A small but powerfull idea: The Planning Tool

[MandelSoft 2,775]

The Planning Tool: a small, but neat and powerfull idea

For many years, me and my fellow city builders have a need of a way to plan our city developments. Currently, we build everything right away, which is not realistic in the first place, but also there are other fustrating issues surrounding this: mis-clicking (very annoying when you destroy the wrong building or road piece), mis-alignment or not enough budget to complete a project. However, there might be one not too hard to realise solution to this problem: the Planning Tool.

Instead of constructing and demolishing right away, you plan everything. This means you will be laying out everything (or remove things) without actually immediately executing your construction. Planning should be free of charge; the costs will be payed during the actual construction. Here's how the process should work:

1. Set the Planning Toggle to "ON". Some players, especially new players, would like to construct right away. By adding a toggle button you can satisfy both.
   
2. Then you can start planning. You can use the normal building tools lay out infrastructure, zoning and you can plan demolition, except everything will be flagged as planned (in programming terms, this would result in only adding a "Planned"-flag to the items). This will cost you nothing during this stage. Somewhere on the UI you'll see the planned costs when you decide to execute the plan. This will save costs and in this way you're able to correct your mistakes during planning (maybe a Eraser Tool could be handy here to cancel some plans). Planned items obviously don't serve any function (or lose function, in case of demolition) until the plans are executed.
   
3. When you're finished planning you can do three things.
   
   • Cancel all plans. This is if you are not satisfied at all about your plans and you want to start over
     
   • Execute parts of the plan with the "Execute"-tool. This will execute parts of your plan you click on. Remember, demolition will go before construction (if you plan some things through to-be demolished area)..
     
   • Execute all, to execute your complete plan.
     

I've seen one game that had such a tool: Trains & Trucks Tycoon. It's pretty nifty and it does save quite some money and trouble.

I'd like to hear your opinion about this and maybe we can propose this to Maxis. See if they like to put this idea in the game.

Best,

Maarten

  Edited March 8, 2012 by mrtnrln  

[Titanicbuff 1,262]

not a bad idea-

not a bad idea-

[DFlanaghan 5]

It would be nice if there were addon packages, or seperate games, for colonial or Carribean style cities, Asian and European and American styles, with homes to reflect the the regions.

Also, Mrtnrln's idea of a planning toggle is great. There should be a realistic day mode, where the traffic reflects the time of day and there is no new construction. Also a growth mode, where buildings grow and taxes are collected.

Plus, building customazation (like Spore, but more realistic). This could make unique suburban homes, or modern row houses. You could then adjust populaton stats acording to the size, but it would have boundries.

And (finaly), when the region is made, you can decide if you want it to be temprate, arid, or tropical. This would make realistic weather, and no plam trees on a New England region.

[CommodoreTech 5]

I think this is a good idea.

Perhaps the game pauses, and you do all this. If you for example (i've done this many a time) place a bus stop or something in the middle of an office block by accident, it can maybe show you that you've done so. Then if you want to undo it you could do so.

It could also be useful if the plans sort of took time to happen. I mean, lets say a massive company moves its HQ into your downtown, which causes an increase in traffic, so you want to expand the road that links to it. But the office block is next to the road and requires demolition to widen the road. You give them notice, they move somewhere else, and all the jobs are kept! As opposed to the SC4 problem of demolishing a building with 6000 jobs that sorta kills the momentum of your downtown. If they could move somewhere else then it makes hte game more realistic also, as.. well, no company just vanishes when it's HQ has had to be 'remodelled'.

[Gamma Stardust 50]

Totally in favor of this feature!

I remember a similar topic turn up for Cities XL, some queue system to allow to build up a urbanistic project, allow for its modification, before finally execute it. It would be perfect.

The glassbox engine would have to deal with the suspension (or disabling) of the simulation aspects for this "Planning Tool" to be possible, though.

[mapboy 106]

I've always wanted something like this in SimCity, but we'll just have to see if it ever comes to eventuation...

[simcityguy 6]

Totally love this idea! Especially since it sounds exactly like what ill be doin in a few years time (hopefully) city planning!

[Ocram's Razr 964]

That is another Boomtown (Cities Unlimited, Metropolis Project, Urbs Urbis...Simtropolis 1000) fan suggestion I would love to see implemented in a commercial game.

