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So cims choose a route based on multiple criteria, now. That’s how transportation network analysis is done IRL. AND they can turn around and reroute in the middle of a trip. Super cool.
Every time I play Cities I have to install traffic mods because the default traffic mechanics are terrible. I’m glad to see they’re putting time into improving that.
I’m hoping for a bit of randomness too, like an arrogant driver that still wants to go the slow way. Very interesting in how the car accident mechanics work as well. Very happy so far with their feature lists
I’m glad to hear about parking. Pocket cars were really lame in my opinion. Traffic accidents sound super sick too! I can’t wait for a traffic accident to block the only route out of a location and have a bunch of mad citizens, just like in real life.
I wonder if the accidents will be able to block sidewalks.
Finally, I can create a true American city filled with parking garages everywhere and a desolate downtown filled with office towers that sits vacant in the evening and weekends.
I hope we won’t get in too much trouble when an accident happens in a new town, haha! Amazing changes for the game, and it really makes it feel like a next generation of Cities Skylines.
Fingers crossed on them blocking sidewalks. They did mention cars being able to hit buildings though.
Parking is a game changer. I’m really excited to solve traffic forever!
I am super duper excited about it! With AI hopefully cims will properly populate all lanes if available!
(Also what I’m hoping for is to allow carrier fees, track fees or depot fees for goods transport, I love hauling goods around but it often ends up being a major uncompensated expense)
(Also what I’m hoping for is to allow carrier fees, track fees or depot fees for goods transport, I love hauling goods around but it often ends up being a major uncompensated expense)
Looks like the next one of these videos is going to be about “Public & Cargo Transportation”, so hopefully you’ll find your answer then. https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features
I thought for sure they’d leave all of my most requested features on the cutting room floor, but they’ve got exactly the right brand of nerdy shenanigans in place. They actually model people’s desire to travel by car based on parking availability! Perfect!
Yeah seriously, they’ve been doing an excellent job of showing us what we wanted to see (save for bike lanes, I’m sure we’ll get them eventually).
They did mention bike lanes in the last dev diary video as a customization option IIRC. So you have base roads and can dedicate lanes to bus/bike/tram if you want.
Perhaps it was in the video but not the blog post, because Dev Diary 1 doesn’t mention bike lanes:
Roads can be customized by adding bus lanes and tram tracks to them using the additional network building tools
https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/cities-skylines-ii/features/road-tools
They have explicitly stated that bikes (and bike lanes) won’t exist in the base game at release. It is a bit hidden, as they wrote that only on Twitter and in a comment under dev diary 1.
Bikes will almost certainly be a DLC again.
Honestly, seeing that traffic incidents will be a thing is nice. I’m so beyond tired of seeing the cims in my city drive through multiple cars and plow through people without any issues. Also, as a chunk of the YT comments say, high beam simulation? Cool!
Remember the time when every server space suddenly got called ‘cloud’? Or when every device needed to be ‘3D’? Or every household item got Bluetooth to make it a ‘smart’ item? Or you needed the word ‘crypto’ included your software products? Or when all the products had a lower case ‘i’ in front to make them look advanced?
In a few months we’ll look back at the time a the time, when everyone suddenly called their algorithms an ‘AI’. Paradox could just call it Smart iTraffic 3D to hit more buttons.
Judging from the 1st game, it’s probably mods and player ingenuity to solve the issues with the traffic. Which his honestly a part of the experience of playing Cities Skylines. Getting around all the problems with your own solutions. Sometimes I completely (had to) redesigned parts of the city to solve one junction.
Afaik when it comes to games the way npcs think has always been called AI, so wouldn’t really say its something new or making it seem smarter in this context.
I get that it’s not ideal. My issue is just that a big part of Cities Skylines is to solve the traffic. Try to keep it flowing with a more and more complex city around it, changing main routes, changing infrastructure options. You cannot just make it Smart iTraffic 3D without removing the major challenge from the game. Fixing some bugs and not having traffic that dumb like in the 1st game would be appreciated though.
The term ‘AI’ just gets used way too loosely, only getting worse in the recent months. ‘Traffic’ and ‘AI’ in Cities Skylines just doesn’t fit together well.
