Simtropolis 1000

[ILL Tonkso 1,236]

Well, i would like to take on the majority of the rail infastructure, i can do the rolling stock too. Something simple like a BR Electrostar Class 377 EMU for the standard?

[david1314 44]

Originally posted by: Alakazam I think a 2.5D engine will be fine. Seriously, does 3D is all that important?quote>

Why re-invent the wheel.

As many have said, SC4 is the perfect version of a 2.5D.  Why improve on it.  Any improvement would be marginal.

The vast stride to be taken in city simulation is to free the transit networks from the grid.  Not only directionally, but also free the number of lanes, width of pedestrian sidewalks...

I mean, you can break Sim city down into as many more iterations of binary you want.  But first, go open a city save file in ilive's reader and look how everything is defined in that environment...

Now we were talking 1m squares?  Multiply cities' file size (and load times) by 256.....Oh, and that's if we stick with the stupid 4km boundaries of the grid.

I want transit networks that are fully customizable (in elevation, width, no. of lanes/tracks, functionioal ped. paths...)

Why are we still even speaking of the grid.  The superiority of splines is clearly established.

[david1314 44]

Originally posted by: ILL Tonkso Well, i would like to take on the majority of the rail infastructure, i can do the rolling stock too. Something simple like a BR Electrostar Class 377 EMU for the standard?quote>

Why have a standard?  Why not users choose all the different engines they want to see?

And why not have them drivable on the spline tracks like Railroad Simulator 2006 (but more SC4 UDI styled controls)?

[+Guest]

I love 2.5D. Improve the realism, and game play, making it far more flexible.

[Targon 0]

While I am not a coder these days(I stopped programming back in 1993), I started playing the original Sim City shortly after it first came out all those years ago, and have always been into city building games. As such, I would love to help come up with ideas for the game.

One idea I have always wanted to see for Sim City 5 was that the type of commercial business that develops is based on the demand in a neighborhood, as well as for the city as a whole. In Sim City 4, we saw a general breakdown into the main categories for commercial and industrial. I propose that for this new project, things become a bit more specific based on what types of businesses are needed by sims. The following are just some of the businesses sims would want to have access to.

Grocery stores

movie theaters

convenience stores

pizza delivery

Chinese food delivery

party supplies

pool supplies and/or services.

Book, record/CD, DVD stores.

Movie rentals

Restaurants(places sims would want to go to eat, which is different from delivery or groceries)

Clothing stores

Fast Food

Electronics stores

The list goes on, but you get the idea. If the project uses stages of development like SC4 did, the size of these could increase, so you could have small places like Radio Shack, or larger stores that service more people once the city is larger.

With needs for things like groceries and such by each house, a focus on neighborhoods needing access to certain services could be used to trigger what businesses are built on a given commercial lot. No more of the 4 different pizza places like in SC4 if my system works.

Anyway, I hope to be able to help.

[Ntq€310 1]

if we use 3d it would have a low amount of detail, with 2.5d we have more detail than 3d, and detail means a more realistic game

[david1314 44]

I still say development efforts on 2d would be more fruitful in SC4 than they would in a new development.

Also, the 2.5d is the reason SC4 is so big of a game and has such huge plugins/save files.

The great thing about splines is they don't have to be pathed in the same way tiles do. That doesn't seem that significant, but as the NAM developers what this means if we wanted additional directions, not just additional intersections. We are going to run into problems where 'transit enabling' still exists in some form, and will cause unwanted conflicts. If the entire game is based off splines, buildings can be built based on their proximity to the spline rathern than the presence of some random adjacent tile.

[ilikehotdogsalot 308]

2.5D graphics is fine with me! i'd much rather have better graphics and gameplay in ST1000 than I would receive on simcity societies

[RooRocz 0]

/me is going to throw out some suggestions...

(I'm sorry if I seem authoritative, I have this sort of alpha-male complex that makes me immediately think I'm in charge of a project even though I know nothing of it.)

I suggest we use the OGRE graphics engine for the project. It's free, it's open source, I'm sure the community around it will be exited that there is a project of this scale being made. OGRE is well established and has a huge and helpful community that will be willing to aide all the project.

The project ought to be open-source, cross-platform, etc., but I think that's already established.

I'm willing to help, I can do 3D modeling and a bit of C++ (still learning, though.)

And I'd like to help ILL Tonkso with the rail infrastructure. (I'm a big railfan... As are a lot of people here...)

[ExiL3 10]

I didn't take time to read through all the posts, but I must say this sounds like a great idea!

I remember someone did make a small game supposed to rival SC not too long ago, don't think they got too far. If we put our best heads together tho, I am sure you guys will be able to create a great game.

