Simtropolis 1000

[patriots_1228 51]

will we(okay, really, you guys, not me included ) try to add weather?

thats somthing ive always wanted.

[ianpaschal 77]

Originally posted by: patriots_1228 will we(okay, really, you guys, not me included ) try to add weather?

thats somthing ive always wanted.quote>

 

Probably too difficult.  Suppose you wanted a rainy day.  You'd need to make a new lighting setup, with no shadows, just ambient light for overcast feel, and then also make a new set of lights, not nitelites, but make lights for durring the day... etc.

Weather would be nice, but not nice enough to warrant all that extra work.  And that would go from 34 renders (17 day, 17 night) to at least 51 or even 68.  Just too big of files.

[ianpaschal 77]

Originally posted by: patriots_1228 joergg is the leader.quote>

 

Respect to joergg but this isn't really his original idea.  I've wanted to do this for a very long time (still have files for a UI i started to make, DT convinced me it was too much work though), and I know other times this has come up on the forums from other people.

I don't think we need a leader.  Perhaps a council.

Honestly, a few members of BLaM, includding me have been the most forward on this.

JasonCW has also been a big leader in game theory and will also clearly be a leading content creator.

Fuduka has been working on the game engine and moding/programing, so he'd maybe be in charge of that.

Onlyplace4 has been tackling render/exporting

MightGoose and I have been talking extensivly about graphic cabablilites as well as gameplay mechanics, similarly to Jason.

I myself have also been doing the lighting rigs.  I got the daytime one made and will probablly be in charge of that.

So I propose a collective council of project leaders:

jeorgg

jasonCW

onlyplace4

mightygoose

ill_tonkso

scipio

fuduka

and some other like glenni perhaps who are also very interested in it and have abilty to make some good content like glenni

also anyone else obvious who i forgot, sorry!  let me know!

from there also anyone else who wants to help is would be welcome to contribute and make suggestions.

[JCarter 0]

May I make a proposed plan?

Phase 1: Eastablish leadership and make sure they keep in contact

Phase 2: Decide how it will be implemented

Phase 3: Begin work on ESSENTIAL features

...and so on...

Phase X: THEN add non-essential (but nice ) features

Just a suggestion

[MINIggy03 227]

Instead of full 3D, why not do a quasi 3D system...you get full 360 degree rotation, as well as freedom of zooming in and out, but it still stays in the isometric view. That would allow for more detail as you don't have to worry about draw distances/ "fog"

Also, with character modeling I've done several times, what we do is have 3 quality levels depending on where its zoomed in on. The closer you get, the higher polycount the model has, as well as seeing better texture work. But when you zoom out, it switches automatically to a lower poly version/lower res textures... and if you zoom out agian, etc etc. You get the idea. It looks 100% seamless, and you can't even tell the difference. That way when you are zoomed out far in a city, it wont have to calculate as much detail as if it was zoomed in more. Make sense?

[ianpaschal 77]

Originally posted by: MINIggy03 Instead of full 3D, why not do a quasi 3D system...you get full 360 degree rotation, as well as freedom of zooming in and out, but it still stays in the isometric view. That would allow for more detail as you don't have to worry about draw distances/ "fog"quote>

If you have 360 degrees of rotation you still need all angles of the modle, ie its no more efficient than full 3d.

MightyGoose and I spent easily 2 solid hours talking about this last night and we're going to have to use the orthographic 17 view system.  period.

Originally posted by: MINIggy03 Also, with character modeling I've done several times, what we do is have 3 quality levels depending on where its zoomed in on. The closer you get, the higher polycount the model has, as well as seeing better texture work. But when you zoom out, it switches automatically to a lower poly version/lower res textures... and if you zoom out agian, etc etc. You get the idea. It looks 100% seamless, and you can't even tell the difference. That way when you are zoomed out far in a city, it wont have to calculate as much detail as if it was zoomed in more. Make sense?quote>

 

Yeah, we'll be doing essentially that.  Render a full detail close zoom image then we can easily scale down the image and throw out some quality for farther zooms.

