CityMania

[Nique]

Yea let's keep it ontopic here 

[mrdazza_460]

Do you think that your pics of dialogs also come under trade dress as well, you may need to change them a bit.   

[Nique]

Do you think that your pics of dialogs also come under trade dress as well, you may need to change them a bit.   

They have gradients, shadows, minimize - maximize and close buttons, much better and cleaner scrollbars..

i think they differ enough.


Progress in forming a team
I go to a friend (250 km from my house) next Friday and we are going to discuss the game.
We have 3 pc's (2 windows, 1 Linux), 2 Mac's.. a deep fryer and a professional CITY aerial photographer (for researching) for free available for developing this game.

If i can make this a school project for the next 4 years, the developing team will grow to at least 8 people. So, for the next period i will talk to teachers and friends around me to get this from the ground.

I am doing this because when i have a team around me in real life, the project will get more serious and it's better for communications between developers . There is a little chance we have a professional modeler also in the team soon.


The ground rules have changed:
- We want to make this a platform independent game -> openGL
- We want to make it a neat, professional looking game -> High details!
- We want to make it a community friendly based game -> Very customizable, add-ons, (game-play) plug-ins supported

It's all about Detail, Realism, Fun, Creativity and Simulation, this not a 3d shooter or a casual Barbie game, so we consider to take the SimCity 4 graphical engine as an example (no CitiesXL 3d style) to develop. Also, no stupid add-ons like "GEMS (CitiesXL term)" will be created / supported, just the game; City building and Management. But, about the GEM part, we can consider to let 'big companies, sport teams or anything else grow when your city is handled very well. The thing is that we want to make it unique, for each city. For example; if you build a stadium.. and all the cities around you have the same stadium.. where is the fun part then?

You will manage your city in greatest detail. for example: You'll have to decide if the crossing on 12th street should have 3 or 2 turning lanes, with or without cross-walks, with or without traffic-lights, lamp-posts, one-way, buslane, no-truck lanes.. whatever you name it, the list goes on. You want to allow that restaurant over there to have terraces on the street? Well give it a licence. Give the whole street, or a part of that area the license to develop 'catering industries'.  Should that piece of road there have a crosswalk or a bus-stop? Well click on it, let's see if it is possible! Modify even the type of bus-stop and name it in a special window.. click on the apply button (if you have enough money) and Yes! it will cost you another $1.200 but that's how it works in real life. After you've done that you will see them 'build' / demolish the walk-over.. with under construction signs on the street.. so that traffic will have delays there.

And what about the economic system? Whats wrong about taxes? Do you really think 40.000 people will bring only a few bucks in each month? What about garbage taxes? What about water tax, car tax.. you decide what to collect here, 40.000 inhabitants create a whole lot more dollars each month than just the $2.400 from SimCity. So don't worry about that $1.200 for the bus-stop.

Thats the kind of details we are talking about here. Thats the way i want this game go to.. There are enough 'casual', 'killing', 'narrow-minded' games out there. A city builder is creativity. Your cities will look unique, it will be a masterpiece.

And about the custom content. I have brainstormed about that. We make a 'global available server' that manage all the add-on packages. Creators can upload it to specific categories and if you want to take a look to someone else his / her City, well the game will download the dependency packages automatically from our add-on server.

We can decide to put a global flag on someone's plugin to make it a official dependency of the game. So that when you download / start the game, you will be notified (if the notifier is on) that there is are add-on updates available. No more headaches from sorting out plug-in files inside raw folders. Just a manager that sorts it all out for you.  I can talk endless about the ideas.. but believe me. We almost thought about everything

[dragonshardz]

<!..snip..!> You'll have to decide <!..snip..!>

Though I like being able to decide stuff in as much detail as you have described, I'd rather you have it so that you can let an "adviser" do it for you or do it yourself. That way, if deciding whether the 12th and Brown intersection should have a crosswalk or stoplight isn't your cup of tea, you can let the adviser do that sort of thing instead. Obviously the adviser would use data such as traffic congestion, usage, etc. to make in it's opinion the best decision for your city. And if you don't like it, you can change it.

Nique, if you can make this a project for school that would be an amazing feat of legerdemain that the entire community would appreciate. You've made such amazing strides by yourself, I can barely think of what a dev team will do for City Mania.

Also, I think that making the game have a 2.5D graphics engine is a great idea, that means more processing time for the simulators. If you could make building models and props, at least, from SC4 compatible with this game that would be a-ma-zing.

I will be watching this with interest, best of luck to you and your (hopeful) dev team.

