Simtropolis 1000

[Arg777 0]

This has probably already been posted somewhere through out this thread, but the link is www.urbsurbis.com  . I encourage all fans of SC that are insulted by Sim City Societies to come and join. This is the next great City Simulator. We are still in the ideas stage. You can come over, read the threads, and add your own opinions. We are in the process of organizing all the ideas, so this means we are starting to get this project moving. 

The more people we can get, the better.

[JFman00 1]

For all those who have expressed an interest in helping out (programming/coding/content creation) Urbs Urbis, there will be IRC discussions this coming Saturday and Tuesday. For more information: http://urbsurbis.com/forum/index.php?topic=303.0

For all those who would like to participate in the creation of a new game, feel free to browse the forums and join chat as well. These discussions are focused on getting the game out of the general brainstorming stage and the primary topics of discussion are on that page as well. Also, there is a rudimentary design document being created by categorizing and compiling ideas from the urbsurbis forum. It would be greatly appreciated if someone could wade through this thread and pick out good ideas.

[Hirachi_Dinavo 0]

My Thoughts

1. Full 3d - This actually sounds like a really bad idea. It would be much harder to code 3d graphics, and would be extremely taxing on the system, and there seems to be barely any benefit to doing so. 4-8 viewing angles would offer enough ways to view a city, and allow significant reductions in code.

2. Spline based roads - Definitely something we should add. But straight roads at various angles should be left to, so I propose a method of making roads by placing two points, connecting them with a straight road. Then you can place splines to change the shapes of the curves, and eventually press a button or something to finalize the road, which would place it. We should also include options to make curves that are perfectly circular, to avoid frustration. Another good idea would be to save each curve and allow the player to reselect it and change options, such as number of lanes, so it would be easier to upgrade streets to road, road to avenue, etc.

3. The Free Grid - I think the grid should be left in, but instead of making rigid tiles, it should be more like a plane, where objects take up space on the plane but are bounded by verticies and curves. For example, a curved road would take up the space x/2 meters on either side of the curve drawn to build it, where x is how wide a real road is.Buildings could be bounded by verticies. All points should be in decimal values, so you can truly place anything anywhere, as long as it does not overlap anything. So a building could be bounded by the points (3.454, 5.23) (3.454,7.23) (6.454, 7.23) (6.454, 5.23) rather than (3,5) (3,7) (6,7) (6,5) like it would in SC4.

[Robstersfive 0]

this all kinda pointless to be honest, if anyone seen lincity that looks terrible and doesn't compare to simcity.

you be better off just modding the new simcity or carry on modding simcity 4, the new one meant to allow complete changes made to the game.

[cdesvar 0]

Is anyone here actually serious about creating this or is it just a pipe dream.  great thought robstersfive and all the other doubters that think its impossible.  just keep dreaming small. 

if there is a group already working on creating an engine and getting this off the ground PM me. i'm available and willing to assist

[djf3591 1]

I truly feel that this is a great idea and I like most of the enthusiasm behind it. I would like to help make it, but I have no experience with game design. But, I would love to lead the marketing of the game whenever it is done. I can make commercials and whatever else needed to promote it. Let me know what you think about that.

I love the ideas.

[lasergoat 0]

cdesvar:

urbsurbis.com

I've been lurking there and I think it looks promising. Lots of good ideas and there are some experienced programmers interested in the project. Any help, I'm sure would be appreciated. I think it would be great to have a community made city simulator.

[crazyyaya 4]

Is this actually possible?

[star.torturer 0]

of course. loads and loads of ideas have been spoken, debated and checked out over at www.urbsurbis.co.uk and we have started collecting ideas and some people have even started experimentally coding

Joe

[Kglarsen1984 0]

I love the idea of Simtropolis (1000) I really do hope this game will be a reality some day. It should be like SC4 but with all the stuff from this site and all the ideas that can't be modded into the game. Keep up the spirit and I'll defiently buy this game!!!!!!!!!!

