The Evolution of Cities Skylines Graphics and Gameplay

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Just want to start a discussion about where this game is and where it could possibly be headed in the future.

It's been a year and 8 months as of this post since the launch of this game. I was watching an episode of Freshpopcorn's Youtube videos and he said something that I think is significant about the way players approach the game play according to the many awesome screenshots all over the place. Detailing seems to be a trend. The game almost seem to be more of a cities "painter" than a game where mechanics are the main observation. With the many mods and props and vegetation options, and with the 4k map themes coming out along with the new Sharp Textures mod, I see players creating works of art and beauty that we can immerse ourselves into and get inspired. The conversation about game mechanic realism seem to be taking a back seat to realism of visuals. Now I'm not saying the mechanics are not important. There's still room for a lot of improvement on that front. But what did improve greatly over time is the ability to create very realistic looking cities. I think the argument of the game being too cartoony can now be put to rest thanks to the community.

With Natural disasters coming up, it will be interesting to see how players evolve further in game play habits. It will be interesting to see what players will do as the game mechanics become more and more interesting along with the detailing capabilities. As of right now, a mod like Traffic Manager President Edition gives us the ability to control how traffic behaves in many situations. Being able to make traffic slow down at a toll booth is one of those details that brings realism to the game. Prop Line Tool leaped us into an era where we have awesome control over how we arrange props and Move It just brought us even more freedom. Network Extension mod gave us new network types with rendered tunnels and one of the authors of that, Lazarusman along with Bloody Penguin is about to overhaul the metro system. Boformer gave us many great things including Network Skins just to name very few out of many gems.

BTW, I want to give another shout to all the prop makers. Let's show them more love by rating up their items more often. It's those little things causing all the visual magic.

I think Cities Skylines is shaping up to be the best city builder game since Sim City 4. The possibilities are growing every day. I look optimistically that one day the game mechanics will catch up to the graphics and I think this game will be around for many years to come. I would like to hear what many of you think would push this game to the next level. I'm rooting for animation and custom people in modding. Thoughts?

 

 

[Ronyx69 2,413]

I understand that others do, but I personally don't care about simulation and gameplay aspects at all, it's all about the aesthetics for me.
I've disabled money, I have unlock all from the start, no fires, no abandonment, hide problems mod.

The main drive for me to work on this game, is to "fix" the look of it.

Unbalanced brightness of stuff - terrain vs buildings, specific buildings being too bright or too dark, or too colorful etc.
Doing this with custom map theme, lut, lighting settings, tonemapping settings, changing some vanilla textures with resource replacer is the next step.

I also want to change those little sprites of grass/fertile/cliff. I already know how, just need to make a custom model/texture for it.

Blurry textures because of aggressive mipmapping and lack of anisotropy (some things have 0 in vanilla, some 8)
Sharp textures mod for this obviously.

Empty areas look uhhh... empty. So the big decals mod helps there.
I recently made a tutorial for big decals because I see that first set of my decals all over the place
and I think there's way more potential to add texture to areas that otherwise would be just empty.

There are still problems with the look for me.
Most roads don't have UV mapping for their curbs.
Still a bunch of props to replace for lanes and for rail, probably more I can't think of.
What about the skybox/clouds, would be cool to have some ultra realistic skies for different times of day, not saying I can make this but just an idea.
Also the sun looks meh, why is there not a really visible sun? It's just a barely brighter blurry blob in the sky.
Tree LODs look meh, especially when trying to reduce directional light and increase ambient light, the brightness for main and LODs mismatch.

If we go even deeper into visual stuff - then semi-transparent alpha would nice, so you could create real glass. That's delving into custom shaders I guess.
The texture compression is really noticeable, it especially ruins specular and normal.

My goal is to replace or change pretty much everything to make the game as custom and realistic as possible, I don't want any vanilla stuff to be visible.
I could handle the visual aspects for just about anything, not the development side though.

