What are some /n/-approved video games?I got Transport Fever 2 in a sale recently. I expected it to be an uninspired OpenTTD clone, but it's actually great. The game itself is meh, but the graphics are very nice and it really does feel like a digital model train set. It's just fun trying to build aesthetic stations, depots, sidings, junctions, etc.
>>1822403the real joy of transport fever 2 is going full autism with mods, i have 100GB of them myselfalso do not play the campaign under any circumstances
>>1822403I spend unhealthy amounts of time playing Cities in Motion 2. The prague map is nice but takes a while to figure out how to avoid traffic bunching up your vehicles
>>1822403>a digital model train setThat would be EEP if you can muster up the autism to actually get into it.For me, nothing beats A-Train. Because it's the only game I know of that leans this heavily into the indirect urban development aspect instead of being either signals & junctions autism or almost board-game levels of abstraction.
>>1822403Workers & Resources, unironically. You need to do immense amounts of rban and transport planning to make your command economy function effectively
i've had sex btw and nobody can prove otherwise
>>1822525My time on Train Simulator has been the same since 2018. Steam stopped counting at 179 for whatever reason. Maybe due to me using offline mode?
>>1822466>Because it's the only game I know of that leans this heavily into the indirect urban development aspectprobably because that's a jap-exclusive concept
>>1822525Get on my level
>>1822403If you want gameplay, get the mod in pic-rel. The guy is a turbo train autist who made this game much more complex.
>>1822532In game terms, not really though. Most other transport management games have at least a vaguely similar basic idea of making cities in the world grow based on player action, and I loved playing Industry Giant 2 as a kid in the 2000s and watching the cities grow based on fulfilling their demands and thinking it would be cool to have something that combines that with Traffic Giant. At the time I barely even knew Japan existed. And of course, A-Train is heavily steeped in Japan-specific transit and urban development policies, but interplay of transportation, economics and politics is not a foreign concept in the west, neither is transit oriented development. But no western game I played ever even really attempted to tackle this.
>>1822508Man, I need to check that shit out. Every new screenshot looks closer and closer to my old hometown.
>>1822564outside of japan it really is as simple in most cases as other games portray it - transport system supplies town, town growsof course things change when you get down to the commuter level but from an intercity perspective that's a fine level of detail
>>1822557looks shithis idea of added complexity is just to add the same generic variants to every vehicle
>>1822557>>1822574What does it do?
>>1822569yeah it's pretty good. once you've built your first couple of towns to learn the mechanics of:*industry*public transport*worker housing*logistics*construction*agriculture*water and sewer provision*electricity generation & transmission*crime & punishment*medical needs*tourism*entertainmentthen head on down to the workshop, and download some of the hundreds of excellent mods
>>1822572I'm not sure what exactly you are thinking is the secret Japanese knowledge here, but A-Train does not cover intercity and is specifically focused on urban and commuter rail. And games like Traffic Giant or Cities in Motion do cover a similar scale, where these concepts would matter but they just barely touch on them in comparison and mostly treat the city as a static environment that is just there to provide some As and Bs to move people between (CiM has at least some development though to its credit, but IIRC it was pretty minimal). And even if they didn't, there is still ample opportunity to come up with the idea of making a game about driving new urban developments from the point of a transport company or planner, because the idea that transportation drives both economic and urban growth and will shape a city and its surroundings (and in turn shape its transportation infrastructure of course) isn't alien here at all. Contracts for transportation projects as part of plans to spur development happen here all the time too.All A-Train does is have a game loop focused around the idea that moving people to and from stations will make things develop around them (not a Japanese-only thing), along with certain other things like local government subsidies (not a Japanese-only thing) and zoning laws determining what kinds of buildings will develop (also not a Japanese-only thing). In many ways, these mechanics are actually pretty simple and not very complex at all. There are of course some more specifically Japanese things, like how fundamentally the Rail companies are treated in their entirety as a development company of sorts and you are expected to operate many other subsidiary businesses, but I find it weird to consider the idea of developing cities via transportation a specifically Japanese thing.
