CityMania

[Andreas]

Well, there's loads of free ambient music out there, fortunately, so it's mainly a question of tracking down stuff that fits to a SimCity game. You might want to start at this site, it has several albums licensed under Creative Commons, and I guess you'll find more when following the links or maybe contacting the artist himself.

[sithlrd98]

In regards to the terrain issue...Ennedi(Adam) mentioned a program he uses to create a seamless texture. I can not remember where/what , but maybe you should ask him.

I truly wish I could offer you something more than "Good Job so far" , but I have zero programming experience.

Jayson

[j-dub]

Also, for more music, theres this site: incompetech.com where you can use that music royalty free. NASA has used this guy's music, and it also music has ended up in retailed videogames, and movie soundtracks. Thats how I found out. There are specif genres at this site to look out for what would be appropriate for this game. I actually have gone here to use this music in game.

[Nique]

Thanks for the links. I've found also a very big website for this kind of music: http://www.jamendo.com (take a look!!) 



I've done some GUI stuff..

Traditional but slightly pimped


New colors

[io_bg]

The blue one IMO is the best. The others are good, too, but I'm used to the blue one

[Nique]

The blue one IMO is the best. The others are good, too, but I'm used to the blue one

I know, me to!    

But if you wait a while, i'm not finished with those dialogs. i will post the whole set soon. In the example above you can see the (future) possibilities of using your own color by configure that in a settings menu. . If you look very good you can see i changed some things on those boxes (gradients on top and bottom, shadow behind the inner subDialog for the options)

[WC_EEND]

The blue one IMO is the best. The others are good, too, but I'm used to the blue one

hehe, same here It reminds me of a game I recently played, I think it was Singstar or something like that

back ontopic, big respect for you Nique, considering what you're doing, I'd love to help, only problem is that at the moment I don't know anything at all about making games or programming. All I know is that it's all very complex.

[Nique]

Hey guys! I got some 2d eye candy to show! 

Advanced Dialogs For News, settings .. etc	Mini Dialog For a legend for example

All made with Photoshop, it's organized pretty well. No copy & paste jobs! 
TODO: Dropdown list, Select list and a Small up/down arrow button for increasing and decreasing values

I want to make these dialogs fully customizable for people who want to extend the game later on... (so i use XML)

[dedgren]

This is K-point worthy effort, even though I've been a skeptic of past community-based development efforts.  Nique, you are a one-man game programming machine.

If you ever get to the point where you would like some textures developed, let me know.  In the meantime, I'm watching this thread, which is now stickied, with increasing interest.


David

[daeley]

I agree with David

have you considered setting up a CVS or SVN repository for the code? I'd love to have a look, maybe help out with the the engine. Even if you are the only developer, once a project starts getting bigger, there are a lot of advantages of having an online repository (backups, versioning, easy diffing etc)

[JoeST]

I would like to see/help with the code too, you should consider Git <http://gothub.org/> for scm as its really easy to use. I believe google-code allows for git too.

Joe

[Nique]

I don't know how to set up all of that. I'm pretty allround but i have allways problems with SVN / git like stuff. So if someone can setup such thing, i will put the source over there.

I want still remind you guys that i'm currently using XNA. But if things go 'too well' we might consider a more cross platform way. But i absolutely prefer C# above every other main programming language. 

By the way, thank you for your Rep point.. and also making this topic sticky. This gives me a real satisfied feeling . I really want to go on with this project seriously.

Edit: We are setting up GIT now..

[Nique]

http://github.com/Nique/OpenCity/

I would like to give you guys a the notice that there is no 3d engine included (anymore). This is because i wanted to restructure the whole project. the previous 3d engine's i showed on this forum were just tests. I will build a new engine after i am done with the GUI.

Thank you JoeST for helping setting up git .. it works now.


I think open source city is not a great name for a game. I was thinking about City Mania ? maybe that's more like it?

[riiga]

http://github.com/Ne0Que/OpenCity

I would like to give you guys a the notice that there is no 3d engine included (anymore). This is because i wanted to restructure the whole project. the previous 3d engine's i showed on this forum were just tests. I will build a new engine after i am done with the GUI.

Thank you JoeST for helping setting up git .. it works now.


I think open source city is not a great name for a game. I was thinking about City Mania ? maybe that's more like it?

I really like the name Open Source City, so I vote for keeping the name.

And btw, the link is not correct.

- riiga

[Nique]

I really like the name Open Source City, so I vote for keeping the name.

And btw, the link is not correct.

- riiga

Sorry, i changed my name.. http://github.com/Nique/CityMania/

Watch this in Firefox or IE 8.0

[mrdazza_460]

Sorry, i changed my name.. http://github.com/Nique/OpenCity/

Watch this in Firefox or IE 8.0

Wow you really have some talent I love the look of your new logo. 
What about City Planer as a name?
I have been looking over what your are doing and some questions about your game and suggestions as well, it is only my opinion. I think you are going a ripping job.

