Show off your cities! (Screen Shots)

[Evillions 552]

I was in the beta. And if I took some pictures, they would be in VERY LOW quatily.

[Ryan123220 18]

Brandon: Im in Canada and though i haven't bought the game yet im 100% sure they would be at an EB games. If your not in Canada then i have no idea

I had my doubts about the game with all the bad talking and bad reviews with the beta but it looks freaking amazing! im not sure if id fork out the money each month to play but i might give the game a chance once i get a better computer that can play it.

[gabry85 2]

Originally posted by: ASheroo

 Hey guys,

I have asked community manager Philippe if I can post screens from  some of my cities I created during the beta, and he has given me the all go.quote>

All right. I'll show something too then. This was the only city I built in the beta... and the last: Athkatla. Nothing too fancy or pretentious. Hope you'll like it.

This game is all about the looks rather than depth, so here goes...

All in all, I was proud of my city. At first glance, you can indeed build pretty cities; that's for sure, but if I want to make the city of my dreams, I want to make a region as large as I want with no limits and terraform it according to my heart. Dunno about you. And second, your city got to evolve and this means more buildings, mass transit, micro-management, better budget options, custom content, no restrictions and other more add-ons and expansions... in one word: more... depth. And freedom of course. Alas, that's only what you're gonna get if you want to stay offline. I wish I would have left those mountains alone as well, though, but you can't hit big numbers if you don't build, especially if you like low-density sprawling, so...

Well, this was the biggest city I built. As I managed to unlock skyscrapers, I suddenly slowed building and crawled up to 600,000 peeps. I guess I explored 80% of the game since I still had to unlock some more buildings. After the biggest patch ate up all the cities in the planet, I stopped playing and uninstalled the game for good. Usually you should be excited when you're starting over; at least, that's what always happened to me in all SimCity games. Too bad this wasn't the case.

Next time maybe.

[TranceField 0]

Originally posted by: gbeats

So are you guys making these cities in the solo game or the PO game?quote>

I am building my city in PO game.... I haven't touched the solo game yet!!!

[autumnsolace 0]

a lot of repeating window textures on the towers @ night .. the way the downtowns grow is a little bizarre, too. it doesn't seem to flow very well.

[Abc987 3]

Autumnsolace, they don't have to be that way. That's just how gabry85 decided to zone his downtown. Looks kind of cool in my opinion!

[nezroy 0]

I wanted to do something a little different than the usual "grid city on flat plain" (though I have a couple of those too), so I decided to start a city on a mountain top. I'm slowly building up the downtown core along the mountain ridge line, though it's only about 50k pop right now. The lowland valley is all farms and some industry.

View from the valley looking up towards the city on the ridge:

The ridge line from behind, with residences to the right and the valley farms visible on the left:

CIty hall on the right, set on the highest nearby peak, with the residential and downtown core visible to the left. The river and farms in the valley just barely visible in the middle:

[0wn3d 2]

I like those mountain screenshots... If I ever have time I'll take some pictures of my PO city thats one of the desert maps, I built all residential/non-polluting industry up on a mountain because its the only area in the map without oil. All of the flat plains contain oil ^^. Its made for some pretty cool tunnels though.

[n88tr 0]

Do I just Printscreen to take images?? I'd like to share mine. lol before my city crapped all over me and went into serious negative cash flow because I don't know how to give buildings "fuel."

[AnnArbor 16]

Originally posted by: ASheroo

 Hey guys,

I have asked community manager Philippe if I can post screens from  some of my cities I created during the beta, and he has given me the all go.

My 4th city - New Rooley...

Hope you like them.quote>

I visited New Rooley a few days before the beta closed and I was impressed.  It was one of the most realistic cities I've come across.  Most of the area was low-density residential and there was even a highway perimeter looping downtown.  Cities XL's graphics are definitely nice.

[nezroy 0]

Originally posted by: n88tr

Do I just Printscreen to take images?? I'd like to share mine. lol before my city crapped all over me and went into serious negative cash flow because I don't know how to give buildings "fuel."quote>

There's a "screenshot" button in the camera controls menu. You can also just hit F11 to take a screen shot of your current view (it strips the UI automatically). You can also use Ctrl-F11 to get a top-down "map" shot of your entire zone. Shift-F11 takes a super high-res shot that freezes the game for about 15 seconds or so. PrintScr should work in Windows if you wanted a view containing the UI, but you'd have to swap out and paste it into a graphics app each time (pretty sure PrintScr just puts the current screen into the copy/paste buffer).

