Why aren't more developers building for CSL?

[Fearlessmayor 44]

Hi all! I've been on and off the boards for some time now.  I haven't played Sim City 4 or CSL a lot for the past 6 months, which is unusual because I quite enjoy the games and like to build large cities, worlds, even.  I've just noticed that the reason is because CSL is still wanting in the beauty SC4 had - partly because of those ugly neon billboards on countless buildings, but lately I've noticed ppl are just making shoddy assets on the Steam Workshop.  It really puts me off the game.  Also, when ppl don't name or omit pictures for their assets.  I'd really like to see more medieval buildings, parks, space craft, and flora and fauna but I don't see a lot of quality work except a select few and there hasn't been a lot of new stuff since december -- unless somehow I'm missing it.  Has anyone else noticed this?  I wrote more on this here: http://mnmmariam.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/building-story-worlds-2-assets-in-citiesskylines-workshop/

The problem is, I just don't see myself playing a whole lot until more talented ppl join the CSL asset developing. Sorry, but seeing as I have not played for 6 months, and I happen to really like the game, I think the game is still wanting.  It's missing that SC4 charm but I think that can be improved with great buildings -- which CSL is needing. I thought Simtropolis was the right place to comment on this as the forums started with SC4 fans.

I'd really like to keep playing CSL, as SC4 can't compete with its road flexibility and street-level zooming, as well as Traffic mods, but I feel like I need more quality items. I've always read users are creating good content, but I don't see it.  Maybe I'm just missing it. Could we start a favorites assets forum or something, I don't know, just a thought. What say you all?

[Darf 1,439]

Hmmm, you say you have 7.500 assets  and you miss quality? Part of me thinks, yeah the amount of asset creation has slowed down since release.
But the real assets we do get now have a lot more quality than the rush at the start of the game. People seem to go for a lot more quality in their assets and the public knows more what to subscribe to. I have very few of those big towers without LoDs left, which were often  published in the first few months.

Assetcreation in C:S is a whole other beast than assetcreation in Sc4 and takes a lot more time if you want to do it right due to the limitations you have and the renderengine of the game. Also with more beautification and prop anarchy we get a lot more variety and detail for city journals than at the start of the game.

[boformer 3,169]

No idea what you mean. There are countless new assets, especially growable sets.

• MrMaison released a few very nice trees.
• BoldlyBuilding remade SC3000 assets and just released a new series of neo-eclectic homes.
• Feindbild created a complete collection of Brooklyn Buildings.

And those are just 3 creators, there are many more!

Regarding the default buildings, I agree that many of them suffer from unrealistic colours and ugly decoration. I'm already working on a fix for that.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

She's a bit right...

A big part of what's released still has huge problems. Part of the things released look fine at first but still lack a LOD and look like crap from far, many assets have awful nightlights.

Of course there is quality content, but it's only a portion of the workshop... a small portion. 

[Fearlessmayor 44]

28 minutes ago, Darf said:

Hmmm, you say you have 7.500 assets  and you miss quality? Part of me thinks, yeah the amount of asset creation has slowed down since release.
But the real assets we do get now have a lot more quality than the rush at the start of the game. People seem to go for a lot more quality in their assets and the public knows more what to subscribe to. I have very few of those big towers without LoDs left, which were often  published in the first few months.

Assetcreation in C:S is a whole other beast than assetcreation in Sc4 and takes a lot more time if you want to do it right due to the limitations you have and the renderengine of the game. Also with more beautification and prop anarchy we get a lot more variety and detail for city journals than at the start of the game.

oh dear! no, no, it's actually more like 745.  7,500 is too much. I just re-checked.  I might have have close to 800 at one point, but unsubbed from several lately.  There are still some I'm subscribed to that I don't like, but haven't taken the time to remove them all especially since I might have used 1 or 2 of them in an old city, and dont want my game to crash if I happen to open it.  But ever since the new updates and a number of crashes I decided I'm not going back to my old cities, I'm just going to make new ones.  which is sad for the cities I spent hours on, like my Omarion region, but I'd rather build a new city than have my city load for 10 minutes and then crash as soon as it's ready to play. in the beginning I subbed to lots of assets.  Like Cool_Z says, when you see an asset you like in the workshop and place it in your city -- it's completely different, and yes often the LOD is extremely poor. 