Because you are making a full 3d game, we will need to have some serious hard where to run this game.  How big?
Maybe you should go back to the 2.5D,  the reason why I think that is, I just don't think people wont to look at "Google sketch up" models,  there are other reason why , I will refer to a article of a anther city building game witch I an shore you are aware of

http://www.citiesxl.com/index.php?/content/view/36/24/lang,en/


As you can see some of the problems that CXL as come across with having a full 3d CB game, the other by product is that we can only have square lot and 40m x 40 m lots,  as you are probably all ready aware of this is to stop major lag when playing the game. I think that it is a far trade off to have a 2.5D game and having very high city detail and models. Anther buy product of having a 2.5D game is that the above issues that CXL has is one less thing for you top worry about since you are basically doing it yourself.  (Think big but not too big you could say)       

Well it would also be rude off me to suggest thing and not wont to help. So as I don't have much programming knowledge, so I can not help you there,  I could help you with design, but you seem to be pretty good at that well, well I am a amateur modeler you can have all my 3D models (if you wont) and I can create  more if needed.  And any ather versus 3D object you need. 
Hear is some of my work

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26453884@N02/

[Nique]

Wow you really have some talent I love the look of your new logo. 
What about City Planer as a name?
I have been looking over what your are doing and some questions about your game and suggestions as well, it is only my opinion. I think you are going a ripping job.

Because you are making a full 3d game, we will need to have some serious hard where to run this game.  How big?
Maybe you should go back to the 2.5D,  the reason why I think that is, I just don't think people wont to look at "Google sketch up" models,  there are other reason why , I will refer to a article of a anther city building game witch I an shore you are aware of

http://www.citiesxl.com/index.php?/content/view/36/24/lang,en/


As you can see some of the problems that CXL as come across with having a full 3d CB game, the other by product is that we can only have square lot and 40m x 40 m lots,  as you are probably all ready aware of this is to stop major lag when playing the game. I think that it is a far trade off to have a 2.5D game and having very high city detail and models. Anther buy product of having a 2.5D game is that the above issues that CXL has is one less thing for you top worry about since you are basically doing it yourself.  (Think big but not too big you could say)       

Well it would also be rude off me to suggest thing and not wont to help. So as I don't have much programming knowledge, so I can not help you there,  I could help you with design, but you seem to be pretty good at that well, well I am a amateur modeler you can have all my 3D models (if you wont) and I can create  more if needed.  And any ather versus 3D object you need. 
Hear is some of my work

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26453884@N02/

Thank you for your great reply. The more building models, the better! 
I have also thought about the 2.5D option. We have very good computers these days, we should be able of create a very good 2.5D game. Your models look very good. I can do a lot on a pc, but modeling...

[Nique]

I'm currently writing the GUI. (Current sub project: doing popup dialogs); Windows are resizable (not in game, but by custom content makers);

The minimum sizes of a default dialog popup window:

Width: (left 17 + Right: 17) = 34 pixels
Height: (top: 48 + bottom: 32) = 80 pixels

If you go below these values, the popup will go look nasty (overlay textures). Consider a miniDialog for smaller dialogs, )

You can set the dialog as dragable around the screen as true and false values. If true, you can drag the dialog by clicking on the dialog title bar and drag it.

i've also changed the mainMenu stage background to a fake region view background. I toke that screenshot from Simcity to simulate a region view atmosphere because that stage can only be completed after the city stage has been completed.

The dialog's content is 200 pixels width and 80 pixels height

The dialog's content is 700 pixels width and 150 pixels height

(ps: don't worry about the font type.. i had to replace the old one because i have problems with the openType font (there is no outlining))

[ACEfanatic02]

Thank you for your great reply. The more building models, the better! 
I have also thought about the 2.5D option. We have very good computers these days, we should be able of create a very good 2.5D game. Your models look very good. I can do a lot on a pc, but modeling...

For what it's worth, 2.5D is going to work better for the foreseeable future until hardware gets much faster.  Computers ARE better than when SC4 first came out, but that power is probably better spent on the simulation engine rather than 3D graphics.  (After all, SC4 has some pretty stellar graphics, in a 2.5D engine.)

I'll be interested to see how you do the game engine itself, especially the development process.

-ACE

[Nique]

For what it's worth, 2.5D is going to work better for the foreseeable future until hardware gets much faster.  Computers ARE better than when SC4 first came out, but that power is probably better spent on the simulation engine rather than 3D graphics.  (After all, SC4 has some pretty stellar graphics, in a 2.5D engine.)

I'll be interested to see how you do the game engine itself, especially the development process.

-ACE

The main key here is that everything that 'can' be handled by the videocard, 'should' be handled by the videocard and not the pc's main processor. Lets keep the CPU free from stuff that can be done by the GPU .

(i totally renamed the whole project now, also on github http://github.com/Nique/CityMania)