I think the reason the game advances in visual aspects more is because you can't really take a screenshot of a gameplay mechanic and market it for players.
All the focus out there is showing off what you've made.
Only sometimes it's some functional stuff, like fine tuning an intersection with traffic president for example, but that's still somewhat visual I guess.

As for the animation, if you mean like rotating signs, it's probably done with vertex colors, contact me if anybody is interested in that.

[johndoh4 13]

To be honest, I don't think the game is a that much of a leap forward in the visuals department compared to SC4 (with the exception that it is now technically rendered in full 3-D, and the lighting is a little better). Where it does make leaps and bounds is in the functionality department, as road building is much more flexible, you can annex new land (no region view though), and the game is just more fun to play than games like City Life were.

As for game mechanics vs visuals, I prefer things to have a rhyme and a reason to exist in the game, rather than something just sitting there looking pretty (although many modders spend a lot of time making some fantastic looking buildings). I also like solving problems related to demand, traffic, taxes, etc; so more options/advancements in those departments are always appreciated for me personally.

However, the game still has to be fun, and many casual gamers like the monuments, and ploppable buildings, which is why most of the add-ons from the developer seem to be in that area; because they sell better (if the developer doesn't make a profit, we all suffer). The other problem is that simulation games have always been a nightmare for PC's to run, and they can only go so far in the visuals department before you would need a CAD PC from NASA to be able to handle all the background calculations, and render enormous sweeping cities at the same time without using ugly draw-in.

By the way, I've been largely out of the game for a few years and just started playing CS a couple months ago, hopefully my comments are still relevant.

[mutton noir 170]

I don't think that the devs at CO could've imagined how the game would take off as it did after lauch back in March 2015. The collective creativity and skills of modders has transformed the game beyond all recognition. Inspirational YouTubers- a growing number- are pushing the game to its limits and many are now working in collaboration with modders to create even more content. One YouTuber who really does deserve wider recognition is Joseph Crowe, check out his Tron City build, it's truly staggering  tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEVVMWFovCc  I rarely play the vanilla game (usually for a few days following a major update). The ridiculous number of Fire stations and crematoriums required drives me mad! I enjoy the creative aspect of the game although not to the obsessive level of micro detailing by YT's like Fresh Popcorn! The ability to screen out all the hideous cartoon like vanilla props vehicles and buildings made such an improvement- there are now over 60 mods that I would consider" essential" before starting a new city. I'm constantly amazed at the quality of assets/mods and maps created by the community- CO seem to be playing "catch up". Initially I was luke warm to the prospect of disasters but the various trailers have whetted my appetite- can't wait to see what the community does with it. It's a great little game- warts and all.

[Skibitth 484]

Hey!

I have to agree, that all the creators deserve more credit! If not a little tip in the jar, maybe at least a rate to their work. I do that to all assets that I love. At this point I am not big of a fan to the new DLC. I might buy it as I want to have them all, but I am not going to use it. Maybe for fun to make some cool videos for my channel.

I am not also a big fan of placing props like there's no tomorrow...it is too much and it is something that you add now and then no one will notice them. Not even from above as they are hard to be seen because of the LODs. Plus it gets the game move pretty bad at a point. So @mutton noir said it pretty good

And yes, this game developed a lot into something that I couldn't had imagine ever! And this is only thanks to all creators out there! Else the game would have been boring by now. So Paradox should say a big THANK YOU to all of you guys!

Cheers!

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

1 hour ago, Skibitth said:

Hey!

I have to agree, that all the creators deserve more credit! If not a little tip in the jar, maybe at least a rate to their work. I do that to all assets that I love. At this point I am not big of a fan to the new DLC. I might buy it as I want to have them all, but I am not going to use it. Maybe for fun to make some cool videos for my channel.