I want to help, tho I am not sure what I can do for you, except perhaps being a tester of some sort. I am that kind of Computers Hardware guy, and not so much into coding. (except when it comes to the good ol' win95/98 Dos/Edit )

Oh an the OGRE engine looks pretty sweet!

take care,

[LivingInThePast 364]

First of all, I'd like to know if all my comments were read and well-received.

In the back of the SimCity 2000 guide, it explains the whole mechanics of SC2K...shame we can't have that for SC4. Maybe I should plan out something.

[mightygoose 92]

lol the ogre engine was the one we were looking at... lol

[hamsterTK 93]

If it is in 2d,how is that going to be coded? Think about it, everything fits in LOD that is textured, and put on the map so that it overlaps whats behind it and is overlapped by whats in front of it. And thats the just the beginning of it.......

but with 3d there are already engines available that would make coding the game easier

Anyways, I think this should start really simple with a few buildings and zones, then get more complex if and when it reaches beta stage. To use SC4 custom content as an analogy, there needs to be regular roads before there is ever a RHW...

[Kaboy 0]

Hey, I just became a member of this site after seeing the disappointment Simcity Societies seems to bring. And I love the idea of making it yourselves but euhm, I seems like you are all talking about the secondary things of the game; the things that meet the eye, like transport this, business that. I don't think that these are the things we should consider in the first place. I can be wrong in this, I'm no computer specialist, but euhm don't we need to actually program each little aspect of the game? All primary things as I call them, the things that make the game play. We are not speaking about a hundred things here, but to my opinion this must be thousands if not tens of thousands of things. From the little guy walking down the street, to the plane in the air, to the accounting system its numbers to add up, to the basic creation of a region that we can actually create as we like. Seems so overwhelming! We must consider technical aspects too, because yes I know we have great talent here that can make nice 3D buildings but that won't do.

[Roguelexicon 0]

This is a great idea but very ambisious. Everyone is throwing around great suggestions but we need to take one step at a time. First we need to start with the rore basics like is the game going to be 2d, 2.5d or 3d. Throw together suggestions on that and make a choice then move on to what type of engine to use. One step at a time. I completely support this idea, if we can get an end product that is open to modds and upgrades that will keep the game fresh giving anyone the option to add what they want in a format that appeals to us loyal, long time simcity gamers we can put together a game that will crush that steaming pile of crap EA is putting out.

[smurf 0]

I have many ideas but not much time to post right now. I just want to say for now that if this project works as intended then SCS is actually one of the best things to ever happen to SimCity fans. If Simtropolis 1000 becomes a hit we can think of SCS as the cause of our great game.

[Mayor AL 1]

first of all... GREAT IDEA!!!

And now the rest. I yesterday I first read about this project and being interested I decided to read on. I am at page 6 by now and hope to catch up with the enormous amount of input. Before I completely read through all the posts I'd like to give an idea that might be very helpfull, I might not be as well... we'll see

As I read through the post I notice the lack of programmers, we have enough BATers and MODers but we need programmers or else no game at all. And where can we find programmers? At universities, in the netherlands we even have a study called game architecture and design. Students doing these studies know how to program, are motivated programmers, have innovative ideas and above all, they are busy with a study connected to this so they can spend time on it. Maybe they can use it as a project, or just as a practice.

And I am sure there will be some programmers out there who like this idea and are willing to spend some time on it.

[mdfrncs 0]

This sounds awesome, though very complicated (like pretty much everyone else has said so far). I'd be willing to put a lot of effort into this - I don't have any BAT/gmax experience but I have a pretty good grasp on programming and I've taken formal courses in software design.

[Yogiya 1]

joerg & Blam team: I fell it is time for leadership to call to order.

We need action plans and who is doing what. just decide. If you see that it is going the wrong result, decide again. We have to be flexable, and the leader has to be a convincer and consensus builder.

You lead we will follow.

I can help with material, finianchial, and human resources.

I non-code script.

I am at ST1000 service

[mittfh 7]

Here's my 2p worth of ideas: feel free to comment on whether any of them would be worthwhile, or indeed the extent to which they are code-able.

A simple method of implementing curves would be to follow the same approach as some painting packages: you select your transit network tool, and click along the path you intend the network to follow. As you click, a point-to-point network is built up - initially a 'preview' of straight lines, but once you double-click to end the path, the game automatically adds appropriate curves to the path.

