Boston done in Sim City 4!

[kz1000ps]

^ I think the easiest way would be to purchase it through a store like Steam, or at least that's how I do it. You have to download the Steam app and then from there you can buy it and it'll download the program to your computer. That's about it!

Also I'll note that considering it's a 18 year old PC game, it runs perfectly fine on my brand new Mac, so it isn't Windows exclusive.

 

[Scott]

Thank you! I will have my Gen Z tech consultant get right on it!

I did once put my old SC3000 disc into an aging laptop hoping it would somehow be backwards compatible. It's not.

 

[KentXie]

Cities Skylines can be absolutely amazing with great buildings and detail... If you a) mod it within an inch of it's life b) have the DLCs and c) have a computer powerful enough to handle all of that. The steam workshop has some amazing assets and mods.

For example, this is the Customs House Tower.
There's some creators who put obscene amounts of time and detail into their buildings and mods. For more examples, see This one, this one, and this one. Some players manage to do rediculous (example 1, example 2) things with it- and some have even modeled assets of the Green Line and the Commuter Rail. (Admittedly, not as well as say NYMTA assets but still.) To me, Cities Skylines is a lot more powerful than SimCity.

Thanks for that. I needed it

^ I don't disagree with you one iota, but the more time goes on and the more Cities: Skylines still struggles with the architectural stuff, the more I appreciate the lovingly detailed quasi pixel art of SC4 or even SC3000. Those mod examples you give are nice, but still don't approach the almost handcrafted quality of the building models in that underpowered 18 year old game. Just my personal preference!

It's essentially the same thing as Simcity 4. It's going to generate the same building over and over again unless you download mods and assets. Once you have a few nice looking ones, you'll start to get some variety that would improve the realism of the city.

Forgive my potato quality screencaps. My computer struggles if I turn the quality to max. But agree, you have to download user made assets for CS. The vanilla high-rises in CS is absolutely trash with no detail and designed by people who made 0 effort to make them look like actual buildings.

 

[kz1000ps]

^^ Good to know!

Also now that it's largely built out here's some more shots of Arlington

^^ It's hopefully self-explanatory, but in case it's not: Route 2 along the bottom, Alewife bottom right, Mass Ave in the middle, Mystic Lake top right and the Symmes development top center. Also Robbins Farm Park and the water tower just above Route 2.

City Hall and the memorial garden

Typical teens/twenties housing stock

Lastly, the Heights with the water tower and Robbins Farm Park environs. Belmont Hill School at the very bottom

 

[Lrfox]

Nice work, KZ! I love that this thread is still going and that you're tackling this area.

I'm torn on the SC4 vs. Cities Skylines debate. I quit playing SC4 probably about 10 years ago, but looking at your screen shots is almost giving me that itch again. I'm with you that the SC4 models are better than the Cities: Skylines models. Particularly in the un-modded versions of either game. Looking at your low density residential neighborhoods is a good reminder of that for me. The color palate is hard to beat too. The richness of the color and textures in SC4 vs. Skylines is pretty shocking considering the age gap. Out of the box, unmodified, I still think it's the better of the two.

I played Skylines as recently as summer 2020. I had all the DLCs and it was heavily modded with transit mods, hundreds of additional buildings, transit stations, etc. A ton of fun and it was stunning. The 12 years of advancement between SC4 and Skylines was most apparent in the transit network simulation as well as flexibility with layouts (curved roads, numerous modes, lot alignment, etc.). But the problem is that in spite of all of the DLC and improvements they've made, there's no equilibrium. Heavily modded cities with high quality video settings look absolutely stunning, but they'll grind even a high end gaming rig to a halt. Vanilla cities still don't really look any better than SC4. I've read for a year or so that Skylines 2 is in the works, but no announcement has been made. I'm all in when it comes to fruition. But for now, it's hard to be SC4.

 

[KentXie]

Nice work, KZ! I love that this thread is still going and that you're tackling this area.

I'm torn on the SC4 vs. Cities Skylines debate. I quit playing SC4 probably about 10 years ago, but looking at your screen shots is almost giving me that itch again. I'm with you that the SC4 models are better than the Cities: Skylines models. Particularly in the un-modded versions of either game. Looking at your low density residential neighborhoods is a good reminder of that for me. The color palate is hard to beat too. The richness of the color and textures in SC4 vs. Skylines is pretty shocking considering the age gap. Out of the box, unmodified, I still think it's the better of the two.

I played Skylines as recently as summer 2020. I had all the DLCs and it was heavily modded with transit mods, hundreds of additional buildings, transit stations, etc. A ton of fun and it was stunning. The 12 years of advancement between SC4 and Skylines was most apparent in the transit network simulation as well as flexibility with layouts (curved roads, numerous modes, lot alignment, etc.). But the problem is that in spite of all of the DLC and improvements they've made, there's no equilibrium. Heavily modded cities with high quality video settings look absolutely stunning, but they'll grind even a high end gaming rig to a halt. Vanilla cities still don't really look any better than SC4. I've read for a year or so that Skylines 2 is in the works, but no announcement has been made. I'm all in when it comes to fruition. But for now, it's hard to be SC4.

It's unlikely that CS 2 is coming out in the next year or so given that the Airport DLC is coming out tomorrow. People thought that the sequel was in the works because it's been more than a year since the previous DLC came out (Sunset Harbor) and then lo an behold, they announced the Airport DLC on Christmas. My main gripe about CS is the low population, as dumb as that sounds. I like SC4 because I can actually build to over 1 million. I also found that assets and the props in SC4 extremely difficult to track down and download and I constantly end up with 500 ft cardboard boxes dotting my screen.

 

[KentXie]

Stuff additional RAM onto my laptop so now I can actually run the mods that improve the realism. Thought I share one of the cities I've been working on. Note, I only run the high settings for the screenshot. I turn the settings back down during gameplay so that my laptop won't fry