Synekism - A New City Simulation Game

[Synekism 19]

Hello everyone,

We are a small team located in Canada that worked for the past summer on a new city simulation game called Synekism. Two days ago, September 1st, 2010, we released the first proof-of-concept demo. We will be working part-time on the game from now on but we will have regular monthly releases.

We very much wish the community to be part of the game’s development which is why we started this thread. Our main focus is dynamic generation of content but everything else still needs to be refined.

If you have any questions, comments, ideas or challenges feel free to add them here. Among the discussions we will also be adding here updates on our progress.

For downloads, screenshots and more information you can visit us at: www.synekism.com. We will use this user, Synekism, for official posts on updates. For discussions we will use our own accounts: Aktof and Yelmond.

Thank you,

The Synekism Team

[glazert 89]

I like the gridless approach. 

[kingdiz_55 12]

This looks very promising. However, I think there needs to be more realism when it comes to the buildings. I hope that the buildings could be developed more.

[gio10469 24]

Wow this looks great! It still looks to be in the early stages but it is very promising...I can't wait to see more updates on this!

[Yelmond 19]

Yes, kingdiz, the buildings are currently being worked on. The problem is that we are trying to combine dynamic generation with community modding capabilities so until we have a solid foundation for this (that doesn't kill frame-rate) the buildings will continue to look like colored boxes.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

[Tysons4 68]

i like the diagonal lots near the edge, however there is too much grid, i would say 90% of a good city simulator is the terrain, as there should always be more of this that you can fit a city on.. simcity 4 kinda messed up by limiting city size and shape of its city tiles, however you still have a region map that makes a city more like a portrait than a city, as there are no more advanced tools region view (zoom, rotate, angle up-down, data maps, building tools, ect) so the game hits a wall and everyone is wanting something more, so always have more land than would be possible to build a city on. the player should feel like god looking over their land, with realistic weather effects that we all know (evaporation, erosion,thunder stoms, snow melts from mountains to form rivers, rivers lead to a bigger body of water, heat waves, cold fronts, storms, different types of clouds ect)

the second most important thing in a city simulator is the people. they need to have agendas and follow a clock (the clock can be different for every simulated person) with different life cycles (maybe take from traits in a horoscope) the more you give them the more you can see them change grow, develop and the people can make their own paths

zones buildings and networks:

these have to look like the real thing from all angles... and the simulated people know how to use these (maybe after some simple education). drainage ditches and canals to divert the water coming down from the hills, irrigation and agriculture, as the population builds more and more ideas will come to the people and allows you to create thier idea (could be a way to produce power, or a new transportation type) the ideas could start out crummy but become refinded (like the automobile) and new travel options could lead to new ideas to incorporate into your city (automobile > roads) and new building types when differnt elements are found on the map

the game should be an educational tool over all else that allows you to see and understand how everything works in a city and the land it sits upon

looks like your zones and your ideas for input could be a prelude to a true simcity successor (black for positive balance and red for negative)

[Yelmond 19]

City size and regional view were some of the core features we wanted to build on, however, time did not permit much work on this subject. We did however try to give the player a god-like feel, as you described it, by having the terrain extend to the horizon past the city limits marked in white. In the future, we want the player to be able to zoom out, smoothly with no loading time, from the streets of a city all the way up to planetary view. There will not be any city limits of any kind. The location of your city will only be determined by how much you want to spend building it. It will be more expensive to build on a mountain side or far from a trade route like a river than in the middle of a plane or by the ocean. The road to this goal will of course be a bit rough.

I also agree with you that having an accurate simulation of the people is fundamental to an accurate simulation of a city. In order to do this properly and efficiently, however, we have to find a way to approximate groups of individuals, their behavior and its effect. This is still something we are studying.

I'm not sure I fully understand the last part. Are you simply talking about having more build options as the education level of the population rises, or something more complex?

Thanks for the input.

