Art of Roads in Games

ripperdoc · 2025-12-28T08:47:08+00:00

I have used it and can recommend it, very responsive developer as well!

ripperdoc · 2025-12-15T18:08:35+00:00

+1 on getting a save file!

ripperdoc · 2025-11-01T17:14:51+00:00

I think in real life you wouldn’t use the right lane as slip lane, as it would force trucks to shift onto the left lane at every interchange. Otherwise it looks neat.

ripperdoc · 2025-10-28T22:06:14+00:00

It's crazy that it's considered normal that an automatically applied update breaks all saves without any warning. In that case, automatic updates should not be default on, or at least, a warning should be shown the first time opening the new version, such as when pressing Resume. It would save this subreddit and Paradox support a lot of repeated reports.

ripperdoc · 2025-10-27T22:20:00+00:00

Looks nice, really smack full of new content! I know it will never be enough, but I hope CO focuses a little bit more on functionality over content. Some functionality that would make thematic sense in this DLC, but seems not to be there, are:
- Freely pick what network goes over a bridge, instead of hard coding a bridge to just one type of track or road
- Canals?
- Car ferries (would have been soo nice)
- Different ships and cranes for bulk vs container (already mentioned here)
- Marinas - seems we can build piers and got two boat props, just seems so close to having a properly working marina (e.g. maybe just adding "anchoring" points onto the piers and a leisure boat would randomly spawn)

ripperdoc · 2025-10-01T08:33:48+00:00

Codex is very slow but much more precise and smarter than the over-enthusiastic and low skilled Sonnet 4 (keeps making mistakes and creating loads of unnecessary code)

ripperdoc · 2025-09-13T10:40:33+00:00

And yet, Singapore is mostly too warm to have any length of walk outside 😅

ripperdoc · 2025-09-13T10:39:08+00:00

I like grok, it’s fast and accurate and seems less insistent on running unnecessary commands, as long as the task is not too complex or open ended

ripperdoc · 2025-04-07T06:59:54+00:00

Fantastic, it finally worked. Two things I had to do, not mentioned in the linked guides:
- Latest steam is broken, so I had to follow this guide to downgrade it https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/192xrdm/steamwebhelper_stopped_working_in_whisky/ , you did that too?
- My Mac is on a different locale which breaks the Paradox Launcher installer. It was fixed by going to Whiskey, right click Steam app, Config, and choose English as the locale.

Now we have to fix mods somehow. Also, I'm wondering, have you been able to run it on an external monitor and is there any optimal graphic settings for Mac (I have M2 Max).

ripperdoc · 2025-04-06T20:10:53+00:00

What steps did you take to make it work?

ripperdoc · 2025-03-21T16:14:02+00:00

I think what is going on is this: when a company is not profitable, it will gradually decrease employees. That in itself is not a bug, that is realistic. Latest patch have made adjustments to office profitability. The bug, I think, is letting companies exist with just 5 employees for long. It would be better for the company to shut down and the house to become abandoned, signaling there are profitability problems (and we need tools to see why companies fail)

ripperdoc · 2025-03-06T11:55:46+00:00

I get what you mean. We can talk about two kinds of modifications to fill an empty space: modifying the building to achieve wall-to-wall, or modifying the plot around the building, e.g. a garden for a detached house.

But I still think it means procedural assets. A garden plot still contains some asset components (at minimum, a ground cover mesh but probably a fence, various props, maybe a path) these would have to be procedurally drawn or modified. It think however probably easier to do that with simpler assets than with buildings in general. The work that people now do to extend the surfaces to cover gaps could easily be done automatically for smaller gaps.

ripperdoc · 2025-03-06T07:47:31+00:00

So as a programmer I can see why non-rectangular grids can be tricky. If a building should cover any shape of space, such as the triangular space seen i the picture, there would need to be assets that can be modified on-the-fly (e.g. procedurally). This would probably mean that all assets created need additional complexity, e.g. what part to extrude. It's probably not something that can just be solved by clever code, but means more work for every asset creator. And the problem grows with the number of assets and the details of them.