[Fearlessmayor 44]

32 minutes ago, boformer said:

No idea what you mean. There are countless new assets, especially growable sets.

• MrMaison released a few very nice trees.
• BoldlyBuilding remade SC3000 assets and just released a new series of neo-eclectic homes.
• Feindbild created a complete collection of Brooklyn Buildings.

And those are just 3 creators, there are many more!

Regarding the default buildings, I agree that many of them suffer from unrealistic colours and ugly decoration. I'm already working on a fix for that.

Well, see, I think that's part of the problem.  I'm not a huge fan of the growable sets.  I prefer starting a city with a theme (usual boreal or temperate), the vanilla buildings, lay roads, and then place ploppable and unique buildings to augment the design and style of the city or neighorhood I'm working on.  Problem is, growable sets limit your city.  If I choose Eclectic homes, ALL of my homes will be that style, but even worse, they'll grow randomly.  Maybe you could remove the billboards on your default building fix.  It's definitely long-awaited!

[Cool_Z 1,547]

God... if you mostly pick uniques from the workshop it's even worse... many, really MANY of the uniques have huge quality problems.

I think it's time we lift things up. We know how to do things right, we should be more vocal about things that are wrong.

 

One year after release it's not acceptable that some people do not make a correct lod for a building. It's not acceptable to see buildings with glowing borders. Not ok to have nightlights repeating each five or 6 floors, or completely different on the lod and the main model. It's not that hard, it just takes a bit more time to make.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

I just saw a screenshot this morning I think on reddit where a auto-lod made me click off the page. For some reason it was actually scary to look at.Too many players and creators are not educated about lods and what they are for. I too suufer when gathering stuff in the workshop. I always end up unsubscribing to 80% of what I found. There are a select few creators who I trust to have quality assets all the time. Maybe we should revive that modder watch list started a year ago to address this issue.

 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

8 minutes ago, Mr_Maison said:

I just saw a screenshot this morning I think on reddit where a auto-lod made me click off the page. For some reason it was actually scary to look at.Too many players and creators are not educated about lods and what they are for. I too suufer when gathering stuff in the workshop. I always end up unsubscribing to 80% of what I found. There are a select few creators who I trust to have quality assets all the time. Maybe we should revive that modder watch list started a year ago to address this issue.

 

I'm not sure this is actually useful... Picking up good stuff is ok but it won't push the "not-so-good-stuff-makers" ahead and won't make people understand what is wrong at times.

My suggestion would be to create an award for quality. Something that could be given to individual assets that meet all requirements.

The list was used a bit like this, but people will be more aware of what an award is. ("you could be in our top list"... "ok... meh". / "You won an award for your great work on that asset/mod/thingy"..."Thank you guys... I'd like to thank my mom, my dad, my dog, my llama...")

And... builders can get lazy... and even some of our top builders have some things that could be made better 

[Koesj 659]

First of all, some advice:

1 hour ago, Fearlessmayor said:

Problem is, growable sets limit your city.  If I choose Eclectic homes, ALL of my homes will be that style, but even worse, they'll grow randomly.  Maybe you could remove the billboards on your default building fix.  It's definitely long-awaited!

Building Themes, building eyedropper, the search box mod, and control level up are insanely powerful tools with which you can control growables from the smallest to the highest level of complexity IMO. Do you use these mods?

 

@Fearlessmayor, I definitely see where you're coming from. The billboards issue, missing art and/or pictures, either a general lack of quality or beginners' mistakes that could have easily been corrected if people had sought some pre-release feedback, etc. - they are an affront!

