clhodapp wrote:
| > ... These games couldn't expand on graphics, so they
| expanded on the logic of the game. That made them
| interesting. > > Very few games do that today ...
|
| The big new Zelda that just came out does exactly this.
| They took the shell of the last game and spent six years
| just _making things_ to flesh out the game much further.
| jeffbee wrote:
| They spent 6 years making a game that is exactly the same
| at a high level with only slight changes to the details.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > Very few games do that today
|
| I'd say quite a few. Just not AAA publisher shovelware.
| pizza234 wrote:
| > but the trend now is to confuse the user with graphics
| while giving really little in term of content.
|
| You'll be surprised, but gaming magazines used to say the
| same thing(s) even in the 80s. It's a platitude.
|
| Fun thing: A famous game developer of that time, but
| can't remember which one, once said that "the name of
| game companies aren't creative enough". /shrug
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Homeworld, quake 2, Half-life, counterstrike, starcraft,
| diablo, 97 to '00.
|
| I cannot think of a more revolutionary span of games over 3
| years.
| cooperadymas wrote:
| 85-88 is unrivaled. I am willing to fudge the 3 year span
| a bit because games were still released at significantly
| times in different countries, though you could sheer off
| either end and still have an extremely impressive list.
| Super Mario Bros 3 Zelda II Mega Man
| John Madden Football Battle Chess Tetris
| Contra Double Dragon Street Fighter
| Castlevania Metal Gear Metroid Mike
| Tyson's Punch Out Final Fantasy The Legend of
| Zelda Dragon Quest Super Mario Bros
| Adventure Island Paper Boy Gauntlet
| titzer wrote:
| Quake II was 1997 and Quake 3 1999 (!). Also, you mention
| Counterstrike, but the original Half-life and Unreal were
| pretty revolutionary too.
| intelVISA wrote:
| A game couldn't be pretty back then it had to sell itself
| on other merits.
|
| I think we'll come full circle with generative ML tooling
| as games will have to compete in wider areas than just
| marketing & graphics.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| The "best (according to me)" games are still 2D or 2.5D:
|
| Roguelikes
|
| Dwarf Fortress
|
| Factorio
|
| EU4
|
| My theory is that deep gameplay and AAA 3D graphics are
| mutually exclusive because deep gameplay fundamentally
| requires "tile grids" of some kind, which don't lend
| themselves to AAA 3D graphics.
|
| (Diablo 1 and 2 kind of railed against this by taking the
| approach, "Hey, what if we took a tile-based roguelike and
| rendered it in isometric 3Dsortof?" At the time, that
| isometric 3Dsortof was state of the art, I guess.)
| badpun wrote:
| I have very similar opinion. Presenting things in
| perspective projection (where things closer to you are
| taking up more space on screen, and are potentially
| obscuring things farther from you) is a very peculiar
| approach, applicable only to FPS and TPS games, where
| seeing things from the eye of the camera is actually the
| main gimmick. For some reason they are immensely popular,
| but they're only a tiny minority of available genres. For
| everything but FPS/TPS, an orthographic projection
| creates a much better view of what the heck is actually
| going on in the game, and thus leads to better gameplay.
| sofixa wrote:
| Depends on the genre. I think few people can seriously
| say Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn't have deep gameplay, and
| it is beautiful.
| loweb1 wrote:
| I tried RDR2 for an hour but I was completely bored the
| whole time. It felt like I was watching a movie that
| occasionally made me hit some buttons. Did not feel like
| a game to me at all.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| I think Age of Empires 2 will always be in my top 10 list
| of favorite games. It's in a similar vein of just upgrading
| graphics, but I also really enjoyed the spin-offs built on
| the same game engine: Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds and
| Age of Mythology.
| xvedejas wrote:
| It's especially exciting that it's more popular now than
| it's ever been. With the 2019 re-release, it's pretty
| consistently been around #50 in top active players on
| Steam at any given time. And they keep updating it still.