>>1822574The readme is like 10 pages long.>>1822579The guy redid everything number wise. At face value it only adds 'variants', but there are some pretty far reaching changes to the game. Like - you get five locomotives when you start in 1850 regardless of climate.There is a setting in this mod that controls maximum track slope and it matters, because on hardest difficulty it makes more sense to easily lay track in 0.25% steps to control gradient than to brute force you way out. No train can handle 1000T train on 8% grade. This is the level of autism this mod forces on you.
>>1822581>but I find it weird to consider the idea of developing cities via transportation a specifically Japanese thing.BUT PRETTY MUCH EVERY OTHER TRANSPORT GAME DOES THATTHEY JUST DON'T HAVE THE FINE-GRAIN CONTROL A-TRAIN HAS
>>1822600I don't know how I feel about that limited slope thing. Distances in TF are so compressed that it seems like you'd just be forced to build ridiculous looping shit that wouldn't be used in similar real life situations, just because you don't have the space to do a more direct gradual slope.
>>1822654Which is exactly what I've been saying the whole time?
>>1822662This was my main problem with TF2. It seems like they should have made the maps a lot larger (and I would think they could have easily done so in 2019). Hell, most of the time my trains barely got to full speed before they reached their destination.
>>1822403I use cities skylines with a trillion mods as my virtual trainset
>>1822877Post Cities Skylines maps. You can generating them by downloading CSLMapView from the workshop.
How much can you expect to pay for the game and a reasonable number of mods? (Idk if the mods are free or paid or a mix)
>>1823018you're not in simland anymore, all mods are free
>>1822877Skylines would be better if they jettisoned all the stuff that made it a game and just made it into a software toy zen garden thing insteadfucking deathcare bullshit. oh you can download 500000TB of mods to fix it!!!. fuck off i just want to draw train lines and interchanges and watch buildings appear
>>1823032Death spikes stopped being a big issue for me after I stopped building huge swathes of high density residential areas and started expanding cities gradually with mostly low density zones.Keep in mind that the scaling in this game is actually quite small; what would be the urban core of a city in real life should really only be represented in-game as a single tile at most.However, I do believe the routing bullshit for waste and deathcare should be fixed regardless of the play style; if a player wants to build an ant's nest for bugmen then the AI should be able to handle that.
>>1823032>i just want to draw train lines and interchanges and watch buildings appearthat's unironically what a-train is for
>>1823043>However, I do believe the routing bullshit for waste and deathcare should be fixed regardless of the play stylesee, that's the thing: it shouldnt be there in the first place. it's only there out of the cowardly belief that games must have structure and objectives, which is ***fucking retarded*** for open-ended management / 'make your own fun' games.when the resulting "challenge" for the player to "overcome" as part of the "gameplay loop" is for service buildings demanded by cims to barf out endless service vehicles that snarl up traffic, i reserve the right to point at that "challenge" and call it "fucking bullshit". because it turns the 'make your own fun by building the thing' game into a 'build road networks' game.cims demand water! laying water pipes is meaningless busywork. the water has absolutely no effect on anything other than a 'place has water supply / place has no water supply'. but city builders must have water supply because ... because they just do, so, in it goes. now go build a power plant and link it to the school by 100m of overhead cable because you have to do that in city builders, etc
you can build any city you like in cities:skylines, as long as it is a dense skyscraper metropolis built off a highway interchange and fed by huge road networks
>>1822866This is an universal problem of pretty much all games. If they made realistic distances, than a train would travel for a realistic duration - hours. Makes for a boring game.For the same reason all of your open world games have shit happening every 500 feet or so.Pic very related.
