Videos show path finding inherently "broken"

[69alldayerrday 0]

So, what are the chances that crack/mod community will make the game offline, make patches and actually develop it till the level everyone expected?
Meanwhile, can anyone suggest me what is the best sc title out there, including mods? I'll appreciate that big time, just wanted to play again, while sc 2013 is stuck.

[Oboboli 2]

You know...this is darn depressing, it really is. I really wanted to jump into a brand new deep, state of the art SimCity and just hunker down and enjoy it for a very, very long time to come. To learn every small detail and marvel at the technical and creative advances todays PCs and object (Agent) oriented programming environment would allow.  To take the time to become familiar with the touted sophisticated "Agent" underworkings of what I hoped would be a milestone in SimCity evolution.

 

Well fast forward to right now…and it’s just a huge bummer. It is obvious SimCity 2013 "Agent" model simply uses Agents with only a few very basic assigned rules and that these agents act completely independent of most other objects in the simulation (other than the few key objects their rules are applied with), the key disconnect is Agent to Traffic Volume/Travel Time to destination.  There is NO intellegent routing of Agents...period.

 

The roads in SimCity 2013 seem to ONLY function as Density objects for attaching Zoning to (zoning backbone) and not as traffic volume oriented transportation vectors that "talk" to the other Agents.  So the amount of sohphistication seems to be Agents with a few simple rules like go to work, home or shopping and for routing they always take the shortest route.  The capacity or traffic volume of any road is not used by ANY Agent it seems.  So that's pretty much an accident waiting to happen, plus it immediately takes most of the fun out of playing SimCity becuase there simply is no AI/city modeling to work with...in a word it feels empty/stupid and meaningless on many levels.  It IS broken.

 

Sooooo, at first I sat here sobbing at my PC screen, day after day slowly seeing my hopes dashed as I played the game and observed the routing (path finding) issues and how devastating they were to the overall functioning of my cities.  The sad reality sunk in and I realized that SimCity 2013 is pretty much just a fancy "Chila Pet" that runs on a PC.  That no matter what, with just minimal user input a city WILL be created, it doesn’t take careful/thoughful planning or much skill at all. So much of what happens is automated and based on fairly simple logic.  I was left feeling empty, this was NOT SimCity, not even close.  It is pretty and sounds great but it is not anything close to what SimCity should be.  To me it felt like an “accessible” (dumbed down) modern game where the first goal of the developers is to make everyone feel important, capable and accomplished AND make it a DLC jukebox.  It isn't SimCity as I know it and I fear it may never be.

 

But something a tad redeeming hit me after reading through this thread...there may be a FUN way to play SimCity 2013 after all (for now at least), as pathetic as it may sound, this could be fun. It might be FUN to play SimCity 2013 by simply changing your purpose or methodology as you create cities...

 

Since we seem to have a broken and overly simplistic SimCity on our hands, it might be fun to more fully examine and discover the details of the rudimentary underlying workings of the simulation and then create cities that work well as constrained by that simplistic Agent based city environment.  To see what patterns (city types) emerge as you work within the current design constraints.  To document these cities and then compare them with cities created after the game is fixed (we can only hope).  At least that will provide some challenge and city building enjoyment, for a while anyway.

 

I hope we see EA/Maxis seriously listen to their customers and get out of this denial phase they seem to be stuck in.  I hope they sit down and read WHAT loyal SimCity fans are saying and step out of character and address the issues in SimCity 2013, and sincerely try to transform SimCity 2013 into a simulation that is worthy of the SimCity name.

 

 

[trar 336]

You know...this is darn depressing, it really is. I really wanted to jump into a brand new deep, state of the art SimCity and just hunker down and enjoy it for a very, very long time to come. To learn every small detail and marvel at the technical and creative advances todays PCs and object (Agent) oriented programming environment would allow.  To take the time to become familiar with the touted sophisticated "Agent" underworkings of what I hoped would be a milestone in SimCity evolution.

 

Well fast forward to right now…and it’s just a huge bummer. It is obvious SimCity 2013 "Agent" model simply uses Agents with only a few very basic assigned rules and that these agents act completely independent of most other objects in the simulation (other than the few key objects their rules are applied with), the key disconnect is Agent to Traffic Volume/Travel Time to destination.  There is NO intellegent routing of Agents...period.

