A Living city

Question

Disclaimer

This is an attempt to reflect on the theme of the living city and an attempt to implement it. Unfortunately, the text is largely literary, and such a text does not lend itself well to translation.

A Living city

A city where life flows… or does it just feel like it?

A city in which life can be felt flowing: people walking in the streets, traffic moving. How to do it. And is it necessary?

For a city to feel alive, each resident must have a role. As far as it is written out and implemented, the city is perceived as alive.

It is necessary to determine how full and deep is the desire to simulate life in the city. Also, the time span in which the simulated life is to take place must be determined. If the time period is years, it is desirable to provide for the maturation and ageing of the characters.

The player may wish to keep track of a resident. If one were to go along with this wish, then the residents should basically have, at the very least, a job and a house. Or some may be homeless, but a place to sleep is still needed. Incidentally, in Cyberpunk 2077, only the homeless have a place to sleep — it's not possible to go into a flat with regular people unless it's in the story.

Consider the simulation of city life to the max — in the life simulator.

Mode of the day, week and year

During the day, characters need to satisfy their natural needs — eating and sleeping. (In hardcore simulations, there's also the use of the toilet.) The average citizen has a home and a job. If it's not a remote job, he moves between the two. When he needs to eat, he cooks at home (and goes grocery shopping) or goes to a canteen/cafe. This is daily.

There are weekends. Usually there is no work at the weekend. A time off when a person does not go to work. Weekends may be filled with parks and other recreational facilities that are empty on weekdays. There may be shift work. Shift work may range from work/rest days to 7/7 or work in day/evening/night shifts. This is a weekly schedule.

I should point out that the 8/8/8 work/rest/sleep daily schedule of most civilized countries is a relatively recent phenomenon by historical standards. And in fictional worlds, it doesn't have to be followed at all.

Life in the city is considered here. Seasonal and weather changes have little effect on city life. But it should be noted that if rural (village) life is simulated, they become crucial. Work in the field: sowing and harvesting crops, animal husbandry, is very much influenced by weather conditions. But during the holiday season, many urban dwellers leave the city. It's an annual regime.

Each character has a different character in reality. The character's reactions to different events depend on it. Usually even the gait is different.

The everyday life of the city

To bring the city to life, it is advisable to think about how to display the following aspects of city life:

• Construction, repairs to roads and buildings
• Services in the city
• Industry
• Cultural life
• Police, crime
• Medicine
• Transport

Not only people live but also the city itself. It expands, rebuilds or empties if depressed. Buildings and roads deteriorate, if time passes noticeably — they need to be repaired. Every day it has to be cleaned of dirt: dust in summer and snow in winter.

Some businesses have an impact on the style of the city. The cultural and religious sensitivities of the population influence the style of the city. Every city has its history.

Accidents happen: accidents, fires, crimes — emergency services and police have to react to them.

Transport, including public transport, moves through the streets. The volume of traffic depends on the time of day and the day of the week.

This also applies to the country simulation, but on a larger scale.

Fast travel

A very important point here is that everything in the simulation is calculated. And fast travel (so popular in almost all games) strongly contradicts this. It turns out that if you move quickly, you need to make a lot of calculations in a short amount of time: who will be next to the player at the end of the fast travel — all the calculations need to be done quickly, as time with this method of movement is greatly accelerated.

The process can be made a little easier by using transport: when boarding and disembarking, a simple animation can be played, which will give some time and free up resources for the calculation.

The simple question is "What of all this will the player see?"

The honest answer is, "Well, not nothing at all, but very little."

In the simulation, you can click on a character to find out his or her history and proclivities. To find that out in the game, you have to talk to the character and justify why he wanted to spill his guts. Or collect notes, but you also need to explain why they were compiled.

What good is the most heartfelt life story if the player doesn't know about it? It's not enough to compose a story — you have to deliver it to the player.

Often the payoff of a carefully crafted life simulation will not be noticeable. But it will consume a very lot of computing resources. Therefore they do not make a live city, but limit themselves to external, very simple behaviour patterns and a small number of scenes.

Full simulation is only needed in the simulator, otherwise simplification is sufficient.

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Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Famished

Answer 1

That sounds like an epic undertaking.

Pharyngeal

Answer 2

Yep, this project could be extended to a country, a planet… another planet… as far as one's imagination allows. But the big advantage is that this project can start with a small village or farm and grow smoothly over time.

Famished

Answer 3

Assuming that is about a game, where the player should interact more is where the most of complexity would be put in the NPC behaviour. Everywhere else could be simplified to extreme, taking Saints Row as example, the gameplay doesn't lean toward non specific NPCs, they are just scenery props.

