Ok... why exactly are Agents so important?

[Akim]

I played all the Sim City parts, and if I understand it right, Sim City 5 was the first to change to agents: people and cars and all things were supposed to have a little sort of AI of their own, and Cities Skylines has it too, just better from what I see in the let's play videos.

However: I don't really understand why this is so important? I mean, I can follow John Doe and rename him into Jack Deer, follow his doings and see him on the roads. But... what gives? I mean, I guess it takes a lot of computing power, and ... just for that? I mean, someone tell me why this is so important and better over the Sim City 4 way of just running statistical calculations?

[Sarvoth]

One thing I can think of is traffic... it adds depth to have an "agent" travel to work from home and an "agent" travelling from work/home to commerical, giving meaning to the road gameplay. Sim City 4 just had that "change the graphic of cars here to seem more crowded or backed up" Cars vanished and reappeared mid-street, etc, from what I remember. Anyways, that is my answer I got so far; roads, which in this game is a extreme core game play mechanic. My 2 cents.

[peng]

I think there is no defined answer as to why; but when Sim City (2013) revealed it I know many people were very fond of the idea.
This game takes that system and makes it x1million better by also providing a city building game with it.
IMO, the best (or my personal) answer is that city builders are at a new dawn and one concept in the new,modern city builder is to have actual citizens.

I really like agents, even with SimCity's flaws I found it hard to go back to SimCity 4 as the way simulated citizens move is quite cool.

[なの〈Nano〉]

It's actaully simple.
Simulation is all about informations, and agent model have more of it, so systems can do deeper simulation do the behavior track and computings, it's like the different between famous node(random, from void) spawning system and eco-based(trackable, from somewhere) spawning system in other games, if a item having more information, it will surely affect some player experiences and a part of the world on the process, and anything you do to the person, you can actaully understand the impact of it.
And FYI, 'Agent model' do have levels, Cities: Skylines don't use the full model atm, so the benefits might be slightly harder to notices

--
And another explains, if a game have a system called 'hatred', on a non-agent system it could be a 'hatred percentage' displayed, and people on road will hate you, like 0.3% of them, until you get rid of the random red dot that have the red name 'Enemy'.
But if it's agent based, someone you meet called John Dove could hate you, he's infact the 0.3% of the town, but you know he hates you, and you only need to get rid of 'him'.
Non-agent model itself is like a simplified(simulated) version of the agent model, or it's like health system in games, your agents are organs, but they counts it for you, so you having 120 health points to lose, and no one can hurt your kidney.

[KiameV]

If you examine SimCity 4's population (traffic/jobs) when a R building is built, the game matches as many residents to the same building to work in. It continues to do this until everyone has a job. That's why if you look at the traffic flow from one R or C/I you'll see most arrows go to the same locations. Example: an R building with 200 poeple will not produce 200 traffic lines, maybe 10. It was an optimization for the hardware of the day but in no way is realistic.

[Obiwan]

I just felt the need to interject and point out that Impression Games were doing "agents" LONG before Sim City 5.

Pioneered with Caeser 3, improved with Pharoah and perfected with Emperor.

[なの〈Nano〉]

Originally posted by Obiwan:

I just felt the need to interject and point out that Impression Games were doing "agents" LONG before Sim City 5.

Pioneered with Caeser 3, improved with Pharoah and perfected with Emperor.

It is, but first is game ind left turned into the graphic void(and got stuck in the bad designed interchange, almost no one uses the frontage system until the indie games come), and second is it do use a lots of resources of out PC.. but I guess in most games only first part matters lol

-
As a big fan of the simulation games, I really hate things like random spawning nodes and flat health systems, I always wants it to be a bits of realistic ._.

[Garrison]

Originally posted by Akim:

I mean, someone tell me why this is so important and better over the Sim City 4 way of just running statistical calculations?

As for whether the use of agents leads to a better game or not, that must remain a matter of opinion. The question as to why the developers rely on agent is an important one, though. One likely explanation is that 1,000 relatively independent computational agents -- theoretically, at least -- will tend to make the outcome of a simulation much more interesting than a single algorithm that decides that x percent of agents will do n1, y percent of agents will do n2, etc. Think of it as top down (a single set of algorithms and probability tables) versus bottom up (1,000 independent, albeit simple-minded 'bots). All of this speaks to the idea of "emergence" -- a way of thinking about how lots of tiny simple-minded drones can, in large numbers, actually surprise you with their collective behavior. See, e.g., bees, ants, slime molds. That's the theory, at least. So whether that leads to more interesting gameplay -- essentially the question you're asking -- is going to be the same question devs ask themselves for the coming decade.

[GeneralGeldenhuys]

To build a city need various modifiers to influence the developement of the city itself. These modifiers can be in any form, agents, statisitical simulation, algoritmic procession, etc.

But agents have an important role in the transportation sector. If you take any transportation game, like Transport Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon, Simultrans, etc. you will understand agent will have a much realistic outcome than statistical processing.

Train Fever is an excellent example of one of those games using individual agents to go to places. Each agent have a living place, work place, leisure and shop. These agents have a much more realistic approach in using the transportation network or travelling by cars on roads than some algoritmic processing.

