Cities Unlimited

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

I cant help but to think of the site as a city being built. They're now doing the finishing touches on the infrastructure  (zoning and such) and when the site opens they will watch the population grow. It's gonna hit stage 8 very quickly!

[+Guest]

HAHA. So true. I think it's great we can vent our opinions to these guys, and (within reason) they will hear what we have to say.

[rctshack 182]

Yah... if you need another game tester... I have a degree is Motion Picture Special Effects. I know that has nothing to do with this game... but I have an eye for cool looking stuff. Yah. Just throwing it out there.

[MayorTim 16]

Originally posted by: dasilva Hey guys,

mpol, I just want to clarify things a bit.

Since I started talking to the community about Cities Unlimited, I've always been as honest and transparent on what we were doing and I also said when I couldn't talk about some specific game features because we are in early stages of development.

I'll go on this direction as well as Monte Cristo: we already have a really good idea of what is the core of a city builder game and we will keep sharing these with you as the time goes.

However, you must understand that the game won't probably implement all the wonderful ideas you have (either because of time constraints or because your computer couldn't hold them ) but it doesn't mean neither that we won't implement them in the future... I cannot actually tell you exactly what we are planning but, I already stated this previously, Cities Unlimited won't be a "fire & forget" marketed game...

Thanks, hopefully, to our discussions, I'm quite confident we will all together bring a great game to life with a lot of fun and replayability perspectives.

quote>

You, sir, deserve a raise. Perhaps you and everyone else at Monte Cristo will get one after Cities Unlimited sells out as a huge success, which I'm fully confident it will be.

I have never seen a developer as focused on the fans as you guys are, and I really do hope this game is a huge success, because you guys really deserve it. I'll definitely be buying this the very first day it comes out.

Well, now that the showering of praise is out of the way..

I feel that it is incredibly reasonable that Monte Cristo isn't going to be changing core game mechanics at this stage of development. I'm confident that you guys have designed something thats very close to what we've all wanted anyway, and I'm not really worried. If you guys put it in, it must be good.

And there is no realistic way any company could add everything everyone wanted to the game, but you guys are really trying to include our ideas, and I think I speak for everyone in the city simulation fanbase when I say that it's very appreciated!

Can't wait for the official site to be up, so that we can take a closer look at this game, and I'll be sure to leave my suggestions!

[Sap59 3]

i agree and add an additional $1 to the games retail price so we each can buy you all a beer. :-)

thank you DaSilva and MC. Cheers

[Arthuryazhemskiy 0]

philip, ideas:

Demolition animation: simcity 4 was lacking in this along with contruction animation. I would like to see the building being built, and not just rise from the ground top first. I also think that this is a good idea: With irregular blocks or land left over around the building(trianglular or an odd shape) make an option to fill the land with trees or parks, This can be done like a "fill" option. i hope you understand what i mean, this was incorporated in tycoon city:new york. The player was able to fill a land in with a park. I would also like to see realistic build times along with constuction teams and trucks coming to build the buildings. These construction sites can also create temporary jobs. This would be very useful and realistic in a developing city.

[Orlandoedwin640 0]

I would like to see something like UDI in Cities Unlimied, where you can get in the car and take road trips

[MayorTim 16]

Originally posted by: Orlandoedwin640 I would like to see something like UDI in Cities Unlimied, where you can get in the car and take road tripsquote>

I must say, I would NOT like to see this in Cities Unlimited, it and the "My Sims" features were the worst parts of Rush Hour, and were really a failed attempt to draw in more fans, and get people from the Sims community interested in Simcity. It didn't work, and it detracted from the enjoyment of Rush Hour for us Sim City fans.

Please, don't bring it back. If you want a driving game, buy a driving game. If you want a driving game inside a city, buy driver or GTA. But a driving game and a city simulation game just don't mix. At all.

Besides, theres 1,000 more important things I'd want in the game before we get a feature as useless as this.

[rctshack 182]

I completely agree... no driving around... it will waste space and memory that is needed for other stuff. You can adject the camera angle and that will make it street level if needed, but driving around is not needed, in my opinion. I used it once in SC4 and was NOT impressed one bit... i found it odd and a waste of time. There are 10,000 other driving games out there and there is a reason I am not playing those and we are playing a city builder.

[Nevets13 27]

I agree, I would be interested in an addon game like streets of sim city that would add it to the game

[Orlandoedwin640 0]

What about a walk around simulator

[Nevets13 27]

GTA without the violence? haha.