There are, however, three issues that I struggle with regarding your quite public call for more quality. The first one is lack of context, the second one is tone, which is a fruitless discussion, and the third is my own (and wholly my own) struggle to not take your comments too personal. 

I'll limit this post to context.

To my mind, flora and especially parks have come out the proverbial wazoo, and even in a sea of mediocrity tons of good stuff can be found. What kind of stuff do you like specifically, when talking about parks & flora? What kind of stuff do you feel is missing right now? Another thing, I believe there weren't, and still aren't any ways for modders to work on dynamic, properly animated fauna. Were you aware of the issues with animation not being available to assetbuilders? Is this a deal-breaker? Because I can definitely imagine it would be, if you're going for a properly narrative style in your building escapades! 

Also, what are, in your mind, 'medieval' assets? I've seen relatively many historic styles being applied to C:S assets, always a treat if you're a trained historian , up to and including a couple of great early-modern growables. Are you in dire need of specifically Romanesque or Gothic edifices? What's left of those IRL are mostly churches (though I myself live close to quite the 14th c. bonanza);  throughout history, pretty much every plot of land that could be exploited better has had more modern (a relative term) stuff built on. Until the moment where preservation laws kicked in during the 1960s and 70s even here in the old world that is. Are you looking for a particular kind of historicity, a sense of historical authenticity? To me, stuff like the Brooklyn Buildings, American 1900, heck even the new Eclectic homes are fantastic in that regard - they just ooze verisimilitude. But then again, I'm a historian of the modern age.  

Finally, you listed a handful of assets that're your favorites. Problem no.1 is that none of them are mine  But, more importantly, they're all relatively old: March, April, May, May, May, June, and finally MrMaison's theater which came out in October, fully five months ago. To my mind, tons of good stuff has been coming out since, but without knowing what you're subscribed to I can't compare tastes. So what does your current assetlist look like? Could you make a collection out of everything you've subscribed to? I'd like to go over it for a bit and see what I can scrounge up out of more recent offerings.

[Judazzz 1,936]

30 minutes ago, Mr_Maison said:

There are a select few creators who I trust to have quality assets all the time. Maybe we should revive that modder watch list started a year ago to address this issue.

Same here, and I agree. Not coincidentally most of the content I subscribe to are from modders/asset builders who active here on Simtropolis, where members teach each other, explain things and generally try to assist each other in a meaningful and productive manner, basically cooperating to elevate their and other people's content, and thus the game itself, to a higher level. I'm not a 3D-modeler (maybe one day...), and jumped onto the mod development wagon just recently (atm. still getting familiar with the API and experimenting, rather than being productive), but just reading all the comments and advice here has taught me a lot of valuable things, which hopefully will be reflected in the stuff I work on myself.

The main problem as I see it is that the collection of fine individuals that has gathered here all share the same outlook on asset/mod creation, and also think about more 'pro' aspects such as optimizing, usability, etc. The vast majority of content uploaders however are people that just play with the Asset Editor a little, upload a few assets, and then move on. At the same time, the vast majority of players will simply download whatever they like ("Oooh, shiny!") regardless of quality. And that's inevitable.
But as long as there will be a core 'fellowship' of modders and modelers that keep working the way they do now, I'm confident things will improve over time (it's not even that bad in my opinion, you just need to be selective and critical when shopping the Workshop) and attract even more like-minded individuals, which in turn bring in their own insights, tips and tricks, which may attract even more.... (and repeat ad infinitum  )

[Cool_Z 1,547]

The sad thing is that we miss some good stuff. Not because it's not available to us, but because some people don't know or just don't care about parts of the process...

I sound like a broken record yeah I know.

 

Take that russian guy, the one that uploaded some blocks and a unique. All of them look nice from close and in the day... but at night they have poor nightlights and from far they look (I'm repeating what I said to Maison, not sure it was about that) like a car crash crashed into another car crash.

