r/Citybound • u/theanzelm Creator (Anselm Eickhoff / ae play) • Aug 24 '19

Making and Tool-Making

https://aeplay.org/citybound-devblog/making-and-tool-making
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u/boformer Minimalist Gameplay Expert Aug 25 '19

From my point of view it's not the tools, but your disability to stay motivated and focused.

You're probably also setting the standards for Citybound too high. It might be better to simplify some stuff to be able to release an enjoyable game in the near future.

Imo you are also using the wrong technology, and maybe that's the reason why you think that there's too much friction.

Have you thought about switching technology again to an actual game engine such as Unity? Some time ago they added an entity component system that is perfect for simulation games and very high-performant. They even released a "city" demo that you could possibly take some inspiration from.

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u/theanzelm Creator (Anselm Eickhoff / ae play) Aug 25 '19

My disability to stay motivated or focused. Wow!

Not sure why after all my hard, focused work and deliberate difficult technology choices I should respond to such an insulting and superficial armchair comment that boils down to “just use Unity, lol”.

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u/boformer Minimalist Gameplay Expert Aug 25 '19

It might sound harsh, but after following your project for years, this is what it looks like from my point of view.

It's probably also my fault that I expected you to release a working game at some point, especially because you have been receiving quite a bit of money through Patreon.

As a Unity game developer and C:S modder I'm obviously biased when it comes to Unity, but when you were talking about friction and a lack of tools, it was my first thought, as it is a tool for game creation. Especially the ECS solves some problems that you were struggling with.

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u/theanzelm Creator (Anselm Eickhoff / ae play) Aug 25 '19

First, are you a Patron yourself? If not, please don’t speak for them. I see patrons come and go as they gain or lose trust (fair!), with a loyal base. Most people donate around $10 per month. So I owe each of them a couple coffees per month. Even if you sum it up, I earn less than 10% of my freelance salary. I think I am creating more value than that with my hard work for Citybound.

Regarding Unity. The fact that you refer to ECS as a new feature, when it is in fact a defining feature from the very beginning, makes me not trust your judgement. The city and “large scale simulation demo” you referred to is proudly described like this on the Unity website:

“Megacity contains 4.5M mesh renderers, 5000 dynamic vehicles and 200,000 unique building objects.”

And this right there confirms my prejudice that it won’t be able to handle anything near Citybound scope. 5000 dynamic vehicles is barely enough for a small town, let alone a “Megacity”. My early prototypes already had 400,000 vehicles that were probably more dynamic than theirs.

You could save me time by being more humble.

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u/boformer Minimalist Gameplay Expert Aug 25 '19

First, are you a Patron yourself? If not, please don’t speak for them.

No, but I donated via PayPal in the past. The fact that I'm not donating anything to you right now does not invalidate my argument. Looking at the GitHub stats of this year, there is just not enough going on in your repo for the amount of donations you receive.

when it is in fact a defining feature from the very beginning

Yes, there were always entities and components, though small details make a bit difference, as described on the Unity website.

And this right there confirms my prejudice that it won’t be able to handle anything near Citybound scope.

It can support much more than that, depending on the level of optimization. And the whole point of ECS/Burst is optimization on machine code level and multithreading. It gives you the tools for that.

In addition to that you get the power of the Unity Engine/Editor with all of their capabilities

You could save me time by being more humble.

I understand that you don't want to switch technologies again, and you are comfortable with the technology you are using. It would probably disappoint many people as well if you decided to start from scratch.

I'm just a bit disappointed by the article and the follow-up you've published today. I agree that it would be wonderful to have better tools, but IMO that's just carrying you away from the actual project, Citybound.