[Anakin2 0]

this sound like a very good idea

my dad plays trainz,and it is a very good simulator.

so if simtropolis his game bases on this game,it sound great.

how big you maps are ,can bedepence on simdollars or pc performance 

because big maps,takes a lot processor speed an memory.

but you can built a lot of buildings,houses or indrustry on this a single tyle.

a lot of trainz ideas can be taken for simtropolis1000.

i want a realistic citybuilder like simcity 4 ,buit stil better.

the faster pc's wit dual & quad processor, with 1,2,4 gb of memory and serie 7,8 later 9 gforce graphic cards on the market,so you can make the game a lot better.

i dunno need distaster or udrive, i want als sorts or transport,higways,lanes,roundabouts.

and must be combine like nam you make for rushoure.

so a combine of trainz an rushoure should be a good idea for me.

[BurroDiablo 222]

I'd always be willing to help, i've learnt about and practised the BAT (i'm assuming that's what your using) extensively since early last month, I guess I know the basics but now I just need some motivation to use it.

Too many cooks spoil the broth however... so I don't know if your only limiting the project to the Talented Batters and teams... fair play if you are... who wants a game riddled with rubbish Bat's, eh? lol...

[ianpaschal 77]

At the moment I don't think we have any plans for disasters. They're not so important or realistic. I think this game is really being tailored for the people who enjoy constructing rather than destroying. I think we've also decided there won't be U Drive It.

[Jasoncw 11,843]

Originally posted by: Scipio The 17 views are:

1. Top down. Like a map. Might be nice to play like this sometimes.

2. 8 views on diagonal, looking at corner of building, traditional SC style, 4 of them at 30 degrees and 4 of them at 60 degrees to the ground.

3. 8 views facing the sides of the buildings, also in the 30 60 method.

This creates 4 arcs of viewing angle. Almost as good as 3d however still using pre rendered images so we can have lots of detail and good quality while still having a lot of viewing angles.quote>

That's not practical, the filesize for each building would be astronomical and unmanageable.  A few pages ago I wrote out why I think 3d is the way to go, and why 2d isn't.

It also requires that a separate program for the LOD stuff be made, which could possibly be complicated in its own way.

And that is in addition to creating a 3d engine anyway.  So we'd need to set up an engine for the 3d, and then make programs for the LODs.  Then we'd need to program the shadow system.

We'd end up putting a lot of work into pretty much recreating the flawed SC4 graphics system + a few extra rotations. 

When instead we can set up a 3d engine and put our own models directly in.

Also, low poly 3-d models would probably be faster to make (and would not look bad) than models you're suggesting.  I spend months working on my buildings, and it would take a lot longer if I had to model things to look good closer than zoom 5.

I'm very confident that 3d is the way to go, in all ways.

edit: holy smokes!  a lot of replies while I wrote this!

I'd be happy to give my advice and work with any group that is making this game.

Weather is very possible for a 3d game.  I'm sure the physics for such things have already been worked out by many other video games, and there are relatively easy ways of doing it.  Water could actually flow, there could be floods, it could snow and snow could pile up, etc.  Weather would be a great touch.  But weather is something to be thought of later, although in 3d we know that it would be possible.

I've also thought about making this game for a long time, and I'm sure that many people have.  I was actually going to make this thread instead of Jeorgg, since I had a dream about SC5, but he made the thread first.

[D_DERIDEX 0]

I have been following this, and am extremely supportive, but I believe the time has come for action.

I suggest the aforementioned council be set up, immediately. The project will almost definitely need a new forum room that is then broken down into

essential subcategories. This has to be started soon.

In, my opinion, the "government" structure should consist of the following: Various councils for each major activity (i.e. Modding, Content Creation, Graphical Design, etc.) with each member being the leader of a specific activity, and perhaps team, within the subcategory itself. A representative from each major council will make up a sort of Executive Board that monitors the overall progress of the project and informs each other on the individual progress of their own respective Councils.

This forum room should be locked (or at least the rooms that deal with serious inter/intradepartmental communication, so as not to flood the rooms with unneeded topics), if possible, from non members, thus making needed a PR division that informs the "denizens of Simtropolis" of particular strides in the project's progress. I believe this person should also be on the Executive Board as well.

Ill try to get a diagram of what I mean, although i think its simple enough to understand.