I am not also a big fan of placing props like there's no tomorrow...it is too much and it is something that you add now and then no one will notice them. Not even from above as they are hard to be seen because of the LODs. Plus it gets the game move pretty bad at a point. So @mutton noir said it pretty good

And yes, this game developed a lot into something that I couldn't had imagine ever! And this is only thanks to all creators out there! Else the game would have been boring by now. So Paradox should say a big THANK YOU to all of you guys!

Cheers!

And thanks to video makers like yourself, many of us find inspiration. I'm liking how there's a huge YouTube following around this game. Here's another thumbs up

[Skibitth 484]

2 hours ago, Mr_Maison said:

And thanks to video makers like yourself, many of us find inspiration. I'm liking how there's a huge YouTube following around this game. Here's another thumbs up

Many thanks @Mr_Maison! I am glad to hear so! In the past 2-3 episode (and the next ones as well) I went a little bit too crazy with the last trees that you have created. With the Maples :))) Amazing!
Don't forget about my little idea

[Ocram's Razr 964]

One thing I would love to see to enhance the visuals and truly make Cities: Skylines truly look the best would be intermediate LODs. One intermediate LOD would make this game look much better while 2 (making a total of 4) would make graphics on par with Cities (X)XL and would allow potentially 600 building packs (some having nearly 20 buildings) made for that game to enter the Steam Workshop with unchanged geometry (but with baked AO and optional color mask). Intermediate LODs are trivial to make, just run optimization to reduce triangle and vertex count to within (or slightly above) the limits. It would also mean that some buildings on the workshop would get new, generated LODs because the provided ones are of intermediate LOD quality (even monumental LODs shouldn't have over 400 triangles but some LODs I have seen for small houses had 500 or so).

[boformer 3,169]

On 22.11.2016 at 8:31 PM, OcramsRzr said:

One thing I would love to see to enhance the visuals and truly make Cities: Skylines truly look the best would be intermediate LODs. One intermediate LOD would make this game look much better while 2 (making a total of 4) would make graphics on par with Cities (X)XL and would allow potentially 600 building packs (some having nearly 20 buildings) made for that game to enter the Steam Workshop with unchanged geometry (but with baked AO and optional color mask). Intermediate LODs are trivial to make, just run optimization to reduce triangle and vertex count to within (or slightly above) the limits. It would also mean that some buildings on the workshop would get new, generated LODs because the provided ones are of intermediate LOD quality (even monumental LODs shouldn't have over 400 triangles but some LODs I have seen for small houses had 500 or so).

More LODs also means more meshes and textures (more RAM usage), and more work for asset creators. Many of them struggle to make a single LOD....

I don't think that it would make the game look better, it would just increase rendering performance.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

If the main mesh has complex geometry, it will be rendered more often as the LOD. Having an intermediate LOD would allow players to see moderately high quality (instead of simple LOD) buildings from moderate distances. If the only LOD provided is already of moderately complex geometry (triple digit triangle counts), then rendering performance would improve from having a proper LOD.

[OwiHH 240]

For me the view of it isnt all i want in a game and/or citybuilder even i like beautifull things. I loose fast my mood to build more within my citys and take a break for while, like do at the moment. This is because lack of good gamemechanics, bugs, bad AI (stuiped cars still drive me mad - even with presidential edition). Trains of Cargoships camping seas is one big major issues im so sick of this.

You see it alot over the last years - pretty graphics, pretty look but lack of true content or simulations. There are only a handfull games (all generes) that realy have both - awsome graphics and good gameplay/simulations/gamemechanics. I like sort of micromanagment - sometimes i play hours to only fix trafficjams or watch sims / workers moving around - where they come from, go to and or deliver stuff just to see where to improve it. CS miss alot in that way. I liked SC4 micromangment but im 3d player and need shiny beautifull views like CS has.

Still, i dont want to make the community bad here - quite the converse, without the awsome modders and designers i wouldnt play Cities Skyline as much as i do and it wouldnt be as good as it is with all the workshopcontent.

So my point - we need more simulation stuff and guys how look into AI and gamemechanics. Shame im not programmer . like most people.

Keep up the good work everyone.