[redroverr 0]

I had a dream last night that shocked me. I came up with ideas for this! 1-Each square of grid could have a mini grid inside of it(9x9)Now when the building plops down lets say 4x5, there is still room. so it could ramdomly generate a parking lot , or trees , or both in the remaining space. you could also zone with that tiny grid for diagonal road 2-when a building more than two stories is built, the game, instead of placing a premade building, has thousands of premade floors. It could peice them together . There could be classes like modern or classic, which could fit together, since every peice is based around the same thing. like you gould have an old lobby with a few floors, and endind to a glass tower on top connected to the neighbour building. BAT ers could also bat floors for the game to peice together. There could also be a mode where you piece together the floors to meet your needs. There could also be connecter pieces like brick square to glass circle, or Glass Pyramid square to twisting tower, or double old tower toglass arch. There could also be many colors, but one buildings style each would have to be the same color( the glass could be yyellow with beige brick) 3-consumer mode-you can be the resident and change up your house and totaly customize it( color level style and accesories eg; window panes and shutters, and the yard. 4-subway connected to building- When a subway goes over a building(not houses) it could connect so it could be a direct route to work 5-new zones Spec. res(hotels and inns) purple Mall orange ( i was also thinking that you could zone parks. They would either need road,walkway, or building connection) Park Blue-green Waterfront Pink Spec commercial( you know like walmart and staples and home depot, that style of buildings White For malls it would piece together areas, or it could use a pre made custom bat 6-puzzle pieces-(highway and airport) I was thinking that you could use highway puzzle pieces to make custom inter changes, with an auto compete feature to place the onramps and changes( like a swirling highway up and goes past a few buildings and goes back down) kind of like rollercoaster tycoon making coasters. Ud use the arrow keys to move and turn it and use other keys for special things Airport is self explanitory.it is drag and drop or connect to make an awesone unique airport Please dont flame me as i no these ideas may be imposdsible, and i am only 14

[castironpigeon 1]

Wow, it's amazing how quickly this thread has taken off and how much interest there is in this project. I'm very impressed and I'd love to see this succeed. There's just one major suggestion I'd like to make:

Before you try to figure out what and how you want to design this, you'll need to get organized. One thread isn't going to cut it. Everyone's excited and wants to spit out code and design ideas, but administration framework must be laid out first or else you'll have total anarchy and nothing will get accomplished. The administration can then set out goals and get people moving. Among all the hardcore SC fans out there I'm sure a capable staff can be put together. The trick is to get them all motivated and working together on a common set of goals in an organized fashion.

[Robstersfive 0]

Originally posted by: cdesvar Is anyone here actually serious about creating this or is it just a pipe dream.  great thought robstersfive and all the other doubters that think its impossible.  just keep dreaming small. 

if there is a group already working on creating an engine and getting this off the ground PM me. i'm available and willing to assistquote>

 

I'm not thinking small i make my own films and we aim very high all the time but your talking about making a game on same level as simcity 4! because your not getting same game again  what is the point when got the game already?  sc4 and predaceors, secondly simcity a very sophiscated game and I personally just really find it hard to see how anyone can make this work properly, because when look at lincity its not even close to simcity classic in my view!

I don't wanna put a downer on things just think its stupid because none of this would be happening if no-one hated scs so much! Mayb you lot should just get over it! We still have sc4! and scs meant to be fully moddable! So wouldn't it be better work with what we got!

[CDI_spy 5]

My excitement vis-à-vis this project is overwhelming but in such a way that I won't come crashing down in dissapointment if it doesn't pan out.  It's a great feeling.

Will a larger team get the same job that a smaller team working full time did?  Let's watch and see.  I think it can.

[lasergoat 0]

I wonder how far SC4 would have gone if it was a community project instead and the code was accessible. The NAM would have been nothing. The CAM, kids play. We would have had real features and extensive game play improvements instead.

I'm really hoping the community can do this. I'm unskilled at programming, but if they get a framework in place, I'm there in other capacities.

[shealaan 0]

This is my first post on ST but this grabbed me a little. Im another who has been worried about the direction of SCS, is that why maxis have given the development to somebody else. SCS look to me to be too "cute", bit like The Sims or WoW (Lvl 80 undead or ork with rather huge axes should never look cute). It looks a very micro managed, and just plain wrong. I like the idea of the higher res grid, thats a must, but i still think no grid works better, I'll come back to that. 

