Transportation, Transportation, Transportation....

[Forkboy]

Wow...I just found out about Societies tonight and have spent the last hour or so looking at screenshots and reading through some of the forums. I get the feeling the transportation network has been completely removed in favor of 3D graphics. Please tell me Societies is not going to be limited to 2 lane roads with fake traffic.

The transportation network is THE HEART of the Sim City series. You can't have a Sim City title without freeways, boulevards and traffic jams.

Has there been any mention from the developers or screenshots that show more than boring 2-lane roads??

Matt

[DonMikimax]

Don't worry, this is not new SC5, this is SC:S for The Sims fans and other kids.

[Kenta]

I agree. This's not SimCity 5. It's Sim City Soceities. When I see the screenshots on gamespot, I think i'm seeing screenshot of RCT3 :D. So it looks good. But SCS seems it don't have style of SC. SCS have new gameplay, it focus into soceity, culture and more.
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2007/164/939939_20070613_screen002.jpg

[Forkboy]

Don't worry, this is not new SC5, this is SC:S for The Sims fans and other kids.

So is there going to be a REAL SC5? Sure doesn't seem like it.

Matt

[NappySick]

So long as we got one type of road thats something to work on with the custom content editor to create more types of network .

[MarkDuffy]

Wow...I just found out about Societies tonight and have spent the last hour or so looking at screenshots and reading through some of the forums.

Welcome to our family, Forkboy! :)

I get the feeling the transportation network has been completely removed in favor of 3D graphics.

I wouldn't make that assumption.

Please tell me Societies is not going to be limited to 2 lane roads with fake traffic.

Consider yourself told.

EDIT: Discalimer ~ I have no idea, except for knowing what TM is capable of from past experience playing their games.

[NappySick]

No mark, SCS will not be limited , GFW says SCS will have a content editor only a matter of time before someone makes a 12 lane highway .

[MarkDuffy]

No mark, SCS will not be limited , GFW says SCS will have a content editor only a matter of time before someone makes a 12 lane highway .

GFW is out? Man-o-man, I'm waaay behind on my Googlying! :o

[Azeem]

So far, we've only seen roads in the pic. Here's hoping that there will actually be MORE transportation types. No offense TM, but having just roads just isn't exciting. ;)

At the very least, there should be at the very least a bus system (to get sims to work before they start getting upset enough to riot! :eek: ) and a rail system. Airports and seaports are definite musts for a major city as well.

ARGHH! When are you Tilted Millers going to tell us about transportation??? Do I have to use my "evil teacher" methods to get you to talk? :p

[Cirugo]

Gotta agree with you. I can live without the power and the water pipes but if the blocky roads I've seen are it for transportation then forget it.

[offspring_dude]

I agree. This's not SimCity 5. It's Sim City Soceities. When I see the screenshots on gamespot, I think i'm seeing screenshot of RCT3 :D. So it looks good. But SCS seems it don't have style of SC. SCS have new gameplay, it focus into soceity, culture and more.
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2007/164/939939_20070613_screen002.jpg
It's definately more like a theme park game. Why not just call it Sim city sims theme park world tycoon?

[Romaq]

Yay! I found how to ignore spammers from my control panel! Anyway, I’m hoping an open ended system of transit is in place, and they are simply working on game mechanics. Raw SC4 transit is painful in some aspects, but NAM 2007 changed the options. Mind you, I don’t want to wait four years from SC5's release for monorails, subways, trains, light-rail and elevated rail. But the NAM is a killer upgrade to SC4, and I’m hoping the ability to ‘NAM’ SC5 makes it into the final release.

EDIT:

I'll extend this post rather than bumping the thread.

I've finally seen http://media.pc.ign.com/media/925/925931/vids_1.html and here are my thoughts regarding transit issues with SC5:

It appears transit is key to moving sims between jobs, venues and homes, and transit could possibly be a major ‘cheat’ within the game.

In SC4 you can really only be concerned with the basics of where sims live and where they go to work. I am guessing, but I *think* it’s the reason ‘plopable homes’ were forbidden within the game engine (they always dilapidate eventually, no matter what). Venues, such as shopping, landmarks and entertainment were simply a means to increase residential value or commercial/ industrial job value. Otherwise, SC4 has no concept of ‘where sims go play after work’ as part of the transit network. Well, now knowing where Sims play is a crucial element of the game.

