Sharing Cities

[lasergoat 0]

One of the major short comings of Simcity 4 was how difficult it was to share cities.  EA's biggest justification for changing the Simcity RCI formula was it was too dense and difficult to learn for newbies.  Part of that problem was there wasn't any decent tutorials or starter cities available for Simcity 4 newbies, either installed or downloadable.  But had there been the ability to share cities, mature players could have shared their successful cities with newbies, who inturn could play those cities and see why they are successful.  Also, sharing your work for others to appreciate is a powerful motivator to do and create something.   If one can share their cities, then it would solve a lot of newbie problems and provide that missing element of motivation that Simcity has in some ways always lacked, especially SC4.

[Xyloxadoria 1,099]

Sharing cities is very difficult for a couple of reasons:

1. Plugin folders: In order for someone to share a city, both people must have exactly the same plugin folder. If you plugin folder is different than the other persons, then the city will not open. Only a few, if any people have folders that are exactly the same

2. Size: Sim city files are large, and if you build a city next to the one you want,  you need to have it  downloaded as well, That means you would have to download muitiple large files, because if you don't and there is a neighbor connection, or regional issues could arise.

The best way to share cities is through a CJ, which lets you see a city without downloading it and dealing with the issues above, check them out here

[lasergoat 0]

You describe problems that made sharing cities in Simcity 4 hard. There are ways to avoid these problems. I just wanted to bring awareness as to why working around these problems might be desirable.

[Kevin 101]

Originally posted by: lasergoat  There are ways to avoid these problems.quote>

Do you have any suggestions? I can't really think of any... once you factor in custom content (which is sure to become a big deal) it is difficult to share cities, as one person may not have the same plugins and mods as another person.

As for the file size issue, I'm pretty sure that as City Simulation games become more and more advanced, file sizes will continue to grow.

I agree with Xyloxadoria... the best way to share cities is through CJ's. All a game needs is a decent screenshot taking feature and you're all set

[patriots_1228 51]

lasergoat-Why would you want to play in someone elses city? then there would be no sense of accomplishment!

[Androv 6]

The only way I can see it working is through something like what Spore is doing.

[LarksTonguesInAspic 28]

I didn't know about the plugins issue...now I know why Maxisland won't load w/o crashing....

[Romaq 18]

There are various trade-offs in allowing huge custom content and attempting to share cities. I've been forming a way for cooperative play with SC4, and I may discuss issues with that here in this forum until the CU website opens. But while 'sharing' an entire region is clearly possible with even SC4, it is not for the faint-of-heart.

[Spinmaster 75]

Rather than downloading someone else's city, imagine having network access to it (at the mayor's invitation, of course). You don't download someone else's city, you just visit it, explore it, possibly interact with it... maybe even build in it, depending on what the mayor allows certain visitors to do. This could be a great way to share cities. You don't need to have that custom skyscraper, you just need to be able to see it - only its image need be transmitted. Indeed there would have to be configurable compromise between how much detail is streamed vs. how much bandwidth you have, but that could be configurable by the visitor. Are you willing to real slow to see better detail, or do you just want to move around it reasonably quick, sacrificing some details to do so? You're the visitor, you decide (though the mayor would have to have some "visitor-throttling" ability based on his/her own network connection, of course).

I can envision a mayor "inviting" people to visit his/her city, perhaps granting permissions to some of them to add/change/demolish, and others just "look." Imagine a living CJ... you don't just look at pretty pictures of someone else's city... you go there.

This would certainly add a new dimension to the game... to the genre, I think. Are there any other simulation games that do this? Let you "visit" someone else's creation without actually downloading a saved game file? Well.. I'd love to see it done in CU. Dunno if it's possible but sure would be cool, I think.

[Androv 6]

To 'see' something you need to have the files on your computer so it can display them. So I don't see how that would get around the problem.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