Kill the full 3D idea for gameplay unless u fancy a crack at some 64bit programing to fully use the SLi/Crossfired cards u would need. Keep the regions and just make them work, its a system resources thing again. Dam if u made it 2D like the 1st born and it played and SCS did not we would be laughing. Use 5 lvls of weath, make crime relative to the area and make the transport work properly, like the 1000s or people coming out of your airport using hotels near to them and make the comerce work right, not just work on demand, when u want loacal shops and not offices. Split the types of air polution in smoke/smell/noise and use a flight path system for air ports (a lovley place called Eton gave me the idea for this, its next to Heathrow but its not in the direct landing/takeoff path of the flights, the money in that place is silly BTW, its a different world to most)

Has anybody throught of a new way to build roads, i think a system simular to the beazer tool in many graphic design packages would work great (the reason to loose the grid), so before building you could strech and bend the road before you place it, u could ask the road in certain areas to dig out mild hills, or have raised embankments along side highways (motorways) to cut the noise (we dont use elevated highways much here btw Americans) u could leave space either side of the road for later expansion into dual carage ways. The inside this boundry u would give it a tag, in the the UK they call these areas estates. U would then ask the interface to fill this area with a number of buildings of a certain weath and density; fill your average estate with homes for 3000, in 500 buildings with 10 (local) shops in 2 rows, weath would still work with land value. You could even select what buildings the game could not use in that area (for asthetics). When the estae was full and demand was good agents would ask your permission to develop that estate, u could even add items or open area into the estate as it was built, open area for space later on for schools, parks and so on. You would do this for all estaes and it would also place the streets as it does for u now, You would select the exits for the streets and their width. As things get dense in CO zones u would have a lots of roads and a lots of estates, they would because more like city blocks.

And for special buildings you have like landmarks or builings which are not placed every day (maybe bring back arcologys) u could use an insert button, instead of hundreds of buildings being in the menu all of the time, u could even add them to the menu for ease of use, or add new menu bars. With all these new options u would need to turn off  a lot of thing to give breathing space. , if you were to add all the Office tool bars in any of the MS Office group you would have half the screen to work with, u adjust the GUI for your situation. I sound really complicated but when u consider a lot of the tools mentioned are used in this idea come from common office tools so it should work for everybody. Sorry just in case this works i had to give the over paid google eyed tw@t with more bugs in his software than a rain forest the credit thing for MS Office .

Ive played SC from the begining and am now very sad that is leaves us, to be fair i think i started playing 3 years after release (1989) but ive played them all. I like a lot of the ideas here. The whole advertising thing could get messy when it gets large but u only need 2 big companys who pay per month for users still playing the game.

SO my points are;
Recognise limits and future limits of PCs and our selves
Make it different, not SC5
Dont make it SCS
Make it work
and Finally anybody who does not know who the over paid goggle eyeds tw@t is, you are; too old, too young or stupid - be silent.

[Kglarsen1984 0]

I have a few ideas on transportation:

Roads/streets that are places right next to a building a sidewalk appears. These sidewalks should have a capacity, like roads/streets. When too many people use them it's time to make them broader - they need more space.

Another thing is rooms for bikes along the road. This is also like the broader sidewalks somethat that you must add yourself - again they need more space.

If you have a good system of bikepaths it'll promote the use of bikes meaning less cars on the road.

In Copenhagen (And probably also other large cities) you can grab a bike for free at some special stations around town where you have to return them again - this could further boost the use of bikes.

Sidewalks with a lot of traffic on them will attract shops. If you zone for shops in an area with hardly any pedestrians these lots won't be as attractive as the ones with more traffic on them.

[deeejayeee 0]

If I was creating a user interface for SC1000 I would start by redoing the menu and make it more simplistic. The toolbar should be similar to what sc4. However the menu should be set up to have the ability to select the number of lanes either by selecting a number or an submenu icon. I prefer the number system since this would alleviate the need for so many submenus. For example click on the road icon and a popup or some other method would allow you to type in the number of lanes. The best part of the new interface is having the ability to draw roads on the map anyway you like similar to paint. The game would then create the road just like it does today.

[MeddlePAL 0]

Developing a game is a lot more difficult than just saying, "Let's make a game! Here's a list of all the features it should have, who wants to help?". Fleshing out the idea (like what's being done in this thread) is the easy part, development is the real problem. It sometimes costs $1 million USD just to license an engine. An open source SimCity-like game does sound quite appealing, but without huge funding it's unrealistic at best.

