bin.pol.social

Will_WMGC, do games w Cities Skylines 2 - Review Thread - (76/100 OpenCritic)

I think what the game’s like right now won’t matter as much as what it’ll become. I don’t think CO need to do a ton to make it as good if not better than the first game. Really excited for it, personally!

Leyths,

Yeah agreed. I’ve been following along with a lot of the influencer videos over the last few weeks and whilst the performance seems choppy, the base game looks like a really solid improvement over CS1

I’ve been encouraged by the acknowledgment of the poor performance by the devs and letting the embargo lift relatively early. If people want to wait for a few performance patches before buying I think that’s really fair- but personally I’m looking forward to messing around with it on release.

simple,

It’s pretty much par for the course for Paradox games to have a sequel that isn’t as fleshed out but has a bright future. I’d still wait a few years to pick it up with DLCs.

Devion, do gaming w Well, Cities: Skylines 2 is here, and it's another broken game release.

Well, maybe this is why AMD is bringing back threadripper?

ArmokGoB, do gaming w What is something (feature, modes, settings...) you would like to see become a standard in video games?

Holding down MMB for callouts in online games. Apex and Risk of Rain 2 both do it and it’s super useful.

saigot,

I think you are in luck, most competitive shooters have it these days, I can’t really think of a big one that doesn’t, some are better than others though. Counterstrike, overwatch, warzone, fortnite, valorant, rainbow six all have them.

ArmokGoB,

Destiny 2 doesn’t have it, and I don’t think BattleBit has it. I don’t really play battle royales anymore. I’m glad it’s becoming more widely used.

MummifiedClient5000, do gaming w What is something (feature, modes, settings...) you would like to see become a standard in video games?

Cut-scenes that can be paused, skipped and replayed later.

Koordinator_O,

This so much. Hate it when the cat desides to destroy the whole flat for no actuall reason. You test the pause button just to see it is skipping and you did not safe before the cutscene. so no going back watching the scene.

FireTower, do games w What's your favorite game through the ears of Original Soundtrack?
@FireTower@lemmy.world avatar

I feel like Payday 2s sound track is underappreciated in general conversations about game music.

It has gotten a driving beat to it and instills both anxiety and courage. Not to mention how they have a system similar to the L4D2 Director system where the gameplay is perfectly matched and foreshadowed by the music.

MilitantAtheist, do games w What's your favorite game through the ears of Original Soundtrack?

Doom 2016

DonPiano, do gaming w Well, Cities: Skylines 2 is here, and it's another broken game release.

There’s many things I can overlook here but the lack of bikes nixed my hype fully. I don’t want to build car hell yet again. I can leave the house if I wanna see that.

brezelradar,
@brezelradar@feddit.de avatar

I don’t want to build car hell yet again

this, so much

RickyRigatoni,
@RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml avatar

If you’re not making your city a hell for the npcs in some way how are you having fun

DonPiano,

I mean… If I want to build a hell, I still want options.

Like, realistic space use for car hell would be interesting but maybe sometimes I wanna build a university on a hill and student housing at the top of a different hill and to get to class you have to bike up a hill both ways.

Strawberry,

I did this in university, it sucked

tocopherol,
@tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

No bikes??? I hadn’t heard that, one of the most satisfying things about playing C:S1 to me was making great bike routes and useful public transit, without bikes I really don’t feel a drive to play this one now honestly hah. Maybe they are going the Sims route where all the useful basic things they added in the previous edition will be released over time as DLC, ffs.

Chobbes,

I don’t think the first Cities Skylines shipped with bikes either? Wasn’t it part of the After Dark DLC? Or maybe that was just bike lanes? I hate the DLC for Paradox games… It’s so confusing that I think I’m just not going to buy their games anymore.

dangblingus,

This is why most people wait a couple years after a Paradox game comes out. They’re fantastic games…once you have the DLC.

