Cities: Skylines - Snowfall DLC Reveal - Trams! Snow!

[hitzu 139]

2 hours ago, Bad Peanut said:

Have you seen anywhere where they talk about metro being raised onto the street? I can't see anything in that link above and I hadn't read it anywhere official yet?

No, I was overexited by the news overexpecting something that CO never did in CiM DLCs. Facing the truth, they always chose the most easiest way to implement new things.

[Judazzz 1,936]

On 1/22/2016 at 9:59 PM, Vals Loeder said:

I have been playing computer games since the first instalment of Pong in the seventies. I have NEVER EVER played a game that doesn't have its flaws, bugs, mistakes et cetera and were and never will be fixed. Because this is part of the type of product I find it utterly tiring to see a community feeling entitled to any thing more than it has actually paid for. You bought the game? That is what you get. Every patch you get for free  is an extra which you are not entitled to. Bought DLC? Great. That is what you paid for and nothing more. Read the fine line of the product you have bought. So please stop acting like spoiled brats like in all the other game communities I have become to know.

Since when is complaining about releasing paid content that is polished nor fully functional the same as feeling entitled to something? If you want to uncritically go with the show and go "owww and ahhh" at every thing CO does, go ahead - it's your right to do so. But please don't tell those that do not, not to complain or raise valid concerns. AD isn't finished, isn't polished, and a lot of what it brought to the table isn't working the way it was advertised by CO itself. To call out those people that do voice concerns about that (or are annoyed by the things that have been broken since the release of AD, and in some cases even the base game, and are not being fixed, or even addressed or acknowledged) self-entitled or spoiled brats is applying reversed logic, immature and unfair to boot.

Being critical of the game or its developer/publisher isn't negative per se. All of those here that have complaints or concerns are avid players that have sunk 100's of hours into this game, and will most likely add 100's more - it's (in most cases) criticism of a constructive kind, not whining for the sake of whining. Yes, CO released a game that was eagerly awaited by many thousands of gamers, especially in the light of the failure called SC2013, but that doesn't mean we just have to go down own our bare knees and praise whatever CO does or comes up with. Hell, not even they want a situation like that, because a good publisher like CO will actually learn and become even better because of the very negative feedback (in the shape of constructive criticism) that you are shoving aside as self-entitled whining by a bunch of spoiled brats...

[QuantumChicken 89]

3 hours ago, Judazzz said:

Since when is complaining about releasing paid content that is polished nor fully functional the same as feeling entitled to something? If you want to uncritically go with the show and go "owww and ahhh" at every thing CO does, go ahead - it's your right to do so. But please don't tell those that do not, not to complain or raise valid concerns. AD isn't finished, isn't polished, and a lot of what it brought to the table isn't working the way it was advertised by CO itself. To call out those people that do voice concerns about that (or are annoyed by the things that have been broken since the release of AD, and in some cases even the base game, and are not being fixed, or even addressed or acknowledged) self-entitled or spoiled brats is applying reversed logic, immature and unfair to boot.

Being critical of the game or its developer/publisher isn't negative per se. All of those here that have complaints or concerns are avid players that have sunk 100's of hours into this game, and will most likely add 100's more - it's (in most cases) criticism of a constructive kind, not whining for the sake of whining. Yes, CO released a game that was eagerly awaited by many thousands of gamers, especially in the light of the failure called SC2013, but that doesn't mean we just have to go down own our bare knees and praise whatever CO does or comes up with. Hell, not even they want a situation like that, because a good publisher like CO will actually learn and become even better because of the very negative feedback (in the shape of constructive criticism) that you are shoving aside as self-entitled whining by a bunch of spoiled brats...

I agree wholeheartedly!

[boformer 3,169]

the second dev diary about trams and road maintenance: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/cities-skylines-snowfall-dev-diary-2-new-things-on-the-roads.904358/

There will be standalone tram tracks (+ bridges and tunnels) and stops on pedestrian paths!

That means it will be really easy to add elevated and tunnel tram stops with a mod!

I also like the look of the tram station in the center of the avenue.

[hitzu 139]

Quote

Stops can only be placed on roads and pedestrian pathways

Does it mean tram-only streets?

