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Showing results for tags 'indie games'.
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I'm creating a new city-building game with a powerful Building Creator tool
pedroseabramedeiros posted a topic in City-Building Games
Hi everyone, For many, many years I visited Simtropolis regularly, always hoping for that one announcement: “SimCity 5 is coming!” Like many of you, I was deeply inspired by SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 — and like some of you, I was also disappointed by the direction the franchise took afterward. For years, I dreamed of a game that could bring back that spark... and now, I'm trying to build it myself. I'm an architect by profession and a long-time fan of city-building games. Last year, I finally decided to take the leap and start creating my own game — CityArchitect. It’s a city-building game with a unique focus: not only do you design the layout of the city, but you also design the architecture of each individual building, using a powerful modular tool inspired by SimCity 3000’s Building Architect Tool — but far more flexible and easier to use. You can mix real architectural styles (from historical to modern), combine façade elements, roofs, terraces, and decorative pieces, and create highly customized buildings that still harmonize with the city’s overall aesthetic. The game is still in development, but I’ve just launched the Steam page and plan to release an early test version later this year. This first version will focus on the building creation tool and allow you to create small city blocks and place your custom buildings in them. The full city simulation is still in progress — but it's evolving every week. I’d love to hear your feedback, especially from people here who truly understand the legacy and magic of SimCity. You can also follow the development on Instagram at @play.cityarchitect . It would mean a lot if you could wishlist the game on Steam — it really helps spread the word! Thanks for reading — and thank you, Simtropolis, for being such an important part of my inspiration all these years. Let me know what you think!- 52 Replies
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There are no fewer than 5 indie games under development designed to let the player build skyscrapers: Project Highrise, Block'hood, IsoTower, Skylimit Tycoon, and Cloud City, and they inspired me to start back up on OcramTower in a way with minimal overlap with them. Here is a breakdown of the games (listed in approximated chronological order until release): Block'hood is an arcology builder/simulator with a Minecraft-esque appearance and strong ecological focus. It released on March 10. I describe it as a puzzle game where resource supplies are supposed to be balanced. Project Highrise has its own thread. Long story short, a high quality SimTower clone with a 1960s Chicago style/theme and campaigns/events was found to be so promising that Kalypso picked up the title. IsoTower is the labour of love of a lone developer (Todd B). It used HD isometric graphics before being rebuilt but has a better simulation now, an Art Deco themed UI, and the next major release will be available soon enough. The developer is diligent and hard-working and posts updates seemingly daily on facebook. Skylimit Tycoon is a full 3D tower simulator with modding tools completed already (to make content creation easier for the developers) with a ton of fun new features but still in the early Alpha stage. Cloud City is sort of like a dystopian SimTower with full 3D graphics (but only 1 layer like classic SimTower). OcramTower's environment is similar to that of Project Highrise because it is vector based and it will feature a classic view. Its construction is done slice by slice, however, OcramTower will have depth, making it functionally similar to multiple highrises in a row if played in Classic View. The most useful (besides multi-floor problems like checking of which floors have utilities and how well elevators work) view will be Top-Down View, which will look similar to architectural drafts of floor plans (in color, with changes from people in real time). Top-down view will be freely rotatable because of the ease of such transformations on SVG. Classic View and Isometric View will only have zoom (which stay sharp at all resolutions and levels of zoom) and will need different graphics for every angle (4 isometric angles) and slice (most rooms are 2 slices deep, hallways are 1 slice deep, the biggest room will be 10 slices). One slice is 4 meters deep, one tile is 1 meter wide, one storey is 3.9 meters tall (including space between floors). OhTees cannot move through rooms besides rare exceptions (like public amenities), which means you must either build hallways or leave unfinished floor space between rooms. Better elevators will unlock with higher star levels and eventually time. My goal is to make--at first--a functionally 3D Yoot Tower clone with 2D SVG graphics (rendered as PNG below) and evolve it into a campaign to become the most powerful real estate magnate in the world by manipulating markets and politics using your vast wealth, influence, and business skills. So far, I have a dead-end prealpha 3, new art, and handwritten code snippets and flowcharts for prealpha 4. 1 Bedroom Apartment top-down view 1 Bedroom Apartment classic view 2 Bedroom family condo top-down view Fast Coffee Shop (this unlocks from the get-go, luxury cafes unlock at 3 stars) Office Reception Room top-down (low-rent occupants)