>>1823058I believe much of the game's fun does derive from its sandbox nature; I enjoy the challenge of traffic management (when paired with TMPE) while others, especially on this board, may enjoy building mass transit networks.However, the agent-based population simulation is still at the very core of the game, so even if it is a sandbox game, it is still necessary to bear some level of realism; after all, deathcare/waste collection vehicles still have to interact with traffic on the road network.Speaking of which, I agree that utilities have no place in the game, as it does not interact with the population simulation at all, but keeping the pylons as a scenery option wouldn't do any harm.
>>1823090fair enough. i graduated from Skylines to Transport Fever 2 because, as it turns out, my brain releases happy chemicals when setting up logistics networks anyway
>>1823059>fed by huge road networksAll cities have a huge road network; every lane, street, and avenue is part of it. There are mods for more pedestrian-friendly roads.
>>1822866>>1823085It's tough because of the way it simultaneously acts as a virtual model train set and as a tycoon management game. You've got trains with somewhat realistic acceleration and speeds, but at the same time there's a game clock ticking a day off every few minutes so that long HSR route takes a week to arrive at its destination, and lots of other weirdness like that. The lack of flexibility kinda sucks too, it adds a game challenge but results in things like every freight train having a fixed formation and having to pull empty cars around, and having to have two sets of the same cars if you want to transfer stuff from one line to another, and so on. I still like the game though.
>>1823092In CIM2 I make a somewhat reliable transport network that brings in good money then replace car filled roads that slow my services down with wide bus lanes only. The key is getting your service more reliable, therefore more affordable for you to run to attract more customers
>>1823108>The lack of flexibility kinda sucks too, it adds a game challenge but results in things like every freight train having a fixed formation and having to pull empty cars around, and having to have two sets of the same cars if you want to transfer stuff from one line to another, and so on.there is literally no game i know of that actually simulates thisit's either fixed formations or magically-appearing cars
>>1823085A-Train 9 actually lets you select the time scaling yourself, from 1x to 100+. It's pretty interesting fucking around with it and seeing the tradeoffs. Really, if the tech was there to increase game speed enough, it wouldn't be that much of an issue running at 1x, but even at the highest speed setting everything still takes too long. On the other hand, it always sucks seeing trains take literal minutes just to accelerate out of a station at higher scales, making realistic metro headways completely impossible. And of course, while you can change the scaling at any time, it completely breaks all the schedules... But it's actually kinda cool switching to 1x once you have a nice city and make realistic feeling schedules for it.
>>1822403Reminder that Death Stranding is /n/
I hate how almost everything forces you to a/the grid
>>1823108>You've got trains with somewhat realistic acceleration and speeds, but at the same time there's a game clock ticking a day off every few minutes so that long HSR route takes a week to arrive at its destination, and lots of other weirdness like that.It actually takes precisely the amount of time it would realistically. The "date" speed is arbitrary and used for technological progress, accounting and servicing. You can pause this and play semi-real-time.You still need to contend with towns being 5km apart.If you enable experimental map types, than megalomaniac 1:5 format map will little industries and towns gives you as close to reality as it can get with TF2. I hope you have a beefy PC though, it takes hammering on such maps.I agree on the game forcing you to run unit trains, essentially. But it is not a railroad simulator, so there is that.>>1823128TF2 also allows to change the flow of time and you can play with acceleration rates. Still, the mere fact that we need to compress everything to a game makes some weirdness to show up. Pretty much what you said. Regardless of anything, some suspension of disbelief is necessary for every game out there.
>>1823135grids are easily simulated and, in a game where you're the omniscient, all-powerful god-mayor-CEO, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from building shit wherever.
>>1823085Obviously, but there’s a healthy balance between making a train trip take multiple real life hours and giving the player enough space to build a switching yard and being able to get their vehicles up to speed between two major points on the map.
>>1823286"Healthy Balance" is not a absolute. A game maker has to 'balance' both gameplay, expectation of their target audience and their average hardware. TF2 played on megalomaniac maps quickly turns into a hardcore grindfest until you have a top of the line CPU. I run the game on Ryzen 9 5950x and even on this It tends to slog at places once you reach ~300 trains. Obviously most people don't have such an expensive CPU. There is a price to pay for the visual accuracy and, at the same time, pretty sophisticated simulation running in the background.I actually agree with you for the most part - which I why I play on long maps and large maps. But I totally understand why this game is what it is out of the box. It turns out most people aren't train autists.