Point in fact, agents core role lies in the moving from place A to place B. It make the game much more immersive and you get traffic congestion, you have rush hours. City building on its own don't need agents, they need modifiers to influence the growth, like land value, population density, wealth, etc.

[DaniAngione]

Think of it like this:

Without "agents", design doesn't really matter. It's actually a matter of logical/mathematical strategy and patterns. For example, you can find the "perfect build" for a city, like, let's say... 1 clinic and 2 firestations and 3 police departments for X citizens, etc... things like that.

With agents, things must get where they must get for the game to work properly. So, yes, there's still ways to find logical and mathematical "perfect builds", but DESIGN becomes a really important - if not the most important - part of urban planning. You can have two cities with exactly the same amounts of people and infrastructure buildings where one of them works perfectly and the other doesn't (because of the design). So it adds depth, realism and the need for thoughtful, functional planning.

[GeneralGeldenhuys]

Originally posted by DaniAngione:

but DESIGN becomes a really important - if not the most important - part of urban planning.

To conclude, you must make sure the agents can reach their destination by using various methods of transportation and make the solutions accessible to these agents.

[なの〈Nano〉]

Originally posted by GeneralGeldenhuys:

Originally posted by DaniAngione:

but DESIGN becomes a really important - if not the most important - part of urban planning.

To conclude, you must make sure the agents can reach their destination by using various methods of transportation and make the solutions accessible to these agents.

That the part made me really want a teleport canceling mod, so they will never teleport just becasue they are jammed in the traffic, so people will forced to solve it.. but I guess that will need a system that will fire them just becasue they can't arrive in time to work though, need moar agent models lol

[Costarring]

.... power and water were agents too...(in Simcity)

Complete misuse of the terms


People hear an intersting word/term, like "the cloud" and everyone seems to have his/her own idea about what it is.


An agent is ANYTHING going from A to B (or going through transition in another way, like oil depleting). Regardless if that is sewage, power, water, a car, a train, a plane, a person in the game. When it arrives, it affects the simulation. This is an agent.

The biggest flaw in Simcity was that they used "agents" for all levels of simulation.
Computers can't handle the real numbers, so they "fudged" them (which in turn leads to very unrealistic... even game breaking issues in the simulation).



Agents:
http://www.gisagents.org/2013/02/explaining-agents-within-simcity.html

[Burlokk]

Originally posted by Costarring:

.... power and water were agents too...(in Simcity)

Complete misuse of the terms


People hear an intersting word/term, like "the cloud" and everyone seems to have his/her own idea about what it is.


An agent is ANYTHING going from A to B (or going through transition in another way, like oil depleting). Regardless if that is sewage, power, water, a car, a train, a plane, a person in the game. When it arrives, it affects the simulation. This is an agent.

The biggest flaw in Simcity was that they used "agents" for all levels of simulation.
Computers can't handle the real numbers, so they "fudged" them (which in turn leads to very unrealistic... even game breaking issues in the simulation).



Agents:
http://www.gisagents.org/2013/02/explaining-agents-within-simcity.html

:rbiggrin:

Agent´s are little James bonds running around in a town and doing stuff.

[Costarring]

Originally posted by Skjöldir:

Originally posted by Costarring:

.... power and water were agents too...(in Simcity)

Complete misuse of the terms


People hear an intersting word/term, like "the cloud" and everyone seems to have his/her own idea about what it is.


An agent is ANYTHING going from A to B (or going through transition in another way, like oil depleting). Regardless if that is sewage, power, water, a car, a train, a plane, a person in the game. When it arrives, it affects the simulation. This is an agent.

The biggest flaw in Simcity was that they used "agents" for all levels of simulation.
Computers can't handle the real numbers, so they "fudged" them (which in turn leads to very unrealistic... even game breaking issues in the simulation).



Agents:
http://www.gisagents.org/2013/02/explaining-agents-within-simcity.html

Agent´s are little James bonds running around in a town and doing stuff.

"special branch"

[Oneeyed]

Agents make a better and deeper simulation because you don't have to assume how a large number of agents behave. Instead you can see how a large number of agents behave and there is a difference befween an assumption and the real outcome of a simulation.

Theoretically you could program the agents to behave like real people: go to work, go shopping, go to recreation area, meet other people, stand around and talk to other people.

Of course that doesn't happen - developers always forget to program the agents with social behavior like e.g. in Banished.

But there is a possibility this will happen in the future because the better agents are programmed the more realistic a simulation looks like.

Originally posted by Akim:

I played all the Sim City parts, and if I understand it right, Sim City 5 was the first to change to agents: people and cars and all things were supposed to have a little sort of AI of their own, and Cities Skylines has it too, just better from what I see in the let's play videos.

However: I don't really understand why this is so important? I mean, I can follow John Doe and rename him into Jack Deer, follow his doings and see him on the roads. But... what gives? I mean, I guess it takes a lot of computing power, and ... just for that? I mean, someone tell me why this is so important and better over the Sim City 4 way of just running statistical calculations?