I think the guy just used some ready made buildings from somewhere... but hey we don't care. What we care is that it's wasted potential.

[Koesj 659]

Ultimately, I pretty much only care about what we build, right here, on SimTrop. Even Naskko's stuff was quickly done away with in my cities: no normal maps, no depth. No depth? No dice.

[Darf 1,439]

15 minutes ago, Cool_Z said:

The sad thing is that we miss some good stuff. Not because it's not available to us, but because some people don't know or just don't care about parts of the process...

I sound like a broken record yeah I know.

 

Take that russian guy, the one that uploaded some blocks and a unique. All of them look nice from close and in the day... but at night they have poor nightlights and from far they look (I'm repeating what I said to Maison, not sure it was about that) like a car crash crashed into another car crash.

I think the guy just used some ready made buildings from somewhere... but hey we don't care. What we care is that it's wasted potential.

Don't agree with you there and he definately made them himself. There might be a few illumination maps missing on his LoDs, but they all do have custom lod models with textures.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

8 minutes ago, Darf said:

Don't agree with you there and he definately made them himself. There might be a few illumination maps missing on his LoDs, but they all do have custom lod models with textures.

Ok not 100% sure about him making them or not... but the lods are not custom lods, and usually it's what makes me think it's not custom content. if you're able to model this you should be able to make a lod. If you're not... you do not deserve any good rating.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Note that I took the time to resubscribe to these pieces of...  to look at them ingame and use modtools to extract them.

All of these buildings are above 24000 tris (yes, 24000, not 2400). None of them have a custom LOD.

Nightlights are as basic as can be. I maintain the guy bought models on some website and asks for donations to try to make money. The fact that he didn't connect for a while looks to me like a "well this didn't work".

[Darf 1,439]

13 minutes ago, Cool_Z said:

Note that I took the time to resubscribe to these pieces of...  to look at them ingame and use modtools to extract them.

All of these buildings are above 24000 tris (yes, 24000, not 2400). None of them have a custom LOD.

Nightlights are as basic as can be. I maintain the guy bought models on some website and asks for donations to try to make money. The fact that he didn't connect for a while looks to me like a "well this didn't work".

Ha, I was thinking you we're talking about Prospers buildings, but obviously it's Rtgstream or whatever his name is. 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Lol yeah sorry, we should give names when we talk about stuff from the workshop.

Actually it's this guy : http://steamcommunity.com/id/vladalexsh/myworkshopfiles/?appid=255710

"vladalexsh"... his name starts with "vlad"... like Dracula. His assets will suck the blood from your PC.

[Koesj 659]

29 minutes ago, Darf said:

Ha, I was thinking you we're talking about Prospers buildings, but obviously it's Rtgstream or whatever his name is. 

@Prosper Merime posts here, we had some good exchanges of ideas.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Those "Vlad the impaler of ram" assets made me think again that we need a bad category more than ever... a wall of shame, a place to talk about assets that are bad, so bad that they can be considered toxic for the game.

[merc187 46]

I'm not sure if it's the cause of but it definitely does not help that modders don't have solid resources for knowing what does what in the game.  We've all done our own testing but for the different values, templates, and existing modding properties - how does that affect the asset in game?  Where are the resources from CO/PDX about this?  Asset editor is a good basic overview, but I feel it's lacking not only specific emphasis but details that modders want and should have access to.

If they opened up modding as wide as they have - was part of the plan to literally have us all just guess and figure it out ourselves?  The Asset Editor wiki really describes the basics of what entails a C:S asset but not what makes a great one, or what properties exist for what etc. etc.  I know a lot of games make you do this (trial by error methods) but in order to make quality assets as everyone's been talking about that's part of it (having solid resources and knowledge base on what does what).

You guys were talking a lot about the creator's idea of what's the pre-requisities in making an asset but I think a lot of the reason people aren't putting extra effort into their models is because simply we as modders and assets creators have to figure it out and rely on forum resources and experiments done by the other people before we get any wind from the dev's on the details.

