I was thinking of time being more of the approach SimCity 4 took, the days/months/years system still applies for taxes and expenses,
and like SimCity 4, the visual /day and night uses an hour system, so a year could take a minute on speed 3 but the agent simulation has days which last around 5 minutes on speed 3.

Confusing? It's also somewhat like Cities Skylines, where days are only a few seconds long, but the actual simulation takes lots of days, to cover a real simulated day.

Doesn't that somewhat take away the immersion, as then only the city aspect of the game is covered, but not the individual, "sens" one?

The days will still visually pass, and day simulation will last couple of days, but what about sens and their life duing that year, and how will you divide the lifespan over such integration of time?

If you want a detailed "ripple effect" depth of simulation, you will definitely need an individual level, which would require a revision of the time integration.

BTW, I'm playing with SketchUp, and then importing buildings to Blender. It works! I'll see If I can import those meshes into Unity.

The day system is decoupled from the year simulation, so we can model days, but we can also have a days/months/years that goes by very quickly, so a sen can generally live a max of 80 years, but years can happen in simulated days, this is very confusing, I'm going to show off a rough mockup of it soon.

Great. I can't wait to see this done (couple of years maybe). I will be making some building meshes for you, once I'm done with school and styding for college entrance. There is a 4 months summer break, and I'll be doing a lot of work for you. I wonder if someone knows how to do textures.

I've finished one trailer home mesh, but it's still simplified. My knowledge of SketchUp is better than ever, and I think I can throw myself at more complicated meshes.

Looks pretty good. Don't go crazy on the poly counts though. I'd recommend setting polygon budgets even if performance isn't an issue, for consistency. Here's a good article a SimCity dev wrote on poly budgets.

Yeah. I'll try to keep poly count as low as I can. I also had in my head that more detailed parts of mesh should be those that are most noticeable, but I have totally forgot about LODs. That's double or tripple more work to do, but I'll leave that for later.

And also, the mesh is broken. It worked at first, but after I added some details, it works partially in Unity. I'll try to fix it later.

Doesn't need to be low, per se. You just don't need to bother with modelling stuff like doors, windows and fencing when a little bump map magic can add all the detail you'll ever want.

Nice! It will certainly provide much needed variety for Residential zones, as they all use one building at the moment, which just so happens to be modeled after the Broke House from The Sims 2. Thanks for taking some time to help out the project!

It actually seems harder to build using SketchUp as everything needs 2 layers of depth in order for mesh to work in Unity, which doubles the poly count.

Here is the fixed version of the mesh. It has less polygons, but works in Unity, and looks cleaner and more proffesional. The catch is to have no shaded surfaces in SketchUp.

Using this occasion, I'd like to discuss the sizes of the lots, as players will be placing different lots through the game. I will need to know what size of meshes I will be buiding.

Here's another one. I will try and compile all of my work (when finished) and then share it with you.



You can see the greek symbols, as I still don't know what language for sens you are going to use (that's the closest I could find to simlish).

I'm still wondering how town is going to work? Is it going to be divided into districts, or be fully open, and are there going to be loading screens or not?

Sorry for the late reply, but about the lot sizes, there are no limits on lot sizes currently, but as a general rule, lower wealth equals lower space, and higher density equals higher space, Regarding the world, currently, I'm planning to have SimCity 4 sizes, and an open world, but that may change.

Can't you find a middle ground between zoning and individual placement. I wonder if you can make zones more lot like, or make lots generated from zones editable. I know it's not yet planned to edit lots, but it would be nice if buildings and decorative objects could be placed on lots, like rabbitholes or assets in Cities Skylines.

Also, I've been thinking over and over, and districts seem most fitting for this type of simulation. If you want more than just 100 of sens in your city, create another district. Only one district is simulated at a time, each district is played rotationally and you could add a set of rules, buildings and sens for each district, making your town have a theme or be a diverse spot.

