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[Cities in Motion] Public Transport Management Simulation? HELL YES
Jintor
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
CITIES IN MOTION: A VIDEOGAME EXPERIENCE FROM PARADOX INTERACTIVE
Have you ever sat on a shitty-ass train on the way back from the city, watching the local hoodlums terrorise a security officer and thought: I could do a better job managing transportation than this? Well, now you can! With CITIES IN MOTION, you too can now casually screw over the public any time you please!
Dive right into the thrilling and exciting world of PUBLIC TRANSPORT! Manage bus routes terribly, plan trackwork at inconvenient times, experiment with 'affordable' wages and dick around by disabling the air conditioning on swelteringly hot days! Okay, that's enough of the salesman pitch. Let's talk business.
Public Transport Management Simulation? That sounds boring as hell!
Firstly, shut your trap, you little whippersnapper. Secondly, if you enjoy games like Transport Tycoon, Traffic Giant, Sim City or the Cities franchise, you'll probaby get a kick out of Cities in Motion. The idea is to set up a successful transportation company in one of four cities; Vienna, Helsinki, Berlin or Amsterdam, working around existing infrastructure, servicing different socio-economic groups to create your transport empire. Still sounds boring? Well, simply redefine your definition of fun!
We got rid of the previous guy. Tell us about graphs!
I'm glad you asked! Cities in Motion sports an 'advanced economy simulation', which in practice means that the world will change and your little company is going to get dragged along for the ride. Banking, contracter deals, insurance, fluctuating economic trends... all of these will have an affect on the wages you should assign, the price of ticket prices, the types of people who want to use your transportation service, and so on.
If you're still hungry for data, why not check out the different social groups in the city? Understanding the needs and desires of different groups will help you get your transportation network off the ground! White-collar workers probably don't want the same thing as high-school drop-outs, and neither do students share common goals with those crazy foreign tourists. It's worth checking out what those dudes want!
Wow! That's a lot of data! But what about the actual gameplay?
Paradox is offering a campaign with 12, count them, 12 different scenarios, as well as a sandbox mode where campaign maps are playable and presumably with their own unique maps as well! And, just because they love you, they're also bundling a map editor so you can create your own cities, too! Everybody hold hands and wait for the inevitable creation of New York City or the transportation nightmare that is... uh, I don't know... Kuala Lumpur?
In terms of focus, we're probably talking a more local/focused level; probably no intercity rail lines or airplanes, unfortunately. You'll have to wait for a new Transport Tycoon before that rolls around, I guess. There will be goals or 'quests' in-game that'll get your company reputation and cash if you complete them, if that's your thing!
I HAVE A VEHICLE FETISH, TELL ME ABOUT VEHICLES
Woah, woah, woah! Hold your horses! (The game does not have any horses). We're talking buses, trams, metro trains, water buses, helicoptors and subways at the least, with over 30 vehicles based on real-life models available for use. The game will cover 100 years of transportation history from 1920 onwards, meaning everything but gyrocoptors are probably in, in, in!
I mean, look at these beauties!
My word, those pictures look incredible!
You haven't seen the half of it yet.
Those pictures are great, but shouldn't they be... In Motion?
You got it, boss! Check out these 'videos'!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FemH4GhEqEs&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS5fdGCJTAk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmyXl2n9Or8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml2lLq2k7-4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmyXl2n9Or8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml2lLq2k7-4
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! What will I need to run this?
The site recommends:
Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core or higher
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Hard drive space: 2 GB
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800/ATI Radeon HD 3850 or higher, 512 MB RAM, OpenGL 3.0
It's not known if the above specs are Recommended or Minimum, but that's what they have on the website.
When's it out? Is it out already? I want to manage transport!
Chillax, man, and feel the groove, because CiM is set for a release date on the 25th of Febuary 2011 for (naturally) the PC. But if you can't wait that long, well... how about we talk about the open beta...
Open Beta?!?
What? I didn't say anything about an Open Beta, available now from FilePlanet.com! That's crazy talk! Go back to sleep, kid.
One last image, please!
Alright kid, you asked for it...
Jintor on
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I think that would have to be my system of choice. Forced march to work!
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
"Elevated metro lines" count right?
I still like it
Steam: CavilatRest
In Sandbox mode I can make my busses or whatever go around and stop at stops but I always end up bankrupt, slowly leaking money because my lines aren't quite profitable. Perhaps the structure of the forthcoming Campaign mode will alleviate the problem. Or maybe I'm just bad. Either way.
I noticed a few bugs/bad design decisions but not anything that would stop me from buying the game when it comes out. A vehicle doesn't actually stop at the first station on its line, which is frustrating when stop one is clogged with a hundred angry riders. Your bus will just ignore them and proceed to stop two without picking anybody up.
Another problem is that ESC opens the menu instead of closing dialogs and windows and reverting the cursor to selection mode. It's not major but I'd really like to see it changed.
I eagerly await for real life cities, so I can see if it is actually possible to have a useful bus service in Bristol.
I don't think I could describe why I like this sort of game without sounding lame either. Maybe I'm just lame. On the bright side, you are now lame with meeeeeee.