2 hours ago, boformer said:

That means it will be really easy to add elevated and tunnel tram stops with a mod!

Does it mean we can emulate underground and overground metro with tram infrastructure?

[Roadman20 601]

With the second dev diary, the trams addressed people's lingering concern on standalone tracks along with tunnels and bridge capable.  

However, my biggest concern after reading was about the road maintenance service since it is introducing another vehicle-based service that is running up against the vehicle limit.  Sure, the maintenance trucks (yes, I had to carefully read that paragraph a second time) are going around the map "fixing" roads, so the AI should not be as silly as the other services.  I know some people who modded all their vehicles to become garbage trucks in lieu of actual vanilla garbage trucks, and I feel I'm going to go about to do the same with this new service.

I know they only dedicated like one, small paragraph to it, but knowing that proper implementation of services in C:S is a priority concern than implementation on trams.  Obviously, CO built CiM1/2, I would hope they did something similar for trams as they did before, so the clarification was in line of expectations.

[boformer 3,169]

3 hours ago, hitzu said:

Does it mean tram-only streets?

I think they mean stations on sidewalks (though it says pedestrian paths).

[Turjan 1,048]

This update sounds a bit more compelling. I love trams, and they seem to take care of giving us some possibilities for trams not to be obstacles in all cases. Except on standard roads I guess. Plus trams actually have visible overhead lines. For someone coming from the CiM games, that's a nice change. I wonder whether trams can cross a railroad.

Regarding pedestrian paths, the CiM games actually had trams on pedestrian paths. They were the only vehicles allowed on there. But yeah, I don't think that was what was meant here.

[Ltw 401]

I really like to see this new Dev Diary. It makes me care less about the snow and even more about transportation. The tram looks very cool. I am curious about the road-maintenance though, it would be cool if roads would be closed down temporarily because of maintenance, that would give transportation a new dimension, but I guess it will be a little bit less complicated than that.

14 hours ago, Turjan said:

Regarding pedestrian paths, the CiM games actually had trams on pedestrian paths. They were the only vehicles allowed on there. But yeah, I don't think that was what was meant here.

That seems modable right? It seems possible to add this road-type with a mod, I've already seen some great work from the modders of Traffic++ and Network Extensions thus I wouldn't be surprised if there would be a new mod for this if CO wouldn't include that road-type.

[donoteat 478]

Kind of annoyed that trams will be another separate network, honestly. IMO it should be all "rail", with metro being underground rail, and trams being on-street rail, but with everything compatible.

 

(I want to run freight trains regular traffic on the street dammit!)

[Horus_Kol 118]

3 hours ago, donoteat said:

Kind of annoyed that trams will be another separate network, honestly. IMO it should be all "rail", with metro being underground rail, and trams being on-street rail, but with everything compatible.

 

(I want to run freight trains regular traffic on the street dammit!)

While I agree a bit of flexibility would be nice (some railyard configurations would need it) - you don't normally see freight rail heading down tramlines. Given that tram systems in places like Manchester, Melbourne, Basel, and Adelaide are all different gauge to the regular rail network, making trams an additional network isn't unreasonable.

What they should do is offer more variety for the regular rail/metro network.

[hitzu 139]

@Horus_Kol This is partially true. Ofc freight trains don't use tram rails — they use their own dedicated railway tracks. It was a common practice in 19 century in US to place train tracks just on streets or to build streets alongside rail tracks and later integrate them. Here you can clearly see this:

http://www.bigmapblog.com/2013/birdseye-view-of-denver-colorado-190/

http://www.bigmapblog.com/2013/birdseye-map-of-houston-texas-1891/

Some of these tracks still exist and are in use

 

 

[Horus_Kol 118]

well, that's just crazy 

pretty cool, though

[donoteat 478]

6 hours ago, hitzu said:

@Horus_Kol This is partially true. Ofc freight trains don't use tram rails — they use their own dedicated railway tracks.

Not true, many trolley companies ran freight trains -- some quite long, but most three or four cars at most, if they had a standard gauge connection.

 

 

Best of all, of course, were the odd applications of the Chicago L, which had regular freight service until 1973.

