City building games have a Soul Problem pt.2(radical-elements.com) |
City building games have a Soul Problem pt.2(radical-elements.com) |
It was then necessary to explain the difference between pre-rendered scenes and real-time rendering budgets.
It often isn't a question about whether or not something can be done. In pre-rendered scenes, or screenshots, the budget is very different than in game. At whatever target frame-rate you choose, there is a finite amount of visual effects you can achieve. Spending that budget requires compromise.
It's easy to live in a fantasy world where you can demand no compromise. The hard thing is doing the most you possibly can given very real budgets and doing so with the people you have available. Not every studio is Rockstar with the ability to throw unlimited devs for several years at the problem.
For a modern take on this, look at Factorio. Why can an industrial zone with a population of one look more lively in Factorio than an entire simulated city in Cities Skylines?
Only now three years later with Iceflake Studios taking over are we starting to see the game turn a corner and become really solid and having a roadmap with some hope.
Also that grand staircase should be something the player chooses to place, rather than something you get every time a path is sloped.
https://www.ign.com/articles/cities-skylines-2-dev-addresses...
Yes, it does. It's exactly what I want my real life city to be like.
No plants growing everywhere completely out of control and invading perimeters they aren't supposed to be in. No cracked pavement that's just a rainfall away from being replaced with potholes.
Apparently, "soul" means a city that looks like it's unmaintained and teetering on the edge of a precipice, just about to be reclaimed by nature, a few years away from turning into the green urbanscape of The Last of Us.
And without many variants, things like "splotchy wall apartment building" would get old so much faster when there's several square blocks of them instead of bizarrely pristine ones.
You can't just make stuff 'look nice' without affecting how the player behaves
I had an argument at one point, honest!
The author of this created these images with AI and that's exactly the solution for game makers. There may be base assets but AI is pretty damn good at contextually modifying them.
As a comment on the article: yes, of course - the lack of all the things are symptoms of "this must release now". They fumbled it so badly, a new developer got put on it.
Yes, by default it’s a little flat. But also, it’s a city builder. Most of the time you’re not zoomed in this close. And not all players intend to focus on these details.
If you spend a few minutes on YouTube seeking out some of the better cities skylines 2 content creators you’ll see a lot of really excellent detail work.
It's truly amazing. It integrated with my ten year old Alienware keyboard and made the lighting ice blue during a snow storm.
Maybe we'll get a million new city sims with the ai goldrush that have unique takes.
Think I gave up on actual city sims with massive scale.
It's not an example of the heyday of townbuilders except inasmuch as the existence of the heyday enabled a borderline grift.
From the moment an object is constructed it is being pulled into the ground. Maintenance has a far higher cost than initial construction. Relative perfection is inversely proportionate to complexity.
This is the exact same mentality that drives suburban lawn guys crazy when their grass has a brown spot. You are not fully in control.
Absolutely. The whole point of a city is to reject all that.
> You are not fully in control.
I know, which is why I don't bother with lawns. I'd rather fill the entire area with solar panels instead.
Opinions be like
"You disagree with me so I can label you in a negative light"
If the clean lines we laid down were persistent, I'd worry we'd planted the seed of something poorly thought out yet permanent.
The glorification of disrepair and decay is still very much present though. "Soul" means decayed paint on houses, visible bricks and a huge hole on the pavement that no doubt spread its own unique flavor of disrepair to the car that just drove past it.
Adding more detail is absolutely fine, but this glorification of breakdown doesn't sit well with me at all. I see far too much of it in real life on a daily basis and it seriously made me cringe. It's a problem to be solved, not something to be added in deliberately.
Fwiw this would certainly strike me as soulless. Haven't you ever seen pleasantville or don't worry darling? "Soul" to my ear implies imperfection.
Instead we have to beg most big cities to install trees at $40k/pop so you aren't getting melted in the texas sun walking your dog.
That's exactly what a city is though.
The post you replied to embodied a preference. You responded that they were wrong and naive for not wanting to depict cities constantly "being pulled into the ground". Some people playing a simulator do not want the simulator to force unavoidable decay everywhere. This is something for which there is room for a breadth of preferences, not something for which there is a correct and incorrect answer.
I'd be all for separating "better, more lifelike, more realistic rendering, with interesting variation" from "decay".
The opposite, where everything is very clearly manicured, created, is so far from reality that the immersion is more difficult to achieve, or is quickly lost. You never stray far from the fact that you're playing a city game with very rigid rules.
I think this is what the author means by "Soul": objects with details to show something lived, was paid attention to, has story, depth, and scars to prove it.
That's not soul, that's just... History. Of neglect.
Detail is fine, but deliberately adding disrepair and actually calling it nice is something else entirely. It implies this is desirable.
Real "soul" would have been adding urban decay as a gameplay mechanic. Players would be stretched thin trying to keep up and some areas would naturally decay as a result. That's the realistic city story: I had limited time and resources, and couldn't afford to care about every part of the city, so the neglected ones decayed.
This is the real story, the realistic one. Adding decay just because you like the aesthetic of it is something else. It's like adding CRT filters to modern games.
breakdown and maintenance is a part of life, and if you want a city to look like it spends a million a month per block on maintenance, thats fine to have as a fantasy for a game. Youre playing a game, entropy doesnt have to apply.
the post is right though, city games always put a layer of fantasy over one of the major costs that a city has - maintenance.
i havent played one since sim city 3k, but i expect theres still no setting up snow clearance routes and how changing the order or amount of plows affects traffic, along with the associated costs to the city.
Neglect leading to decay is supposed to be a punishment though. Turning it into "soul" makes it desirable.
Consider the 115 year old brick building in a town I used to live in, with the faded remnants of a 50 year old replica of the sign painted on the side by the butcher’s shop that originally owned the building.
Yes, it's romanticizing decay to add thematic and realistic problems to games.
I didn’t realize cities were made with a point to reject entropy and weren’t mostly organic congregations of people for economic reasons
Agreed. Or xeriscaping, or something better than grass (which is a really low bar to be better than).
This is stuff you grit your teeth and put up with because it can't be helped. Who would choose to design a city with this decay literally built into it? That's mind boggling.