Badfish301

Here are a few more models from the AI:

At 3:20 in the above video- You can upload an image and it will create a 3d model from it - Could be huge for building models.

This is from the subreddit AI SimCity: https://www.reddit.com/r/aisimcity/ These building models are just fantastic, the design, scale, feel, adornments etc. Too bad models can't be generated directly like these images- the Holiday Victorian houses are spectacular, and the skyscrapers are so sleek too.. Now that's a game I want to play for the rest of time.. those models are just so good. They could at least be used as inspiration for modelers.

Those are some great building models- They used AI as the inspiration, and then manually built them? Do you have a link to their post on Reddit by any chance? Some of those industrial buildings look fantastic.. and like the gothic skyscraper and other skyscrapers, very nice.

What justifies a new game is that graphics, and road /rail tools have improved dramatically since SimCity 4. As much as I love SC4 I can't go back because of the road building now/lack of true 3d. SimCity 4 was my favorite city builder of all time, but the lack of better road tools is what holds it back now. SimCity 4 definitely had the best "city growth" model out there where you had to work hard to get the very tall buildings and there was a lot of sprawl- across maps even, which was great, because you got a good sense of scale. Cities Skylines never really got the scale right - because they were simulating too much (but not simulating the right things- teeth instead of a city growth model) - and skyscrapers would appear all over the place with hardly any work on the player's part. What is the point? The fact that so many important buildings need to be "Plopped" also ruined the game - the size and scale of most of these buildings was much too large- and placing the most significant skyscrapers kind of defeated the entire purpose of the game. Growing the tallest skyscrapers is what makes a game fun, plopping them defeats the purpose in my opinion. Plopping tall buildings to me is kind of cheating and pointless. A city game is about the challenge of developing services and infrastructure to the point of getting the buildings to grow taller, getting areas to become very wealthy etc.. That's where skylines 1 and 2 missed the plot. Getting a Pedriana Pharamaceuticals to grow or equivalent in just the spot you had planned it was so enjoyable. FYI- There was a good indy city builder game called "New City" that did a pretty good job simulating height and city growth recently, but it stopped getting updated. Its graphics weren't great either, which unfortunately is a bit of a deal breaker in a city game where graphics actually do matter. I just posted another thread about how AI probably could be used to create a huge number of building models fairly quickly- generally AI is good at creating city-specific models too, so that could be a huge time saver. If you could create a procedural generation method like CityState Metropolis is trying to do that would be the best, but having a lot of good building models would be fine to. I just keep hoping some people from the old Maxis Emeryville come back, using the new tools we have and create a SimCity 2030 (SimCity 5). Good luck with your game, if you make it- seems like a lot of work, but can never have too many city builders - especially if they are a builder/simulator and not a building plopper.

Hi Everybody, Not sure where to post this, and I know everybody hates AI (I generally am not a fan). I have noticed that AI is really good at creating realistic building models though. How hard would it be for AI to create a whole bunch of building models- you could ask it to create a range of New York Style buildings, or Boston style rowhouses etc. It seems like it is really good at understanding architecture styles and creates some very nice looking buildings. I guess you would have to have it create them in a 3d render program somehow. Has anyone been working on this for importing building models into city building games? Seems like a huge time saver, and could create a lot of variety.

I just found the Dev Diary on Citystate Metropolis- not that many entries, but interesting material and it gives some insights on how this game will work: https://www.citystategame.com/post/citystate-metropolis-development-update-and-first-screenshots What is interesting is he isn't going for individuals being simulated at the person level, like was done in Cities Skylines 2, but is focusing on the building/ house level being the simulated part, and agents are just kind of a result of those structures. So basically the level of simulation is a bit more abstracted, but this was in order to have much larger cities. Some people are going to like this, others won't. For me, I think it's a good thing, because the level of simulation was too high in Cities Skylines 1 and 2 that it slowed down the game for larger cities. Another thing that was confirmed is that any odd-shaped lot can be fully filled in, they are vector-based, and residential, commercial and industrial buildings are procedurally generated. I wasn't sure if it was just residential, but it's all buildings. Also, the last dev-blog is from February of this year- but in it he said the game will be released in early access sometimes in September and November of 2025.. So, it could be released in early access this month, or next month (this stuff usually takes longer than people realize with scope creep though) and I have heard Q1 2026 for early access in some videos more recently.

A new (short) video showing some of the new vehicles in the game. Airplane definitely looks good, some nice high-speed train shots:

City Planner Plays always makes games look better than they are in my opinion, but an interesting video by him regarding this game. The way plots are developed is interesting (and they are vector based plots), the way plots grow appears to be a big upgrade from previous city building games.

So, there's another city building game coming out, this time by the creator of Citystate and Citystate II - I have to be honest, never bought any of the previous games (and likely won't buy this one either). The previous city-state games had a lot of very rich, tropical homes, and super rich looking skyscrapers. Looks like this one is similar, in that there are a lot of very rich people.. maps always look kind of tropical. Some new stuff is shown though- looks like buildings are drawer procedurally (at least some of them) which is very nice. The building growth model also is the first time I have seen a building grow floor by floor, which is nice. Road layout looks pretty good, but again way too many skyscrapers for city size, and some other kind of goofy stuff, doesn't seem like a good simulation really.