 

And, of course, the Electroliners, which would begin their journey on the trolley tracks of Milwaukee, travel at 80-90 mph from Milwaukee to Chicago on the Chicago North Shore Line, then transfer to the Chicago L tracks to make their journey downtown, making select stops on the way.

 

so uh, forgive me for saying that I think there's no good reason to separate the networks, but there's no good reason to separate the networks. Rails is rails.

[Roadman20 601]

1 hour ago, donoteat said:

-snip-

However, if you look at pretty much every modern example of how light rail vs heavy rail systems are separated networks.  Modern transportation engineering and city planning has evolved from those earlier examples to keep trams separated from heavy rail networks.  The modern system is heavily tiered hierarchy of heavy rail -> light rail -> tram/streetcar.  Most cities worldwide tend not to intermix their rail networks, I've observed enough of this in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok, Berlin, Cologne, Prague, Vienna, New York City, Chicago... and this list can go on.  There are a few exceptions to this rule in the major cities, but those days of being widespread is long over.

Of course looking to the past like you have, you have to understand the context of a world that was being shaped by the evolution of cars.  Most of the old trolley systems in the United States passed away due to the development of the Interstate Highway System and modern freight truck industry.  You're looking at an older philosophy that simply doesn't exist anymore and also became economically nonviable.    C:SL addition of trams is well in-line to modern city planning philosophy. 

[Turjan 1,048]

2 hours ago, donoteat said:

Not true, many trolley companies ran freight trains -- some quite long, but most three or four cars at most, if they had a standard gauge connection.

You don't need to talk in the past. We have the WLB run a tram line here from the Opera to the town of Baden, and it's mixed in every sense. It starts as normal tram:

It runs partially in a subway-like segment with signal-controlled traffic (all of this part of the regular city tram network):

After another tram segment, it switches to a normal rail line:

And the last segment is a tram segment again, which it shares with freight traffic by the same company:

This was already posted here.

[QuantumChicken 89]

OOOO! I love trains! Keep the pictures coming! I am learning allot about different systems as I read this also. EDIT: I think it would be cool if CO did something like Vancouver, BC's Sky Train.

[hitzu 139]

6 hours ago, Roadman20 said:

C:SL addition of trams is well in-line to modern city planning philosophy. 

I don't get this argument. There are so many standarts and practices worldwide, why the game should be restricted to accomodate to few of them? Why should the game limit player's creativity for the sake of... I even don't know what's the aim of this, because what you call a "modern philosophy" is "future" for one place, "outdated" for another and "alien" for a third one.

[Roadman20 601]

3 hours ago, hitzu said:

I don't get this argument. There are so many standarts and practices worldwide, why the game should be restricted to accomodate to few of them? Why should the game limit player's creativity for the sake of... I even don't know what's the aim of this, because what you call a "modern philosophy" is "future" for one place, "outdated" for another and "alien" for a third one.

There has never been any city builder game that accepted every real life standard and practices.  This is mainly a game design choice, and usually the most modern of philosophies are mainly picked due to having the greatest understanding to the casual player.  Every generation of city simulation released to the public has adhered to a certain loose philosophy of city planning coupled with limitations of the computers of their time.  Eventually, this generation of city planning practices will pass just like others have fallen away as well.  The new crop of philosophies will influence another generation of this genre.

[Ryno917 102]

3 hours ago, hitzu said:

I don't get this argument. There are so many standarts and practices worldwide, why the game should be restricted to accomodate to few of them? Why should the game limit player's creativity for the sake of... I even don't know what's the aim of this, because what you call a "modern philosophy" is "future" for one place, "outdated" for another and "alien" for a third one.

Because expecting to be able to do everything is completely unreasonable?

The reality is that most current tram systems in the world operate completely separately from conventional train systems (and usually make use of completely different track gauges and guidelines), and as a result that is the logical method of implementation from the devs.

It'd be cool to be able to replicate the kind of weird things shown in the last couple pages of this thread, but the reality is that those examples are anomalies. They are strange, and unusual - expecting the game (especially one built by a small team) to be able to replicate all of those kinds of things is kind of ridiculous, to be frank.

That kind of stuff could possibly be taken care of by modding, if anyone wanted it bad enough.

[donoteat 478]

1 hour ago, Ryno917 said:

That kind of stuff could possibly be taken care of by modding, if anyone wanted it bad enough.

