KotCity 0.49.3 (last updated 4/13/2018): an open source city simulator

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

I'm really sorry to drag on the topic of icons for this long, but being someone who refuses to download premade icons, I couldn't resist drawing this up. (Apologies if they look terrible.)

[ww2commander 7]

Those icons are sweet!

I'm just using placeholder icons from that site to help me mock-up screenshots. Assuming something eventuates from my work, it would be a case of substituting icons as required.

As I don't know much about Kotlin's UI capabilities, would placing UI elements over the map be an issue or should they be confined to their own boxes as is the case with the current build?

[LivingInThePast 364]

8 hours ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

I'm really sorry to drag on the topic of icons for this long, but being someone who refuses to download premade icons, I couldn't resist drawing this up. (Apologies if they look terrible.)

My main problem with icon design is the desire to be too abstract. So from left to right, there's

- Civic Buildings

- Education

- Police & Fire

- Health

- Trees

- Water

- Power

- Garbage

- ????

Already, I can see a few problems. When you filter out Police & Fire, Health, and Schools from Civic, there's not much left. Most of the "city functions" (city hall, courthouse) come from Rewards, and Libraries/Museums are put under Education in all the decent SimCity titles. Is the Police & Fire the place where fire stations and police stations come from, or is it only emergency dispatches like SC2K? Likewise, is the "Trees" button for parks and stuff, or is it for planting free-form trees? Is Water for water pumps and pipes, or for building lakes?

[kotcity 110]

17 hours ago, LivingInThePast said:

Having played a bit of KotCity, I like it and it reminds me of Classic SimCity

Hoo hoo! Then we are on the right track!

17 hours ago, LivingInThePast said:

- The green background makes residential REALLY hard to see.

This is just a stand-in until we implement the SC4 palette for the ground terrain. Bear with us.

17 hours ago, LivingInThePast said:

- I can't afford a huge monitor, and even though 1366x768 should be good for most purposes the screen still cuts off

That's good to hear... we need to take care of people on the smaller screens. I will figure out what we can do (probably make toolbar resizable).

17 hours ago, LivingInThePast said:

- I don't know what the zots mean. What does the checkmarks and Xs near the people in the Commercial zone mean?

Most likely cannot find workers. If you use the query tool you should be able to confirm this. The "ZOTS" will be listed under that building's query stats.

17 hours ago, LivingInThePast said:

- Do zones not transmit power?

They do... up to a radius of 3... then you have to pull out a power line.

17 hours ago, LivingInThePast said:

- Since graphics are not the strongest suit right now, why not (and I think I can help with this) rip the original graphics off of the original SimCity? The game went open source several years ago as Micropolis, and until better graphics are drawn up, it can have SimCity's graphics for roads and buildings.

I did consider this -- however we want a "clean break from SimCity". Also their old art is very pixelated. THEORETICALLY we could have hi-res on my setup now. Thirdly, if we did that we'd have to match their style on the rest of the buildings, which I don't want.

[kotcity 110]

10 hours ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

I'm really sorry to drag on the topic of icons for this long, but being someone who refuses to download premade icons, I couldn't resist drawing this up. (Apologies if they look terrible.)

Wow man awesome! Are you able to send us the SVGs? Are you comfortable with us using your art?

[LivingInThePast 364]

33 minutes ago, kotcity said:

I did consider this -- however we want a "clean break from SimCity". Also their old art is very pixelated. THEORETICALLY we could have hi-res on my setup now. Thirdly, if we did that we'd have to match their style on the rest of the buildings, which I don't want.

Right now it's in Alpha and what's available (maybe except for the Depot) is almost identical to SimCity as it is, and yes, it is pixelated but I still would prefer it over black squares. On "clean break from SimCity", I guess you WOULDN'T be in favor of the idea floated earlier in importing SimCity 4 building graphics? (as my earlier post indicates, I'm really on the fence on that one if it were up to me, as I saw several advantages and disadvantages)

[kotcity 110]

2 hours ago, LivingInThePast said:

Right now it's in Alpha and what's available (maybe except for the Depot) is almost identical to SimCity as it is, and yes, it is pixelated but I still would prefer it over black squares. On "clean break from SimCity", I guess you WOULDN'T be in favor of the idea floated earlier in importing SimCity 4 building graphics? (as my earlier post indicates, I'm really on the fence on that one if it were up to me, as I saw several advantages and disadvantages)

Hmm... I guess another way to state it is I wouldn't mind if we could import SC4 buildings (it could augment our game). What I don't want is a dependency on SC (so we have our own core assets).