Exactly. SimTrop 1000 sounds great and all but there is a total lack of focus as to what would need to be done. Somebody needs to lay out a roadmap for the project. Then you need to establish a core team of programmers to get together and decide on what will be focused on for the first development release let's say (start/exit game; save/load system; terrain rendering). Get all the code written for this and posted to a Subversion or CVS repository and you work from there. Lesser programmers write code for the game, then the core team runs through the changes checks to see if they are consistent with the current release roadmap and approve / decline / or put them on hold.

There's a lot of modelers and enthusiasts in this community. Who I don't think have the slightest clue how difficult it is to write good software. It's the difference between an artist and an engineer. Night and day. One thing is for sure, this project isn't going to go anywhere without organization and more than hopeful wishes expressed by avid community members on a forum.

[Larsz 7]

Hi Joerg,

I apologize for not reading the entire contents of this thread, so some of the things I am throwing out might have already been suggested.

1st suggestion - take a look at ANN - Artificial Neural Networks btw, I am not an expert, I really just got interested recently in the theory of ANN. From what I did read in this thread, you may be thinking inside the SimCity box. I think a lot of the modeling (not graphics) in SC4 was not adaptive enough. It is hard to describe but I always imagined a multilayer relational model. I think this mostly applies to the environment within the game. I always thought about trying to pull this off using a color palette. For example:

One shade (32 intensity variations) = environmental stability, has the area been stable for a long period of time

Another shade = air pollution

Another shade = water pollution

Another shade = deformation - how has the player deformed the landscape (building a dam)

etc.

Overlay the shades using a trained ANN to model the environment. With SimCity 4 or the previous SCs, it was too easy to manage pollution and other effects. Transforming the landscape had no effect as well. This kind of model should incorporate Time better as well.

I would think ANN could be used for traffic as well. There should be plenty of data out there to train the ANN.

2nd suggestion - Step away from the tile Not in terms of structure or programming framework, but in terms of land development. A land developer today does not think in terms of a 1x2 tile for residential development. They plan for an entire neighborhood. This is where I thought SimCity could become multiplayer. Using an editor, a player creates 45 residential unit neighborhood that consumes 60 acres - low density. This development plan gets shared with other players. The game is still built on RCI indicators, so a player sees demand for low density, median wealth and grabs the plan, picks the building model palette. The player pays the price and plops it. The model determines the desirability and builders begin building within the development. Maybe 20 units get built within 5 years of game time, maybe only 5 get built depending on how everything is going. 

Commercial development could be handled in a similar way but I think the ratio of dollar per square foot should be steep when reaching 20 floor and above development. Commercial development should also be significantly impacted by transportation availability.

3rd suggestion - This is directly related to the second suggestion. I left out industrial development in #2. Industrial development should be determined by resources. You don't see many paper factories in the great plains Logging, Mining, Agriculture are all driven by local resources.

4th suggestion - Design and build the game without buildings. Simcity could easily be played with a bunch of numbers and symbols. Get that to work and dressing it up is easy.

I would love to help and may even have some time to help in a few months, so I will try to keep up with this thread.    

[_MostlyHarmless 17]

So is this really a thought-out project...or are people just throwing suggestions and half-baked ideas out there in reaction to SCS?

[LB_Industries 4]

like the 

http://www.flightgear.org/

project

as the base engine

http://www.softgames.de/developia/viewproject.php?cid=20708

sorry I dind't find it in english

~Next time please use the 'Edit' button if you want to add more info.~

[Lord Baylum 0]

I would like to see a game use THE SAME ISOMETRIC VIEW as SimCity but have a GRAPHIC STYLE similar to SATELLITE IMAGES.It would be easier to create than full 3-D rendered graphics

[Lord Baylum 0]

HeY GUYS how about a Digitally scanned Simtropolis version of the old SimCITY CARD GAME for a starter project.Does ANY remember the SimCITY trading card game ?

[Myr 0]

The idea you've all had for a community-developed piece of software is pretty interesting. It's one I've been considering for a while since I just haven't been all that thrilled with what's out there right now, including the user-created mods and additions. They're great work, but I feel the core of the game is out of date and not open enough to allow complex new and modern ideas.