Transit is a crucial element of the game now. You do not want sims driving home drunk from bars. A ‘good’ public transit system will allow you to keep your bars from your residential areas and counter the negative effects these have on your residents. In real life, many who work where I do at the industrial plant actually live many miles away north of even Ferndale. High speed rail would make those folks very VERY happy, as they can work and shop here in Bellingham, and then head far away from here. I’m one who wants high-speed rail all the way up to Heather Meadows (a ski resort near Mt. Baker). The means with which TM resolves transit balance in the box will have a drastic impact upon gameplay, and not necessarily a desirable effect, at least from the perspective of *their* point of the game in showing ‘social energies’.

Transit ‘cheats’ could have more impact than ‘money cheats’ in SC5. We use ‘money cheats’ in SC4 to kick off having to deal with budget considerations which drive the game, and purists howl about how the use of ‘cheats’ should be discouraged, and the game should be played ‘right.’ The ability to have a rapid transit network between happy homes and high-paying industrial centers could well make any other form of ‘cheating’ within the game irrelevant.

And thus… TM is going to measure every drop of sweat that goes into transit, at least the release that goes into the box, regardless of how people whine, beg and howl about it.

--Romaq

[NitC]

unfortantly, transportation networks dont seam to be in the game, there are avenues, dirt roads, and avenues with stone, ect on them, but the thing i dont get is WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS, DONT THEY LOOK ON THE FANSITES?

[Romaq]

I'm sure they do look at the fansites. I'm equally sure they *have* to be more careful about transit issues with SC5 than the Maxis Dev team needed to be with SC4 because of the way game dynamics of SC5 have been explained. I'm also *also* sure that they still have two more business quarters in which to provide details on transit after they've worked out game balance issues.

Public transit isn't cheap. Light rail/ monorail much less cheap. Seattle Light Rail (http://www.lightrailnow.org/news/n_sea002.htm) has been discussed for a long long time, with many millions of dollars spent without one track of rail ever being laid.

The Chicago 'L' is pretty prominent in that area, but http://www.chicago-l.org/history/4line.html shows that the 'L', too, had an expensive, messy history. The New York subway history is messy and expensive. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway). All that pain goes away in SC4 with something like the NAM and cheats that let us build what transit we want, where we want, including ‘road top mass transit (RTMT) mods.

The problem with Mass Transit in SC5, as I see it, is that you *might* be able to place buildings and transit in just such a way as to make ‘social energies’ largely irrelevant. Many people, myself included, would cheer at the thought. But transit has a significant impact on game play, and I strongly suspect that’s why we may not see transit issues frozen for another few months. And what isn’t yet frozen, TM really *really* does not want to talk about. Sorry, that’s just the reality of contractual agreements and game development dynamics. http://www.gdmag.com/homepage.htm is an excellent read. For $3.95 you can get a ‘digital download’ of GD’s October 2004 issue with the following article:

The Art of the Game Deal
By Jamil Moledina
Startup publisher Myelin's Gene Mauro and independent developer Tilted Mill's Chris Beatrice come clean on how they circled the party and finally hooked up.

This may be insightful into Chris Beatrices’s personality, his relationship with EAGames and insight into the development of SCS. Or it could be a waste of four bucks and some time. But my time in working on NMC development (http://nmc.limitless.org/) has me pretty well convinced that even the most simple things to an enduser of a system are not necessarily so simple to *implement* when you are the one building the code.

Give TM a chance to ‘freeze’ transit and show us what they have in mind. While waiting on them to freeze, why not clearly explain specific goals you have with transit issues and give them a chance to consider freezing your ideas into the features list?

--Romaq

[Forkboy]

Give TM a chance to ‘freeze’ transit and show us what they have in mind. While waiting on them to freeze, why not clearly explain specific goals you have with transit issues and give them a chance to consider freezing your ideas into the features list?

--Romaq

I hope you're right, but it sure doesn't look like they have any big plans for transit. As for modding, I doubt you'll be able to do anything as complex as creating a freeway system or rail system out of nothing.

I almost get the feeling that TM was working on a city builder for a year and then the folks at EA found out about it and thought "Hey, why don't we cut a deal with TM and brand it as the next Sim City game."

Maybe if sales are good, we'll get some better transit options in Sim City Societies 2 in 2011.

