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Showing results for tags 'city building game'.
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A Build It Ourselves City Building Game Needs To Be Created
Badfish301 posted a topic in City-Building Games
Hi everybody, and sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, I just don't see a better forum to do so: I have been watching the Cities Skylines 2 stuff unfold, and I really feel like they have left the door wide open for the truly next-gen city building game- only I think it could be approached much differently. It would be mostly content created by the player base: Cities Skylines 2 is very good with road and rail networks, but pretty much everything else leaves a lot to be desired. There is no map editor right now, and no building editor, which are two of the main reasons the release hasn't gone well besides the performance problems. What I am hoping to see is a game where the content is mostly created by the player base. This would be almost an open-source city building game, which has the very nice road and rail fundamentals that we saw in Cities Skylines 2, but would have a map editor and building editor that would be the main focus of the game. This way, the creation of the building models and maps is farmed out to the player base who does it for free. The game is less expensive, but would grow explosively. The map creation tool should allow for the creation of the usual "flat" and squarish type maps we are used to, but also creation on a globe- where you can scale up and down the globe size. A globe type map where specific areas could be zoomed in on on a much, much larger scale world map would have many advantages: Trade distances could be much larger scale and more accurate and have more of a purpose. Travel infrastructure between disparate cities on the map would feel more important. Building a very long rail line to a far-away city for example would add a lot. Potentially multi-player maps where other players are involved on a much larger scale could be implemented. Different world biomes relating to the given settings and latitudes could become a thing. Basically, the game ships with the road and rail tools, map and building editor, but there is nothing else- Not one building from the beginning until someone uploads it. There would be a base-game city building simulation model, where services such as fire stations and police stations, schools and hospitals are needed for population growth, but the actual building models and statistics for those buildings (number of workers, building coverage, building influence etc.) everything else is created by the players in models they upload. The building editor: The building editor would be an in-house maybe block based building tool - or buildings could be imported using other 3d design software and that is the content that populates the game. It would be like the steam workshop, but you get to subscribe only to the building models you find interesting- low Poly, or just well thought out and compelling. This way, you populate the game only with user-created content (maybe some of your own) that you actually like, and don't have any of the bloat that you don't want and bad building models you don't want. People would have just as much fun designing buildings in the game editor to fit their particular city as they would playing the game. Imagine the diversity of building design that people would come up with. There is a person on this forum who has made some amazing models (well, there are a lot of people actually), but the models are just more architecturally interesting than what CO developed. Even the musical score could be created by the players, and it would be triggered by certain city-growth benchmarks, such as population growth, cultural growth, education, or industrial triggers. Think the music in the SNES version of SimCity- only more potential triggers for different musical styles. The City Growth Models- the underlying city simulation could also be altered and tailored by players to create more realistic city growth patterns and city growth simulations- There would be a base city-simulation, but it could be replaced with other models created by the playerbase to help simulate different countries and cities growth patterns. - European cities grow differently than American Cities- Asian Cities grow differently as well. There really isn't a city-building game like this that exists right now. Perhaps a decent comparison would be something like Minecraft almost (but not really), where the players create the content and you are just kind of provided with the UI and also the road, rail, sea, and air framework to populate your game the way you want. You can of course download mods as well to alter the game. Almost everything is user created though. The building and map upload areas would also have the option to tip the person who made the model or map, which would encourage people to try and do a really good job, and would incentivize people further to create content. Everything would be free to download as a rule, but with a tip optional. A percentage of the tip might go to whoever develops the underlying game infrastructure, with the content creator keeping most of it, or maybe the entire thing is open sourced. You could even download different water type brushes, water behavior models, trees, props.. basically anything and everything, and the sizes would be decided by the content creator. This probably should be built in Unreal Engine 5. The game just ships with the 3 basic things though - 1. The building editor, 2. the map editor, and 3. the basic city simulation model, road, rail and the UI. What are your thoughts on this?- 15 Replies
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Anyone who's been reading my U.I.E. city journal entries may have seen reference to my empire's Martian colony, Industria Planitia - something that I have (occasionally) worked on in Surviving Mars, published by the same folks who publish Cities: Skylines - one of the radio stations I listen to fairly often in Skylines (when not using the music mod to listen to the soundtracks to SimCity 3000, 4, Societies, etc.) is the "Official Mars Radio" they gave out a while back as a sort of tie-in. Which begs the question: Does the greater community here consider it to be a "city-builder" game, or would it be considered more akin to an RTS or some such? (I'm asking primarily because I am considering adding pictures from the colony to the U.I.E. city journal, heh heh.)