I think I remember seeing Zed, GC Vos, Shroomblaze, and many others trying to create resources for modders than frankly  - I believe CO/PDX should have had a bigger hand in creating or adding information for us to understand and how new modders can rely on it moving forward.  Maybe not everyone browses Simtropolis and really don't know how critical LOD's are, for instance.  Outside of just mentioning a LOD - in the Asset Editor Wiki - how does it emphasize the importance of a LOD?  Maybe that's not what the goal or focus of the Wiki is (meaning not to educate people on the basics of 3D model theory) but I still hold to my guns in that maybe the modding community lacks a lot of "new-blood" because there isn't good methods, avenues, resources, and viable approaches for these people to get involved without spending days, weeks, and hours upon hours just trying to find out the basics.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I strongly adhere with what you just said. It would have been so much easier if we weren't left guessing stuff.

CO said the game was open for modding (it is) and for building (it is) but left us with nothing but sticks and stones. The asset editor is still a pile of *I censor myself* one year after release.

[Judazzz 1,936]

33 minutes ago, Cool_Z said:

Those "Vlad the impaler of ram" assets made me think again that we need a bad category more than ever... a wall of shame, a place to talk about assets that are bad, so bad that they can be considered toxic for the game.

The thing is that some modelers simply don't know better for whatever reason, and may be susceptible to constructive criticism to improve their assets. A wall of shame may actually be counter-productive and scare them away. Others (like a certain skyscraper modeler who shall not be named  ) simply don't give a crap and won't listen no matter how many rational arguments you throw at them (the "Just here to make a quick buck", "I have an i7 with 32GB RAM, so I don't see the problem" and "I know it's just a 1x1 asset, but it really needs that 2048x2048 texture" crowd), and I certainly wouldn't mind exposing those people to increase quality awareness amongst players. However, as long as lots of players simply subscribe anything they like without haveing a critical look at file size, tris count and other optimizations (and subsequently turn on CAPS and go ape$%&^! on Reddit about what a POS this game in their opinion is), I'm afraid it will remain preaching to your own choir. I'm doubtful it'll ever happen, but I think it's inevitable CO has to weigh in and take some significant steps to spread awareness and facilitate the necessary tools and info to improve in the long run - it would even be in their own interest. 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

If you're good enough to build a superb (from close and during the day... funny how easier it is) building, you should be able to undersand the limits imposed by a game.

 

If you don't, you're a fraud.

Yeah well ok I'm mostly talking about those guys using paid mesh models and importing them as they are, and asking for donations. (I just hope not too much people fall into this trap).

When I think about the time I sometimes spend just tracking a few unneeded tris... and those *cantsaythewordhere* release crap with tens of thousands polys... rhaaaaargh

[boldlybuilding 873]

10 minutes ago, Judazzz said:

(like a certain skyscraper modeler who shall not be named  )

[Cool_Z 1,547]

1 minute ago, boldlybuilding said:

Don't call me Shirley ! 

I think this needs an explanation...

 

[Judazzz 1,936]

13 minutes ago, boldlybuilding said:

Lol, that made me laugh so hard  

Fear not, it's not you In fact, someone who manages to create Neo Eclectic buildings that are a million times better than the originals, while maintaining the same file size, deserves a monument! Besides that, your towers are pretty huge indeed, but at least you're upfront about why you decided to do so - I may not subscribe to them, but I can most certainly respect your decision.

I'm pretty sure it's not someone who is is active here. I don't like dropping names, so I keep it to myself, but some, like Zed, may know who I mean - one hint: it took ages before his towers were given (mediocre) night lights...

[boformer 3,169]

31 minutes ago, AJ3D said:

It would be great to have a wiki site for this stuff. I know there are some Steam guides, but the format is too restrictive for a comprehensive guide with multiple contributors. It would be great to see some of the guides from Zed and Shroom in a more consolidated and open format, with information from other contributors along side

The skylines wiki was made for that. I want to put all my knowledge into that wiki. The devs said it was made for modders.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

LOL!!!