Same with my map importer right now, it's able to import SC4 regions but I have my own format after that. I don't ever plan to export anything to SC4.

[velrox 39]

the build is leading me to an older version.

also, the icons are so big that I can't even build anything. even resizing the window hid the icons.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

3 hours ago, kotcity said:

Wow man awesome! Are you able to send us the SVGs? Are you comfortable with us using your art?

Hmm, not until, 1, I perfect the hell out of the icon set, and 2, I know what I have to make for the first batch of icons.

So far, I'm basing it on the mockup from last page (but I added another category that I've yet to explain), so the breakdown looks like this:

• Admin
• Education
• Emergency Services
• Health and Research
• Parks and Rec
• Power
• Religion and Rememberance
• Sanitation and Water
• Tourism and Landmarks
• Waterfront
• 4 types of ploppables

My icons' breakdown so far is this:

• Admin
• Education
• Emergency
• Health
• Parks
• Water
• Electricity
• Garbage
• Gas

For reference, here's SC4's breakdown:

• Landscape Tools
• Zone Tools
  • Residential
  • Commerical
  • Industrial
• Transportation
  • Roads
  • Highways
  • Rails
  • Misc (Buses, parking structures, tool booths, subways)
  • Airports
  • Water transport (Ferries)
• Utilities
  • Power
  • Water
  • Sanitation
• Civic
  • Police
  • Fire
  • Education
  • Hospitals
  • Landmarks
  • Rewards
  • Parks

And here's C:S's breakdown:

• Roads
• Zoning
• Districts
• Power
• Water
• Garbage
• Health
• Fire
• Police
• Education
• Transport
• Parks
• Unique
• Monuments
• Terraforming
• Economy
• Policies

I have a slightly different hierarchy in mind, so let me just write it down (and anyone else reading this, feel free to rearrange or add or remove anything to this list as needed; also, these are things that can be built, not so much things that have to be deployed, like an ambulance):

• Administration
  • City hall building can be found under here, as well as certain office buildings that work for the city (maybe offices for the utility companies)
• Landscaping (I'm gonna exclude this for now but I'll still make an icon)
• Roads and Transportation
  • Roads (could be subdivided by size)
  • Highways
  • Rail
  • Water
  • Air
• Mass Transit
  • Buses, taxis, and tram
  • Train
  • Subway
  • Monorail or high speed rail
  • Special transport(?)
    • Whatever C:S introduced
    • Restored steam locomotive (don't take this one too seriously; I've been watching too many train videos lately, though if you do take it seriously, think "scenic railroad")
• Zoning
  • Residential
  • Commercial
    • Commercial services (stores)
    • Tourism(?)
    • Commercial offices
  • Industrial
    • Standard industry or manufacturing (no specific specializations)
    • Agricultural
    • Mining and quarrying
    • Oil and natural gas
    • Forestry
  • Mixed
  • Specializations (if the specializations I listed are worthy of their own subcategories)
  • Districts
• Utilities
  • Electricity
  • Water
  • Gas(?)
• Waste management
  • Garbage and recycling
  • Sewage
• Services
  • Health
  • Fire
  • Police
  • Education
  • Parks
• Rewards'
  • Commemorative statues
  • Special parks

Another thing: I'm assuming the expenses for constructing, say, a new hospital is in part due to the cost of materials. If a city can supply, for example, its own concrete, could the construction cost drop since it doesn't have to buy concrete from outside and ship it all the way here?

[ww2commander 7]

When I was creating that UI mock-up, I didn't have any particular classification structure in mind. Rather I was trying to get a sense of how a 'scalable' menu system with classification tabs might work. I gather the lead developer would have the final say on any of this.