 

The roads in SimCity 2013 seem to ONLY function as Density objects for attaching Zoning to (zoning backbone) and not as traffic volume oriented transportation vectors that "talk" to the other Agents.  So the amount of sohphistication seems to be Agents with a few simple rules like go to work, home or shopping and for routing they always take the shortest route.  The capacity or traffic volume of any road is not used by ANY Agent it seems.  So that's pretty much an accident waiting to happen, plus it immediately takes most of the fun out of playing SimCity becuase there simply is no AI/city modeling to work with...in a word it feels empty/stupid and meaningless on many levels.  It IS broken.

 

Sooooo, at first I sat here sobbing at my PC screen, day after day slowly seeing my hopes dashed as I played the game and observed the routing (path finding) issues and how devastating they were to the overall functioning of my cities.  The sad reality sunk in and I realized that SimCity 2013 is pretty much just a fancy "Chila Pet" that runs on a PC.  That no matter what, with just minimal user input a city WILL be created, it doesn’t take careful/thoughful planning or much skill at all. So much of what happens is automated and based on fairly simple logic.  I was left feeling empty, this was NOT SimCity, not even close.  It is pretty and sounds great but it is not anything close to what SimCity should be.  To me it felt like an “accessible” (dumbed down) modern game where the first goal of the developers is to make everyone feel important, capable and accomplished AND make it a DLC jukebox.  It isn't SimCity as I know it and I fear it may never be.

 

But something a tad redeeming hit me after reading through this thread...there may be a FUN way to play SimCity 2013 after all (for now at least), as pathetic as it may sound, this could be fun. It might be FUN to play SimCity 2013 by simply changing your purpose or methodology as you create cities...

 

Since we seem to have a broken and overly simplistic SimCity on our hands, it might be fun to more fully examine and discover the details of the rudimentary underlying workings of the simulation and then create cities that work well as constrained by that simplistic Agent based city environment.  To see what patterns (city types) emerge as you work within the current design constraints.  To document these cities and then compare them with cities created after the game is fixed (we can only hope).  At least that will provide some challenge and city building enjoyment, for a while anyway.

 

I hope we see EA/Maxis seriously listen to their customers and get out of this denial phase they seem to be stuck in.  I hope they sit down and read WHAT loyal SimCity fans are saying and step out of character and address the issues in SimCity 2013, and sincerely try to transform SimCity 2013 into a simulation that is worthy of the SimCity name.

 

It's funny because as far as I can recall, the 'agent' system or something like it was already implemented in a better way around 2001 in a little game called Tropico. Also as far as I can tell, three sequels have been made, and to this day the individual citizen system still works. Not that an agent system couldn't have worked, but it could have been done better than this.

 

As to your plea to EA to smarten up...yeah that's not going to happen. Not anytime soon, anyway. They're EA. The only real way to send a message is to do this:

 

 

Next time, speak with your wallet because that's ALL that matters.  This forum, this thread, and your complaints do NOTHING

Which I myself am already doing. But it's still fun to complain, so I'm doing that too.

 

 

 

 

While I am disappointed with the bad pathfinding, I should think that realistically, not everyone chooses the best path all the time.

I have something for you, it's called direction signs:

It doesn't guarantee the fastest route, but at least it makes you avoid dirt roads.

Yes, I know what signposts are, thank you very much. I'm talking about people who know this, yet still prefer back roads (because they're more scenic, or have less traffic, or they usually stop somewhere along the way), or people who are new to the area and don't see the signs for whatever reason (these people exist, i am quite sure of it), or people who simply want to take a nice drive. For that last reason alone, we should have randomizing transit algorithms. These random trips won't number nearly as much as the sims who actually have places to go and know how to get there of course, but they will exist, and still be a factor. Not a very big one, but still.

 

I pointed out in another thread that somebody had made a recommendation that the education of the agent could determine determine the probability that it takes the best route.  That if Maxis is weighting distance, congestion, and road throughput (size) for pathfinding then after the optimal weights are determined, i.e., balanced, that the education of the sim agent would be a modifier impacting the weights making them possibly take a less than optimal path as the educated the Sim decreased.  For example, optimally educated Sims have a 1 modifier so they use the optimal weights while other education levels use 0.8 or 1.2 as modifiers (just proposed random #) which would slightly jack with the path selection.  This would be a nice way to tie education to behavior thus "simulating" peoples behavior in a city.  I think its an excellent idea.

 

I do like this idea. I don't believe that the reason some people may take scenic drives is because they are without the benefit of a college education, but it works on a gameplay level.

[RSIxidor 0]

Hi, new here.

 

I was curious, how did path-finding or similar concepts work in previous SimCity games?

 

Did they have path-finding, or some sort of flow analysis or some other concept?