[Tysons4 68]

have tools be unlockable but only to the simulated people and with the varying instances of their location and the stimuli around them will create new tools for you to work into the simulator, not a tool that is not highlighted in toolbox before it becomes available, but only after your simulated people make them visible to you

say from the simulator that you have already developed, you have 4 zones and once you reach a certain combination of those 4 zones a new school would be available and would vary by the way you designed the first 4 zones to fit together and the school once attended by a certain amount of people would unlock a new zone for you to build (maybe you have a lot of commerical so a flight school is unlocked and after a while airport zones become available).. the game needs to start out simple and gradually become more and more complex for the user. and an ability to zone any sort of development you would see in the real world (i had to go to a mcdonalds school to start working at a mcdonalds)

i want to feel like bender from the the episode of futurama when he plays god after going through a meitor shower and picking up some beings that worship him.. futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Godfellass

also a lot tool would be good... say you click the zone you want and hold shift and it allows you to plant an individual lot to the size the user wants

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I love the free-form look of the zones. I cannot tell what angles the roads are, I think I see angles other than 45/90. I would recommend making 3 different densities that can be represented by different-sized buildings (or rather blocks at this point). Low density would have lots with a small block in the middle of a yard, Medium density would be blocks roughly the same size as your current ones (maybe a little smaller), and high density would have blocks much higher than medium. Maybe you should even change the color of the zone based on density: low density residential 00FF00, medium r 00BB00, high r 008800, low density shops 0000FF, mid shops 00BB00, large shops 008800, low density offices 00FFFF, mid O 00BBBB, high 008888, agriculture (low ind) FFFF60, light industry (mid ind) BBBB40, big industry 888820, then all civics would be BBBBBB.

[Aktof 2]

Its nice to hear feedback from you guys

Tysons4,

The idea of reactionary buildings being given to the player is a another facet we will have expand upon. I like your idea of having components that together will create something greater, eventually building up to larger more complex mechanisms. Its a tricky thing adding alot of complexity to a game, I for one like it alot to manage minute things, but I find when games turn into, for a lack of a better term, something like Anno. At the very high end stages alot of things you have to keep track of becomes exhausting. There is a fine line of course, but nonetheless I look forward to when we will talk about such an idea.

Ilikeseattle,

The roads for now are free ranging in angles with a minimum amount to prevent ones that are too acute. You can hold down shift and ctrl for different functions as to create joint roads or at 45 degree angles. We will continue to work this seem more relaxed in the future and allow greater versatility when placing lots. This is probably where the different lot densities will come into play. Currently we have a function that releases a higher density of building as your population grows. It also takes in a as a factor the amount of government lots nearby. Later on we will move on to player controlled densities as you said, not sure when, but it is definite!

Thanks for the reply!

[Synekism 19]

There were some installer problems and they have now been fixed and a new version released. This does not update the game itself only the installer. See the release notes on the website for more details.

[Yelmond 19]

To expand on what Aktof said, lot density currently has no per-individual-lot cap but we will soon add lot types which will restrict density as well as other aspects. For now, density is determined by the surrounding density and is capped by your city's population. The caps are: 5000, 25000, and 100000 people after which there is no more cap and buildings will get quite high.

Also, to be more specific regarding the roads, Shift will have it angle lock at 45 degree intervals and holding Ctrl when finishing placing a road segment will start a new one for you.

[Commandoj251 3]

cant wait for the XP version, cant believe that didnt come first

[Tropod 144]

Any chance any (or even some) of the source code will end up becoming public/shared ?

In any event, nice to see an endeavour such as this

[Yelmond 19]

Hello,

Commandoj241:

Sorry about that but unfortunately DirectX 9 (Windows XP) has a much steeper learning curve than DirectX 10 (Vista+) and so with the time we had we could not incorporate DirectX 9. More significant is the fact that we currently generate the boxes, I mean buildings, on the graphics card every frame as this was the only we could manage to keep the frame rate acceptable. This automatically requires DirectX 10. Anyway, that's the long story of it but XP support will come.

Tropod:

The problem here is that we are making entertainment software which means banking on earning income from support fees would not be wise. There are other ways to make money from open-source software but I'm not aware of any that apply to city simulation video games. So, if we had to answer now, the game will never be open-sourced and will, eventually, be developed into a commercial version to be sold.