Something else to consider is whether mimicking a triple-A title UI helps or hinders modding? Most indie games have rough-as-guts UI systems that are actually quite intuitive and easy to customize (e.g. Rimworld). a dynamic UI with the ability to added and shuffle things around would be preferable rather than the limiting approach SC4 took (i.e no way to add another main type icon at the root level).

The UI questions that come to mind for me include:

1. How will the building classification system handle custom content (especially items that belong together as a set, but a sprinkled throughout various locations)? This was an annoyance of mine in SC4 when I have to find a key structure digging into one branch only to then go down a completely different branch to find the eye-candy parts.
2. How easily can classifications be modded to add new sub-branches that players may want to create for easier sorting?
3. How much branch 'diving' is deemed too much? SC4's approach could be frustrating as you dig into (sometime not intuitive) branches endlessly scrolling small icons, whereas C:S uses a somewhat flatter classification system which allows easier finding of custom content with nicer large icon.
4. How will KotCity building results actually be displayed? The assumption is that hundreds of custom buildings could be added and the use of descriptive buttons will not suffice long term.
5. At what point does the community consider and agree on 'standards' for custom content and how it should be categorized in the UI?

Also, its great seeing all this creative discussion by the community

[kotcity 110]

2 hours ago, velrox said:

the build is leading me to an older version.

also, the icons are so big that I can't even build anything. even resizing the window hid the icons.

You can always go here for our latest build: https://github.com/kotcity/kotcity/releases

I'm not sure what link you followed.

We will have a fix for smaller screens soon. We are rapidly iterating on our UI so please bear with us.

[kotcity 110]

2 hours ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

Another thing: I'm assuming the expenses for constructing, say, a new hospital is in part due to the cost of materials. If a city can supply, for example, its own concrete, could the construction cost drop since it doesn't have to buy concrete from outside and ship it all the way here?

We haven't implemented this. Our ploppables / zoning don't even cost anything yet. Good idea on the materials thing though. Maybe if the city has a certain amount of industry ploppables can be cheaper or construct faster.

[kotcity 110]

23 minutes ago, ww2commander said:

Something else to consider is whether mimicking a triple-A title UI helps or hinders modding? Most indie games have rough-as-guts UI systems that are actually quite intuitive and easy to customize (e.g. Rimworld). a dynamic UI with the ability to added and shuffle things around would be preferable rather than the limiting approach SC4 took (i.e no way to add another main type icon at the root level).

The UI questions that come to mind for me include:

1. How will the building classification system handle custom content (especially items that belong together as a set, but a sprinkled throughout various locations)? This was an annoyance of mine in SC4 when I have to find a key structure digging into one branch only to then go down a completely different branch to find the eye-candy parts.
2. How easily can classifications be modded to add new sub-branches that players may want to create for easier sorting?
3. How much branch 'diving' is deemed too much? SC4's approach could be frustrating as you dig into (sometime not intuitive) branches endlessly scrolling small icons, whereas C:S uses a somewhat flatter classification system which allows easier finding of custom content with nicer large icon.
4. How will KotCity building results actually be displayed? The assumption is that hundreds of custom buildings could be added and the use of descriptive buttons will not suffice long term.
5. At what point does the community consider and agree on 'standards' for custom content and how it should be categorized in the UI?

Also, its great seeing all this creative discussion by the community

All of these are very thought provoking but we have been so busy adding in the basics we haven't given much thought into the future. If moddability ends up being a problem I will delay this for 2.x. Of course, this being an open source game, technically you can mod absolutely anything!

[kotcity 110]

Cough cough

Smog!

What's that in my KotCity? Cough cough The streets of KotCity can now be filled with smog and other pollutants. I am finishing up this latest feature and then we'll be launching a new build. You'll have to carefully consider placement of busy roadways and major industrial centers because you can greatly affect how desirable zones are. Zones and roads generate pollution based on their activity that then diffuses through the city.

[catty-cb 4,413]

1 hour ago, ww2commander said:

....Most indie games have rough-as-guts UI systems that are actually quite intuitive and easy to customize (e.g. Rimworld). a dynamic UI with the ability to added and shuffle things around would be preferable rather than the limiting approach SC4 took (i.e no way to add another main type icon at the root level).....