Matt

[Romaq]

Yup. I know. Until we hear more on Transit, we have some really... grid-bound road options. And every time you encounter elevation changes, grid-bound roads do not work so very well. Maybe if sales are good, transit won't be considered an issue worth spending budget on. We really won't know what they were thinking until the Post Mortem comes out in GD Mag, presuming one does. Or perhaps we can get some clarification relatively soon. I had to take a drive out to McDonalds at Mikaela’s request for specific food she wanted. At 2am, the only viable McDonalds is on State Street. The only reasonable way to get there is by I-5 from north of Bellis Fair. I can’t think of cities of any significance that do not have some form of highway through or alongside them. The Demos had nothing on that scale, but at least we did see a bridge… that sorta looked like every other road paved across water.

Well, we won’t know what all is in the can until it’s pretty much all in the can, unfortunately. I hope to see more options also.

Meanwhile, however, we can consider what potential problems transit options in SC4 would have with SC5’s ‘societies’ model, and how those problems could be overcome. Perhaps we could offer something constructive for TM. Or… maybe we could go llama bowling instead. J

One transit option I was toying with in SC4 wasn’t so much a transit option at all, but a Sci-Fi ‘gate.’ One that would function like a high capacity residential building and another that functioned like high capacity commercial. What you might *see* would be a stream of people traveling to and from ‘Trans-Dimensional Gates’. And thus you explain *THAT* is where all the sims come from. Unfortunately, plopable residential simply doesn’t work in SC4. But as a ‘fake transit system’, the concept is pretty cool. I could end up simply creating various levels of gates, all exactly alike, and plop-replop a new gate to suit commercial demand without the gate abandoning. It would make for a cool CJ, I would think.

Part of the wonder of SimCity is from the stories you can play out, even if you never trouble yourself to make a CJ out of it. Those stories sure will suck without some transit options, though.

--Romaq

[SC COMMUNITY IS POWER]

Look at those cities - their size doesnt need nothing more then 2-line roads with fake traffic to connect buildings in them.

[Techleo]

I think as long as they keep the basic concept of demands in the game people will be satisfied. The traffic model doesnt have to be all that complicated. Bigger cities need bigger roads. Los Angeles just wouldnt be LA without the Highways. Im not saying we need buses or anything to complicated. Just something equivalent to the first simcity.

Trains for long trips which wouldnt be reasonable and for industry. Roads for inner city. Highways for between cities. That simple.

[simcity5_orbust]

I agree. This's not SimCity 5. It's Sim City Soceities. When I see the screenshots on gamespot, I think i'm seeing screenshot of RCT3 :D. So it looks good. But SCS seems it don't have style of SC. SCS have new gameplay, it focus into soceity, culture and more.
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2007/164/939939_20070613_screen002.jpg


This may not have the style of a Simcity game, but there ARE societies that are based on forms of tranportation!

You look at Nome, Alsaka, they completely DEPEND on two kinds of transportation more than any kind of road, their huge fishing ships, and their railroad into Canada. You look at towns in Switzerland, and Sweden, and most European cities, they rely on rail systems to get themselves across Europe, the don't use the Highway as much as they used to.

For Tilted Mill to reduce tranportation to just some road with too few cars and nothing else, feels like they aren't trying to make their game what they want it to be, society related.:mad:

[Romaq]

Based on the 1Up Video we continue to see very 'griddy' road networks, and only one form of road at that.

I can't resolve the issue of network *types*, but here are some thoughts on resolving object placement.

1) Have buildings able to toggle from 'snapping' at 90 degree 'right' angles to rotating at 15 degree angles, otherwise remaining 'centered', or perhaps you can make lot 'hints' that alter placement and size of environmental objects, but otherwise does not greatly alter the data structure.

2) Allow for a 'texture skirt' that will propogate any specific ground textures that are a part of the lot that *stop* when the 'skirt' encounters transit flagged textures or another lot's texture which would require blending of the two, or other object clues that set boundaries. This 'skirt' would rotate with the front of the building to allow driveway entrances, front-door sidewalks and so on. Those textures 'vanish' on hitting the road.

3) Have roads spline or snap between intersections. A spline produces curved roads (and warps the road texture to suit) and a 'snap' makes direct diagonal intersections. There would have to be 'hints' for how an intersection meshes with other roads.

At this point, I expect you have a set of six 'primary social energy' textures with 'hints' that govern how strong to mesh various textures and how to apply those textures. If the 'hints' data is extendable, perhaps we can get 'rotation' data into buildings and road splining in 15 deg. increments.

Agents (Automata?) should have access to the 'hints' for determining where to drive vehicles and walk.

--Romaq

[Doctorevil2425]

well i just saw a cideo of SCS and apparently they only had a town with 74 people... 74 PEOPLE! No need for a bus system in a city that doesn't have enough people to even fill a bus...

