[vityaz_]

Great read.

Jumping ahead a little: The Sim City 4 community is one of the better ones I've ever seen. 13 years after the release, and people are still releasing high quality mods and custom buildings. The community has kept the game alive for all these years, and made the SC4 experience many times better.

[erikb]

How do you feel about the new games like Cities Skylines? How would you rate it against SC4?

[speeder]

Not OP either...

I am a fan of city games and tried to mod SC4 with official sanction of EA (more on that later).

Currently I like SC4 much more than C:S, for two reasons:

1. When properly fixed, SC4 is a much better simulator and challenging game than C:S

2. I like SC4 graphics more too, C:S graphics resemble cities that I never saw in my country, they are too bright, spacious, saturated and "happy" and "calm", it is nothing like São Paulo for example, so C:S to me is too uncanny-valleyish, too "Alien" to me.

Still, sometimes I wonder if I should go ahead and make the SC4 successor I want, I was trying to fix SC4 to make it run properly on new computers and finish some features, but it required stuff that go against the EULA, so I asked EA about it (the asking part took months... very hard to ask EA!), and when they finally replied it was along the lines: "Oh, yes, X, Y, and Z are broken, X is driver's fault, we will work with hardware makers, Y is serious, we will THINK about fixing it." then no mention of Z, or much less "W" that I told them about.

I understand their position, and think the open-sourcing of EASTL in a way was a great step, still I feel very disappointed they miss the mark about such stuff.

[vityaz_]

>I like SC4 graphics more too, C:S graphics resemble cities that I never saw in my country, they are too bright, spacious, saturated and "happy" and "calm", it is nothing like São Paulo for example, so C:S to me is too uncanny-valleyish, too "Alien" to me.

I really like the SC4 graphics too, looks much more realistic. Guess it's easier when you just got 4 angles at various zoom levels to handle. Don't you think much of the problem with CS can be solved with custom content? We got color mods, and there are buildings being created without the cartoonish art direction of the default content.

>Still, sometimes I wonder if I should go ahead and make the SC4 successor I want, I was trying to fix SC4 to make it run properly on new computers and finish some features, but it required stuff that go against the EULA, so I asked EA about it (the asking part took months... very hard to ask EA!), and when they finally replied it was along the lines: "Oh, yes, X, Y, and Z are broken, X is driver's fault, we will work with hardware makers, Y is serious, we will THINK about fixing it." then no mention of Z, or much less "W" that I told them about. I understand their position, and think the open-sourcing of EASTL in a way was a great step, still I feel very disappointed they miss the mark about such stuff.

Oh man, when was this?

I've longed for an SC4 like game without grids. That'd be sweet.

[traskjd]

>> When properly fixed, SC4 is a much better simulator and challenging game than C:S

Can you elaborate on what it means to be proper fixed? I still occasionally play SC4 but aren't involved enough to know what the quick wins are to mod it for modern play. Appreciate the feedback :-)

[vityaz_]

Cities Skylines is great, and the community is too. I feel that CS is the game many fans wanted Sim City (5) to be.

CS in itself is a better game, but the SC4 custom content scene is still superior making it a better city designing experience (only simulation worth caring about in SC4 is modded traffic imho...).

CS is very moddable, has an active community releasing custom content using the steam workshop, making it very accessible. Oh, the time I've spent trying to browse early-internet-looking japanese websites to download awesome custom buildings and their dependencies.

But just give it some time and we'll have at least as awesome custom content for CS as for SC4. As I see it, Colossal Order are the new masters of city building games.

[toxican]

Not who you replied to, but still an avid fan of both games.

C:S feels a little shallow compared SC4 at times. It's not very challenging at all, but the draw to SC-like games has always been the creating, not the challenge. I usually use the unlimited money mod to just build my city how I please. In terms of mods and stuff, I actually think C:S is the clear winner. If not for the large variety of mods, maps, buildings, etc. then for the centralized location of them. While there are a few "one stop shops" for SC4 mods, they're not nearly as effortless to use as the Steam workshop is.

My biggest issue with C:S is how half-assed the DLC seems to be. A night mode is neat, but when it's next to impossible to build during it and the simulation effects of that night mode are non-existent, you're left wondering why the hell you paid money for it. The DLC opens a few new possibilities to modders, but I don't like that the burden for interesting things is put solely on the modding community.