Its one of the reasons I like Banished as the modders can alter the UI, it does require a bit of co-ordination between them as originally they were putting their mods in the various in-game menu categories like housing, etc and now they are redesigning the UI to have submenu's for each of the main modders then splitting it up by housing, etc ...  trying to remember which modder it was doing the canals or the castle walls or the waterfall took a bit of getting used to when it first came out but I think I prefer it now I've got used to it.

[LivingInThePast 364]

2 hours ago, ww2commander said:

When I was creating that UI mock-up, I didn't have any particular classification structure in mind. Rather I was trying to get a sense of how a 'scalable' menu system with classification tabs might work. I gather the lead developer would have the final say on any of this.

Something else to consider is whether mimicking a triple-A title UI helps or hinders modding? Most indie games have rough-as-guts UI systems that are actually quite intuitive and easy to customize (e.g. Rimworld). a dynamic UI with the ability to added and shuffle things around would be preferable rather than the limiting approach SC4 took (i.e no way to add another main type icon at the root level).

The UI questions that come to mind for me include:

1. How will the building classification system handle custom content (especially items that belong together as a set, but a sprinkled throughout various locations)? This was an annoyance of mine in SC4 when I have to find a key structure digging into one branch only to then go down a completely different branch to find the eye-candy parts.
2. How easily can classifications be modded to add new sub-branches that players may want to create for easier sorting?
3. How much branch 'diving' is deemed too much? SC4's approach could be frustrating as you dig into (sometime not intuitive) branches endlessly scrolling small icons, whereas C:S uses a somewhat flatter classification system which allows easier finding of custom content with nicer large icon.
4. How will KotCity building results actually be displayed? The assumption is that hundreds of custom buildings could be added and the use of descriptive buttons will not suffice long term.
5. At what point does the community consider and agree on 'standards' for custom content and how it should be categorized in the UI?

Also, its great seeing all this creative discussion by the community

I'm not in charge of UI (I think I've stated my piece on the dangers of being too abstract), but I think that your frustrations with SimCity 4 were from mods. If you cut out all your mods, you would find that your menus are quite manageable. When mods are involved, the single scrolling of items becomes endless, and modders often stick their items in weird places (like in Parks since Landmarks gets crowded otherwise). NAM vastly makes your transportation items extensive. On that matter...a lot of SimCity 4's problems with custom content was the designation of Landmark as a separate category. Originally, landmarks were created in SC3K as basically eye candy (or to lure the monster away), whether it be Statue of Liberty, the Great Pyramids, or 700 Louisiana (I include this one since I see it every workday... ) but in SimCity 4 they were changed to have jobs and effects. Still, plopping them all costs money. The idea should be that all that be done away with and have one "ploppable" menu, where any item can be placed and plopped for free, and then have that function as a residential/commercial/civic building, or whatever. Think the SCURK options in SimCity 2000, where you could put a million KSIM tv studios and drive-in theaters but they'd still function as commercial buildings (and then disappear almost as quickly since you had saved your file on African Swallow).

[ww2commander 7]

@Ganaram Inukshuk , I was just going through my old attachments on this site and found this from many years ago for a UI grouping system. Seems I was daydreaming UI stuff long before this thread!

My thinking was heavily influenced by SC4 at the time. Obvious things like managing deceased people are not a game mechanic before C:S

 

[ww2commander 7]

@LivingInThePast , Another approach might be to compliment the menu system with a tag search capability that shows results for a creator, building keyword or series name.

I don't see why this couldn't work on the basis content creators provide necessary keywords in their config files.

 

[kotcity 110]

24 minutes ago, ww2commander said:

Another approach might be to compliment the menu system with a tag search capability that shows results for a creator, building keyword or series name.

I don't see why this couldn't work on the basis content creators provide necessary keywords in their config files.

Brilliant! Like a "Google" of buildings! I'm definitely ripping this off...

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Hmm, good thing I ran out of ideas for the bottom icons.