Oops, I thought it would start from the beginning, but guess I had a time-stamp in the link, sorry about that. Yeah, the graphics look really good and landscapes seem very realistic. I like the node-based maps. I am not sure how water level works in the game, or if they can get rivers to flow- that's my only big worry.. They say they are trying to make modding very easy., so turning it into more of a city builder seems possible (maybe add parks and stuff). I have a feeling when modders get their hands on it, it can be turned into more of a city-builder by adding some features. As it is, cities do grow due to player decisions, and roads can be laid, but the city builder side is a bit restricted and has to do mostly with what is delivered to cities and how well they are connected to transportation over other factors.

So, borderline "city builder" but growing a city is part of the game, so I posted it here. Game looks very promising, kind of like an advanced Transport Tycoon.. The buildings were pretty good in Transport Fever 2 also. You can build roads that do have buildings grow near them, so there is that. - Custom height maps can be imported to re-create real life areas. - 4 Different biome types can be used and all can be on the same map. - Node based maps create more realistic landscapes. I personally really like the graphics, and seems like the developers have a new game engine also which should improve performance vs. TF2. Looking forward to this one personally.

Honestly, there is just no chance this game can be fixed well enough to be good now. This thing is a total write-off. They haven't allowed custom buildings after this long- there's no way they fix the underlying simulation issues and memory hog problems. The game is just an unstable piece of trash. Like you said- it can be made to look ok at certain angles, but generally looks sharp/weird and not right. The city simulation is horrible- super tall skyscrapers for tiny area cities.. they think that's cool and exciting, but it's not. Plopping the largest buildings- I always said this was a bad idea, and it turned out it was. Building growth- again, a crane shows up and a building just appears.. come on. They couldn't care less about how a city actually grows it appears. Super tall buildings just out of nowhere.. no city center effect.. no really good or bad parts to the city from the growth models.. just generic looking garbage buildings and a ton of body incinerators. The zoning mechanic is horrible. The only redeeming qualities are the road and rail layout, and that's literally it. Like you said - the base maps are just horrible- it's as if a small child created them.. and not a smart small child, like one that doesn't give a crap. They had so much time to make this game better than the first one, and besides being slightly graphically better, it is worse in many ways- including the map editor, water, no custom buildings, super huge downloads for the regional packs that seem to break/not download right. We need another company to take over, because CO just tried to mail this one in as a cash-grab after showing everyone a trailer made in Unreal Engine 5. I have no respect for this company, and actually don't like them now, because we get so few City Building game releases and they took the market share, discouraging others from making a good city building game akin to something we actually wanted in the first place.

Looks pretty good. Very impressive you did this all by yourself! I am going to say a few things, and I hope you don't take them the wrong way, I would love to see this game succeed: I am worried about a few things here: 1. We need 30 degree and 45 degree roads (know you said you were working on 45, but really we also need 30 degree roads). Without them I can't get behind it this game. That's what ruined CityState - even though the graphics were good etc. only 90 degree roads is an instant no from me. 2. It doesnt appear as though roads can be elevated, which would be restrictive and really hurt the game. Are there bridges/tunnels planned? 3. On your Steam page it looks like the city is being plopped. I am not really seeing a simulation and buildings are being edited on the fly. I would prefer the building editing tool to be separate from the game, and assets can be selected for play in certain games, but not editing during the game if this makes sense. Buildings should grow, not be plopped/edited by the player in the game. Procedural floor growth would be absolutely fantastic, but should be part of the simulation. 4. Is the map just kind of blank in the beginning and you add onto it? I would prefer maps that are all there in the beginning. 5. Looks like a similar mistake that was made in Cities Skylines- where there are way too many tall buildings for a city that isn't that large. I would be very careful to have enough urban and medium density sprawl before taller skyscrapers start appearing. This of course means maps should be fairly large, or like in SimCity4 where regions can be built from maps. The best thing about your game here though is it seems like you're trying to have the player base build the buildings. Is there a way to share the buildings with other players and allow people to download them? I feel like you should just create the framework and editing tools- the zoning types etc. and the player base can make most of the models for you (even though your building models look very good)- you have some base models, but that should be the game mostly- other people creating and uploading their own attributes. Ideally- building growth is procedural, and by floor- so you could have many different buildings created out of say 3 different floor types... or 1, or more.. you already kind of have that modeled it appears, just not the procedural growth part. Good luck with this, but I think the road angles and flexibility will be your biggest hurdle.

Not only does it crash a lot and take a very long time to download regional packs and then constantly re-download things every time you re-start a game (why do it this way?) The main problems I have with it are the zoning, lack of procedural generation, lack of city simulation, and the graphics are just awful. Its hard to make the cities look nice with the strange eyesore graphics that have jagged angles and just look weird at most of the more zoomed out play distances. I really wish Maxis would come back for another one now that we have better game engines etc. (but they can't try and pull the online-always thing again, which is ironically now another reason CS2 to be a big failure) files need to be downloaded 1 time, stored locally on the hard drive.. no more of this "mods are downloading" thing every time the game loads. Whoever makes the next City Building game also needs to employ a few city planners/ geographers and urbanists who understand how cities grow.. CS2 completely missed the mark.