[Nique]

Though I like being able to decide stuff in as much detail as you have described, I'd rather you have it so that you can let an "adviser" do it for you or do it yourself. That way, if deciding whether the 12th and Brown intersection should have a crosswalk or stoplight isn't your cup of tea, you can let the adviser do that sort of thing instead. Obviously the adviser would use data such as traffic congestion, usage, etc. to make in it's opinion the best decision for your city. And if you don't like it, you can change it.

Nique, if you can make this a project for school that would be an amazing feat of legerdemain that the entire community would appreciate. You've made such amazing strides by yourself, I can barely think of what a dev team will do for City Mania.

Also, I think that making the game have a 2.5D graphics engine is a great idea, that means more processing time for the simulators. If you could make building models and props, at least, from SC4 compatible with this game that would be a-ma-zing.

I will be watching this with interest, best of luck to you and your (hopeful) dev team.

You are right, of course, for (beginners or lazy, or just people who don't want it) we create 'default' settings and let the computer make artificial, logical decisions to simulate these advisers you are talking about. But believe me, if we succeed with implenting all these functions.. you want the power .

If we go on the 2.5D way we keep a lot of cpu power left for these simulations indeed. Especially if we manage to take as much as we can out of the GPU (graphical processor unit) and it's available memory instead of the computers CPU. When everything goes well my living room will change dramatically in to a game studio (no i have no girlfriend ) anyway.. papers and white-boards on the wall.. (they are here already).

[JoeST]

So my decentralised 'git-like' plugins architecture isnt gona be considered? as a big central server is rather quite hard to keep going and keep clean. Look at the STEX, that was all good for a few years, but once the major players started disagreeing, booom, and we now have SC4D and all the other little sites. And you cant forget the people like Gizmo and others that would rather make a website of their own to host their content. (You see, I did put quite a bit of thought into my git-integration )

I really do hope you get it to be a school project, though the problem will then be to keep it from being miss-licenced by the school themselves,

Joe

[Nique]

So my decentralised 'git-like' plugins architecture isnt gona be considered? as a big central server is rather quite hard to keep going and keep clean. Look at the STEX, that was all good for a few years, but once the major players started disagreeing, booom, and we now have SC4D and all the other little sites. And you cant forget the people like Gizmo and others that would rather make a website of their own to host their content. (You see, I did put quite a bit of thought into my git-integration )

I really do hope you get it to be a school project, though the problem will then be to keep it from being miss-licenced by the school themselves,

Joe

Depends on how to use the server. I was thinking about a combination. Uploading new versions of plugin's, but keep the old ones alive. That's where git comes in. I haven't work this out yet. But i 'll take the ideas to be considered.

[mrdazza_460]

Good to see you have you priority's right, no cities XL crap,  and no trading.



 

[Nique]

Good to see you have you priority's right, no cities XL crap,  and no trading.



 

Trades should be done between companies.. but of course power and water or landfill could be exchanged later, but on a more friendly way

[JonM]

Hi, glad to find this topic, I would like to help.

I have experience developing games and a large amount of experience doing 3d graphics and arch viz.

I have tons of ideas for 2.5d game, that I know are not too difficult to implement that could provide useful, these are some quick explanations:

-I would like to see the roads and train tracks be fully 3d, so as too allow curved roads and not on tiles (like cities XL). Using a simple bezier system would be good

-In going with the above, I would like to see an elimination of the grid and tiles (or just a much smaller one) and the buildings should not be "lots" but just the footprint of the building, so it could be oddly shaped. The LOD determining what can or can't intersect it. Various ground textures could be determined in the building, but there should also be a lower layer of sidewalk that covers whatever the user wants it to cover, IE changing the ground texture, (default would be grass) to a sidewalk texture. If you make a complete block (making a closed spline with the roads) you could fill that entire shape with a sidewalk texture of your choice, and buildings would grow on top of that.

-Buildings should still be trimetric, however I was experimenting in 3dsmax with adding lower angle camera, (so having 8 views) with a clipping to avoid tall buildings blocking everything. This will allow the player to see the facades of buildings more. It would double the size of the graphics, but since roads are 3d, perhaps it would not be too big.

-Perhaps trees, and other props should be 3d?

-The zoom 6 on simcity should be another sprite, so it would be rendered, giving much more detail to the cities.

-A way to "paint" roads and sidewalks different texture, like in the Sims where you can "paint" floors. (just simply changing the texture on the 3d object)

-"Collections" that the user can make (easily by dragging+dropping) which determine what buildings would grow in that specific city. So if the user wants to make a northern European style city, he can put whatever buildings he/she thinks would fit into this collection and only they would appear.

-All buildings and textures should in the same way custom ones would, meaning no all encompassing dat files.

But in the end, many more professional coders would be needed to make it happen right, but considering the wide range of people interested in doing this it could be possible. I think shooting for a raw empty game, that can be easily customized by individuals and communities would be the only way this could happen.