 

58 minutes ago, merc187 said:

I'm not sure if it's the cause of but it definitely does not help that modders don't have solid resources for knowing what does what in the game.  We've all done our own testing but for the different values, templates, and existing modding properties - how does that affect the asset in game?  Where are the resources from CO/PDX about this?  Asset editor is a good basic overview, but I feel it's lacking not only specific emphasis but details that modders want and should have access to.

If they opened up modding as wide as they have - was part of the plan to literally have us all just guess and figure it out ourselves?  The Asset Editor wiki really describes the basics of what entails a C:S asset but not what makes a great one, or what properties exist for what etc. etc.  I know a lot of games make you do this (trial by error methods) but in order to make quality assets as everyone's been talking about that's part of it (having solid resources and knowledge base on what does what).

You guys were talking a lot about the creator's idea of what's the pre-requisities in making an asset but I think a lot of the reason people aren't putting extra effort into their models is because simply we as modders and assets creators have to figure it out and rely on forum resources and experiments done by the other people before we get any wind from the dev's on the details.

I think I remember seeing Zed, GC Vos, Shroomblaze, and many others trying to create resources for modders than frankly  - I believe CO/PDX should have had a bigger hand in creating or adding information for us to understand and how new modders can rely on it moving forward.  Maybe not everyone browses Simtropolis and really don't know how critical LOD's are, for instance.  Outside of just mentioning a LOD - in the Asset Editor Wiki - how does it emphasize the importance of a LOD?  Maybe that's not what the goal or focus of the Wiki is (meaning not to educate people on the basics of 3D model theory) but I still hold to my guns in that maybe the modding community lacks a lot of "new-blood" because there isn't good methods, avenues, resources, and viable approaches for these people to get involved without spending days, weeks, and hours upon hours just trying to find out the basics.

I believe the main problem is though this is one of the main sites for CSL players to get info, this is still SC4 turf. CSL do not have a robust fan site with visuals and an active forum where a majority of players come to interact. The CSL community is fragmented all over social media on Reddit (where posts have the life cycle of a fly), Facebook and places like that. I'm guessing a majority of those who are in the official site do not come here at ST and even over in Paradox, many do not pay attention to the modders section. What makes ST as a fan site so great is the visuals on the front page and updated activity between members. CSL do not have an active robust fan site of it's own. The ones that tried fell very quiet soon after launch. If somehow this game can get a true central site for players to interact, then more important info will be known to more modders and more players will know better what to look for when shopping in the workshop. I have no idea how this can be achieved though...for now, ST is one of my favorite places. Maybe one day we can get more traffic over here some how. We should promote ST as much as we can when posting abroad.

The wiki is missing so much info for us. And yeah, I agree they should put more emphasis on lods and their importance.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

21 minutes ago, Judazzz said:

Lol, that made me laugh so hard  

Fear not, it's not you In fact, someone who manages to create Neo Eclectic buildings that are a million times better than the originals, while maintaining the same file size, deserves a monument! Besides that, your towers are pretty huge indeed, but at least you're upfront about why you decided to do so - I may not subscribe to them, but I can most certainly respect your decision.

I'm pretty sure it's not someone who is is active here. I don't like dropping names, so I keep it to myself, but some, like Zed, may know who I mean - one hint: it took ages before his towers were given (mediocre) night lights...

Oh... ah 

 

And the one whose growables are bigger than the lot size I suppose 

3 minutes ago, Mr_Maison said:

Reddit (where posts have the life cycle of a fly)

I must correct that... the lifecycle of a fart actually. (unless you post a random pic of an intersection).

Oh and if you dare post something that might be a tiny bit saying there's something that could be better with the game, you'll get answers like you're clubbing baby seals.