Crotaro,

You’re right. After Dark was one of the first(?) DLCs and I’m not sure if bikes were part of that or the eco-friendly DLC but bikes definitely are not part of the vanilla experience (I have quite a few DLCs that are important to me and no bikes yet)

Minnels,

They usually give a lot of free stuff at the same patch even if you don’t buy the dlc.

teuast,

I can leave the house if I wanna see that

too bloody right

FinallyDebunked, do games w What's your favorite game through the ears of Original Soundtrack?
@FinallyDebunked@slrpnk.net avatar

Unreal tournament '99

Blubber28, do games w What's your favorite game through the ears of Original Soundtrack?

Absolute favourite game soundtrack? Frostpunk’s OST. The soundtrack really brings home the desperation and harshness of survival in the cold. When the storm is coming and the music swells up… goosebumps. Every single time.

Divinity 2: Original Sin has a great soundtrack too. Kinda surprised I couldn’t find it in the comments. Minecraft as well. It’s very soothing and calming.

Aside from that, some smaller titles with great music: GRIS, What Remains of Edith Finch, and FAR: Lone Sails.

DarkMetatron, do games w What's your favorite game through the ears of Original Soundtrack?

Great Gianna Sisters on the C64

jarfil, do gaming w Well, Cities: Skylines 2 is here, and it's another broken game release.

even with RTX 4090s and lowering the graphics to 1440p medium settings. Based on utilization numbers, it sounds like the GPU is limiting factor here.

What are the CPU utilization numbers? C:S is a notoriously CPU-first game, particularly with mods. If your CPU can’t calculate more than 10fps, you won’t get more than 10fps.

Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.

It starts (barebones, slow as hell) with 8GB. You want 32GB or more for it to run somewhate decently.

Seriously, people don’t understand what “cache” means, maybe they should just create a ramdisk and install the game there to understand the concept.

0x442e472e,

Seriously, people don’t understand what “cache” means, maybe they should just create a ramdisk and install the game there to understand the concept.

I believe people with lots of RAM simply enjoy the feeling of theoretically being able to run everything, but they don’t actually want processes to use that RAM, because it would deny them the theoretical possibility to run everything.

I jest, of course. The problem is that as a user you don’t have that much control over which process should use your RAM, and also freeing RAM is hard. Chrome gobbling up your whole memory is good when you’re using Chrome, but you don’t get it back when you alt+tab back to your game

jarfil, (edited )

freeing RAM is hard. Chrome gobbling up your whole memory is good when you’re using Chrome, but you don’t get it back when you alt+tab back to your game

Actually… you can do it with two .bat files and a “ram cleaner” tool:

  1. Suspend all “chrome.exe” processes
  2. Free all working sets (since Chrome is suspended, it marks all the RAM used by Chrome as swappable/discardable)

Now your game can use all the RAM, the OS will just swap out or discard whatever was in use by Chrome as needed.

Want to go back to Chrome?

  1. Resume all “chrome.exe” processes

The OS will swap in whatever it swapped out, and let Chrome ask for as much RAM as it feels like.

ReversalHatchery,

Free all working sets what the fucking hell??? No, no, no, I don’t want to send my full browser to swapfile just because of a greedy game. Loading back all the memory pages will take a lot of time when I want to switch back to the browser, and it will lag for quite some more time until all the not too frequently used but important is loaded back too. This also applies to the reverse: swapping the game out and back in will take a ton of time, and then it will have lag spikes when it needs a dozen of memory page that is somewhat more rarely used and haven’t been loaded back with all the rest. This nonsense of literally using all your ram “as a cache” but as working set just makes everything slower in the end. This just cannot be justified. There’s a reason I’m using a multi tasking PC instead of a single-tasking gaming console, which you can only use for one purpose at a time.

And don’t tell me to put my swapfile on my SSD. This is the perfect way of killing yours, with writing 16 GB of data every time you switch between windows.

jarfil,

I don’t want to send my full browser to swapfile just because of a greedy game

You don’t, most of the times the game doesn’t use all that memory anyways (or crashes if it tries to… so still, doesn’t use it).