| It's been a blast to get back into it and try to actually
| get decent at it. And the pro scene keeps getting bigger
| and bigger tournaments too.
| codingdave wrote:
| That is also just a few years before World of Warcraft came
| out, which drove everyone to focus more on multiplayer
| games. Not that we didn't all do multiplayer at LAN
| parties, but that is when it really switched to being done
| across the internet.
|
| FWIW, I have a pet theory that WoW took over at that point
| not because of the MMO concept (which already existed), but
| because their UX was so smooth. That was the first MMO that
| "just worked" to understand what you were trying to click.
| The others at that time would take multiple tries to click
| an object correctly.
|
| In any case, the success of WoW is what changed the
| direction of gaming a few years after all those games came
| out, so I'm agreeing with you that it was an incredible
| era.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| You're right on the UX. But not just the UX,
| eeeeverything was polished with little details put into
| place around every turn. Nothing else was like it at that
| scale.
| duckmysick wrote:
| You're definitely onto something and it's not just an age
| bias. I can think of a few 2D games released in the
| previous decade that continued this trend: Terraria,
| Stardew Valley, Factorio, Rimworld, Celeste, Hades.
| scotty79 wrote:
| You can see how much of a challenge it is to go into
| interesting game mechanics in 3d by looking at the
| development of Satisfactory.
| EtienneK wrote:
| Hades is in my top 5 games of all time. Might even be #1.
| chakernada wrote:
| Yes Rimworld! was thinking exactly the same thing.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| When these games came out, the PC game market was smaller
| with less competition. Programmers and game makers drew
| from what they grew up with which was table top board
| games. That's why the instruction manuals were thick (like
| a DnD manual), the rules were incredibly complex, and the
| learning curves were steep.
|
| These games were a product of their time and you definitely
| do have an age based selection bias!
| midasuni wrote:
| I don't remember a thick manual for red alert. Or much of
| a manual at all.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| http://nyerguds.arsaneus-
| design.com/manuals/Red%20Alert%201/...
|
| 99 pages long my friend.
|
| Checkout the manual for StarCraft, which gives you the
| entire backstory!
| rightbyte wrote:
| Later re-releases didn't have any. The red box one has a
| big manual.
| capableweb wrote:
| There was definitely a manual, I remember that. I don't
| think it was huge though, but I remember reading it
| through on a car ride home (something like ~3 hours) so
| probably was around 100 pages.
| chakernada wrote:
| second that!
| wtvanhest wrote:
| Red Alert 2. That was such a fun game. One thing that has
| been majorly lost in games now is the ability to create
| levels too. I loved the creation part
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Creating a competent and usable level editor that you can
| publicly release is a lot of work, and unless you can
| somehow turn it into a major selling point for the game,
| you will be hard pressed to afford it. Dev time for games
| is expensive and if you're hacking together levels using
| a bunch of disparate tools including some third-party
| ones it might not really be worth it to make a tool that
| you can release.
| zamnos wrote:
| The ultimate "level editor" was released - Unity. It's
| infinitely moddable and you can even sell your mods for
| money.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| There's a world of difference between making a new
| map/level and making a new game. The effort required for
| the former is measured in years, whereas the latter is
| mostly weeks to months (ignoring open world games where
| the level spans the whole game universe).
| bleep_bloop wrote:
| Level editing tools are created to build the levels by
| the devs. They just don't want to give them to players
| because they want to sell you additional content.
|
| Talking specifically about the usual suspects but hell,
| even some indie games are doing it now, in indie games it
| seems more popular to release a new game entirely which
| is basically 1.0 with new maps but thankfully there are
| tons of passion projects that get new content for years
| and years who really deserve more support.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Level editing tools are created to build the levels by
| the devs. They just don't want to give them to players
| because they want to sell you additional content.
