The sequel to the popular city-building game Cities: Skylines has given an impressive boost to its "Agents" capability. A developer's post for Cities: Skylines 2 provides a fascinating insight into this feature, explaining that these "Agents" or moving elements, such as pedestrians and cars, will no longer have a hard limit. This means the game can keep track of and visually represent a significantly higher number of citizens simultaneously.
Enhanced pathfinding calculations allow this upgrade, ensuring more extensive and deeper analysis without affecting the game's performance. The blog post explains that these calculations are more efficient, using all available processing power. The results? An improved performance and simulation across the board, making larger populations in the game a possibility.
This is a remarkable step up from the first Cities: Skylines, which had a hard cap of approximately 65,000 Agents, causing an odd disparity where players could have cities populated in the hundreds of thousands but could only see a finite number on-screen. The removal of this limit in Cities: Skylines 2 paves the path for a more immersive player experience.
Game enthusiasts are excited and skeptical. Most are concerned about the potential strain on their hardware due to the uncapped limit. Nevertheless, the improvement in pathfinding AI, including factors like ease of parking and transportation costs, is being praised. Despite the absence of a hard limit, it is expected that hardware will define its boundary, offering different experiences for different users.
To summarize, Cities: Skylines 2 has revolutionized its game's mechanics, offering an incredible upgrade in tracking "agents" within the game, thus enhancing the player experience. While there are concerns over potential hardware strain, the developer's efforts in improving simulation and pathfinding AI cannot be underrated. The uncapped limit may be the key to opening a door towards creating an ever-evolving virtual reality, and we might be looking at the inception of something akin to the Matrix.