As far as I can tell, buses will bleed money like nobody's business, but require the least overall initial outlay. Trams are probably your first 'profitable' line of business but require a little more forward thinking because of the fact that trams are still affected by traffic problems. Metros are your best bet but require a shittonne of cash, more than you have at the start of anything. If there's a good water taxi route you should take that, they cost a bit more than anything else and you only need to pay for ports and the taxi itself. I think choppers are a waste of time right now.
The purposes of minor transport services like buses is really to move passengers to your higher-level services so as to improve patronage on those services, I think. They're a bit like a loss leader in that respect... don't try and use them for major routes because they'll simply get overloaded and everybody will get mad at you (and you're really likely to start causing jams, which'll give you a tonne of problems later...)
There's quite a few glitches right now, like cars deciding the middle of tram tracks is a fantastic place to get caught in a jam (this'll fuck up your entire network) or the tail end of your buses blocking two lanes, as well as cars not changing lanes, etc... still, it is beta. Whatcha gonna do
It looks awesome, but my last experience with Paradox Interactive was Victoria II, which I consider a terrible piece of shit. I'm remaining cautiously optimistic.
I haven't really experimented with trams yet and obviously have major bus problems. Do you think it is better to have a lot of busses on long routes say from the suburbs to the town centre, or to have more, but shorter routes that overlap. With passengers having to change vehicle all the time I would imagine it will clog up the interchange stops as you are suddenly delivering a whole bus load of people ontop of the stops 'natural' coverage.
From the [strike]demo[/strike] beta this looks like it will be a worth game to sit alongside transport tycoon. I am yet to play for long enough to see city development on a big scale, but just looking at the change in vienna in 100 years makes it look like there will be some interesting planning going on.
While not being quite what you want, almost every screen has a keyboard shortcut, pressing it again gets rid of it. So "L" opens/closes the lines menu, "R" does the roster. I found with a bit of thought you can quickly shut down stuff you aren't looking at. "Z" is the most important one as it brings up the selection tool, so you don't delete the main high street when you're trying to remove tram rails.
yes. military parades, fires, protests... always screwing with my routes. i played the beta last night for a few hours and time just slipped away. Its brutal trying to make cash.
I could see something like morons causing accidents or construction being the equivalent of tornadoes and earthquakes for this game.
I was thinking more along the maglev in Disneyland style, not the Gotham Wayne train. If it has that it may solve a childhood dream of mine.
PSN:RevDrGalactus/NN:RevDrGalactus/Steam
i was at 40k and climbing before i got tired of my perfect little company
tute town. havent tried vienna yet. between a sick wife and 2 wild children, i havent had much free time.
i started a game at nap time and just left the game on and paused till about 11pm when i quit. not being able to save is just a minor inconvenience.
and the whole making money thing was purely accidental.
Well that's why I just minimized the game last night when I finally went to sleep, no problem there, really... ;-)
I arrived home last night at around 10PM installed the game and started playing. After doing half the tutorial, I went a little overboard and ran out of money "buy a bus for the line? pffff I just built 2 lines, let me buy 5 buses for each and then build a tram that goes from the airport to downtown.". After this I started the sandbox with Vienna and it was great. I hadn´t seen the buttons for speeding up time so it took me at least 1 hour to make my first line work, with the right quantity of buses going around downtown. So after this first line I built 2 more, one from the airport to the suburbs and the other integrating these 2 lines.
Everything was going well for the first couple of months but I underestimated the demand for lines 2 and 3 and bought only small buses for them. After losing a lot of money to change them to bigger buses I had to take a loan to increase the number of buses in line 1 since it was becoming too crowded. This led to me playing, "just a couple of more months", in order to finish paying the debt and become profitable again. When that happened it was past 2 AM and I went to sleep, can´t wait to continue playing this today. Anyone has any idea when this comes out on steam???
This would make sense considering that Magicka is from Paradox and sold 30000 units on day one and I believe hasn´t fallen below number 3 on the most sold list, as of today it is number 1 again. At 20 bucks this is a day one purchase for me, will preorder as soon as it is up.
As of my game I made some loans and built a subway line from the northern train station to the airport, with stops on the southern train station and next to the cathedral, where 2 of my bus lines have stops. Even though I am paying 900+ monthly for the loans my income shot up from 100-300 to 1000+. Now I´m messing around with water buses and still loving every minute of it.
Nevermind, it was by the minimap. Also, the tutorial sucks, it tells you what to do, but not HOW to do it half the time. Or at least it seemed like it to me.
There's an underground transition button just to the bottom right of the map, just below the information button
I'm going to go cry now.
Edit: Seeing those numbers for Magicka, I'm glad to see Paradox doing well. PC gaming needs them.
are you kidding. there were a bajillion patches that enhanced and reblanced EU2 back in its hayday. EU3 kind of suffers from expansion patches, but they tend to add all new features.
And its not an actual paradox game. They're just acting as publishers.
Disable V-sync. It Keeps Venice from not studdering like crazy on a mid range system. Game still flys.
You say "reblanced" I say "Made Playable". And yeah, EU3 and HoIII3 both suffer from expansion patches, so I guess neither of us are joking.
And I'm pretty sure this is a paradox developed game. I've seen nothing to the contrary, and that UI has paradox written all over it (not literally, FYI).