Now in The Sims more variety in NPCs routines are great but need to be constrained to gameplay theme still.

In a small sandbox with few NPCs complex behavioural interaction can shine the best.
Something like a detective story.

The gameplay is what dictates where more attention and complexity should be allocated. Otherwise is just wasted work.
It needs to fit the game theme.

Where the player is guided to pay attention is where player induced expectations should be fulfilled.
It's really about manipulation then anything else. It's all about the player experience.

A real "uncompromised" simulation would be more about scientific study.
Or fiction. Welt am draht (World on a wire)?

Downwind

Answer 4

The gameplay is what dictates where more attention and complexity should be allocated. Otherwise is just wasted work.
It needs to fit the game theme.

This is exactly what I wanted to say in this article. 🙂

In a small sandbox with few NPCs complex behavioural interaction can shine the best.
Something like a detective story.

Yeah, a completely fair point — you can only "scrutinise" each character carefully in a game with a small number of characters. And there has to be a reason to study them, hence "detective story" is very appropriate here.

A real "uncompromised" simulation would be more about scientific study.

Yep, that's exactly the research work. This is why I don't really like calling the project a game, although it is playable. Psychologists (to model people's behaviour in crowds) and archaeologists (to reconstruct the life of people in ancient settlements) have been interested in this project. Therefore, such a project can count on grants from scientific institutions.

Or fiction. Welt am draht (World on a wire)?

The Sims exists, so there is nothing super fantastic in such a project.

Famished

Answer 5

I must go out of my way to warn against this kind of project from a gameplay perspective. The reason being is because when I look at open world games of any kind whether they're simulation and so on I find it incredibly boring and so do a lot of other players. It might be nice to fantasise about doing a project like this and by all means it is possible however are you designing a game or are you designing a simulation? Because those are two different things.

Something I've found remarkable as well about open world games is how the big AAA developers manage to fill entire cities with NPCs that supposedly behave as the OP describes but in reality again, it just happens to be incredibly boring. The reason being is because all these behaviours in an NPC needs to have meaning. For example not to show off too much but I have something like 17 different states that I'm designing and animating for my villagers currently. That might not seem like much, but every single one of them even things like the idle animation which indicates that the NPC doesn't have anything to do has a purpose. The rest involves things they are doing which the player has a hand in influencing.

If you don't put this level of thinking into your design for the NPCs in your city, you may as well just be creating static background art. Don't just have them playing generic animations of being put under arrest and so on because that's going to be a real turn off for gamers.

What would be extremely impressive is if you turned each of these situations into a real game mechanic that enables players to interact with these NPCs. So if you want to go to a hospital for example and do stuff there you can. You mentioned Cyberpunk 2077 and this is the type of experience they were promising but they completely fell on their arse. The backlash for failure will likely be much worse for an indie dev trying to promise all this stuff and not delivering.

Elburt

Answer 6

First of all, I would like to thank you for the feedback. I can see that you've been thinking about this topic. 🍻

You mentioned Cyberpunk 2077 and this is the type of experience they were promising but they completely fell on their arse.

Calling Cyberpunk 2077 a failing game is rather difficult, given the number of players it has. But I was going to cite it as being very unsuccessful in terms of implementing a living city. I had to shorten the article, otherwise it would sprawl into an obscene amount of space.

I must go out of my way to warn against this kind of project from a gameplay perspective. The reason being is because when I look at open world games of any kind whether they're simulation and so on I find it incredibly boring and so do a lot of other players.

A very boring game is the Sims series. But for some reason it gets played. Even more boring — The Medieval (based on the same Sims), but also had enough fans. It was similar considerations that such a game was boring and would not be in demand that justified the refusal to fund it. Only EA took a risk... and won, as we can see.

It might be nice to fantasise about doing a project like this and by all means it is possible however are you designing a game or are you designing a simulation?

A simulator that can be played.

For example, no world and public policy simulator takes into account interpersonal relationships. That was only in The Medieval.

The reason being is because all these behaviours in an NPC needs to have meaning.

Well that's pretty much what I wrote:

For a city to feel alive, each resident must have a role.

For example not to show off too much but I have something like 17 different states that I'm designing and animating for my villagers currently.

A very interesting project, I suppose. Would be happy to help create it. I envision using procedural animation.

Famished

Answer 7

In terms of Cyberpunk 2077, yes it's technically done well as a game, a very linear game at the end of the day, but it's not anywhere near what was promised. Still pretty miffed at the release myself and I think it fully jaded me on any new releases and so did Dying Light 2. I've now reached peak patient gamer because I know with these types of games anyway that they're probably going to be half price in several months and will have released a number of DLCs by the time they're finally done with development so for it to even be worth buying you're better off getting the 'whatever edition' they put out. Weirdly, with the way the industry works right now, you're liable to get ripped off if you buy even on launch day, nevermind pre-order.

