Seasonal events

[Everybodyknows]

Hi!

• Can you add christmas day and/or other big celebrations? It can improve commercial transaction, and in reaction, the amount of product that the factory has to make, the traffic, in one word the city activity. This feature could be merge with "Vacations for citizens #28" and more tourist could come, more citizen go out the citie.
• To complicate we can imagine a wave diseases in winter.
• But the issue, is to define the type of city, a city who attract people in winter, in summer, maybe a little some of the two? For example in my citie people come for christmas and leave the citie to go to the beach in summer (the streets are really empty in august).
• Also the temperatures not vary in the years, can you change this to make temperatures more realistic? Regards

[originalfoo]

I love the idea of disease outbreaks at certain time of year, eg. Flu Season. As well as putting strain on health services, it would also be big impact on industry, commerce, etc. with people being off work. Would need to be accompanied by chirps from ill cims to give player some idea why so many people are getting ill.

I'd like to see seasons play a greater role in the game but such stuff seems better placed in separate mod? These things could be defined in a suitably advanced events mod and seasons mod?

[Sipke82]

Years take too long now :-) perhaps introduce shorter years first

[originalfoo]

I love that years take... years. Previously after a week or so my city was so far in the future that realistically our species should have already encountered a Seneca shift and global systemic collapse of human industrial civilisation by that point.

Also, we can use the speed sliders to choose how long a year takes in relation to real life time.

[Sipke82]

Well atm 1 realtime minute takes about 10 real life seconds for me. So a full year will cost me 1474 real life game hours., so if i play everyday 2 hours, it will take me 728 days to complete one game year.

With speed sliders you mean the Realtime speed sliders? but we want the realistic day feeling right... And just speeding up the simulation has like no effect when your city becomes larger then ~75k people....

A solution could be less days in a year, in some other thread i came with the suggestion of months that take a week, that way a year is gonna take 12 weeks... thus 340 real life game hours, so if i play 2 hours each day : 170 days of playing to complete one game year, perhaps still too much...

Well i simplified the above calculations a bit, during awake city i have speed 4. at sleep city i have speed 7.

[dymanoid]

@Everybodyknows, I like the idea of season-depending citizens behavior, like Christmas holidays & vacations etc. However, @Sipke82 is right: no one will play so long to ever see this Christmas time in game (especially when the game is started, say, in February - an almost whole year to wait!)

Regarding diseases and temperatures - this is indeed something for another mods. Maybe I will create some other mods, but first, Real Time needs to be brought to its perfection.

So my ideas:

• Maybe move Real Time to an extraterrestrial location? Where a week has 5 days (4 work days and 1 weekend), a month has 4 weeks, and a year has 4 months?
• Like: after 20th of January comes 1st of April, then after 20th of April - 1st of July and so on...
• This will make a compete year round trip to be possible in 16 weeks or 80 game days

And for the Christmas holidays etc, there might be an additional configuration, where player can select days of year which are "holidays" and maybe also which are "most wanted for vacations". There would be a default config, but players can define their own holidays.

[Sipke82]

I think the idea of month weeks is more simple and easier to understand, and it results in the same amount of game days as your proposal: 16 weeks x 5 days= 80 game days or 12 x 7 days = 84 game days

Where in my proposal the week format is still intact. so 12 months of each 1 week. Default holidays could be: the whole month of July (=1week) as summer break and the whole month of december (=1week) as christmas holiday ending with a big firework show!

Or perhaps even combine, because in my opinion 84 game days is still pretty long.. 12 weeks of each 5 days? hmm, i think it would be a shame to lose the week format.... especially the saturday and the sunday which should give different gameplay. So perhaps 4 workdays and a regular weekend? hmmm

One other idea could be to skip a few boring monthsweeks So we keep: Jan, Mar, May Jul, Aug,Oct, Dec 6 months of each 1 week of each 7 days = 42 game days, which will take me approximately 160 real life game hours, so 2 hours a day, 80 real life days, about 3 months.of my life..

[originalfoo]

I like the idea of month weeks. Very simple and memorable concept. Hopefully it would be optional feature, but on by default.

I'm not keen on 5 day weeks idea :/

Skipping 3 weeks per month is nicer than skipping 2 days per week, imo.

[nosh59]

@Sipke82 I really like the month-week idea. Here's a little mockup for when big holidays and breaks occur and how they could affect gameplay:

Months start on Sunday, end on Saturday.

January: Normal work week February: Valentines day on Wednesday (slightly increased shopping) March: Normal work week April: Spring Break (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off for students) May: Normal work week June: Normal work week July: Summer Break (No school for students, shorter breaks for some workers) August: Summer Break (No school for students, shorter breaks for some workers) September: Normal work week October: Halloween on Saturday (slightly increased shopping, kids visiting other houses?) November: Thanksgiving on Thursday (No school for students, breaks for some workers) December: Christmas break on Friday (No school for students, breaks for some workers)

How does this look?

[Everybodyknows]

Hi! Nice idea but I think we must to base ours reflexions on speed set to 1 to have the max time in real life for 1 year, and to 6 to have the min time for 1 year in real life. (As dymanoid say the speed 7 seems to be too fast for the citizen speed of move). But there is also an other issue. When the cities become very big (approximatively 200 K for my pc) when you change the simulation speed (without RealTime, but I think it's the same with the mod) there is no effect... So we must to keep that in ours minds. For summarize, with yours propositions how longer take one year at speed 6 in real life?

[Sipke82]

My calculations are based on: dayspeed 4 nightspeed 7 at my 140k city, which is 14-22 FPS so sluggish, speeding up has no effect. so for thw full year of monthweeks (12 gameweeks) my pc would need approximately 320 real life hours. So if you game 2 hours every day, it takes 160 real life days..... still too long for a game year IMO... Therefore an additional proposal was to reduce some boring months as well, so it leaves you with 6 gameweeks for a year, which then completes at 160 real life game hours so if you game 2 hours a day, 80 real life days.

[Everybodyknows]

Sound good for me (I didn't saw your settings at the beginning of the thread), peoples can up or down the speed on the option panel.

[originalfoo]

I'm splitting the time scaling aspect out in to separate ticket as it's distinct from OP which discusses ideas for seasonal events.

Link to time scale ticket is below...

[originalfoo]

Suggest rename of this issue 118 to "Seasonal events" to disambiguate from time scales (issue 122).

[Everybodyknows]

Done.

[dymanoid]

Okay, this will be the feature for customizable seasonal citizens behavior.

[Sipke82]

If #122 cannot be implemented, does this feature even make sense?

[dymanoid]

I think it does. You can still configure many seasonal events (each month, or even each 2 weeks). Why not?

[Sipke82]

Because the years take too long... I personally love the rush hour dynamics and I would dislike to play through weeks of holiday calmness on the roads, which will take significant game time.

[originalfoo]

Because the years take too long... I personally love the rush hour dynamics and I would dislike to play through weeks of holiday calmness on the roads, which will take significant game time.

As long as events can be turned off (either in whole, or by category or even individually?) then that shouldn't be a problem?

Many events, such as holiday season, could actually lead to more traffic on road. For example, an event that causes influx of tourists during Summer.

Events don't necessarily mean "no traffic", most of them will just change where the traffic mayhem occurs, eg. with people visiting parks instead of offices, or mass rushes to shops in December, and so on.