[Mark Waybill 242]

This is an idea that has caused me to toss and turn in my sleep for years... I used to like drawing city plans when I was younger and before we got a computer and then in 2003 I discovered on said second hand computer a game called Simcity 2000 which was like all my dreams come true, only ironically the one flaw was I couldn't plan a city any more, and had direct actions instead. (Which meant either drawing a plan on paper and trying to implement it or laying down roads and services and trying my best to afford it all neither of which worked dreadfully well)

This 'planning tool' is not only pseudo realistic and thus in keeping with the vaguely educational and real vibe of the game but also a useful concept, which for instance if you planned part of a city or a new development, or the whole city layout, would allow you to do so much you can't now. In fact I can't think of a single flaw with the ide as long as it's implemented properly. hould be fairly easy to create too for the developers I should think as it would be a graph or map which when saved would cause constructions

[Tropod 144]

If everything was zoneable (as it should be), you wouldn't need a separate planning mode. You could just use a "Reserve X" tool to reserve whatever it is you're wanting to utilise the land/sea for. These Reserve X areas would also potentially have their own YIMBY/NIMBY effect.

For example:

Reserve Markers:

-zone areas Reserved for XYZ/future i.e. reserved for hospital would generate YIMBY, reserved for Jail would generate NIMBY.

-When you want your reserved thing to kick in, click & action it to generate/construct.

-There would be an immediate (very small) cost to implement Reserving said area, with full projected cost on generation.

What I'd like to see is Blueprints/MasterPlans:

-'(Pre-)Designed layouts; that player can select & place/designate area with.

-Custom blueprints: user able to create own.

To be able to use 'Copy & paste' style.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

^^ Well, I was more thinking about planning infrastructure and such, things that are not zones...

[mrboo001 12]

Very good idea, I've wanted something like this for years, in any city building game.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I think it would also be useful to have a regional planning tool. Say for instance you wished to have a network of freeways linking cities or areas, or a terrain feature (imo terraforming should be regional anyway, at least with regards to terrain height) or a rail network etc. However naturally if you had already build a sprawling city you'd need to do these things at ground level also. But for new developments and planned cities it could work. Or a blueprint tool which would allow you to place individual modules within a zoned civic space.

[tomfoolery_79 85]

Can we please just get an "undo" button?

[MandelSoft 2,775]

^ Programming-wise in a City Simulator game, that's not really an easy thing to do. Besides, a simple planning tool already has kind of an undo function: you can just cancel the plan.

[Azurespecter 506]

I think this idea would be fantastic. Maybe you could also add a "save project" feature in case you don't quite have the funds, or aren't ready for the changes yet. This would allow me to plan for a great city infrastructure before I even fully build the city. Since money cheats probably won't be available, this will be an essential cost-saving tool.

[Mark Waybill 242]

Also if they could be saved as separate files you could upload/download city plans, and integrate this with google maps etc to 'download real cities'

[jacksunny 741]

Can we please just get an "undo" button?

I don't think an undo button is really necessary. If you plop something in the wrong spot, oh well. It shouldn't cost too much to destroy it and build it again. This is why you save before building something expensive. If you mess up, you can just leave without saving, come back and everything will be fine. Like Maarten said, it is harder than it sounds to implement.

[Disraeli Blue 1]

This is something I always wanted to do in sim games, but I suppose because of hardware & software limitations made this impossible, plus this is how it actually gets done in the real world through contractors.

Now let's take this & put it in the online portion of the game, wether that be solo or multiplayer.

Say you wanted a new housing estate built, you could either do this yourself or ask the people your playing with on multiplayer or the community through a "City Planer" part on EA/STEX, where you upload the portion of the city you want built on (uploads only roads & greyed out where its already developed).

You then award the contract to the one you think is best & you pay them the money from your budget (in game money, no real money) which gets put into their budget.

• eg. Brief
• Uk $ housing estate To cover x sq. acre's
• Simi/Detached & terraced housing (W2W)
• 3 road conections
• Cycle lanes 2 bus stops
• Small shopping parade (3-5 shops)
• Budget - xxxx
• (include pictures of construction & surrounding area & images from the net & google maps cord's)

[Mark Waybill 242]

The contractual idea sounds like it's sailing towards getting SimJobs to earn Simoleons. (People becoming recognised SimContractors working on SimProjects in SimWorld)

In Multiplayer Mode though I suppose the tool could be worked on as a team like a design document.