I agree. The concept of zoning is pretty stupid, really. It's a thing that was relevant in 1960s suburban America. 2013's SimCity had the great idea of modular buildings, but why can't zonable buildings be modular? At least, in the sense that their colour and shape is somewhat randomized. If you have 1 building mesh but 4 ways to colour it in, you have 4 buildings. When the number of floors is variable, or when garages or balconies can be added at random, you'll end up with dozens of possible buildings.

The reason why SimCity 2013's zoned buildings didn't have ploppables is most likely because Sims didn't matter, they were exactly like sewage, so there was no need for actual life simulation. Since SensVille is all about the simulation of the individual sen, it would make sense for zoned buildings to be modular, as you're caring for these individual sens, shaping their lives bit by bit, so of course that involves expanding their houses!

This is an interesting concept, and I'll definitely prototype some models and code to see if it is good in the game.

If you want some models, I've made few buildings and decor. It's nothing much, but It's probably enough for testing.

How I see such concept is:

- Lots can have buildings and decorative objects on them
- Buildings are something like rabbitholes but have charactetristics (eg. room number, structural stability,). These all depend on the price of the building.
- Decorations are objects that can be placed on lot in order to slightly boost happines on that lot (if you need higher density faster)
- When lot becomes one of the higher density, you can add buildings that are associated with that kind of density.
- Low density citizens pay taxes.
- Medium and High density citizens pay taxes and rent.
- Sens can move in, and out on their own if they need a better place to live and have enough money to do so.
- In order to statisfy senses, you will need to add new buildings and improve old ones.
- Game starts with one family (founders of city), and expands from there.
- Lots are zoned, but can be edited individually.

That's a basic concept of how I see the game. City size should not be big on the SimCity scale, as only 100 sens can be simulated right now. And I don't really see SimCity/Sims hybrid as a game that has big scale world. It should be smaller than SimCity but bigger than The Sims. Mannagement of both people and city on a big scale would result in chaos. Simulation is one thing, but simulation game is other. If there is, however, a need for more space, in order to make game more interesting, then districts should be the solution.

That's just my vision of this kind of game. And here are the models BTW:

I was thinking of the highest population being 2,000, as 100 is too small. even smaller than TS4's sims limit and you would keep bumping into the same sens all the time.

I went ahead and used Simplygon to reduce the polygons for the model, anyway, it looks exactly the same from the current view, but only has 400 polygons compared to the original 8,000, high poly model. (Tip: Don't even bother making things looked curved, like the railing on the building and the street lamp, because the nearest you're currently going to be seeing them is 40 feet away.

The project really needs a texture artist though, everything can't be plain white.

I'm tempted to offer my services, but I don't think I can deliver anything I'd please even myself with. I'm good at doing low-res sprite work, but textures aren't my thing.

I see you have traffics. How does that work, or does it actually work?

Also, It's not bad to save high poly models if you ever decide to go full 3D.

Traffic is rather basic at the moment, as currently, the only real traffic behaviors implemented is that they stay on the correct side, and that they stop at traffic lights if they turn red.

I've been thinking something... The graphics can be blocky, and you could actually keep the isometric view, if there are no buildings higher than 5 stories. Minecraft is the most popular game of all times and it's graphics are bare minimum. That's one of the reasons it is popular as well. Because it is accessible to everyone.

Maybe the "No curved surfaces" idea is not bad after all. I'm going for the blocky look right now, and things are going more easier, but look more stylized. If I could only know how to make textures...

I love progress on zoning, and "optionality" that you are going for. Simulation and sandbox games should have enough variety for players to choose how to play them. Options are the way for player to customize the game to it's liking, and addapt it to it's playstyle. Nice going.

I should clarify No Curved Surfaces, what I meant was, "Don't make curved parts of the mesh high poly" like the traffic light having a lot of polygons for a prop that's generally on screen about 10 times all the time. But the blocky aesthetic works too! I was thinking of the textures having a "pixel art" aesthetic like this .

I wonder who can do that for the project.

If you have an UV-mapped mesh, I can give it a try. Can't promise anything, and it'll cost me a lot of my precious free time, but I'd love to give it a shot.