You cannot just make it Smart iTraffic 3D without removing the major challenge from the game. Fixing some bugs and not having traffic that dumb like in the 1st game would be appreciated though.
AFAIK the way it worked in the first game, the pathfinding was a simple A* algorithm that used only the length & speed limit of each link in the network to determine the shortest path. The way this video makes it sound, travel time will be the most significant factor, which means traffic will make a difference in the pathfinding. Then they’re also introducing factors related to the individual cim’s need for parking, comfort, and risk-taking. It should be a lot more realistic and just as challenging, without the ridiculous situations where traffic would come to a complete standstill because everyone is taking the same route even though there are hundreds of alternative side streets to take.
As someone who’s done some advanced coursework in traffic engineering, I’m pumped.
Exactly! It should allow for even more control when designing your road network, without the random things you cannot do anything about.
I’m stoked too! Big improvement from the first game
AI has been game dev jargon for decades. Gamers are unlikely to confuse it with having any relation to machine learning models.
What are you on about? This sorta thing has been called AI in games forever. This has nothing to do with the Gen AI fad that’s going on.
This has always been called AI, and it’s a correct use of the term.
They called it AI in the first game too. It’s been called AI in games for decades.
Example: https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/448825-cities-skylines-traffic-ai-better
This type of AI has nothing to do with the recently more popular machine learning. Gaming has been using Artificial Intelligence as a term since forever, it is simply an algorithm that approaches realistic behavior. When you look back at games like Command and Conquer they also called the computer opponents AI
What? AI was a term regularly used in gaming context since the 90s. It’s not self-learning neural network, it’s just the usual, specific problem-solving algorithm in the game. It’s not marketing term, which is riding on the newest popular buzzword.
Oh boy, am I hyped. It looks promising
Yes! It’s the best thing from the Xbox show, and I can’t wait to play it. I’ll just wait for the reviews to see if it’s OK from technical side. The first game won’t get past 45 FPS after the city grows to 10k citizens, no matter the hardware.
I’ll be happy if cars can drive down a 5 lane interstate, in a lane other then the far-most right lane.
It takes a ton of optimization to get multi-lane highways and interstates to be properly utilized… If I recall, I used traffic manager to only allow drivers taking the next exit to use the right lane, as the mechanics… are very finicky.
Edit- and appears, they heard the call.
Lane Usage
In Cities: Skylines II vehicles use more lanes. They try to optimize road usage to allow as smooth traffic as possible, occupying all available lanes as they travel to their destination. This means that if one lane in a multilane road is filled with vehicles waiting at the traffic lights, new cars arriving at the intersection choose the other empty lane(s) to fill the intersection evenly.
On multilane roads, vehicles can overtake slower vehicles when the simulation notices that the other lanes are less used. Vehicles also switch lanes to avoid completely blocked lanes due to a traffic accident, a traffic jam, or a stopped vehicle, such as an ambulance picking up a patient. Additionally, vehicles will try to give room for the emergency vehicle by switching to other lanes when possible.
I am really curious how this will pan out for the casual city building enthusiast.
I liked everything about Skylines a lot, but I always ran into a roadblock (ha!) with traffic. I never designed well for it, resulting in my cities locking up by mid game. I briefly tried to learn, but it seemed almost impossible to retrofit a solution and trying to design from day 1 with traffic in mind wasn’t really enjoyable. I always wish there was a mod that just abstracted traffic simulation out because it was the one thing I didn’t really want to deal with.
Dealing with parking and accidents sounds like kind of a headache, but the smarter lane changes and path-finding hopefully alleviate some of the load as well.
You’re raising a very valid concern, I hope they have enough options for more casual players.
At least the regular traffic flow should be better than vanilla CS:1. But then again they added road maintenance and parking.
I’m so excited for this. I generally like to skip the hype train, but in this case: toot toot.
Honestly it’s the little stuff. Traffic collisions make a huge difference in terms of realism.
Does the price aspect of the pathfinding penalties mean that induced demand will be properly simulated now?
Maybe! It would be cool if they took the simulation that far.
But I’m not too sure that they’re actually keeping track of cims money. On Twitter someone asked if they are also introducing traffic fines, and they replied with a no.
We’ll find out on the 14th of August, when they will discuss economy!