[Dexter 41]

This would be great if it was pulled off - I would even pay to get it.

There would be a lot of work involved to get this off the ground.

I always wished that Simtropolis owned Simcity4 - no more "exe limitations", unfixable bugs, and cluttered menus.

I woudn't bother having 3d graphics - I would rather have good quality 2d ones, although more detail on the higher zoom levels, and maybe more "steps" in the zoom system.

If this gets off of the ground, I wouldn't mind helping with the textures for the road networks (not all of them though ).

I do think that this is a very good idea, and it  would be the best city simulation game ever released.

 

[Xelebes 0]

First thing you want to consider: start small.

Create the logistics engine you want to see in a very basic playable form. Maxis has a head start, they can use it whenever they want. We have to start from scratch. Let's create the very basics and know which direction we want to take. That way we can have input on the logistics engine from the very start that we can have a better system once the 3rd, 4th or fifth version comes out.

[paperboy15 4]

Wow. The more I read this thread, the more I realize I'll be able to play this game at work and no one would be the wiser, even if they were looking over my back.

[BurroDiablo 222]

Jasoncw- I agree to an extent, 3D can end up looking very good... I mean, Company of Heroes is a great example of how highly detailed 3D graphics can get. Yet, on the other hand, you have... well, the majority of most 3D EA games were detail seems to be just a myth.

The problem we may have here is the fact that everything is going to have to be done for free... i'd be willing to chip in a few extra

[Jasoncw 11,843]

Something I think is very necessary is to think ahead.  I expect that after this is released, a patch would come out two or three times a year that would add some features, and tweak some more.  A few years after being released, the game might change a lot.  There might not even be much of a reason to make a new game after this one, just modd new features and remove unpopular ones for a long time.

I think the game being in 3d keeps it more flexible.

I also think that having rigid zone types and other such rigid ideas should be avoided at all costs, so that the game can still be flexible afterwards.

[Anakin2 0]

simtr 1000 should to be have 4 different schools 

kidsschool 6-12 ,teens 13-17,highschool 18  - 21 ,unifs 19 -25 

every school must be can updated depent on neigborghood.

more studends just like kids 500,1000,2000,5000.

teens 500,1000,2000,5000, same voor unif and highschool.

types like artschools or musicshool can also be an idea.

if there are different styles of class people like in game 'new york city'

so maybe you build a plot,with school what you can upgrade without of demolish.just expand.

the building.even you can you use this for police and hospitals or clinicks.

and different types of building in al classes.

so you plan you city better,and don't need demolish building civic building al times.

Originally posted by: Scipio e

Originally posted by: LivingInThePast That would alienate everyone under college age. Every Friday in 6th grade, I plopped down and played SC3K. I would've hated "Kiddie School", and now that I'm in high school, I don't like "Teenie School"! Yuck!quote>

 

I was kidding about the names.

What I mean is that there is 3 levels of school.

Level 1, Level 2, and College.  Call them whatever the hell you want but its nice and simple that way, to have 6 year, 6 years, and up.  I think that would be a good system for the game.

The game is meant to have a well functioning system, how you felt in 6th grade doesn't really make a difference.  If it makes you happy call it Cool School, Cooler School, and Coolest.quote>

[MINIggy03 227]

Originally posted by: Scipio

Originally posted by: MINIggy03 Instead of full 3D, why not do a quasi 3D system...you get full 360 degree rotation, as well as freedom of zooming in and out, but it still stays in the isometric view. That would allow for more detail as you don't have to worry about draw distances/ "fog"quote>

If you have 360 degrees of rotation you still need all angles of the modle, ie its no more efficient than full 3d.

MightyGoose and I spent easily 2 solid hours talking about this last night and we're going to have to use the orthographic 17 view system.  period.