That's pretty much my point - Metro is already useless as a network now that we have underground and elevated train stations, making rail a more flexible system for urban rapid transit. 

Trams will, I would imagine, be modded to be compatible with rail (and vice-versa) soon enough after release. I just don't see why they can't integrate them from the start since it's such an obvious move...

[boformer 3,169]

12 minutes ago, donoteat said:

Trams will, I would imagine, be modded to be compatible with rail (and vice-versa) soon enough after release. I just don't see why they can't integrate them from the start since it's such an obvious move...

That's not as simple as it seems. I also see no reason why that would be important.

A connection to metro would be reasonable (but still hard to implement).

[Ryno917 102]

1 hour ago, donoteat said:

I just don't see why they can't integrate them from the start since it's such an obvious move...

Because they are different networks in the vast majority of cases, with different standards. It's absolutely not an obvious move. 

That's the point.

[Turjan 1,048]

The only thing that's quite common is that trams operate in tunnel sections. Many "subways" in Germany look like that, and the image I showed above is an example from Vienna. This was modded into CiM2. The way to do that was to have an underground street section in a tram tunnel (the street did not have to be connected to the street network) which you connected the free-running tram track to, so you could build an underground tram stop. The entrances had to be realized via pedestrian paths.

[boformer 3,169]

What I have in mind is a metro-station approach, like the underground train station in the workshop.

It just requires the addition of a new "tunnel station track". We'll see

[unnamed 174]

I would love it if they just add a hint of SC4 feel, like dynamic public transport, maybe seasons? (There is a seasons mod for SC4). Maybe seasons seem too expensive and impractical to program. But things from SC4 would really make this game better. 

[mrsmartman 200]

Let's be realistic. Seasonal changes will be much fun and cool. However, it is really difficult to implement considering the amount of successful cases in the past.

[Anderson Xeyed 23]

On Monday, January 25, 2016 at 1:30 PM, KillrChicken said:

I agree wholeheartedly!

Me too. I wholehearted agree with you. It's because of our critical aptitudes Cities Skylines came out that much great. They listened to us AND read the critics about that late fated ill EA Simcity Company president, who completely ignored us "the players or gamers" to his own greedy. I certainly hope games developers listen to games players in order to create great games that we'd happily pay and not a broken-down and ill finished games. As for your information Vals Lowder, I'd played old games that played for hours without a glitch or whatever. "Supposedly", games should come out perfectly working. That's what I think. 

[hitzu 139]

22 hours ago, Ryno917 said:

It'd be cool to be able to replicate the kind of weird things shown in the last couple pages of this thread, but the reality is that those examples are anomalies. They are strange, and unusual - expecting the game (especially one built by a small team) to be able to replicate all of those kinds of things is kind of ridiculous, to be frank.

Instead of making the "one size fits all" they're adding 3rd type of rails.  It is CO who adds excess barriers doing excess work. Don't say about the team size, please.

22 hours ago, Ryno917 said:

The reality is that most current tram systems in the world operate completely separately from conventional train systems (and usually make use of completely different track gauges and guidelines), and as a result that is the logical method of implementation from the devs.

Yes, but sometimes tram lines act like metro, metro trains go on and overground to the neighborhoods like suburban trains and suburban trains connect different cities like interurban trains. There is no distinguishable fundamental difference between two similar transport modes. Sometimes you cannot say " this is X and this is Y" because there is no worldwide standart and even in some countries the difference is just nominal. Name for example the principle difference between underground RER and Metropolitain stations in Paris. 

[Vals Loeder 27]

On 25-1-2016 at 1:24 PM, Judazzz said:

All of those here that have complaints or concerns are avid players that have sunk 100's of hours into this game, and will most likely add 100's more - it's (in most cases) criticism of a constructive kind, not whining for the sake of whining.

Than you an I have have been reading different posts apparently. And since when is sinking 100's of hours into a game an accomplishment that entitles you to anything? I would say you got more than your money's worth if you have enjoyed playing this game for 100's of hours for the amount you paid for the game. Which means to me that besides an entitled whiner you are also greedy. Way to go dude, I bet CO will really listen to your kind.