From what I've read it doesn't look like any of you have real game developing or software engineering experience or instruction. Having those skills is what takes you from creating a few little pieces of a program over the short term to putting it all together months down the road on the long term. You need a roadmap, vision and design documentation, and a general architecture for the game itself. You also need a meeting place that's for project members only so that you can focus your thoughts and get on the same page without distraction.

Good luck with your project. Hopefully you all don't disappear like the Roller Coaster Tycoon 4 community project did. I'd offer to join in, but I've been burned on too many community projects so what I'm working on is a personal project until I get to the sounds part.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you like the community development idea, you are currently using a community developed product called the Internet.  It started as a set of Requests for Comment under the auspices of DARPA and was developed by a group of university and other computer types into ARPAnet, Bitnet, and others.  Since then, the beat continues.

The same could be said of various versions of UNIX/Linux.  There is one set of ideas and many ways to put it together.

Community developed application programs, like games, need a co-ordinating body to test and make sure things are minimally acceptable.  If you want to see another of these, look at OpenOffice.org.

[_MostlyHarmless 17]

Ohh I love Open Office! Yes, I guess everything starts at a grass-roots level...

[Marc_1985 0]

I have a small idea, sorry if someone has posted the same idea before, but i don't have time to read all the 20 pages of replies here.

Here goes my idea,

Many of us always have wanted to "walk" inside our cities, like CityLife and SC Societies, but my idea is different, build the city as we have been doing now, in iso metric views, and realistic graphics, (with or without gird, this doesn't matter, only I want is to zone diagonally too), then we can have two possibilities, one could be to zoom in our city, and walk (or fly) inside it, in a mid-graphics detail enviroment, so we would not have computer specs problems, we could walk in front of our nice house, then we can take a photograph of it and then the game would render it in hi-graphics, so we would see our house detailed, with shadows, reflections, etc. The other idea i have is to skip this "low-graphics" walk and directly choose a camera position inside our city and take the photograph anyway. To accelerate the rendering, we could have some pre-rendering options, like day time, weather, details, refletions, and all this kind of options to make look nice our photograph.

I wish you understand my idea, and sorry again if someone had posted the same idea.

Other ideas i have are about the gird, i like to make "squared" cities, but also to make some curves and diagonals inside it, so would be possible to activate and deactivate the gird for build freely, or make the zoning gird as the road next-to it.

The possibility to make airports and seaports with unique shapes and sizes, like we had in SC2000 and SC3000 editions, and some SC4 lots.

Of course the great work of NAM should be there, but with enhanced options.

Making tunnels easily, you choose where the tunnel starts (like in SC2000), but then you can choose where you want to place the tunnel exit.

I have a lot more ideas here, but these are the main ones.

[Cob92 360]

This is my idea for road building: A system similar to that used in CityLife should be used for directional placement. Networks would include streets, roads, avenues, oneway roads, highways, and highway ramps. To create elevated or sunken networks, the player would hold the shift key and use the up and down arrow keys to adjust height. This eliminates the need for puzzle pieces, premade interchanges, or hole digging lots.

For buildings and zones: Ploppable lots would align to the road. Zones could be zoned freeform by clicking and dragging and using shift+left/right arrow keys to rotate.

Grid: While the grid would still exist, players would not be forced to build on it.

3D: 3D graphics are a must. A UDI feature, when combined with this view, would actually be a worthwhile component of the game.

Airports and seaports: if zones are too complex to code so that all the pieces line up correctly, airports and seaports should be built out of a set of modular pieces with prefab airports and seaports available for new players or those who simply don't have the time. If you don't fully understand, check out the roller coaster construction system in Rollercoaster Tycoon.

[mayor_potter 0]

I'm a newbie here on Simtropolis, but as soon as I saw that some people wanted to create their own game to rival Societies I was thrilled. I knew I needed to get posting; I knew I needed to become part of a community that wants to take on a huge endeavour and create its own video game. I'm hating Societies the more I hear about it, and really hope we can start working soon. But, to do so, we need to stop making wish lists. If we really want to do this, and this isn't just a pipe dream, we need to elect leaders. We need to learn code or find people that know it. We need to raise funds. We need to get software and equipment. We need to get organized! I'm happy to help in any way I can, and will start looking for code/programming information immediately.

For Simtropolis 1000... For Opposing The Man... For A New Revolution In Fan-Generated Technology...  Hurrah!