Regional Play

[lasergoat 0]

Simcity 4 introduced regional play.  Unfortunately, it was clumsy and buggy as well as limited.  But it did allow a mayor to feel like they could add onto their city and the scale of city building magnified x1000.

-The addition of regional play will add greatly to the depth of play in CU, especially if done right.  Some features I think would be desireable in regional play would be"

-The ability to import or generate terrain maps. 

-Maps that can be very small or very big. 

-More than one city can exist on a region and transit can be built between cities that don't share city limits. 

-Taxes can be collected from the cities in regional play to pay for and maintain the construction of transportation. 

-The ability for cities to annex land into it's city limits (there are a few good ideas out there on how to implement this, btw).

[Androv 6]

I'd rather have a central city, and the surrounding 'region' would be non-buildable in terms of city management. However, the region would supply resources/power/waste etc. As your city expanded to the edges of your map, suburbs surrounding the main city would pop up next to the city on region review. These could supply some of the more basic demands/low density housing and allow your main city to expand upwards :-)

Having over 100 city tiles to build on was incredibly annoying :-/ I don't want to have that again.

[Kevin 101]

I wouldn't mind having a single massive map to play on. I did like the way City life worked which was you could 'buy' more land for your city and expand into your region as you earned more money.

[Sap59 3]

i agree having some sort of multiplayer would be outstanding.

[MayorTim 16]

A very large scale multiplayer (say, 1:1 scale to the Earth) would indeed be very cool, but would present a whole list of problems. No one's building styles would match up, no ones cities would match up, you'd have skyscraper forests all over the place, and even if the world was large enough, people still wouldn't be able to choose where they want to build their cities (there could only be 1 New York) unless it allowed for overlapping cities, which wouldn't make sense anyway.

If there is a multiplayer involved, I think it should be hosted between smaller groups of people who can coordinate with each other, such as the SCJU. That way, we can ensure everything matches up, and looks realistic, and we could trade with each other/provide disaster relief, ect. That would be really awesome, and would even encourage many new unions to spring up as well.

Of course, we'd probably end up with a single player world, but if it's so large that it's 1:1 scale and you could build realistic cities in it, that would still be awesome and I'd be very happy with it.

What I would not be happy with, is if the "world" was so small that, say, a single city took up an entire continent. To me, this would be both ugly and useless, and would ruin realism, and perspective within the game.

[Kevin 101]

Originally posted by: MayorTim

If there is a multiplayer involved, I think it should be hosted between smaller groups of people who can coordinate with each other, such as the SCJU. That way, we can ensure everything matches up, and looks realistic, and we could trade with each other/provide disaster relief, ect. That would be really awesome, and would even encourage many new unions to spring up as well.

quote>

I could see a 'clan' based multiplayer... that'd be awesome

[Nevets13 27]

Hmmm, don't know if anyone has said anything about this yet, but the slogan "virtual cities, real people" sure sounds like it is for an online game.

I don't know what to think about that. As long as it has a decent single player where I can build by myself, I will be happy.

[rctshack 182]

from the screenshots... it definitely looks like it's not going to be a small world. It looks very very large.

[6underground 11]

I could see a 'clan' based multiplayer... that'd be awesomequote>

I would love for something like that for the SCJU.

[Micah 16]

I love the regional play. That's just incredible. It would be interesting to recreate the world. Hmm...

[Romaq 18]

Recreating those sorts of details would be one hell of a huge time-sink. I have an SC4 region that accurately represents the county I live in. There are tools I could use that could make recreating where I live MUCH easier within 'a city builder game', and I'm sure there are other ideas. But the world is a really REALLY big place. As in... really REALLY big from the perspective of laying out individual buildings, or even zoning sections of land.

I prefer the notion of 'clan server play', where anyone can pop up a server and host a region for a group of friends to build upon.

[Mulefisk 15]

Originally posted by: MayorTim A very If there is a multiplayer involved, I think it should be hosted between smaller groups of people who can coordinate with each other, such as the SCJU. That way, we can ensure everything matches up, and looks realistic, and we could trade with each other/provide disaster relief, ect. That would be really awesome, and would even encourage many new unions to spring up as well.quote>

 

That would be so awesome. I don't know how many times i've dreamed of having a Sim City game where this is possible.

[Spinmaster 75]

The one thing that annoyed me most about regional play with SC4 was a lack of a regional budget. My little farming village doesn't need even $100,000. My screaming metropolis with its own massive airport needs a lot more than $500,000. Yeah there are ways to work around this (neighbor deals, money "cheats", various bank mods) but I'd much prefer to just have a budget for the entire region.

The next thing was moving between neighbors. Would've been nice to go to the edge of a "city tile" and actually see the neighbor, or some representation thereof, and perhaps even have an option to jump to it immediately (well after a save/load cycle I suppose). I'll acknowledge the idea of simply scrolling an entire region in 3D would be impractical, requiring either low detail or limits to city sizes... either of which would be wholly unacceptable of course (could this also be a factor in SC:S' apparent limits, since it appears you'll be able to in fact scroll an entire map? hmmm). But a way to see and quickly jump from one "district" to another would've been great. Maybe the "some representation" could even just be simple flat 2D images of the surrounding neighbors, similar to the region view in SC4 - just a picture of the neighbor (even if empty, just the terrain), instead of the empty void we have now in SC4. Click on that "neighbor image" and effectively swap which piece of the city you're actually working with.