How about instead of sharing cities, we play as sims ourselves. What I mean is instead of downloading cities to play as we would normally do as mayors, we enter into established cities as citizens. Dedicated servers will host the cities. When you first enter the city, you pick a building to move into that reflects your status. You start off as a blue collar worker and have to find a job where you earn money. When you have enough money you can buy property from the different zone types, so if you buy a commercial building, you now collect rent. but before you can be a landlord,you have to earn enough money by getting a raise(being promoted in a job site...even becoming a boss or CEO. This would involve moving to a location where education is good as you are only eligible to live in a low income neighborhood at first. Each level you advance to will open up more choices for you in the multi-player interface's menu. Buildings can be bought and sold and traffic can lower or raise revenue for that property. Each building can have a boss(an actual human player) who manage the population of the building and give jobs to newbees. If you mis-manage a building it will abandon and that goes on your record. That's just one aspect of it. This can be pretty deep. The object of the multi-player mode is to rise to the ultimate level from blue collar worker to Regional President if regional play is involved. Or if no regional play, then Mayor. The first big payoff is becoming Mayor of a city where you reap a large portion of the city's collected taxes that goes into your account that you can use for your own cities, ect.(each player is registered with a bank account) After becoming a mayor, if it is regional play, you will serve as mayor for a specific time. during this time, the mayor is responsable for the upkeep of the city and can even leave a footprint by adding things or just making changes and manipulating ordonances. If the mayor is not empeached for mis-management......the mayor is honored with a statue or the mayor's house can become a historical landmark in the city when the term is up. And that's not the end of it. Conquering a city puts you in an elite class of players and you now enter a beautiful city (at each level you have access to various dependency packs to enter various cities) where you get to plop or even upload your own custom house and when you query a house in this city, a pop up with the mayor's accomplishments is shown along with wall trophies for cities conquered. (yes you can go and play any city or as many cities you want with the money accumulated.) To achive regional president, you must have the highest record of accomplishment in the region. This title is given to a playor for as long as the record stands. Think of this like a cross between SC and monopoly. Imagine an entire city (some smaller than others) where there are thousands of players interacting with each other buying, selling, trading, charging rent, owning multiple properties etc. even sub achievements like being the richest player in a city etc. will account for accomplishment history. the levels can be deep as being a direct employee of a mayor who get to plop buildings and change transit networks ect. I think this way we can interact in cities without worrying about dependencies and the goal oriented play will keep players online much more frequently. There's deeper thoughts I have for this but this post is long enough already. Thanks for listening.

[Spinmaster 75]

Originally posted by: Androv To 'see' something you need to have the files on your computer so it can display them. So I don't see how that would get around the problem.quote>

Actually, no... you don't have to have the files. Only the images need to be transmitted (and mouse/keyboard commands the other way). "Only" is the arguable word though, I'll grant that. But internet video streaming and Citrix are but two good examples of how it's quite possible to see images from a remote computer without having its file on the local machine. For CU/SC4/whatever it would be a matter of how much data needs to be transmitted and how fast the game can assemble and transmit it. That may make it impractical, but certainly not impossible.

[Romaq 18]

My suggestion is to have Flash or Quicktime files that allow for virtual views, such as when you do a search for 'quicktime virtual tour city', there's a huge list of sites. The ability for the software to render virtual tours like that would be quite incredible for a CJ.

[mightygoose 92]

romaq.... fraps....

[Romaq 18]

I'm not looking so much for making a fraps recording of *my* gameplay, as a movie. I'm thinking of having the game be able to produce an image suitable for printing of an image too huge to display, but detailed enough that it looks 'real' coming from my photo image printer. I'm thinking of 'maps.yahoo.com' style streetmaps that show my streetnames and what types of structures are there, 'photo printed', or at least printed with whatever setting I choose. Even if I go for 'draft mode', it will be better than what I can screen capture. I also think of having a CJ with a shockwave file like I've seen here but without the pain of cut & paste, stitch & process like people have to do to get those things they do. And I think about the game producing a file I can put into my CJ that lets YOU the person reading my CJ look around and focus on things in view of the camera under your own control, using the same technology as the virtual city tours. Instead of you having to watch through the movie I create, what if you could just grab the camera and look at stuff, zoom in and out as you like as you read through my CJ?

That's the sort of thing I had in mind.

[dasilva 3]

I like what I'm reading down here ;-)

[Androv 6]

I'm just saying that if you want to have your computer display something, it needs to have the data. If you want to walk around the building, you're going to need the 3d model of the building and the accompanying textures. You can access this over the internet but your computer still needs to receive the data - I suppose it doesn't have to save it to your hard drive except as a cache file though.

[Romaq 18]

For QuickTime VR, I beleve it only needs an image file taken with a fish-eye lense camera that provides a very, very wide angle image. The resulting image is fed into the software, and the software allows you to view a normal angle view of the image with the illusion of you being there, able to turn your head and look up and down, zoom in and out, and so on. The CU client should be able to generate such an image trivially. What remains is the license to make flash or quicktime objects that anyone may 'snap' a VR Tour object then slam the object into their CJ. This allows people following the CJ to get a view of standing on a street corner, or as if suspended from a helicopter with the ability to look around at a frame frozen in time.

I would hope Monte Cristo would really REALLY want to have people posting glamour shots of their CU cities on web pages, getting friends and family interested in playing with something like that. Word-of-mouth advertising is hard to do well, but it's the best kind. 'Tour my city' webpages would really be some awsome word-of-mouth advertising for CU.