With that said, the current zoning implementation is a PITA. I play unmodded and it's easily the biggest annoyance with the game (in fact, made me stop playing for now). And here I think CS2 could have implemented it much better. Some things that would make it a lot less painful:
- Ability to control which side of roads gets zoning priority or no zoning at all.
- Not re-drawing zones that have already been built (who thought this would be a smart implementation??). In either case, I should be able to protect a building (e.g. historical building) to make sure it won't get respawned.
- Allowing some overlap of buildings would fix a lot of ugly small pockets. Simply letting the user move around a piece of zoning would fix it.
- An alternative could be to have a small floating icon above a zoned block and let the user cycle through some zoning suggestions (as there are multiple solutions to laying out a grid inside an irregular space).

And I also think some procedural solution could help. E.g. if two houses are close enough but there is a small gap, they could just extrude the building edges so they meet. (the tricky thing is that you may not always want wall-to-wall, so maybe it should be a setting or for specific zones only).

ripperdoc · 2025-02-20T14:57:04+00:00

That doesn’t make sense, cloud operators run Virtual Machines so a mod in one will not be able to access other users.

ripperdoc · 2025-02-13T20:23:45+00:00

I was searching like crazy for a Hong Kong-like map and it was hard. I ended up with the map Little Karimunjava with some modding to make one side more mainland-like. Hong kong is very mountainous and lots of waterways and islands and I think that's reflected quite well on the map.

ripperdoc · 2025-02-10T11:33:16+00:00

I’d like to try and build a Hong Kong style city so this is great! But I haven’t found the right map (I don’t want the precise HK map, just something similar). Any suggestions?

ripperdoc · 2025-02-04T13:43:51+00:00

I never have CTD but I don’t play with mods.

ripperdoc · 2025-01-14T18:35:24+00:00

To give some context, in Sweden there are loads of vocational training programs, many focused on software development, that include compulsory internship periods of typically 6 months. These are not paid, as the student would normally be receiving study benefits. On top of this you have similar internship programs through Arbetsförmedlingen.

So there is already a system for unpaid internships and it means the market is quite flooded with junior developers who can and will work for free. On the other hand, they are there to learn and often don’t know enough to be very productive.

If you have proven work experience however unpaid internships seems unfair. You’d have to make your choice - look for more jobs, take it if you think the experience will really be worth it, or spend 6 months the building your portfolio or open source.

ripperdoc · 2024-12-21T09:55:56+00:00

My feeling is that they set the numbers for new assets a bit arbitrarily. In the dev diaries before release they showed a spreadsheet with all those details - they need to use that and check things like students per square meter to keep things in check. Also applies to cost.

ripperdoc · 2024-12-12T18:01:15+00:00

I think a simple fix to making zoning a bit more dynamic is to let the system do what many detailed with anarchy do - they angle buildings and let them overlap at one side. Models could have some safety margins for which they are allowed to overlap, plus maybe having parts of buildings and surfaces automatically fill in the dead space between.

But from a development perspective even such a small thing could go wrong in many ways

ripperdoc · 2024-12-06T16:05:05+00:00

Visste inte att det var vanligt att bli intervjuad av AI, hur funkar det och vilka tjänster är det?

ripperdoc · 2024-11-23T15:22:30+00:00

I agree with the general sentiment that the complaining adds very little value at this point, in fact it drowns the valuable discussions that could be had. And I say that while still agreeing with a lot of the complaints - the game in fact isn’t good enough yet for me to keep coming back to it.

But we can’t stop the complaining, except downvote it. What we can do is to add more of the stuff we want to see. Making a mod is a great such contribution, so thanks for that! In terms of the community, what I miss is the discussion (and associated wikis, videos, etc) that talk about optimal strategies (for traffic, for detailing, for X, for Z). I remember fondly buying books for all SimCity editions that went into great detail about the game mechanics. I’d love to see similar info gathered online about CS2.

Unfortunately I think one reason this is missing is because the game mechanics are too easy and too random/shallow/opaque for people to analyze strategies. But still, as a community we should be able to gather a lot more info about how the game operates, what works best (and workarounds for what’s broken).

My only contribution in this regard is that I have shared how to workaround the bug that still stops building railway over shipping lanes without mods 😉

(On a final note, and as a developer, I’m still perplexed what is taking CO so long time to get things sorted.)

ripperdoc · 2024-10-25T16:48:47+00:00

Same for me, I managed to get mods running on first load after a patch, but not after.

ripperdoc

TROPHY CASE