Originally posted by: MINIggy03 Also, with character modeling I've done several times, what we do is have 3 quality levels depending on where its zoomed in on. The closer you get, the higher polycount the model has, as well as seeing better texture work. But when you zoom out, it switches automatically to a lower poly version/lower res textures... and if you zoom out agian, etc etc. You get the idea. It looks 100% seamless, and you can't even tell the difference. That way when you are zoomed out far in a city, it wont have to calculate as much detail as if it was zoomed in more. Make sense?quote>

 

Yeah, we'll be doing essentially that.  Render a full detail close zoom image then we can easily scale down the image and throw out some quality for farther zooms.quote>

I was talking about using a 3D engine, but keeping it isometric to keep the strain off compared to what CityLife or SCSocieties does with a free roam, or semi free roam camera.  Not render individual zooms/rotations.  3D, not 2D.  

[D_DERIDEX 0]

Although my idea is alot more complex, this is essentially my idea, sort of a multi tiered representative republic of simcity genius. haha

this is 800x 600

****haha thats supposed to be "Tileset Compilation Group"

[Jasoncw 11,843]

Schools do not need actual classifications or types.

Instead, like in SC4, they are just buildings that give an education bonus to certain age groups.

So, you can have any building that you want, and you can have it affect any ages you want.  "High School" or "Elementary School" is a human concept that we need to think outside of.

Where I'm from, there are preschools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges.

But education effects are not limited to schools.  Theaters (for plays/musicals) could also give a small education boost.  Having one purpose/effect per building is a Maxis idea that we need to think outside of.

I'm going to start working on a building.  There are some things I need to learn before I can help teach them. 

edit:

we don't need to create our own heigharchy of bureacracy, the gaming industry has already done that for us.

[gml_josea 2]

Too much talking, we need a definite place to talk about this since this topic is getting too cluttered already.

We need to form some sort of team or commission that will gather the ideas and write a preliminary design 'paper' explaining every aspect of the game that is supposed to be made, then members choose what to add and what to drop, until a final document is done.

Then we need to gather the programmers, artists and stuff to see how we'll make this come to reality.

We need our own forum, an OFFICIAL one I mean.

[onlyplace4 603]

Well I haven't had time to read all of this remarkable thread, but it shows just what amazing talent there is around and what a wonderful community exists around this game we all love. To take things further I have taken the liberty of setting up a development forum which you can find here. As we feel this is a community project for the larger community we have given the site the working title of Urbs Urbis ... but that's just a working title ... who knows what it will eventually end up named!

Already we can announce that we have the working mechanics of a 3D engine (not that the game will be full 3D) that will enable easy content handling and display and won't eat computers alive!

The team developing this will be by invitation so that we don't get a situation where there are too many chiefs and not enough indians, but everyone is welcome to come along, make their suggestions, put over their thoughts and ideas, and generally have your say in how this game is built. After all, this is no single persons project ... this is a community project ... by the community, for the community.

[LivingInThePast 364]

I just hope my UI ideas are OK....the thing that worried me most was "Simtropolis 1000 is 17 views and high-quality models". The last thing we want is some ultra developer's tool that have a terrible UI.

[joerg 280]

Scipio just count me out of that council, sounds like you guys have it under control. BTW its spelled Joerg, and I dont think its anyone's idea, city building games have been around long before you or I. Im glad I helped get the ball rolling. Ill be checking in periodically. Hopefully the stubbornness of a few doesn't hold this back to much. We really need to stop bickering about ideas and start the basic stuff. I know I started this thread with ideas, but we have peoples attentions now and we need to start on something instead of arguing about 3d, or not 3d. In the end if it works out it will be better than SCS and that was my intent.

BTW just so everyone knows its this stubborn im right and your wrong childish attitude that sent me away from this place for a couple years. I don't mean to offend or accuse anyone of this, but we need to show each other a bit more respect. I put countless hours into tons of projects for simtropolis and towards the end it felt like i got nothing but complaints. I looked at some of my last bats and mods on the stex and saw all the complaints and bickering and then my reaction to it all and thought wow I was being kind of a jerk, but now i look back and see just how frustrating it can be to try and help 170,000 people and have each one of them tell you that you are doing it wrong and there way is better. The irony is that the biggest complainers had often never produced anything themselves.

By no means did i ever think my ideas were the absolute way to go in this project, and that can be clearly seen by the discussion david and myself had over grids and the use of splines.  We all need to be open minded here and some of us seem very set in our ways.  There are probably 100 good ways to do this game, but for now those small details dont matter, and when we eventually do come to them we will need to learn to compromise.