|
| This is probably true as well, but the internet editor
| map editors use are often very different than what they
| would offer the community, requiring a lot of polish
| compared to what's used internally (and we all know that
| the 20% last polish takes 80% of the time) Although there
| are some games that offer the very same experience, like
| what Crysis had (with the CryEngine Editor) and ARMA
| series.
| bleep_bloop wrote:
| I don't disagree with your assessment and if anything it
| really opens the door for someone else to step in and
| offer these tools because if Skyrim, Minecraft, Gary's
| mod etc have shown us anything it's that these tools can
| create vast communities that will keep growing and
| supporting your work and any future releases. Just a
| shame to see so many companies prioritise profits over
| gameplay / replayability and community these days.
| meowtimemania wrote:
| it's still kinda there. Halo forge, fortnite creative
| mode, starcraft 2, mario maker 1+2, etc.
| Aeolun wrote:
| When I talk to people older than me they think some of the
| NES games were the best ever released. But I look at the
| graphics and I just can't get over it.
| dehrmann wrote:
| The graphics were bad, but what really makes the games
| unapproachable now is a lot of the games were impossibly
| hard.
| dingusdew wrote:
| This is super valid. I grew up with these games, and I
| have heavy nostalgia for them, but they were heavily
| limited by the hardware of the time. I think some series
| have had really good modern translations, like the New
| Super Mario Bros series which has a play-style very akin
| to the originals, but in a modern format and graphics. I
| would also consider Mario Maker an example of this as
| well. But these examples are generally rare and more
| often there has been a full shift to 3D gaming (Mario
| Galaxy/Odyssey etc) and side-scrolling is a thing of the
| past, because a lot of those traditional NES game styles
| are kind of limited and garbage compared to modern games.
| I still have my NES, and it still works, but I don't
| exactly find myself breaking it out all the time to play
| as opposed to playing a modern game in a modern format.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| All game generations have their 'best of' games. Of the
| 1700+ NES games maybe 50 or so are actually classics and
| worth your time. Then you have the band of 'nostalgia and
| tough', only play if you are in for a challenges, or it
| is a game you grew up with. Then 'do not bother' which is
| the majority of the games.
|
| The same is true for MSDOS games, Genesis, 2600, MSX,
| PS1/2/3/4, XBox, GB, GC etc etc etc. The majority of
| games out there are just not good or have aged poorly on
| the graphic/playability front. I personally would
| recommend only a very small handful of games on the NES.
| Also one issue with some of these older systems is they
| were meant to be played on a 15-20 inch PAL/NTSC screen
| with interlacing. You splat that across a 65 inch OLED
| they tend to look bad. Your brain is good at making up
| the detail.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I grew up with the NES and loved the hell out of it at
| the time. But today, there's not a single game I want to
| go back to. I'd rather play the SNES versions of many of
| the best series. Also emulation with CRT shaders is the
| best way to visually play older games these days. This
| includes PS1/2 games.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I don't know how to call this but the ratio of magic
| versus graphics resolution fascinates me. 8bit games were
| often very crude, but you got the essential for a gamer's
| mind to rejoin for hours.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Anyone growing up in that era should have fond memories
| of arcade games that were far better than most NES games
| -- there were still real arcades while the NES was
| current.
|
| However, try playing the first level of Super Mario Bros
| on original NES hardware. The game mechanics basically
| still hold up.
|
| All Atari 2600 games were worse than NES games, and
| primitive as anything. But try Breakout with paddles on
| an original 2600; again, the mechanics are good and it's
| fun, at least briefly.
| titzer wrote:
| Bought but almost never played 4. Simcity 2000 was pretty
| clunky and 3000 was the right amount of updated graphics and
| mechanics while maintaining the original fun. It seems
| impossible to get my original Simcity 3000 CD working on
| modern hardware...
| numtel wrote:
| GOG has sc3k that works on modern hardware. Also, wine runs
| the original afaik.
| trackflak wrote:
| 3000 was just a modernised and polished expansion of 2000.