A similar approach could be taken with zoning - especially as in real life, not all zones extend right up to the road, but sometimes have a patch of 'amenity' land in between. You'd click your way around defining the edges of a zone 'parcel'. In easier game modes, when you have two 'back-to-back' lots on the zone (e.g. when zoning between two roads), the game would draw the backs at the half-way point between the two edges. In harder modes, you'd have to define the backs yourself (so you could have one road having deeper lots than the other). Zones would primarily refer to the predominant use of the ground floor - so your typical surburban row of shops with flats above would appear in a commercial zone and would provide the necessary jobs - but also recognise the residency of sims. Alternatively, zones could be defined more loosely, so "mainly residential", "mainly commercial", "mainly industrial" would allow a limited amount of permitted development of other occupant groups within a zone - so when placing a residential area, the houses nearest the school might convert their ground floor into a shop.

Building exemplars could contain fields for all occupant types - so you could have a building providing 12x R$ and 24x CO$$ at the same time.

Buildings could also contain props which are activated under certain conditions - so e.g. over time, houses acquire conservatories and the asphalt drives get replaced with block paving. Garden props should change seasonally - prop families could be used in a similar way to seasonal trees, so bulbs appear in spring, bedding in summer, shrubs bloom in autumn as the bedding is chucked, and the gardens look a bit miserable in winter (unless the sims have shrubs with nice bright foilage). Also, as the resident sims get older, they may replace their lawn with gravel (easier maintenance).

Initially zoning all land as agricultural would be fairly realistic - but there should be an option at the God/Mayor mode boundary to define 'exempt' areas e.g. for nature reserves as well as land unsuitable for zoning (e.g. marsh, steep mountains etc.)

Building types are much more sensitive to the local environment - i.e. regardless of the wealth of your citizens, you do not get a 300 storey tower block in the middle of a satellite village - even though it is on the same map as megopolis. For commercial buildings, perhaps a nearness indicator could be included in the exemplar - minimum distance between repeats of the same building (so companies don't set up two branches in the same area of town).

And how about the option to zone seaports, airports and parks as well as plop them?

At easier game levels, you could delegate most funding decisions to your advisors, therefore allowing novices to concentrate on city building without having to worry too much about finances. However, your advisors will choose funding levels that are in their best interests, so on the next level up you should be able to override your advisors. On the tougher levels you'd have to do all the micromanagement yourself, but the advisors could still nag you that they're unhappy with your decision. Of course, there'd have to be an 'auto-ignore' option - so that they would only interrupt you if the city was descending into bankruptcy or anarchy.

Also on easier game levels, the option to auto-upgrade transit networks when they become over-capacity - advisors list the approximate cost (in terms of compulsory purchase orders and building) of widening the transit network, and you choose whether to let them proceed. Of course, the advisors won't tell you that if you were canny and examined your transit data view, you'd realise that plopping a few extra bus stops and subsidising a few services could alleviate the problem for less money, and wouldn't anger the environmental advisor (since in the UK at least, the "Green" lobby vehemently oppose any new infrastructure developments - especially roads [their logic being that new roads "create" more traffic rather than shifting existing traffic elsewhere]...)

As most roads/streets in real life are named, but manually naming every street would be as tedious as plopping every building, how about the ability to select an estate, and select a naming scheme. A few would be provided automatically (e.g. birds, poets etc) , but as ever with Simcity, you could plug in your own themes (of course, we could let it do the US model of "First Avenue, Second Street" etc., but that's far too easy and plain boring!). If we were really clever, the game could take cues from the environment when suggesting naming schemes - particularly with small R$$$ developments.

I like regions, but I also like the idea of tiles. Perhaps a hybrid could be made, where you can create a custom region, but in the unlikely event of you filling it to capacity, you can extend it as needed. Since the whole point of region play is the ability to shift between cities, we need to develop a way of saving/loading cities much faster than in SC4. Perhaps if you save and exit to region, the game initially does a 'dirty' save - saving all the variables in a large uncompressed file, then works on compressing / optimising it in the background. The uncompressed file would only be deleted once a 'safe' copy had been made, so that if the game crashed, you'd still have a working copy. Perhaps even the game could cache somewhere on disk all game variables that are not currently 'active' for what the user is currently doing, so that a quick save would only entail saving the currently active variables - the game could then work on merging and optimising the necessary data into a single file in the background.

[Bazkur 34]

Water should be able to be added at different elevations in the game. I hate not being able to create something like a platue that has a lake on top of it.

[patriots_1228 51]

AmunRE-good idea. i dont know how that would work but that would be awesome.

[digitize 0]

I am a new member here (I just joined to download content for SC4, but then I learned about SCS), but I have some programming experience (in PHP and Java, so it wouldn't be much help), and would like to give my input.

First off, the source code for SC4+Rush Hour is what we really need to start. Without that, we would have to start from scratch, which (unless you go entirely free/open-source, which I have a feeling would be hard to get through the entire SC community) costs a decent amount of money, time, and resources. Games don't program themselves overnight.