The contractual idea sounds like it's sailing towards getting SimJobs to earn Simoleons. (People becoming recognised SimContractors working on SimProjects in SimWorld)

In Multiplayer Mode though I suppose the tool could be worked on as a team like a design document.

[ggaleazz 1]

I would also like a transport designation tool. Say you want to designate a certain route (road) as a trunk line that will eventually become an avenue for example. The simulator would set aside the space for the future road expansion (just like road Rights of Ways work in real life) and any development would be build beside the road with some sort of buffer between the future road expansion and the property line. This way, as in the example above, if XYZ corp comes along and plops a 6000 job office tower next to your roadway you won't have the trouble of demolishing the new building just to expand the road capacity to handle the buildings demands. The road would simply grow into it's own Right of Way.

[Wiimeiser 452]

I'm in if this could be used for freeway reserves and the like.

[Mark Waybill 242]

This is how I plan cities when I wish them to become skyscraper filled metropolises, by using two roads with space in the middle instead of a single road, but of course IRL many cities aren't planned from the start, and certainly very few would have been planned with knowledge of what the future would bring. Real life cities have to deal with these issues. However I would agree with the idea of a 'upgradeable road' that had space set aside either side, the same could go for a railway.

[City Planner 121]

This is something that many of us have been asking for, well... For years now.

The difference only in the name, (although I like planning better) as we used to call it the "Blueprint" mode that would allow us to lay down any building, highway, freeway, roads or other build-able items in blueprint mode and it would leave a blueprint of the item. This blueprint mode can be turned on and off from viewing them, but it would really help for games that don't allow you to place things like Highways or avenues early in the game and thus force you to either leave space and hope it is enough and you make no mistakes about it, or you have to demolish stuff later on to place those items again. Especially useful to me for when I want to place a highway through my city but can't yet afford it, I would place the blueprint of a highway and not be able to build anything else on that space alloted for the highway. When it comes time to build the highway I should be able to simply right click on part of the blueprint and choose to build xx miles of the highway, or in the case of a building, right click the blueprint and choose to build it. Then the charages would be taken out of my treasury and the items would build.

When I say it lays down highways, buildings etc in blueprint mode, what this would mean is that it would show a "ghost" image of the highway, building or items and not allow anything to be built on them unless the blueprint was destroyed or moved in some way.

I don't know why no developer has picked up on this idea, it's absolutely brilliant and would be utmost of help to the player of a city building game.

  Edited March 21, 2012 by City Planner  

[ggaleazz 1]

This is how I plan cities when I wish them to become skyscraper filled metropolises, by using two roads with space in the middle instead of a single road, but of course IRL many cities aren't planned from the start, and certainly very few would have been planned with knowledge of what the future would bring. Real life cities have to deal with these issues. However I would agree with the idea of a 'upgradeable road' that had space set aside either side, the same could go for a railway.

Yes and no. Many roads are planned with a right of way it just varies (as always) with the intended use of that road and the time period it was planned in. For example many 4 lane roads might have been laid out in the early 19'th century (or even earlier and so have narrow rights of ways and thus little expansion capacity. Many inner city streets have been built right up to the narrow Right of Way. When these streets become busy intermediate corridors the become congested.

Contrast that with modern planning that often plans and designates what will be a minor community street, what will be a collector road, what will be a intermediate transportation corridor, and what will be a higher order highway/freeway/etc. Often the right of way is established for what that corridor will become in the future (say a 6 lane intermediate corridor) however starts out as a fairly minor 2 lane road. The road grows with the growth of the growth of the region.

The 401 is a prime example of maintaining a Right of Way. It was often panned for having a wide swath of land retained as a right of way, however this allowed it to grow to the 18 lane monstrosity that it is through parts of Toronto (good or bad); rather than having to build a whole new highway

[Mark Waybill 242]

Yes, so one could build both timeline based cities that grow organically like many historical ones or modern planned citys/suburbs.

If these blueprints could be saved to a file, they could be uploaded and downloaded like cities. A neat idea for downloading a city without a large file size. Of course with the new online nature of the game maybe that will become an obsolete suggestion.

[deanej 2]

I was thinking about this yesterday when playing on a hilly tile; the simulator was causing issues where the shaping of the terrain for a tile of road would make it impossible to complete the road as I planned because there's no way to communicate that to the game so it can shape the terrain accordingly.