Which /n/ game is THE most realistic? Asking for autism.
>>1823302Depends entirely on specific area/level you want to focus on. Also what genre you're thinking of. For train sims, ZUSI is probably the most realistic you're going to get overall and especially for physics and signalling. For more management sort of games, Transport Fever 2 (especially with mods) is probably the best you get on the lower levels (trains, signalling), but both Cities in Motion and A-Train handle higher level stuff (route planning and securing right of way, scheduling, long-term investments and business management including having to pay taxes) on an urban/commuter scale better while abstracting certain lower-level things.Or if you want model trainset kind of sandbox autism on a very low scale with control over lots of low-level details, EEP is probably the best (though that one is arguably not even a game anymore, but literally just a digital model trainset creation tool). There are arguments to be made in favor of OTTD, Simutrans, Openloco and others too. Hell, arguably the Japanese Train Sim (aka Railfan) and Japanese Rail Sim games have the most realistic visual depictions of routes (since they're FMV) and Densha De Go and Train Crew handle certain aspects of Japan-specific operations better than anything else I know of (not sure anything else provides a similar level of detail as Train Crew's conductor mode for example) Depends entirely on where you want the focus to be.And this is only in regards to rail, let's not forget planes, ships and potentially other things are /n/ too. I'd argue even something like Flight of Nova would qualify as realism-focused /n/-vidya.
>>1823308>tfw still no better economic simulation
>>1823450I love RRT3, but let's not kid ourselves here. Having a rudimentary company stocks system does not an "economic simulation" make. The actual cargo supply/demand system was just a simple gradient. Factories expanded production and towns grew as long as you supplied them with the cargo they demanded, and that's about it. Not any more sophisticated than most games out there.
>>1823460>Not any more sophisticated than most games out there.what games do it better then
>>1822403https://youtu.be/8ssEKpmUypcMini Metro while it may be simplistic minimalism it has tons of charm that comes with it.
>>1823129I definitely agree was definitely a blast once I got use to it.
Surprised no-one has mentioned this. I alternate between it and Transport Fever 2.
>get urge to play cities skylines>hate starting up a cityit hurts
>>1824073Dude literally just happened to me
>>1823695Really fucking annoying having to bridge over every road and stream in the way. The curve building tool sucks dick as well
>>1824073>>1824075oh boy i can't wait to build The Residential Area over *here*, The Office Area over *here*, and The Factory Area over *here*, then demolish fucking everything and start over once it actually looks like a place people would want to live. no wait all my cims are now dead, and the living are complaining about the dead-people stink. this is cool and fun, probably, for someone.
>>1824152>american urban planning
>>1824073>hate starting up the game to begin with
>>1822986Wish there was a tool like this for SimCity 4.
>>1823693mini metro is a fast resource management game, not a transport simulation
I love Cities Skylines butI hate Cities Skylines road assets. Like you should be able to create your custom roads on the fly: select width from 1 to 3 units, then lay down the lanes, tram tracks, sidewalks and bike paths. It is really stupid to be required to download hundreds of random assets from the workshop just to create an urban road with bus lanes, without parking and asymmetrical for turn lanes.Also I dislike the path system, you can't create crossing outside intersections without mods, and bicycle infra is basically impossible to build nicely thankfully the engine treats bicyclists as super fast pedestrians so hundreds on them can just ride at 25 km/h on a 50cm sidewalk while clipping in each other without any problems
>>1825419We should just have Mass Transit Skylines instead of City Skylines. Maybe the company will make that with a focus on Bikes and Trains.
>>1825419>Like you should be able to create your custom roads on the fly: select width from 1 to 3 unitsSo much this. Wish I could have this level of fine control over more things.