[+Guest]

I've had Rush Hour for the last three years and haven't used this option once. So I agree. NOT NEEDED!

[Arthuryazhemskiy 0]

what are you people talking about? what do you care if there is an option in a game that you will not use. let the people that do want to use it enjoy themselves. Having this feature will make everyone happy, while not addivng it will make peopel that liek the U drive it unhappy. adding it is a win win situation.

[+Guest]

I hear that. I'd add it in an extension though. Get the game out there first and foremost.

[KeanoManu 42]

Originally posted by: Arthuryazhemskiy what are you people talking about? what do you care if there is an option in a game that you will not use. let the people that do want to use it enjoy themselves. Having this feature will make everyone happy, while not addivng it will make peopel that liek the U drive it unhappy. adding it is a win win situation.quote>

It takes time from the developers to make the feature, time that can be used to do some better things that has to do with the city-building part of the game.

[gabry85 2]

Well, we'll see. I'm personally a fan of driving games, and I always wanted to take a good spin in my city, although I didn't like the SC UDI either.

If system requirements are the problem, the game (keep this in mind, we are in the street level) could show small, near sections of the city and hide (or show LODs of) the farthest. Imagine the Underground series of Need For Speed where you race in THE city, I've never seen problems in the gameplay; just speed, motion blur and lot of fun.

I understand that what we are looking for is first off a city-builder. Maybe that'll could be a good expansion pack. We already know that MC is listening to our opinions, so who knows?

[Sap59 3]

i never used it in SC4 neither and i would rather MC focus on other more important aspects of city building for its original release but having it added later in an expansion or addon wouldn't be a bad idea.

[rctshack 182]

no only developing time, but system memory... even when we weren't using UDI in SC4... it was still thinking which cars to pop up that annoying logo above, and it had it ready to go in the memory for when we clicked it. I know people may have had fun doing it, but I have fun doing a lot of things that wouldn't fit into a city building game. Why waste time on that when 500 other games have already wasted time on making cars drive around cities?

[MedoPu 0]

don't want to change the topic direction, but I would like to say, I don't like the jobs depended on certain culture. Like schools only for red guys and police stations only for blue guys. Those are pretty much same thing for me, except building style.

oh, and another thing, is when I build normal houses it is nice to see houses and that, but suddenly some houses are replaced by ugly ugly gypsy houses (the poor culture) which IMO ruins everything.

[cuboctahedron 0]

I agree with the last poster!!

When houses are built (either manually or through zone-ing) I don't want buildings to suddenly to change shape. If you build a certain neighborhood to you likes, and after a while come back again to the neighborhood, you want it to be recognizable. I really hated that in SC4 (esp in SC3)

My suggestion is that house are build to a certain class (rich, poor etc.), and if prices or conditions of a neighborhood change than buildings that do not match the neighborhood's criteria must than look deserted and empty. The player must than demolish the zone/buildings and replace them with a new set.

I really think this must be addressed

cheers

Patrick

btw, I am a real fan of city building games and look very much forward to his game; CU, (not City Life actually). I even made a concept-image a few years ago how I would envision a simcity game ( http://www.geocities.com/cuboctahedron2004/simcity5_image.jpg )

So far I think CU, of what I've read, even exceeds that expectation!

[Rean2 10]

Originally posted by: MedoPu don't want to change the topic direction, but I would like to say, I don't like the jobs depended on certain culture. Like schools only for red guys and police stations only for blue guys. Those are pretty much same thing for me, except building style.

oh, and another thing, is when I build normal houses it is nice to see houses and that, but suddenly some houses are replaced by ugly ugly gypsy houses (the poor culture) which IMO ruins everything.

quote>

 

My Views:

Red people (Fringe) are radicalists/liberals and often take jobs promoting creativity (Aka, these are the "hippies" of modern culture). The Blue people are the Blue Collar workers, they are those typical 1950's suburban family, patriotic and work for their country, taking jobs that are related to the government work force. (automative industry, Police Force, Fire Fighters, more Business-related jobs) 

Just my 2 cents on the red and blues

And those poor slum houses do ruin everything, but its these game moments were you have to "do to get what you want" moments that makes this game interesting. In other words, if you don't like it, you can change it. Improve work conditions or build more Blue or Red influenced work places to change them. However it is annoying to have to do everything just to get a good living condition when a guy working in a business moves out causing a chain reaction. (Business less effiecient, living condition is bad, people who live around the building will move out, other business start losing employees, etc. results in major "Culture shifts")

If anyone played City Life, they would get what I'm talking about.