Yeah I've definitely put a lot of thought into the whole concept of open world and I've decided that as a general rule I'm against it. The exception is when the world that's been created, procedurally or not, has lots and lots of stuff in it. No, splattering a bunch of trees everywhere can't count and you can't just place a bunch of NPCs across the map and call it a day and I've seen plenty of AAA devs guilty of this who should know better.

I realise I've come at you with a wall of text on the topic but it's just a trap I've seen many, many devs fall into. I think using a hybrid of procedural as well as manual design in your games is a great idea. Procedural can be a fantastic tool but it should never be relied on to the point that's all a dev uses.

Elburt

Answer 8

I am an atypical player, I like open world games. There does not necessarily have to be fighting, other challenges may be just as good.

Though I think the envisioned project might turn out to be a tad too complex from a programmer perspective, but that wouldn't keep me from making plans and putting them to paper.

Just my 2 cents ... :-)

Pharyngeal

Answer 9

I realise I've come at you with a wall of text on the topic but it's just a trap I've seen many, many devs fall into.

Actually, the original idea of the article was just to say that the implementation of the open world in the game is not very necessary — it often does not justify itself. The idea arose after discussing the game, where the open world was planned as the background. Well, I decided to compare and contrast this concept with my idea of a social simulator, where the open world is the main part and subject of study.

Your comments are good food for thought.

There does not necessarily have to be fighting, other challenges may be just as good.

Yep, there will be no battles, at least in the beginning. They are very difficult to implement (usually players in war games don't think about how and what to feed soldiers, how to get ammunition to the battlefield and where the wounded go).

Though I think the envisioned project might turn out to be a tad too complex from a programmer perspective

The project is indeed voluminous and complex, but I see my initial task as creating a simple prototype, a proof-of-concept. I planned to make a small village, like a farm. Further development would have depended on how successful and in-demand it proved to be.

Unfortunately, current events are forcing me to pursue other things, leaving little time and energy for this project. If someone decides to do it, I'm ready to share the groundwork developments for the project and will help.

Famished

Answer 10

As long as you've got a clear design in your head that's fine, it's just as a gamer, I would much rather see a small, very well crafted and detailed game world made up of a few areas than have this vast expanse of nothing which is what a lot of open world games end up as.

The problem is as well even if you're earnest about filling the open world you've got in mind it would potentially take years to really nail it and get the content in but you're at least thinking about this properly so I'll get off your case lol. It's just the amount of damn indie titles out there that go 'OPEN WORLD' in their marketing automatically makes me drop any interest because I know it's either going to be an early access title they're charging £20+ for or an AAA studio that got too ambitious for it's own good so I guess I'm trying to prevent anymore from being spammed onto game sites by over eager devs.

I mean just to give an example of a game that's not necessarily open world but with the scope of what the devs are aiming for, I have been so damn disappointed in Larian Studios and Baldur's Gate 3. The game has been in early access for almost two years now and they're selling it at full retail price as if it's an AAA game and the most they've done recently are a few bug fixes and some class/race updates, that drives me mad.

Elburt

Answer 11

The problem is as well even if you're earnest about filling the open world you've got in mind it would potentially take years to really nail it and get the content in but you're at least thinking about this properly so I'll get off your case lol.

There are indeed difficulties with filling the world. I have the idea of making a simulation game as a builder, where players fill in the world themselves: characters, clothes, houses, quests, etc. The "core" game, in fact, will be more of a feature demo than a full game.

It's just the amount of damn indie titles out there that go 'OPEN WORLD' in their marketing automatically makes me drop any interest because I know it's either going to be an early access title they're charging £20+ for

The game itself is supposed to be free-to-play. There are ideas of commercialising it, but they won't infringe on the gameplay in any way. One way, as I've already mentioned, is through grants from scientific institutes.

This is one of the problems why I am stalling development now — I can't get money from abroad in my country (and sometimes you have to eat). Our situation is such that people do not care about games at all.

…it's just as a gamer, I would much rather see a small, very well crafted and detailed game world made up of a few areas than have this vast expanse of nothing which is what a lot of open world games end up as.

One large area or several small ones — it's a matter of implementing visible area loading (scenes loading). If there is a smooth transition, it will not be noticeable that there are several areas — for the player they will merge into one.

But I'm going to start with a very small area and gradually expand it.

Famished