If by some whim EA released the source code to us, then most likely it would be under the GNU General Public License, which means we would be legally bound to release our resulting product(s) as FLOSS (free/libre/open-source software) under the GNU GPL. Keep in mind that FLOSS doesn't have to be free of charge, but when released, the source code must be released with it, and you must be able to freely (for free or for $$$) redistribute it, et cetera.

And really, if we want to keep it running with old SC4 plugins, we more than likely must keep it 2.5D, which I think is the best option, anyway. Also, the grid would more than likely have to stay as is. Both points are debatable, but it would take one heck of a programmer to change them.

Also, with the source, we could possible compile it under WINE so it would work (in addition to Windows) under GNU/Linux, the BSDs, OS X, and just about any UNIX-like operating system. Right now, I believe SC4 works on WINE if you use software graphics rendering and crack away the CD validation (although the latter is illegal under the present license, so I haven't personally tried it), so it shouldn't be much of an issue.

I'd like to help, even though I don't know C/C++, possibly in porting it to GNU/Linux (especially Ubuntu).

[smurf 0]

There needs to be a thread dedicated to collecting ALL the things that everyone wants to be in the game. You know, things that are essential for any City Simulation and then things that we think would be nice to be in the game. I know that a flood disaster will be a big request.

[roqratt 0]

I reckon this is all sounding great and I certainly wish I was clever enough to be involved. However this goes, I'd just love to see it open ended in the way it could be fully modified in the future. If it goes 2.5D now (as it is starting to sound having read all this), the ability for it to go 3D in the future when we all have computers with dual 12 core 128bit CPUs with integrated quadcore graphics (and know how to make our coffee in the morning) without losing all the previous content would be something that should be considered in the developmental stages. I just don't want to see tons of work go into something like this to come out at the other end and think "I wish we had done this..." and someone else not be able to modify it to suit.

[owenluby 1]

I'm all for Ill Tonkso being in charge of the rail infastructure

[KurtangleTN 10]

I read the first two pages, so exuse me if this point was brought up before. First off, great idea.. and it would really be an awesome feat if the community could pull this off. I'd like to point out though, EA.. at least in my experience has been very protective of their source codes. I'm a member of the community of a game called Populous: The Beginning (3) (I actually found it thanks to a SC3K demo :-)) and we've asked for the source code many times, and the responce we got was lawsuit threats to members of our community, and this is a near 10 year old game, with the chances of a sequel being extremely unlikely. So i'd imagine what they would say to a franchise like Sim City.

[Superchan 23]

like i said earlier, if we make it we should use gmax/3dsmax for 3dmodeling and make the graphics like sc4, allowing us to import sc4 bats into ST1000, so we would be able to lower the amount of actualy modeling required, and we would not lose all of our custom content.

[sc4melbourne 0]

Originally posted by: david1314

The vast stride to be taken in city simulation is to free the transit networks from the grid.  Not only directionally, but also free the number of lanes, width of pedestrian sidewalks...

I mean, you can break Sim city down into as many more iterations of binary you want.  But first, go open a city save file in ilive's reader and look how everything is defined in that environment...

Now we were talking 1m squares?  Multiply cities' file size (and load times) by 256.....Oh, and that's if we stick with the stupid 4km boundaries of the grid.

I want transit networks that are fully customizable (in elevation, width, no. of lanes/tracks, functionioal ped. paths...)

Why are we still even speaking of the grid.  The superiority of splines is clearly established.quote>

 

David, even if transit networks were to use splines, which is what is seriously being considered over at the Urbs Urbis forums, a grid system would still need to be in place for buildings and props. You could not have buildings being orientated parallel to the splines because that would require 3D - the buildings would have to be rendered from all angles. So, you cannot fully use splines unless you go 3D, but the community has already decided overwhelmingly in favor of 2.5D (both here and at the other forum).

Instead, the proposal that I had way back on page 8? (Ithink), could be used to allow more freedom with a small grid. It's also posted with more detail over at the UU forums (http://dev.simcities.com) in the thread 'Splines with the Grid'.

One more thing, would having a 1x1 metre grid really make loading times 256 times longer? Surely there must be a way that the game can be coded to cut down on this. In fact, over at UU, there is serious discussion abot having a 2x2 metre grid, which would only 64 times the size.

I encourage everyone to join up over at http://dev.simcities.com, as the development and management team which was concerning some has now been dismantled for the time being, and the forums are open for eveyone's contributions, in a democratic and equal way.

Thanks for eveyone's input!

[hjanfield 0]

sc4melbourne: No, actually. I have a long writeup for a grid-free transit and lot system which I will post at Simcities in the next couple days. I think most of you will like it. Even a small grid will limit you. I have used a system similar to what I've designed in another game, so I know it works, and in this game it would work without performance hits.