Just thought you may like to hear these. I have more if you would like to hear them!

[KoV Liberty]

I have a few questions for the new game:
UDI?
Sims?
Is it optional or a complete necessity?

[JonM]

I may come up with some faux screenshots to explain what I mean.

[dragonshardz]

Driftmaster: Given that the Sims are Maxis trademarks, it might be best if they're not included. No one wants Nique to get sued.

As for UDI, maybe we should worry about having a working city sim first, then petiton for a UDI-esque function.

[KoV Liberty]

Ok. But will this be an optional thing or a more of a necessary thing? Optional being like the SimMars Project.

[Nique]

Ok guys, good news and bad news here:

• The good news is, that they liked the SimMania idea, my teachers were very enthusiastic, especially because it's a peaceful, creative and 'learning' game. Anyway, my school begins next week. So i don't think there is time for SimMania in the first month of this school year (due to the time to getting acquainted with my class). I already know that they switch to C# and directx to teach because C# is the dev. language for the future on this moment. But, i've asked about C++ and openGL, and if i want, they will help me with getting more experience on that part too.
  
  
• The bad news is.. well, not that bad, i couldn't go to my friend this weekend. I was on the bus-stop but some personal problems came around the corner, so i had to delay the trip for 2 weeks. It is not a real problem i think. There is more time for focus now

About the 3d vs 2.5d part:
Full 3D = to difficult @ this moment. We should go for 2.5D including the grid. Maybe, SimMania version 2 will support free building modes. But as we have no time and experience with free zoning we should take sc4 's method as an example for at least creating a similar gameplay experience.

[croxis]

Hey devs, I'm a linux and python guy (my current pet project), but I've also been wanting to sit down and learn C++ (or C#) and join an existing project.  I havent read all 25 pages but I was wondering if there is room on the team for someone like me, if any example work is needed, etc.

[JoeST]

Hey devs, I'm a linux and python guy (my current pet project), but I've also been wanting to sit down and learn C++ (or C#) and join an existing project.  I havent read all 25 pages but I was wondering if there is room on the team for someone like me, if any example work is needed, etc.

Good to hear from you Croxis I cant speak for Nique but I would definitely welcome you and you should maybe get used to Git and Github and also, C# is very similar to Java and PHP (all I can think of right now)

Joe

[croxis]

I have experience with bazaar (launchpad uses it) so learning git should be easy   I should also warn that my code learning is a hobby, I've only had one term of basic class in java and C++.  I am sure I have gaps in my knowledge so I may have a stupid question every now and then

3D vs 2.5D, you can have both.  I use a 3d engine instead of 2d (to take advantage of 3d terrain, shaders, particle effects and so on) to remake an old 2d isometric game. In OO I store the building info in a yaml file (like xml but fits better with python) with a is2D line.  If true it throws up a square and throws the appropriate texture.  If false it will load the appropriate 3d files and place it in the tile.

I've been skimming the thread (strolling around town soon so can't sit down and read the whole thing) and noticing Nique wanting to move to a platform independent system.  I also appreciate his school requirements, but I just want to share my biased opinion anyways 

C# can be used in linux using mono however this is drawing the ire of many in the open source community as the C# specification is under the sole control of microsoft.

My recommendation for python is based on my experience with the panda3d engine.  Python works very well with C++.  Panda3d uses c++ for the heavy lifting, math intensive, components (such as drawing 3d objects, or pathfinding 1 million sims from home to work).  It uses python as the glue and interface between the components.  What I have heard from C++/Python programmers is while C/C++ is obviously faster, coding in python is faster.  This helps with the "release early, release often" mantra of open source projects.  The other cool thing is that with python you can work on code dynamically and be able to see code changes in real time while the game is running.

[dragonshardz]

Mmh, I never said this, but Nique, if you need any static graphics done (logos, etc.) I can help. Though you seem to have that pretty well handled already! 

[Djohaal]

Actually with lods we can have a 2.75 3d view. If you ever bothered spinning a 3d model within the reader you'll notice you can rotate the camera angle about 5 degrees to most directions without causing excessive distortion. 

Perhaps allowing the player to unlock the camera if he wants could satsfy everyone lol..

Another consideration is using a different method to do the LOD boxes, perhaps we could use a better data storage for the renders, and figure out some other way of projecting the textures on the boxes.

We also need to brainstorm what approach to use to the day/nite system, either the new trunite approach, maxis's overlay system, or even a mixed approach. Although I'd advise asking simfox or other of the BAT gods around here about what they think would be the best approach... Standarizing the illumination rig and rendering procedure will be of paramount importance for the game's graphical aspect.