Loading back all the memory pages will take a lot of time

No it won’t. Browsers preemptively allocate a bunch of RAM just in case they need it… then never use it. “Loading back” empty memory, takes zero time.

This also applies to the reverse

No it doesn’t. Games rarely can be suspended and resumed successfully, and they rarely allocate RAM that they aren’t going to use. I was clear when I said you suspend “chrome.exe”, not “your game.exe”. If you resume the browser without exiting the game, the game stays in RAM and the browser manages with what’s left (surprisingly, they manage to run a tab or two without a problem, which further proves they didn’t “really” need all that much RAM in the first place).

swapfile on my SSD. This is the perfect way of killing yours

My swapfile SSD got retired after 10 years when I switched to a NVMe, it’s an external drive now.

writing 16 GB of data every time you switch between windows.

As explained above, no you don’t, most of the data simply gets discarded, maybe 1-2GB of it gets actually written. To further expand on that, the swapfile gets constantly pre-populated with less changing in-RAM data so the OS can “swap it out” instantly. That same data stays in the swapfile after it gets read into RAM again, so it doesn’t get written to the swapfile over and over, only read back.

There’s a reason I’m using a multi tasking PC instead of a single-tasking gaming console

If you do, then you put more RAM in it. Otherwise, you can use it as a gaming console. Your choice.

ReversalHatchery,

Loading back all the memory pages will take a lot of time

No it won’t. Browsers preemptively allocate a bunch of RAM just in case they need it… then never use it. “Loading back” empty memory, takes zero time.

Yes, it will, and I’m saying this from experience. I have 32 GB of RAM but since I have dozens of tabs in several windows open, the browser really consumes a lot of RAM. When windows starts swapping it out, even just a little because I’m over 70% utilization, I can feel that it got slower.

And on the occasion when in PH I accidently click “empty working sets” instead of “combine memory lists” and windows swaps out everything, it’s horrible for days until I just give up and reboot instead.

Games rarely can be suspended and resumed successfully

Probably I’m playing with the wrong games then, as those that I play don’t crash from it. One such example is Factorio where I have did that a lot in the past.

I was clear when I said you suspend “chrome.exe”, not “your game.exe”.

Now I understand, but then your workaround does not allow for switching back to the browser for looking up something.

surprisingly, they manage to run a tab or two without a problem, which further proves they didn’t “really” need all that much RAM in the first place

1-2 tabs maybe work fine. But the whole user interface will also be slower to respond, and if you have addons which need to do this or that when a page loads, then that 1-2 tabs won’t be usable either.
Also, I doubt that windows wouldn’t swap out parts of the game.

If you do, then you put more RAM in it. Otherwise, you can use it as a gaming console. Your choice.

I won’t spend on anywhere North of 32 GB. This is not a fucking server. I would rather just not play games that are so out of touch with reality. To back that up, I’ve just read someone else posted a steam statistics page that says only ~20% of steam users have 32 GB of RAM, while most of the rest has only 16.

Also, when I have built this PC I have heard multiple remarks that 64 GB RAM may not be a good idea, because the hardware memory manager would be slower with managing that amount of RAM than 32, which is important for games that move a lot of data in the RAM.

jarfil,

when in PH I accidently click “empty working sets” instead of “combine memory lists” and windows swaps out everything, it’s horrible for days until I just give up and reboot instead.

“Empty working sets” doesn’t swap out anything by itself, it marks it as “swappable” but stil in RAM. It does make a copy to swapfile in case it needs to swap it out so it can do it instantly.

To fully force a swap out, you have to clean the lists… level 1, I think? (sorry, in bed, don’t want to look it up RN).

If you did that with a HDD however… yeah, I can see how that would feel bad.