[Romaq]

Yes, that would ... be an issue.

--Romaq

[DJAvenger]

As much as I like this game so far, even I have to admit that there needs to be more transportation options. Personally, I would love to have a train running through your city. It's been said that distance from work can have an affect on your society so maybe a train could help with that. Also, I would love to see a train change along with your city, maybe a very brutalist looking train for your Orwellian city, a steam locomotive for a creative city, and a maglev for a high tech futuristic city.

Just a thought, TM, just a thought...;)

[Romaq]

In Dirk's write-up on SC:S, there is a photo showing the early stages of the town he's working on (http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=368&threadid=92085&enterthread=y). Perhaps there is another image to show this better, but I make the following notes.

I see two intersections with a very small gap between them. I'd include the picture http://www.simtropolis.com/library/societies_preview/shots/07-08-11%2008-20-29.jpg but it's likely blocked on http refer, so I'll need to find another image to show it here. Anyway, dirt roads and paved roads appear to be double some basic tile width. Very narrow buildings may be one tile width, but most buildings appear to be two or more 'tiles'.

I also note that *BOTH* dirt roads and paved roads appear to be this 'double tile width'. Paved roads are, in fact, two lanes each way. This also contributes to dirt roads looking way too wide.

The ability to create 'single lane roads' within the code should be explored at the obvious cost of half the capacity. 1, 2 or 3 tile/ lane roads should be explored as an option. Even if 'N-lane' roads can't make it in the release, if TM could say they have supplied us with hooks for writing our own 'NAM for SC:S' would take some of the sting out. Part of what makes the cities not look correct is that all roads are 'double sized'. Particularly the dirt roads. I would think it rare to see a four lane gravel road, nevermind a dirt road of four lanes.

I understand TM has limited time and budget, and so much of the work has already been invested that it's hard to find budget for major revamps. I also know you need to be careful what hooks you provide. I do not wish SC:S to be opened for custom content to a point where someone can slip an attack script into custom content.

Intersection intelligence... the join between a dirt road and a paved road should be a short paved segment that extends out into the dirt road. I recall in one screen shot seeing left turn arrows, but I have not seen this in recent screen shots. This needs developed more.

NAM 2007 + CAM was able to make some major overhaul to SC4. I'm anxious to explore what APIs modders have access to that a group could make up a 'NAM' for SC:S.

--Romaq

[MarkDuffy]

Perhaps I can help with your guessing, with more of my own guesses, Romaq.

Assuming SCS is based on the C4 engine (with obvious enhancements), we are talking microtiles (C4 roads are three microtiles wide, minimum) & your assumed tile size is waaay too large. This should be obvious from all the different building & decoration footprints.

Let's say the 4-lane roads are at least 6 microtiles (car as one microtile).

You can run with this with modding, I assume.

EDIT: Here (http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showpost.php?p=121149&postcount=1) is a Forum post with C4 building sizes.

[JuliaSet]

In talking about transportation, has anyone seen a parking deck for municipal parking in any of the screenshots?

[MarkDuffy]

I have only seen a very small fraction of the Simtropolis images, JuliaSet. I haven't seen any obvious parking structures, but I have seen buildings with parking lots & driveways to underground parking in older builds. These were also being used in various videos.

EDIT: Perhaps you could check out the Simtropolis images & report back, JuliaSet? Not now, however. It appears ST is down for software upgrade.

[JuliaSet]

The screenshots strain my eyes. I was hoping your young eyes would find something mine would miss.

I will SO enjoy looking at the details on my new 22"widescreen monitor when I get the game. Thought I died and went to heaven when it arrived yesterday. Even with this, it came with destructions on getting the ATI drivers to get the 1680x1050 resolution. I'm not about to rush in and uninstall the old one and put on the new drivers and then find I can't see the tiny things and have a choice of resolutions after I get the new driver.

[Romaq]

Microtiles, hrm... I noted in the demos how buildings had 'clicks' that they could lock into. Black dots under the ghost image just before placement. Since my memory is of a dynamic video and not a screenshot, I can't point to any photos.

I've mentioned under 'Terraforming' that I hope they are using either 10 or 1m units. Or perhaps they would use 2m or 5m units.

