The world needs a real city simulator

[LivingInThePast 364]

Right, so EA is making another SimCity. As much as we would like to quibble about it, SimCity has always had a sense of the whimsical, and we would never actually see real life cities get crushed by monsters, or be able to bulldoze entire neighborhoods with no one batting an eye. I would like to see a real city simulator, stripped of all the silliness and whimsy of SimCity and an ultra-realistic simulation (at least, with a more degree of realness than SimCity, anyway). I think the computers of today can handle it (like that train simulation that you can get on Steam, etc.) and with an ultra-moddable core could be used for years to come. It's not a SimCity knockoff or competitor (Cities XL) but a real city simulator, something the truly "hardcore" SimCity player can move onto or even a real city planner could use.

What say you?

[Ocram's Razr 963]

They have it. City Engine and Enodo cost 4 figures.

[LivingInThePast 364]

City Engine is a 3D city modeling program, not a city simulator.

So is Enodo.

  Edited May 23, 2012 by LivingInThePast  

[Linoa06 1,374]

City Engine? Please tell me more about it!

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

City Engine? Please tell me more about it!

It actually looks pretty cool.

Good demo video here... I like the way they make their curvy roads.

http://www.esri.com/...gine/index.html

[Linoa06 1,374]

This looks awesome! A shame it's so expensive and the gameplay feature is kinda removed

[MandelSoft 2,769]

For almost any given simulator, the realisim is proportional to the pricing of a product. The more realistic and complex the simulator is, the more expensive it is, since these programs are even more complex and labour-intensive to make. Since most gamers don't have a budget of thousands of dollars/pounds/euros, it's unlikely for game developers to develop such a simulator: the market is simply not big enough...

Compare this: Both Cities XL and SimCity are in the range of less than 100 dollars. If you want advanced programs like CityScape or CityEngine, you must think of prices of thousands or ten of thousands of dollars. Heck, even 3D Studio Max is in the range of $2000-3000. The legitimate question is: "Would you want to pay that?" or even better "can you even pay that?" Most likely the answer to the first question is "no" ...

[colco2121 55]

SimCity is expensive because Ea thinks that the Glassbox is "the next big thing" and whatever. Powerful tools like 3dsmax cost $3000 while gmax is free. Gmax has less tools the 3dsmax though. Previous SC's have followed a trend of maybe thirty dollars or so, while this "reboot" is fifty! What is going on, Glassbox isn't too much 'new', and features are being cut out! We need a true, reasonably priced city sim. That's what Boomtown is here for.

[LivingInThePast 364]

SimCity is expensive because Ea thinks that the Glassbox is "the next big thing" and whatever. Powerful tools like 3dsmax cost $3000 while gmax is free. Gmax has less tools the 3dsmax though. Previous SC's have followed a trend of maybe thirty dollars or so, while this "reboot" is fifty! What is going on, Glassbox isn't too much 'new', and features are being cut out! We need a true, reasonably priced city sim. That's what Boomtown is here for.

At one time SC2K carried a list price of $45...and that's in 1995 money. SC4 cost more when it was released, too.

[colco2121 55]

But now it is $19.99 on steam. Good point, but that was when expansions were inexistent. Now it will cost $125 to play with expansions when previous ones will cost $45.

And that was 10 years ago.

[RichManSCTV 14]

seeing how EA is watch how many stupid extensions they will have for a huge price

[sean24 46]

Another aspect of city simulators that detracts from the realism is the "jack of all trades" mayor. You play not only the mayor, but the fire/ police chief, school superintendent, civil engineer, gaming commisioner, port authority and many others.

I think the thing I don't like about the new Sim City, is they sacrificed so much in order to perfect one aspect of the sim city environment, which is the interaction of the sims. I don't care about watching a truck physically make a delivery and watching someone else use what was delivered. They could have taken it a step further abd had the driver get out of his truck with the delivery paperwork and hand it to the store owner to sign. I mean this sort of detail while cool right now will get extremely boring. Just as the mayor of San Diego doesn't care that I am writing about the new sim city, I am not going to care that a flippin box got delivered to a factory and that another sim used whatever was in the box.

They need to maintain a balanced simulator. The new Sim City, in my opinion doesn't deliver. The environment and buildings look extremely generic and cartoonish, with an overemphasys on how individual sims interact. The game should be called City of Sims, not Sim City.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Problem with making a true city simulator that is extremly realistic is that you'll need a tremendous amount of variety in game for it. Suddenly a city that looks like New York City and it's surrounding areas acts and looks totally differently from Bangkok and it's surrounding ruralities. The Roads are inconsistent, people jay-walking, people have a mind of their own, and don't just do their day after day things, they themselves need to more than just several lines of code that's identical for every sim allowing for some minor variation. Such a game would require a tremendous amount of RAM consumption, and a very very fast computer.

Plus, cities and the people in them evolve and grow overtime, and are not separated from the outside world... Outside events influence cities and regions as a whole. All of a sudden, boom! Global market crash! or Boom! A portion of the world suffers from being hit by a freak tsunami and nuclear power plant meltdown... Or boom! The mega-coporations of one country decide to betray their citizens and outsource a giant portion of their jobs for cheap labor over to regions like your own... How does that affect you and the gameplay? Such a game would have to be very very very dynamic with a colossal amount of storage, probably upwards of a Terabyte! How would the cultures and climate of the region you chose to build your city affect the way your city looks, feels, or thinks? I would think it's probably better to have one huuuuuuge world map (acting as a single server with plenty others out there as well), and players claim a whole region or individual chunk of land to build their cities/countries... Might as well make this game something that slowly evolves from an ancient civilization city/region to that of modern-times if you really want to go all the way with this game.

Sure, such a game might come in the future (several decades down the road), but these ultra-realistic hypotheical games are just to advanced for the mainstream market-level computers of today. One day though, I'd love to see such a game too!

[nuyokcity 22]

Some cool ideas there, Zukunftstraume.  I would also like to see such a complex realistic game but it probably would require a lot of computer resources to run decently, if it was completely 3d and depending how detailed. 

 

Some games that have spanned from ancient to modern and future times are Empire Earth 1 and 2 and Rise of Nations, these are primarily military real time strategy war games though with no city building and managing.

 

To the original poster, LivingInThePast - I made a thread with a list of modern city builder game as well as some urban modeling programs and other related things which anyone might find interesting. 

 

Maybe there's a middle road somewhere between the expensive professional urban simulators, modeling programs and a videogame like the Simcity series?  It's possible one could be made, maybe an independent one supported by fans?  There is some discussion here about making an independent Simcity named Boomtown so it's one possibility to make a more realistic game.