(highlighting added to 2nd paragraph... and thought finished in 1st paragraph... don't ya just hate being interrupted when you're goofing off at work?)

[neocity123 0]

but then it would be all urban and no countryside and that would be dumb there should be no urban zones on this world

[SC4BOY 21]

hmmm... seems to me that the idea of "spanning borders" has nothing whatever to do with the density of building. It could range from cross-border super skyscrapers to a country road with a couple of farms to empty land...

[Romaq 18]

This is my idea of one possible approach to the problem of coping with regions.

The picture I had in my mind was of one huge regional area, unincorporated, blank. 'Just like nobody has ever lived here yet'. The first order of business is to create a highway of some sort. You get a budget appropriate to the size of the region to create a region entry point that connects to 'SimNation'. It could be where the highway leaves the map, it could be a ferry. It could be an airport, space port or trans-dimensional port, though 'ports of entry' like that will require some sort of city as well. Perhaps you can create such a city and build out from that first, but you need transit through unincorporated areas.

Cities tend to form at forks in the road. Bellingham has a harbor and it's halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, yet close to the border. We have a huge harbor to work with, and an 'International' airport. That answers where sims come from. So on your 'empty' region, people may be allowed to build low density homes and low density commercial stores with low power needs and 'well water' is good enough.

At the point you want more, you have to incorporate. Incorporating a city allows you to select an area, and then treat that area as a city with a mayor and options for more power and water. Incorporated cities may merge or split. Internally, cities limit their focus to only what's within the city border that you are looking at, so you don't burn CPU cycles calculating everything for the entire region. If you find the initial city area you created is simply too big to manage (or grows to the point the lag kills your gameplay), you have the option of splitting it. If you need more area for the city, you can grow the incorporated area or have it join with an adjacent incorporated area.

One advantage of this method is that you can have a region that falls under control of a governer for the region, then delegate control of the cities to members of a multiplayer team. The more traffic there is, the more wear and tear on the highway, and thus a need for the regional budget to be spent to maintain it. That money is a tax applied to the cities. You can have all the usual arguements over who's responsible for what public interest and how it's to be paid for.

--Romaq

[Sap59 3]

land annexing would be cool. :-)

[Romaq 18]

If you start a small town and realize that it needs to be much bigger, you need a means to fix that sort of thing.

[NetPCDoc 1]

Just a quick thought -

For Regional Play - How about un-incorporated areas, using a limited regional budget, to provide improvements limited to transit (maybe with a few NIMBYs) and agricultural zoning/development.  Who knows of any real city that spends much time on agricultural development - in Real Life (in my part of the world), agriculture (a.k.a. FARMS) tend to be an anti-city type of development.

Then allow the player to incorporate customizable (size wise) sections of these un-incorporated areas into cities, as the player desires.

-NetPCDoc

No detail is too small to be micromanaged.

[Romaq 18]

That would be ideal, and parallel city development as I understand it. You have unincorporated land that becomes farmland. The area gets traffic, and small commercial zones spring up for petro and food. Homes spring up to take advantage of small services. A farmer will sell out to a developer who decides to put in a mall. Housing development goes in, and with it more commercial. There are other issues that apply, and this is a very simplified view. But I've watched my home neighborhood go from being mostly cornfields to mostly urban 'getto' sprawl. The people that used to live where I grew up mostly moved outside of Marian County, Indiana. Out to where the cornfields are. Dragging their urban sprawl right behind them.

But back to the point, I'd like to see region play ABLE to play an open region with just a highway to the edge of the map, and then decide to put in a ferry terminal, then build the city around it starting with farmland.

See, that's the thing with City Journals and such that it seems were missed in the design of SC:S. I have a story I want to tell about this area. It's a group of cities near a bay, including islands. The area is dominated by this currently dormant volcano. It isn't 'a' city, and in fact initially 'Bellingham' began as three separate cities that merged over time. Talking about Bellingham tends to include nearby Lynden and Fairhaven. Blaine and the Peace Arch are important local landmarks as the major gateway to Canada and Vancouver, BC. Seattle isn't QUITE in the picture, but Seattle dominates the local news in the same way Mt. Baker dominates the local landscape even though it's as far away a drive as to Seattle. When I think of 'My City', it's way WAY too huge to fit into some tiny .25 square kilometer area. If I'm to make a CJ about this area that fascinates me, I need a region. And based on what I've seen in CJ's, that seems to be pretty much the view of what I've seen from others.

I do so hope that 'region play' is a factor in the development of Cities Unlimited. I also hope there is some notion of 'unincorporated land' vs. 'incorporated city' for the sake of limiting the scope of detailed gameplay from the surrounding setting. This would benefit the CPU a great deal. There can be many cities in the region with the CPU only burning cycles on the current one in focus.