Furthermore i want to apologize for being so direct in my decission not to use the original sc4 source, but I did try to be a good leader and i kept and open mind to it, especially after reading the post by buggi.

Thanks to everyone here that has been so supportive of this project and many countless others, and no worries I will still be around, but I can see where this project is going right now and it is starting to feel like a pissing contest (kind of an american term used to describe alpha male behavior, or a more childish version would be your wrong and im right).

[Lord Kronos 0]

I've been reading this thread since it's inception, and I've already noticed some very good arguments for and against various things. But we're trying to put the cart before the horse in working out the graphics engine before we even think about working on the actual simulator.

Whether or not the game becomes full 3D or stays at 2.5D with more viewing angles ala SC4 (for there is by know means a consensus pointing one way or the other on this site, just a vocal few who have pushed their ideas to the forefront), what matters the most at this point is getting a viable city simulator.

It is the simulator, not the graphics that could bring this idea crumbling to it's knees. Graphics can be improved/changed later. We need to start work on the simulator algorithms. How long do you think the original SimCity took to build? what took the most time, the graphics or the simulator?

Recent iterations of the SimCity franchise have had the luxury of being able to build upon the already functioning simulator and so we ended up with the graphical improvements of SimCity 4.

This is where we need to start focusing our attention, not on how we're going to render the roads, but on how the simulator is going to know where the roads go. Not on what the buildings are going to look like, but on how the buildings functions are going to be recorded, evaluated and influence other buildings/aspects of the game.

Until then all this talk about graphics is meaningless.

And whatever you do, do not hide away in a "developers forum" where it is invite only, this is a sure fire way to alienate the community from this project. Take it to another site focused on it by all means. Just do not limit who can post.

regards,

LK

Edit::

Joerg beat me to the reply!

[joerg 280]

Thanks Lord Kronos, you make some great points and I completely agree, this needs to stay public.

As for graphics people are not really thinking this through. How many of you are even aware of the fact that SC4 is a fully 3d game? The game is merely simple 3d lods with renderings of the objects applied to the sides of the lods. The point is this game will be 3d no matter which way we do the buildings and objects, and no matter what we do that point is months down the road so lets chill.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

Something I think is very necessary is to think ahead.  I expect that after this is released, a patch would come out two or three times a year that would add some features, and tweak some more.  A few years after being released, the game might change a lot.  There might not even be much of a reason to make a new game after this one, just modd new features and remove unpopular ones for a long time.quote>

Now this idea I like. Release a vanilla version of the game, then tweak it. Add the "nice" things progressively, and make each individual addon optional, kind of like how you can check or uncheck things on the NAM. That way, you only get the game YOU want. By the time this is done, everyone might have a completely different version.

Also, I notice that this has reached 12 pages of discussion in less than 2 days. That's incredible.

[Ntq€310 1]

if this happens we need better disasters, they make the game funner, disaster have been down hill since sc2000, also simtropolis could host emergency polls to decide what to do with the game, or the developers could decide, every simcity community could help out in someway, the possibilities are endless!

[BurroDiablo 222]

Originally posted by: Ntq$310 if this happens we need better disasters, they make the game funner, disaster have been down hill since sc2000, also simtropolis could host emergency polls to decide what to do with the game, or the developers could decide, every simcity community could help out in someway, the possibilities are endless!quote>

I second that oppinion. I've always wanted war to be a disaster option... but that seems almost too complicated to pull off. The good ol' Fire is a must.

I got my  'Urbs Urbis' account activated... whoop!

lol... whoever came up with that name deserves a cookie...

[the olive 0]

Originally posted by: D_DERIDEX Although my idea is alot more complex, this is essentially my idea, sort of a multi tiered representative republic of simcity genius. haha

this is 800x 600

****haha thats supposed to be "Tileset Compilation Group"quote>

This looks good, this is organized and things can be done with little confusion.

After about one and a half weeks I can spend a lot of time on this, as I will be done school and finnished exams.

Content creations council would be the entire non programing side right, where al ideas of go into the game come from?  If thats the case that where I belong, or maybe somewhere below because I know theres lots of poeple who would fit that position.