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A list of modern city and global civilization builder games
nuyokcity posted a topic in City-Building Games
Hello, I have compiled a list here of the SimCity series and related games, including the more famous ones as well as independent projects and links to various other related games. Please feel free to mention any relevant games and link this post to other SimCity forums as I will be updating this list over time. Some of the games in the list I found in the forums here. My goal is to make a sort of archive list of any modern city builder games so if you are looking for something older, newer, different, similar, etc you can use this list as a reference. I also recommend checking out the Mobygames database - here is a list of city builder games, merchant/trade builder games and transportation network builder games. If you are into ancient and medieval city building games I have also posted a similar topic in the Heavengames forums here and a copy of that thread as well as a thread of linked threads in the City Builder Games forums here. The list below will contain games from any modern city building genre, as long as there is some kind of minimal amount of building involved. There are a bunch of independent modern city builder games so there is a lot of potential for a new SimCity sequel or new type of game, whether done in a classic 2d style or 3d style, either developed by a big company or independently. One promising example of independent development is the ancient military rts game 0AD, which can be interpreted as a remake of Age of Empires but in 3d, more historically realistic and the game will be fully moddable - so it seems there are still ways that the rts and city building game genres can evolve. Maybe creating a game engine, code, or game that could be custom modded is possible at this point after over a couple decades of various city builders. A game where people could modify the setting to include various modern urban settings such as a pre-Industrial age, early Industrial age, modern age, various post-Industrial age settings, alternate histories, scifi, alien, fantasy and alternate/"what if" past, present, and future settings would be interesting. A recent example of a futuristic scifi/fantasy city-building game is Anno 2070 which is included below. I have added some games in this list which are not directly related to modern city building. For example the Rise of Nations and Empire Earth series are military rts games, but they feature a modern age setting either in an age-progression or standalone-age game. I also added Spore and related games and programs to this list because they are and expanded version from city to global scale building. So I felt it would be interesting to include it here as it might open up some possibilities for new game finds and ideas. As some know, the final Spore game came out to be different from the 2005 video demo, so there is still untapped potential in the genre of biological simulation and global civilization building games. Modern city building games: SimCity (1984, 1993) Utopia: The Creation of a Nation (1991) SimCity 2000 (1993) SimCity 2000 Collection (1993) SimCity Classic (1994) SimTown (1995) Constructor (1997) Infustry Giant (1998) Mob Rule (1999) SimCity 3000 (1999) SimCity 3000 Unlimited (2000) Tropico (2001) Industry Giant 2 (2002) Atlantis Underwater Tycoon (2003) Tropico 2: Pirate Cove (2003) SimCity 4 (2003) SimCity 4: Rush Hour (2003) Locomotion (2004) Geniu$: The Tech Tycoon Game (2005) Genius: Biology (2005) City Life (2006) Deep Sea Tycoon: Diver's Paradise (2006) Tycoon City: New York (2006) City Life (2006) SimCity Societies (2007) City Life: World Edition (2007) City Life Edition 2008 (2007) SimCity Societies: Destinations (2008) Cities XL (2009) Tropico 3 (2009) Eco Tycoon: Project Green (2009) Plan It Green (2009) Cities XL 2011 (2010) Cities In Motion (2011) Anno 2070 (2011) Cities XL 2012 (2011) Tropico 4 (2011) SimCity (2013) Cities In Motion 2 (2013) Banished (2014) 1849 (2014) Evopollution (2014) Tropico 5 (2014) Cities Skylines (2015) Cities XXL (2015) The Architect (?) Factorio (?) Outer space colony builder games: Outpost (1994) Outpost 2 (1997) Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) Space Colony (2003) Space Colony HD (2010) Maia (2013) Spacebase DF9 (2014) PeriAreion (2015) Unclaimed World (2015) Offworld Trading Company (2015) Colonisation: Moonbase (?) Shackleton Crater (Cancelled/?) Other urban modelling programs: CityEngine (2008) CityScape (2008) IBM CityOne (2010) Enodo (2010) ArchTech (2012) Independent mods and games: Transport Tycoon (1995) LinCity (1999) Simutrans (1999) Open TTD (2004) LinCity NG (2005) ElectroCity(2007) City Empires (2007) My Virtual City (2007) City of Rauma (2007) MyMiniCity (2007) Micropolis (2008) Virtual City (2009) OpenCity (2009) VirtuCity (2009) SimCity Deluxe Gold (2011) Subversion (2011?, unreleased) Untitled project by Fritzpoll (?) Creatopolis (?) Cities of World (?) Utopia Unlimited (?) FreeTrain (?) SimMars (?) City Builder (?) Synekism (?) Urbs Urbis (?) Simtropolis 1000 (?) The Metropolis Project (?) ProjectCB (?) (?) (?) (?) (?) SimCity 5: Boomtown (?) Main Street MMO: Real Cities in Realtime 3D (?) Civitas (Cancelled, ?) (?) (?) Citybound (?) Other related modern age setting games: Rise of Nations (2003) Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots (2004) Empire Earth (2001) Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest (2002) Empire Earth 2 (2005) Empire Earth 2: The Art of Supremacy (2006) Other city builder and economic game series: A-Train series Stronghold series Anno series Patrician series Settlers series Alien Nations series Cultures series Port Royale series Tropico series SimCity series Impressions City Builder series Tilted Mill City Builder series Various ancient Roman city builder games Medieval Lords: Build, Defend, Expand Various merchant and trade-oriented games Spore series and other planet management sims: SimEarth: The Living Planet (1990) The Game of Life (1992) SimEverything (1994, unreleased early Spore version) Evolution: The Game of Intelligent Life (1997) Star Wars: Episode I - The Gungan Frontier (1999) L.O.L.: Lack of Love (2000) WorldKit (2003?, unreleased) Spore (2005, unreleased early version) Spore (2008) Spore: Creepy and Cute Parts Pack (2008) Spore: Creature Creator (2008) Spore: Galactic Adventures (2009) Untitled independent Spore-like game (?) Bowshock (?) The Universim (?) Civilization series Various biological simulation games Various Spore-like games Other biological simulation programs: Avida (1993) Various digital organism simulators Various evolution simulation programs Other virtual globe programs: Celestia (2001) Stellarium (2001) Nasa Worldwind (2004) Google Earth (2005) Earthsim (2005) Earthsim 2 (2010) 3d Planet (2011) Related websites, forums, game and mod links: SimCity official website Simtropolis SimCity 4 Devotion SimCity Forever SimCity Central SimCity Forum SimCity Societies Forum at Tilted Mill SimCity Forum at SkyscraperCity SimCity at City Data Forum Timeline of Sim games at Game Informer City Builder Games Forum Game Mod Database Indie Game Database City Building Games at Wikia City Building Games at Wikipedia Chronology of City Building Games at Wikipedia Mobygames Videogame Database and Forum List of related rts and city builder projects and discussions: - 0 AD (2000, ?) - an ancient military rts game, sort of a Age of Empires 3d "remake" but better, is open for game testing and and will have the option for custom modding. - Glest (2004) - is a game engine for fantasy rts games. - Zero-K (2010) - is an open source futuristic military rts game. Related thread lists These game lists have been cross posted on related gaming forums: A list of ancient city builder games here, here Also see: A list of fantasy and sci-fi rts and city builder games here, here, here So some options for new city builder games may be the following: - mod the existing games in some ways such as the many SimCity 4 mods for something different - research existing and past attempts at independent games that weren't completed and use some of the data if allowed and/or work on completing them - create new games independently from scratch which will take time if funds and talent is limited, but is certainly possible - it's up to gamers to post on various forums, social networks, and game mod websites to generate interest and potential collaborations - ideally an open source version of a city building game can be made where anyone can go in and mod it to add any historical time periods and civilizations or completely new settings, including ancient, medieval, pre-industrial, modern, post-industrial, alternate history, fantasy, scfi, alien, custom, any specific historical time/culture/location, etc.- 35 Replies
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