[dasilva 3]

Hi all,

I can say nothing right now on this topic but be sure we're listening closely... ;-)

Cheers,

[isc91142 0]

Originally posted by: dasilva Hi all,

I can say nothing right now on this topic but be sure we're listening closely... ;-)

Cheers,quote>

Glad to hear it Philippe.

Read my lips: Subdivision proposals (I can elaborate) and the ability for us to design specific transit routes based on the maps.

[rctshack 182]

Originally posted by: isc91142 Read my lips: Subdivision proposals (I can elaborate) and the ability for us to design specific transit routes based on the maps.quote>

I have always thought subdivisions should be incorperated into a city building games. Most cities I have ever lived in have huge sections sold to developers and they do all the building and roads and so on.

[Equilibria 16]

As a transportation person, I have to second that, the ability to build bus and train routes (say with a shift-click like building groups in MS Office) would lend some realism to the game. SC4 busses are done on an individual basis.

The extension, of course, would be timetables and frequency, but that might be a little much for both player and computer...

Oh, and I'd love to see airports be custom built out of puzzle pieces (like the user-created content for SC4) and realistically scaled!

[rctshack 182]

Originally posted by: Equilibria As a transportation person, I have to second that, the ability to build bus and train routes (say with a shift-click like building groups in MS Office) would lend some realism to the game. SC4 busses are done on an individual basis.

The extension, of course, would be timetables and frequency, but that might be a little much for both player and computer...

Oh, and I'd love to see airports be custom built out of puzzle pieces (like the user-created content for SC4) and realistically scaled!quote>

I don't think many players would object to making routs. Micromanagement is what sim games are about. And for the few who don't want to do that, set the default busses to work, or have an auto-adapt function for them.

[Romaq 18]

One of the issues with building a huge realistic region is that water 'seeks its level'. That is, for my 'hyper accurate Whatcom county region', I have sea level and costline accurate, and the notion of ocean with SC4 works. For lake Whatcom and other lake areas, I can't simply drop those into below sea level as it looks ... really bad. Instead I'm using Peg's Ponds tiles to fill in lakes, creaks and other above sea level surface features. That's one hell of alot of 1x1, 2x2 surface detail to fill in 4,994 acres of 'water' area.

Three things would be vital for really good regional work:

1. Get rid of the damned 'fixed grid city tiles'. I still suggest treating the whole region as a very simplified 'city' container that has severe restrictions on what it contains other than cities so as to not drag the CPU, but I digress. The main point being that an entire region being defined by city tiles is a horrible pain in creating objects that exist at 'city boundaries', per the notion of 'region' in SC4.

2. I wish I could have a 'paint flora' tool that lets me sweep over huge areas and allow the game to decide what sort of flora should be there. We almost have such a tool built-in with SC4, but I can't easily tell the tool to use Peg's Seasonal Trees near the bay and then use evergreens for the skirt of Mt. Baker. 1x1 and 2x2 tree tiles make for a LOT of detail to place. Or lots of mayor mode plopping. The God Mode tree paint tool is too ham-fisted in approach.

3. I'm using DEM data to determine elevation. That same data set provides topology maps showing where water is. I wish I could use some image tool to paint where water is, or that I could use a 'rain' tool to let the compute figure out where water ought to be based upon topography.

[Equilibria 16]

A "rain" tool was released on the STEX a while back that grew streams that flowed with the terrain. If that could act as water and not as blue coloration over land...

Furthermore, it would be wonderful if you could "rain" from the region view without being zoomed in; in fact it would be great to be able to terraform on a regional level. Again, something the STEX has brought to SC4.

I picture city boundaries as being a border between a "light" and a "dark" area, reminiscent of the "fog of war" in AoE, Starcraft and the like. What you've incorporated or annexed is bright and you can change it. The dark area is unincorporated or another city, and is static as it was when you last saved it. (the image is brought from the region view. This allows some context and lets you line up transportation networks properly.

Another model might be a "window" that you can drag over a section of the region, again with "light" and "dark" areas. It wouldn't necessarily conform to city boundaries, and could be placed anywhere when loading from the region view, in a variety of sizes. Sort of like a city tile that you could define every time you load the game.

My $.02

[Kevin 101]

Originally posted by: Equilibria

I picture city boundaries as being a border between a "light" and a "dark" area, reminiscent of the "fog of war" in AoE, Starcraft and the like. What you've incorporated or annexed is bright and you can change it. The dark area is unincorporated or another city, and is static as it was when you last saved it. (the image is brought from the region view. This allows some context and lets you line up transportation networks properly.

quote>

City Life worked in a similar way to this... the area you were allowed to work in was light and the surrounding region was shadowed. The cool thing was you could buy the dark areas in order to expand your workable area.

[rctshack 182]

I still want the neighboring areas to grow on their own so that you can work with them to connect transportation and so on. It woulod adapt to the style that you are building for your city.

[Equilibria 16]

The difference in City Life was that each city was stand-alone. In a region, you couldn't just buy land, you'd need to annex it from another city. The surrounding area would have to be buildable somehow as a different city.