DIRT First - Design It Right The First Time with Cities: Skylines

Welcome to the first in a series of design articles about general design concepts I'm calling Dirt First - Design It Right The First Time. Regardless of what you're designing, if you put more effort in up front and design it correctly at earlier stages, each layer of detail will be all that more meaningful. End users will appreciate simplicity, other developers will appreciate not having to redesign what you've done because of an issue left unchanged, and you'll enjoy less work if you every revisit a design.


To exemplify this design concept, I'll be using Cities: Skylines, a city-building game with a lovely traffic simulator. Part of the challenge in starting a new city in the game is designing the road system to handle higher traffic volumes later. You're limited in cash, road size, and you have no mass-transit options. At first, you can only build a two-way street, then you get one-way streets, avenues, and boulevards. You can't extend or change the highway. Here's how you design your first few roads so that, even late in the game where you'll have high populations and lots of industry, your traffic will still flow smoothly.

1. Connect the highways together with a two-way street. This gives you a quick way to unlock the one-way streets, which is vital for the next step. (You can change the two-way to a one-way later.)
2. Using one-way streets, create a counter-clockwise loop big enough to place avenues or boulevards on each of the three remaining cardinal directions. Right turns means almost zero wait times at intersections.
3. Place avenues left and right, and a boulevard towards the center of your city plot. Don't go too far with two of them, you only need one long one for the residential development.
4. Your industrial should get priority nearest the highway connection. Then a small plot of commercial to separate the industrial and residential. Then place residential along your long avenue.
5. You'll want to try and drive your residential development towards a water source so you don't have to build too many power lines, and your pipe will service everyone from the source to the industrial.
6. If you've done it correctly, it should look something like this!

The avenues lead to a water pump and sewage drain, and the power plant never runs out of fuel.

I've played this game a bit since the screenshot, and the city is now at 23,600 residents, and I have over $1 million in cash. I might build slower than some people, but I design it right the first time.

DIRT First - Designing the Oracle Class Omni in Space Engineers

I spent a couple hours making this based on an earlier large mining ship design. It features two levels, a clean main level and a spacious sub-level, as well as a safe room and cockpit. The safe room houses an auxiliary control station, medical bay, and an array of batteries. Twenty-four gyroscopes help rotate the ship, Sixty-eight small thrusters and six large thrusters keep the ship moving. The ship come standard with two airlocks with functioning entry and exit buttons.

I'll use the ship's design later for various specializations, such as mining, cargo transport, and gunboat. Right now, it's just a shining example of my design aesthetic.

Are you a leader?

... most likely not. One problem I've run into in my experience is that everyone has a brilliant idea that they want to see become realized, but they have no idea, or the wrong idea, about how to accomplish that goal. If you're going to create a game, especially a big, fancy game, you need a team. That means you have to be a leader, and if you want anything better than garbage for an end product, you have to be a good leader with the ability to effectively communicate, contribute, be personable, and potentially be political. Or, you could simply get some skills, market those skills effectively (by building a great portfolio), get a job with a game development company, and slowly create your game, or game ideas, into undeniably potent productions on the side. Being a leader means taking an awful lot of risk for potentially no or little reward. Being a member means filling a role (who knows, maybe you even enjoy it?!), earning money, and still perhaps following your dreams over a longer time.

Take this quiz: it will tell you if you fit into either a leader or member role.

What role do you fill in the game development community?
Artist
Animator
Information Technology
Programmer
Level Designer
Q/A Tester
Producer
Creative Director
Game Designer
Web Developer
Sound Designer
Other
I don't make games.

Do you consider yourself organized?
Yes
No
Others help me stay organized.
Others depend on me to stay organized.
I don't think it matters.

Your favorite group is meeting less often, and at bad meeting times. What do you do?
Ask the group leader to change the meeting frequency/time.
Get with the other members and set up unofficial meetings at convenient times.
Leave the group and start your own, with more meetings at better times.
Attend/join a different group's meetings.
Do nothing.

Your annual evaluation is coming up, how do you plan to make the best of it?
Tell them you are the best and you deserve a promotion/raise.
Explain any shortcomings honestly, and inform them that you will continue learning and working hard.
Apologize profusely for mistakes, and show them that you are passionate about becoming better at your job.
Blame the people/events responsible for mistakes, and show them how dependent they are on your work.
Calmly accept your evaluation where it is agreeable, and generally don't make waves.

You're the boss and your friend asks you for a job. You don't necessarily like this person, but they have potential to contribute to the project and some desired skills. What do you do?
Hire them on the spot. If you need to you can always fire them later.
Deny them immediately. You didn't like them then and you won't like them later.
Allow them to apply with other preferred applicants.
Make them complete a series of tests; if they pass, hire them.
Ask them to work for free for a while. If it's going well, the job is theirs.