Pro tip: don’t leave PH open for too long, it’s kind of a devel tool and has some bugs that can mess up the hooks of the whole system. Best is to open, use, close, for ~15 day uptimes on Windows 8 to 10 without ECC.

I have 32 GB of RAM but since I have dozens of tabs in several windows open

I used to play games with 8 GB of RAM and 40 tabs in Chrome. It was either-or, it worked, didn’t kill the SSD, for years. 🤷

dangblingus,

Stop using Chrome is a great first step. Seriously people. This is Lemmy. We’re better than that.

jarfil,

Feel free to use any other browser, they all allocate RAM preemptively just the same.

ReversalHatchery,

You want 32GB or more for it to run somewhate decently.

No, you misunderstood. I don’t want, like at all. That is totally undue. What fucking engine was this crap written in, electron or what???

The worst is not even the resource usage, but that there are actual people defending this bullshit.

jarfil,

What fucking engine was this crap written in, electron or what???

Unity with C#.

That’s only half the problem… the add-ons are also written in Unity with C# 🤷

ReversalHatchery,

Is unity and c# really that bad by itself? I don’t have much experience in c# development, but I was in the impression that c# is a relatively fast language (not as much as c++ but much, much more than js, python and even java)

jarfil,

Is unity and c# really that bad by itself?

No, they’re pretty nice, that’s why they got popular. It’s when you pair them with game development, that shit hits the fan.

Basically, you have:

  • Rocket software - if it fails once, you fucked up
  • F-35, infrastructure software - if it fails, it better recovers fast
  • Business software - if it works for most of the workday, it’s fine
  • Consumer software - if it works most days, it’s fine
  • Game software - if it eventually works at least once, you’re fine; most people don’t care about replaying the same story anyway

Unity and C# are very easy to make utter crap with, and still have it “work at least once”… which leads game developers to use it, make it work, and have it packaged and sold. Add to that “modders”, who are mostly random people who want to see some [part] of some idea they had, work maybe once in the game… and you get a perfect recipe for disaster: rushed out games, with sloppy mods, often conflicting with each other.

acastcandream,

Dude 51% of steam users have 16gb. 22% have 32gb. It’s probably lower in the broader gaming public.

32gb is still pricey and far from standard. 16gb should at least be fine. 32gb to be “somewhat decent” is beyond unreasonable.

dangblingus,

32gb of DDR4-3200 RAM (fairly middle of the road RAM) is like $100.

Maven,
@Maven@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

“32gb of RAM is a week’s worth of groceries”

DAMunzy, do gaming w What is something (feature, modes, settings...) you would like to see become a standard in video games?

I like how Sony PS5 lets me have subtitles on for all games. I think that’s part of the accessibility features you were talking about.

anti_antidote, do games w What's your favorite game through the ears of Original Soundtrack?

Can’t believe no one has said Risk of Rain 2 here yet. Amazing music, masterful composition

AceQuorthon, do games w What's your favorite game through the ears of Original Soundtrack?

Deus Ex

System Shock 2

Hotline Miami 1 & 2

Telltales Sam & Max games

EternalWarBear, do games w What's your favorite game through the ears of Original Soundtrack?

Just gonna list a few.

Xenoblade Chronicles (1 & X): haven’t gotten around to the others yet.

Final Fantasy XIV & XVI: Soken is a god

Mass Effect

Legend of Dragoon

  • Wszystkie
  • Subskrybowane
  • Moderowane
  • Ulubione
  • krakow
  • antywykop
  • Gaming
  • test1
  • esport
  • NomadOffgrid
  • muzyka
  • rowery
  • FromSilesiaToPolesia
  • fediversum
  • Spoleczenstwo
  • Technologia
  • sport
  • Blogi
  • lieratura
  • niusy
  • informasi
  • retro
  • motoryzacja
  • slask
  • giereczkowo
  • MiddleEast
  • Pozytywnie
  • tech
  • Psychologia
  • Cyfryzacja
  • shophiajons
  • warnersteve
  • Wszystkie magazyny