>>1825419>bicycle infra is basically impossible to build nicelyAn accurate simulation of reality.
>>1825466That's Cities In Motions, the predecessor of Cities Skylines, it didn't have much of a success though
>>1825676Wish we could try again with Cities In Motion 3.
>>1822569Are you russian?
>>1826706Worse, east German
>>1824073I've been playing on the same 50,000 pop city for 4 years now, I spend most of the time slightly tweaking the roads
>>1826146This desu. I get much joy from transforming the city into a transit oriented metropolis
>>1827263>>1826146>>1825676Cities in Motion 2 is so far the absolute best transit tycoon sim in existence. We need an improved version of it with more varied and flexible transit options.
>>1822525>>1822555What I never liked about Transport Fever is the abhorrent passenger mathematics. A train carriage for some reason has a capacity of like 12 pax, and then you get so many passengers at the station you can't even carry them all. And it's even worse with trams, they have a capacity of like 6 pax, and after 15 minutes you have 300 people waiting at the stop. I'd have like a constant procession of tram cars and they'd still all be completely full. Did they never test their retarded fucking piece of shit game?
>>1827284passenger numbers are obviously fudged; if the numbers were anywhere near realistic it'd be impossible to simulate them all. regarding your second point, 'my mass transit network is overwhelmed with passengers' is the problem you have to solve. i just wish TF2 had borrowed the 'passengers on this line are coming from A, B and C and going to X, Y and Z' information overview from Skylines desu
>>1827284dude just get the mod fixes the capacity.also, setting map to 1:3 ratio gives you a 27km long map.Watching the tgv take 500 passengers across it is kino af
>>1826146cim 3 is cities skylinesc:s never was a city building game, its a traffic management simulation
>>1828098that's not traffic giant, that's transport fever 2and yes it is an ingame screen
Happiness is a heavily-modded TF2 install
>>1829900>heavily-modded like what? I only have a few trains added
>>1823460>>1823461I have actual crickets outside my window right now that are louder than the replies.Also, not many games out there could let you build pic
yes
>>1822403Cities in Motion 2 is pretty nice
>>1822466Is there an english translation out for A-Train 9 v5?
>>1832527Theres a 90% complete fan patch. Its not uploaded anywhere yet, you need to join the discord linked on the Steam forums and ask there.
>>1832700I might wait for a full release of that patch then. Don't want to spend the money on the full 5.0 DX package if it's private or not playable
>>1831449>build up the G&D again>the hard drive gets corrupted>all that's left are your half-corrupted screenshots
>>1833408You can also just search for A-Train v5 on archive.org
>>1833459It looks like the translation patch requires the full DX version
>>1834988Nope, it doesnt. Just the latest patch from the official site. DX just adds more trains anyways.
>>1822403>>1822405how do i stop it from breaking and lagging my pc
>>1835096seriously is 32gb ram and a 5800x not enough?1850>lategame and I get sub 10 fps, super slow simulation, and multiple freezes
>>1831439>like what?Have a flick through the workshop and see what takes your fancy. There's a lot of mods that improve the gameplay, such as the zero-height bridge mod or another one that lets you build proper highways. And of course, there's a massive amount of mods that add new assets to the game.
>>1835618Retaining walls are a big help for making things look prettier
>>1835632And stations look better with proper train shed roofs
>>1835081You're right, thanks anon
What's the best bus driver simulator? I want to be a European bus driver.
>>1835687Im not, it turns out they actually released a new update since the latest version of the translation patch was released and the game will crash with the latest official version and the patch. You actually have to use waybackmachine on the A-Train 9 patch site to get the old patch from 2020 to get it to work.
>>1823460It's sad that the gradient supply/demand system is still the most sophisticated economic simulation for cargo transport in a game. It even allowed for AI competition from river transport that's lacking in games today.
Any map recommendations for tf2?
>>1836633ctf_2fort
>>1836633Race to the North v2.1 by TheOneWhoIsall of TheOneWhoIs' maps, really