Usually i would just make a new slum house thats more pleaseing to the eye

[cuboctahedron 0]

One more thing I would like to add to the landscape-shaper (god-mode).

I saw you use a globe as start point, which I found awesome! However I would suggest having three options:

1) A globe, with all continents shuffled; the way the preview images currently show (Australia positioned right next to South America).

2) An actual factual globe.

3) a phantasy globe, where you can create imaginary continents.

cheers

Patrick

[MedoPu 0]

Originally posted by: Rean2

Originally posted by: MedoPu don't want to change the topic direction, but I would like to say, I don't like the jobs depended on certain culture. Like schools only for red guys and police stations only for blue guys. Those are pretty much same thing for me, except building style.

oh, and another thing, is when I build normal houses it is nice to see houses and that, but suddenly some houses are replaced by ugly ugly gypsy houses (the poor culture) which IMO ruins everything.

quote>

 

My Views:

Red people (Fringe) are radicalists/liberals and often take jobs promoting creativity (Aka, these are the "hippies" of modern culture). The Blue people are the Blue Collar workers, they are those typical 1950's suburban family, patriotic and work for their country, taking jobs that are related to the government work force. (automative industry, Police Force, Fire Fighters, more Business-related jobs) 

Just my 2 cents on the red and blues

And those poor slum houses do ruin everything, but its these game moments were you have to "do to get what you want" moments that makes this game interesting. In other words, if you don't like it, you can change it. Improve work conditions or build more Blue or Red influenced work places to change them. However it is annoying to have to do everything just to get a good living condition when a guy working in a business moves out causing a chain reaction. (Business less effiecient, living condition is bad, people who live around the building will move out, other business start losing employees, etc. results in major "Culture shifts")

If anyone played City Life, they would get what I'm talking about.

Usually i would just make a new slum house thats more pleaseing to the eye quote>

True, but problem is, you don't split your city in city life by zones. For example industry there residental there..... Usually when I played i had to build a factory and houses nearby, to supply citizents with jobs. Pretty industrial-age if you ask me. I think SC4 was more accurate on that.

Don't get me wrong, I like cultures. But i would rather see them to be really small minor factor in game and not that whole game to be cultural micromanagement.

My solution is. For example police stations.

They could employ anybody, but if they employ blue people, they would be more efficient.

[KeanoManu 42]

CL & SCS seems like they could be close to eachother. I've only played CL and i didn't liked it and i get the feeling that SCS will work similar.

Originally posted by: cuboctahedron One more thing I would like to add to the landscape-shaper (god-mode).

I saw you use a globe as start point, which I found awesome! However I would suggest having three options:

1) A globe, with all continents shuffled; the way the preview images currently show (Australia positioned right next to South America).

2) An actual factual globe.

3) a phantasy globe, where you can create imaginary continents.

cheers

Patrickquote>

But with the actual globe option, everything will be out of proportion. Building London will take up half of Britain and so on. But it would be cool to have the option.

[cuboctahedron 0]

Originally posted by: KeanoManu

But with the actual globe option, everything will be out of proportion. Building London will take up half of Britain and so on. But it would be cool to have the option.quote>

I don't know how big the region size is actually going to be; I was hoping though the the play area size, e.g. Britain, would be identical (area-wise) to the actual size of the  the islands, so you can theoratically rebuild a whole country (providing you have enough harddisk space).

It's not that Monte Cristo has to mimic every hill, river or other details of a country/continent, but basically just have the contours of the coast-lines, and the climate main features (desert, artic, tropic, temperate, mountainous etc).

Indeed it would be horrible if you build a city like london, and have Heathrow airport located in Bristol or Luxembourg-City be a suburb of Paris.

In addition, perhaps Monte Cristo could use the mapping of a game like Microsoft Flight-Simulator as template for the geographic features.

[borntoboogie 15]

Going back to the UDI idea, I think it's a bit pointless but i would like to see the 'peep-cam' idea from rollercoaster tycoon 3 where you can see your city from the eyes of a resident

[Seanmagon 0]

On the main page it says virtual cities, real people. Does that mean its multi player somehow?

[Badfish301 60]

Somewhat rambling, perhaps intoxicated post added at will2real today.. nothing new to report really, just anxiousness about the website and game launch.

[212 1]

Mr. Da Silva,

The screenshots look beyond exciting, and you're so smart to engage the fanatical urban gamers here.

I just want to second MightyGoose's post here from 9/17. He said everything I'd want to say.

Build something close to what MightyGoose is describing, and I will buy CU without a second of hesitation.