14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Colossal Order and publisher Paradox Interactive have been talking up the upcoming Cities: Skylines as an alternative city builder experience for those who have been disappointed with the launch of SimCity, and zoning is one of the most important elements of any title in the genre.
In a new diary linked to the title, the studio talks about the way it moved away from the options of placing buildings individually, which could be interesting but would take too much time, in order to allow gamers to create zones that the citizens can then develop in an interesting way.
Colossal Order states, “We decided that zoning is the way to go in a game of this scale. And clever city planners can take advantage of the various zoning tools and have more control over the zoneable buildings than just painting large areas if they so choose. For example, instead of zoning the full depth of the zone grid (4 cells) the player can zone thinner slices, like 2 cell deep areas, that spawn smaller building fitting the 2 cell deep restriction.”
The classic residential, commercial and workplace areas will be offered in Cities: Skylines, with two options offered for each, low and high density for the first two and industry and offices for the last one.
The citizens that exist in a simulated city will have different needs and abilities, and based on them, they will choose where they want to live, shop and work, and gamers will have to react to the way their settlement evolves in the long term.
Options and ease of use in Cities: Skylines
Colossal Order will offer a number of tools for zoning, with filling used for large areas, brushes for detail placement and marquee zoning tools to create areas by clicking and dragging.
Both land value and the education of the citizens that frequent various zones will lead them to evolve and to become more efficient, but gamers also need to provide essential services in order to increase the satisfaction of inhabitants and progress.
The studio adds, “Offices unlock at a later stage since they require even more educated personnel to be functional. Once the player reaches this level and is able to really start educating their citizens with the higher level of schools they can choose to switch to office workplaces instead of industry on the expense that it might not create as much tax income as the more polluting yet profitable regular industry.”
Cities: Skylines will be launched in 2015 on the PC.