| Maxis had plans to do a successor to 2k that was fully 3D but
| they kept hitting frustrations and setbacks. So they just
| stuck to what they knew and made a faithful successor.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Maxis had plans to do a successor to 2k that was fully 3D
| but they kept hitting frustrations and setbacks.
|
| Graphics hardware at the time wouldn't be able to handle a
| city builder with the depth and scale of SimCity 2000.
|
| Heck, it wouldn't have been able to handle a 3D version of
| the original SimCity unless the draw distance was limited
| to like 300 feet.
|
| For proof, check out SimCopter. I can't imagine trying to
| play a city builder with those graphics.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| 100% agree, simcity 2000 will always he THE simcity for me.
| _Qeomash_ wrote:
| SimCity 2000 is definitely my favorite. I'm surprised someone
| hasn't made a version of it with a larger map (or infinite
| map).
| bruce511 wrote:
| Take that one step further. Start with a virgin earth. With
| sufficient, but finite, number of players, and a modelled
| global population, you build cities that effectively compete
| with each other for population.
|
| In other words an alternate history of population and human
| development.
|
| A multi-player Sim Earth.
| WJW wrote:
| Isn't that just (multiplayer) Civ 4/5/6 on a Earth-shaped
| map?
| jcpham2 wrote:
| This sounds danger close to metaverse speak
| trackflak wrote:
| We already have OpenTTD and OpenRCT. Maybe someone somewhere is
| creating an C++ remake of our favourite isometric city
| simulator, with multiplayer support!
| pqb wrote:
| How the multiplayer mode would look like? Do you think about
| competing against the other real player? Or maybe
| collaborating with some friend?
|
| I am asking, because I think I haven't seen the multiplayer
| support in any railroad/transport-tycoon game. I remember in
| Railroad Tycoon 2 and then in Sid Meier's Railroads [0] we
| could play against NPC. Same as us, NPC is establishing a
| company and we may buy all his stocks to win.
|
| [0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/7600/Sid_Meiers_Railr
| oads...
| rpcope1 wrote:
| Probably a lot like Simcity 2000 Network Edition.
| trackflak wrote:
| In OpenTTD, each player controls a rival transport firm and
| you compete against each other on the same map. AFAIK you
| can also arrange a buyout of your rival, similar to
| Railroads.
|
| In OpenRTC, each player gets full control over managing the
| same park from a shared pool of funds. Mayhem may ensure if
| you set your game to public and don't configure permissions
| carefully.
|
| In my mind, such an OpenSC2K's multiplayer would work like
| the latter. Each player managing the same city. Though if
| they removed game engine restrictions, it would be nifty if
| each player could manage his own city on one big shared
| map, similar to OpenRTC.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I've often dreamed of making a city builder MMO.
|
| But to do it right, I'd want it to be the scale of a
| moderately large nation like the USA. You'd buy plots of land
| one square mile as you expand. The game world would be seeded
| with a major highway and railroad system that you could not
| remove, just add connections to.
|
| I'd want traffic to be simulated in the same depth as Cities:
| Skylines, and have freight have to move over a thousand miles
| to reach destinations.
|
| But most importantly, I'd want the entire game world to be
| seamless. You should be able to pan from one side of the
| country to the other.
|
| But such an ambitious game would require immense processing
| power. I don't know how I would scale it.
| devman0 wrote:
| The ability to import a SimCity 2000 map in to SimCopter was
| amazing for the time, imo. I remember flying around cities I
| had worked really hard on thinking how the cross over between
| the two games was really cool.
| mcaravey wrote:
| Absolutely! I remember adding a bunch of rail to my cities
| just so I could do more train rescues or catching robbers on
| the trains. It was huge fun at the time...
| Mezzie wrote:
| I will always fondly remember the ridiculous SC2K maps I
| made for SimCopter + Streets of SimCity. Hills and road
| ramps everywhere.
| nateberkopec wrote:
| I did the same with Streets of SimCity.
| caycep wrote:
| ahhh that brings me back
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