We are, however, looking at a minimum of 5 years until we will have something deep enough for sale (until when everything we make will be completely free). All we want is to be able to work on this full-time at some point so if we find a way to do that and keep the game free and even open-sourced you can be sure we will pursue; and we have plenty of time to think of such a way.

Regards.

[Yelmond 19]

Hello again,

Back to Tropod's question:

I may have misinterpreted your question. Were you were asking in regard to community modding capabilities? If so, we are fully aware of the importance of such abilities and we plan to make it as easy to do such modding as possible. If that means releasing parts of the code then so be it. We will also work on our own tools to help with modding, especially for the buildings.

I know we don't have much now but you can already change parts of the game including the road textures and all the UI graphics. They are all PNGs stored in the Resource folder in the game's install directory. Sorry about the file names; we will fix them soon.

[Tropod 144]

I figured as much. Thought I'd ask anyways . Wasn't thinking in terms of modding, more in the context of open (C++ etc) source code, or shared source code (ala SourceForge), so others (meaning me lol) could well, tinker .

But yeah, I'd be doing the same as you guys. Hey I might even borrow some of your ideas

[Joetropian1 1]

I'm making a bit of a bump to this thread to say that it's nice to see another indie developer making a city simluation game. I'd also like to note that my thread on www.minecraftforum.net has passed this one on the list in a quick Google search of Synekism. It seems the game is getting more popular on other sites.

[Synekism 19]

Today we released our first of many monthly updates. New features include regional roads, toggle buildings, road maintenance tax and road length locks. See our site for full details.

[The_City_Builder 299]

Very good update. Especially liked that fact how the road bug was fixed!

[Tysons4 68]

this game is awesome and playable... however you still need to fix the money... label it black for positive income and red for negative...

the game currently shows a positive amount of money as red... if you change it to black it will be easier to assess how much money is in reserves (black means positive from an economic standpoint)

having it red makes me feel like i have a deficit (when i dont)

should be a simple fix

[Joetropian1 1]

You guys should definitely try out the angle and road locks. Gridded cities, octagonal cities, and lots of other rhombic and trapezoidal (I doubt those are words, but you get the idea) shapes are possible!

EDIT: Actually, Tyson, the red on the left is your monthly income coming in. It's negative, if you'll look closely, because the starting road is costing you money for maintenance. The deficit will ease as you get houses, businesses, and factories set up by using the money in your balance on the right.

Also, on that topic, if you guys are having trouble starting cities with just 2k in balance, they're considering raising it so we can play around with the game more in its early stages.  Check out the Synekism Google Group for more information.

[Tysons4 68]

when i deplete that money it goes to zero and is still red... ive had successful cities almost filling the whole map and that number is still red

[Yelmond 19]

Yes, we are aware of the balance-colour issues. If you could send us a screenshot of when this happens to our support email it would greatly assist us in fixing this. I know its simple fix but we have hard time reproducing it. Also, we will increase the initial balance (probably 2x) in the next release.

[Synekism 19]

Our November 2010 update has just been released. Nothing major. Some bug fixes regarding the toolset and some minor new features like a fullscreen button and custom terrain textures. See site for details.

[supercity124 8]

This city building software looks good but, THERE IS NO TEXTURE ON THE BUILDINGS AND THE GROUND!!! Just colored blocks that are protraying as buildings, not realistic at all.

[Yelmond 19]

All major games go through this stage in development. The only difference is that they don't usually release the game like this to the public. We decided to alter the template and release early and this may very well blow up in our faces. Nevertheless, we hope keeping the public as up to date on our (slow) progress as possible will result in a better overall final version.

Think of this as a train going from New York City to the Moon (and not necessarily stopping there). Every km is another bug fixed or another new feature added. Everyone is welcome to hop on the train (and hop off) at any point as well as influence its journey.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I uninstalled it to free up space but I like the way it is going. At least you do not charge for betas like MineCraft.

[Synekism 19]

We released our December monthly update today. One major feature was added regarding the lot tool and several bugs were squashed. Next month, on Jan. 1, 2011, we will be releasing the first major update since our initial launch. Version 0.2 will come with Saving, Windows XP and DirectX 9.0c support among other things.

[Slashback 136]

Sounds like i should try this...