#colossal order

Detailing.

I’ve been watching the Cities Skylines Global Collaboration series and was inspired to do a little detailing in my save. I wish I had a beefy computer like the folks in this series so I could also use a ton of assets! I am gonna download a couple more trees/bushes because l want a couple more for decorating.

It is so weird to me that the Cities in Motion pair have been this blog’s major stumbling block – perhaps even its death knell – because for the longest time I looked forward to them with anticipation, or as close to it as anything around here gets. Obviously, first off, it wasn’t *just* the games themselves that did it, so much as the final erosion of my own willingness to spend time with games that I wouldn’t enjoy, here in this year of years, when even though I - like most of us - have been measurably inside and available more than any other year of this silly little life, I simultaneously lost the sense of frivolity necessary to sustain this parade of pointlessness, wherein meaning would only ever be created by consistency itself, dedication to the task at hand. If I had my time over, perhaps I would’ve placed less emphasis on the need to have *a thought* about each and every game, back there at the beginning, and do something more in the manner of Kris Ligman’s version of this sort of thing.  

But Fuck, the games themselves did not help. Cities in Motion 2 has – I think it is fair to say – one of the worst tutorials I’ve ever encountered. It’s so bad that I (a person who keep-in-mind has spent ten hours or so fumbling with this game’s predecessor) bounced off it repeatedly rather than straggle through the requisite minimum hour with it. Even as it meant letting this once-proud blog (lol) slide further into oblivion. Even as my city, alone amongst Australian cities, backslid into a hard second lockdown, complete with curfew, and for four months we were once again shorn of things to do outside the house. Even as I spent my time playing other games, good games, fun games, thoughtful games, or staring anxiously at the wall. Even with every reason to just grit my teeth and bear it so I can just move on with my life, move on with this list, feel like I’d done something measurable on a day that seemed indistinguishable from many of the one hundred plus days before it, make some reasonable record of the weird time I was living through, I could not.

This year has been awful, for so many people, in distinct and overlapping ways. I never did manage to play a full hour of Cities in Motion 2, public transport tycoon simulator, and perhaps in the wash-up of waiting I can admit that this project might be dead forever, TBC, and good riddance. I wanted this blog to follow me through life and perform an semi-accidental shadow memory of the real thing, but this year I found out that I wouldn’t always be willing to take it with me. In brighter news, last week, for the first time since March, I caught public transport – a tram and a train – to the west of the city, to meet friends for a pint or four on a Saturday afternoon, safe in the knowledge that after months of a hard lockdown, this city I live in had effectively eliminated the virus, for now at least, and that catching public transport was no longer the nauseating enclosed risk that it so recently seemed to have posed – that it still does pose in most other places in the world. Everything changed and it changed and it changed again. Still, the sun rises every day, etc.

Happy New Year.

Decided to boot up Cities: Skylines. It’s changed so much since I last played it... 3 years ago

Cities: Skylines Nintendo Switch Review: A Mobile Mayor | #Nintendo #Switch #CitiesSkylines #CityBuilding #Sim

[Disclosure: A review copy was provided for the contents of this article]

Whilst I love Paradox Interactive’s ambition in bringing Cities: Skylinesto the Nintendo Switch, playing it feels a bit like having to pull on a pair of hand-me-down socks that still have a bit of crustiness about them. The PC version is something like a hundred years old, but it remains by far the most complete and…

I literally love how every DLC that gets announced for Cities Skylines there is always the same hate and flack “FUCK THIS FIX THE TRAFFIC ARRGH!!!1!!”.

Even though they have said... what? over a 100 times now? That there isn’t anything wrong with the Traffic AI, it works as intended. Works how they want it to work. How it needs to work.

The problems people often describe aren’t flaws in the AI code, they’re flaws in way the player has set up their roads.

If you build a city with a shit ton of intersections, no roundabout’s, limited/poorly funded public transport and don’t space out and properly plan your districts, you’re going to get bitch slapped by the tsunami of traffic it generates.

One of the easiest ways to deal with traffic is to start your city with an elevated express way, starting with normal roads and upgrading to one way highway types. By using these with connecting roads you can improve traffic flow through the city.

Ban heavy traffic from certain districts to encourage the use of the express ways, bypasses and road tunnels. 

Use monorails to connect population hubs with major services to avoid the need for cars. Use pathways and bike roads to connect blocks and use them as overpasses so your citizens can walk to nearby places rather than drive.

Use busses for connecting districts within proximity of each other and subways for more distant districts. If you set up a system that has lines like how New York or London’s subway systems work you can dramatically decrease traffic.

Don’t spam those god forsaken intersections. These become bottlenecks and cause a lot of traffic issues. Use the congestion/traffic overlay to see which roads are struggling and upgrade them if you need to.

With industrial zones, use one way roads to streamline the traffic.

Don’t spam services. Just make sure existing ones are built in areas where they can help the most people and be accessed by public transport or by foot and that they’re nicely funded.

After watching the Mass Transit play through by ConflictedNerd, It helped me fix a shed load of issues I was having with my traffic. So far his concepts have yet to fail me.