Bottom row: Administration, landscaping, zoning (transportation, mass transit, utilities, sanitation, and civic services don't have proper icons yet)

From left to right, each column (from bottom to top) are:

• Roads, highways, rails, airports, seaports
• Buses, taxis, trams, trains
• Residential, commercial, industrial, mixed, farming, oil and natural gas, mining, forestry, offices
• Water, electricity, gas
• Garbage, sewage
• Health, fire, police, education, parks

The stray icon to the left could be used for dispatching emergency services.

I'll definitely be reorganizing this given the recent posts, but there's enough that makes the .SVG file worth sharing. Some of these icons, oddly enough, are from other projects, such as the toilet and the water/gas/fire icons, and I might even recycle the shovel from the image I linked in the word "toilet"

kotcity_icons.svg

[ww2commander 7]

1 minute ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

Hmm, good thing I ran out of ideas for the bottom icons.

Bottom row: Administration, landscaping, zoning (transportation, mass transit, utilities, sanitation, and civic services don't have proper icons yet)

From left to right, each column (from bottom to top) are:

• Roads, highways, rails, airports, seaports
• Buses, taxis, trams, trains
• Residential, commercial, industrial, mixed, farming, oil and natural gas, mining, forestry, offices
• Water, electricity, gas
• Garbage, sewage
• Health, fire, police, education, parks

I'll definitely be reorganizing this given the recent posts. Some of these icons, oddly enough, are from other projects, such as the toilet and the water/gas/fire icons, and I might even recycle the shovel from the image I linked in the word "toilet"

kotcity_icons.svg

Nice work. Some feedback....

• Would the wheels connected to the body of the vehicles make a difference?
• The train icon looks a bit like a boat on rails....at first glance I thought it was a maritime icon! Maybe have a single center hole like the US F-class trains and curve the roof edges a little.
• Maybe add a solid bottom bit to the tram icon so that it doesn't look similar to the bus....kinda thinking like a cowcatcher maybe.
• Possibly add slight waviness to the gas icon to make it look more like a flame as it still looks like a drop.
• I'm still uncertain as to the best icon for 'mixed' buildings. Building blocks seem to come to mind when I think about them! Maybe 3 blocks stacked with R,C,I on each instead of A,B,C?
• Should we entertain the idea of different industry types such as ore processing (steel I-beam symbol), crops (wheat symbol), high-tech (chip symbol)?
• Would canals be a modified maritime icon with walls on either side?
• Maybe a coffin or tombstone for mortuaries and graves?
• Is there any point in avoiding common icons such as the red cross for health and crucifix for religion as these don't translate easily in other parts of the world sometimes?  Thus why I went with the caduceus and obelisk in my mockup...I figured the less text, the easier language support.

[kotcity 110]

On another topic we had a user contribute a track and said they were working on some more. What do you guys think? Does this sound like KotCity music?

 

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

And refined... I think.

1 hour ago, ww2commander said:

Nice work. Some feedback....

• Would the wheels connected to the body of the vehicles make a difference?
• The train icon looks a bit like a boat on rails....at first glance I thought it was a maritime icon! Maybe have a single center hole like the US F-class trains and curve the roof edges a little.
• Maybe add a solid bottom bit to the tram icon so that it doesn't look similar to the bus....kinda thinking like a cowcatcher maybe.
• Possibly add slight waviness to the gas icon to make it look more like a flame as it still looks like a drop.
• I'm still uncertain as to the best icon for 'mixed' buildings. Building blocks seem to come to mind when I think about them! Maybe 3 blocks stacked with R,C,I on each instead of A,B,C?
• Should we entertain the idea of different industry types such as ore processing (steel I-beam symbol), crops (wheat symbol), high-tech (chip symbol)?
• Would canals be a modified maritime icon with walls on either side?
• Maybe a coffin or tombstone for mortuaries and graves?
• Is there any point in avoiding common icons such as the red cross for health and crucifix for religion as these don't translate easily in other parts of the world sometimes?  Thus why I went with the caduceus and obelisk in my mockup...I figured the less text, the easier language support.