Anyway, issues of terrain detail aside, I attempted to figure out road width by guessing based upon the images. Paved roads and dirt roads are 'highway-width', more or less. I would expect 'true' dirt roads to simply be two meters, three at the most. Guessing off the top of my head. A gravel road would be more permanant, and perhaps a little larger, but not 'four lane width'. SC4 is able to 'connect' various road types, so you would have a smooth transition between a street and an avenue. Perhaps dirt roads could be constrained to be thinner, and thus 'look right' for dirt roads, and yet have connection points between homes and dirt streets, intersections and whatnot.

Paved streets are double-wide (four lanes), which is appropriate for larger sized cities, to some extent. It doesn't appear as cars will have sidewalk parking, but the streets at least provide proportionate spacing between buildings. Such is my attempt to get a feel for road dynamics, the intent behind the design of it, and grasping at straws to see if things could be made better.

I told my wife about my disappointment over the roads. She said that not having highways didn't sound like much fun. I reminded her of the grief she had trying to set up roads within SC4, and she conceeded roads did cause her grief.

As an issue of focus, SC:S game play might simply forbid complex transit of the sort I would like to see. SimCity4 turned out SC4 Rush Hour. Hope springs eternal. Even if contractual gameplay dynamics forbid 'complex transit' for the release, I can hope hooks in the engine are in place for another 'Rush Hour' expansion, or at least means for a 'NAM' group to focus some love in that area.

But even for what's in place, the same 'transition dynamics' between roadtypes with SC4 should appear within SC:S. Rather than have a dirt road directly adjacent to a paved road, the paved portion should partially extend into the dirt road and provide transition.

Anyway, that's enough of my musing on transit for the moment.

--Romaq

[Romaq]

Geeereat freakin' horny-toads! http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=1617.0 is showing new tech discovered in SC4 allowing for refined texturing in streets. There are bits of quirkyness and awkwardness to the project, but the point remains with the Street Addon Module (SAM) is that transit is still being explored as an important part of the SimCity4 building experience.

It is my hopeful desire that even if TM were contractually forbidden from all but the most simple of transit options that things LIKE the Network Addon Module, Street Addon Module and Colossus Addon Module will still be possible for independent custom content modders to create on their own what TM has does not have the budget, time and contractual freedom to provide.

--Romaq

[King Faticus]

that sounds reasonable and to be honest the possibility to add that into the game might make many people happy. Infact I am going to say that the real fun a lot of people seem to have with SC4 is not so much with the game itself but what they can do with it-add on to it- change it- ect.
I bet a lot of those batters really just love making their buildings and seeing them in the game (like their artwork being framed)

[Romaq]

Yay verily. I wonder to what extent the SC4 Dev team knew or thought there might be certain things in the code they didn't have time to exploit, but they are happy that the NAM/ SAM team found and has accomplished great things with it.

The ball with transit is in TM's court until we have enough of the API's publicly released that we have something to work with. There has to be 'enough' within the game engine that modders can see the potential and run with it. If multiple transit types on multiple layers is excluded from the engine, it could be somewhere between rough to impossible to hack that functionality in.

But without any idea of the project's progress and budget, the best one can do is groan at the provided transit options until something different is revealed.

Transit is a big deal to some people. I'm one for whom transit is a big deal.

--Romaq

[Azeem]

If TM's previous games can give us a hint about how movement of individual figures are handled and if patterns used in these games may have some bearing on SCS, then the only thing that would really separate SC4 and SCS in terms of transit and movement is the lesser number of transportation infrastructure. In both Caesar IV and CotN, an individual had to go from point A to point B to accomplish a task and then return to point A using the shortest and quickest route. CotN had a much more sophisticated system where an individual needed to from point A to point B, but then may decide to handle something at Point C and then stop by Point D to deal with something else before finally returning to Point A. Traffic networks in SC4 are simply generated by the need for residents to go to workplaces and then to return whereas individual figures in CotN needed to accomplish multiple basic tasks and would thus make multiple trips in any given game day. If the pattern is repeated in SCS, then we could very well see Sims driving around with more complex travel patterns, which would mean that you'd *need* an efficient transportation system or else risk your city as a whole to become inefficient. CotN obviously doesn't have big fancy transportation systems and individuals would go whichever path that is most convenient, but placement of buildings and the simple act of facing them to a road or an open pathway could alter the overall city's level of efficiency and how fast things can get done. If we transfer this concept into a SC setting, then the individual sims would retain their individuality of making travel choices, but be confined to a road system, bus sytem, or subway system. We could speculate that the placement of subway stations, bus stops, and how we set up our roads may have some fairly visible effects on how efficient and satisfied citizens may be (how fast they can get to work places, how fast they can get to venues, etc.).