Reconnected the wheels, un-boatified the train, used Toby the tram engine to help out with the rail vehicles, and added a few other icons as well. I might redo the gas icon again and the water icon I added (left side) will have to be redone also; I honestly don't know where to go with the gas one especially.

I tried out the RCI building block idea, but it's currently being use as a main category icon (bottom row).

I like having special icons for industrial specializations, and the wheat is a better idea than a farm (I already have an axe for forestry and a pickaxe that could be used for quarrying/mining); by extension, oil can be an oil drum, but what should offices be, and should tourism be its own commercial specialization?

I haven't gotten to graves just yet, but a coffin and tombstone are doable. I figured canals would be a subset of water transport (represented by the boat).

I went with the red cross symbol (technically a negative space cross here) since it was easier to draw; interestingly, the SC4 icon for hospitals is the same thing you used, so I may look at that for reference.

I did find another old pic of some icon work that I did on SC4, which (oddly enough) included a modified zoning icon. Here, it's far more refined and... flattened.

kotcity_icons.svg

[ww2commander 7]

Nice!

It does have that urban feel to it...atleast that's what comes to mind for me. The way it starts and ends feels like it represents a dawn to night cycle of gameplay

I can picture this playing whilst watching a video of a metropolis growing

 

[LivingInThePast 364]

1 hour ago, kotcity said:

On another topic we had a user contribute a track and said they were working on some more. What do you guys think? Does this sound like KotCity music?

I don't know if it fits KotCity as it stands now but it does very SC4-ish. Many years ago I remember someone had a "demo" of trying to make SC4-style music but it was just maybe 30 seconds of banging on a xylophone. SC4 music is pretty hard to describe, with SC2K the soundtrack was dark and moody (assuming you had a sound card, or a version that WASN'T the DOS version) whereas SC3k was more openly jazzy and upbeat. Fun fact: according to an interview, SimCity 2000's music was inspired off of Blade Runner, or at least that's what the heads wanted.

[velrox 39]

smog? can we have a tree-lined road? it will reduce smog. and we seen that there will be a new type of road after road. what it will be called? how much it will take up? will it need ramps? how expensive it is to build the new road?

[kotcity 110]

2 minutes ago, velrox said:

smog?

Yes!

3 minutes ago, velrox said:

can we have a tree-lined road?

No trees yet, but we do plan to have parks. I assume you mean tree-lined roads as in Cities: Skylines. I was just thinking parks but that is pretty low effort for me to add tree-lined roads. I may consider this for 1.x.

3 minutes ago, velrox said:

and we seen that there will be a new type of road after road. what it will be called? how much it will take up?

Great observation! The new road is one way road, which should be going out with 0.48 build in a few days, along with the pollution and a few other fixes / features. I haven't worked on costs yet -- you will notice the player has infinite money. Tweaking the economy is going to be a trial and error thing for us, to come after all the subsystems (health, schools, etc.) have been implemented. We are making great progress so far! I also have someone who joined the project that is working on trains right now, so you MAY see them in 0.48 but I am not sure.

[ww2commander 7]

Here's a WIP example at 1920x1080. Ignore the right side bar which is just a holding spot. Plenty of things still missing but I'm testing out ideas for a clean minimally intrusive UI.

Once again, all icons are just temporary to get a sense of functionality.

[Flat Raver 59]

Would it be a good idea to have an icon legend, i.e. a list of all the icons and what they're supposed to represent?

[ww2commander 7]

11 minutes ago, Flat Raver said:

Would it be a good idea to have an icon legend, i.e. a list of all the icons and what they're supposed to represent?

I'm assuming that there will be tool-tips appearing when hovering over elements.

Right now the left bar icons represent:

• Main Menu
• Options

        -----------

• Zoning (e.g. RCI, mixed)
• Administrative (e.g Education, Health, Fire, Police)
• Transport
• Utilities
• Parks & Recreation
• Tourism & Landmarks
• Terraforming Tools
• Building Tag Search
• Favorite Buildings (idea to allow players to pin fav buildings that appear in this list)

        ------------

• Query Tool
• Dezone Tool
• Bulldozer

As mentioned, alot of functionality is missing from that test example such as reports, graphs, ordinances, disaster buttons.