[nezroy 0]

Originally posted by: 0wn3d

I like those mountain screenshots... If I ever have time I'll take some pictures of my PO city thats one of the desert maps, I built all residential/non-polluting industry up on a mountain because its the only area in the map without oil. All of the flat plains contain oil ^^. Its made for some pretty cool tunnels though.quote>

Yeah, when I first started I initially had the connecting road cut through a tunnel in the ridge-line. Nearly bankrupted the city before I even got the first residential zone put down When I upgraded it to an express-way I found another way down without tunnels, but I'll probably switch it back to a tunnel once I can afford it just for coolness.

[0wn3d 2]

If you wanna check out a brand new city I made in "The Valley" (Very snowy map) you can check it out on the CXL website. http://www.citiesxl.com/component/option,com_profile/task,city/id,209650/Itemid,102/lang,en/ I've made 2 CJ entries using MC's CJ system.

[nezroy 0]

Originally posted by: 0wn3d

If you wanna check out a brand new city I made in "The Valley" (Very snowy map) you can check it out on the CXL website. http://www.citiesxl.com/component/option,com_profile/task,city/id,209650/Itemid,102/lang,en/ I've made 2 CJ entries using MC's CJ system.quote>

I would use their CJ system if I could get it to work. Unfortunately none of my cities show populations, stats, or any CJ creating links

[0wn3d 2]

Originally posted by: nezroy I would use their CJ system if I could get it to work. Unfortunately none of my cities show populations, stats, or any CJ creating links quote>

Yeah they're website does get a little buggy.  It seems that when you make new cities sometimes it takes like a day to update, sometimes its instant, and sometimes it seems to lose your cities stats.  Like... it used to show the stats of some of my other cities, but now it wont show stats for anything but my new one (Although it recognizes that the cities are there).

[herenthere 0]

Beta was pretty fun to play!

But it sucked how all the bridges of the same structure looked the same...the opening picture in this thread had like 5 Golden Gate look-alikes

How did you guys solve your Satisfaction issues? Some of your houses seem pretty spread apart...I had to use the rectangular tool to make it the most efficient for stuff like Education, police, etc ( even though they weren't too far away.)

[herenthere 0]

Originally posted by: herenthere

How did you guys solve your Satisfaction issues? Some of your houses seem pretty spread apart...I had to use the rectangular tool to make it the most efficient for stuff like Education, police, etc ( even though they weren't too far away.)quote>

Here's a link:

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=ee466db1-d2ce-4830-935f-9e3bf7da77b7&m=false&i=0:0:0&c=-5.00432:1.4864:-12.5841&z=622.596137840389&d=1.75895834260154:-2.78161924394151:-0.490345372280343&p=0:0&t=False

[MayorsmifT 1]

lol Asheroo, im glad Phillipe said it was ok because I already posted beta shots XD

[sparky66 0]

the problem with snowy mountain lots is that the buildings, gardens and roads never get snow on them. so houses and parks still have a bright green grass texture when all the surrounding land is snow covered. i know roads would be cleared of snow, and some people may clear garden paths etc. but it just looks silly to me.

[gnomonite 0]

Originally posted by: sparky66

the problem with snowy mountain lots is that the buildings, gardens and roads never get snow on them. so houses and parks still have a bright green grass texture when all the surrounding land is snow covered. i know roads would be cleared of snow, and some people may clear garden paths etc. but it just looks silly to me.quote>

I agree 

Thats where the content packs should come in. They should release texture and model packs for snowy or dusty buildings based on the region they are in.

[Abc987 3]

Once I take a screenshot, what folder do they end up in?

[Naviss 0]

They go in a "Monte Cristo" folder in your My Pictures folder.

[hehe 0]

Path to the screenshots:

Windows 7:

C:\Users\%Username%\Pictures\Monte Cristo\Cities XL

[hehe 0]

 

 

[Fixed formatting]

[rss334 0]

CrestView on Prosperus

[8elhaj 0]

Originally posted by: rss334

CrestView on Prosperus

quote>

In the 5th picture, does it show a crime?

that means it actually has crimes!

Has anyone seen sth like that somewhere else?

[rss334 0]

Yes the old lady ends up beating the crap out of the mugger who runs away.   That is so far the only "crime" I've seen.   I'm sure there are other random crimes but I've just recently starting a city and started looking for these things.   I have seen the police pull in to the police station and unload people from their wagons.   And FBI guys come out of the police station get in a cruiser and speed away.  Althouh the animations seemed looped for each lot and play once they reset themselves, they add 100% to the game.  

[Abc987 3]

The very beginning of a mountain-top city I've been working on. I've found it to be a lot more challenging then I expected, and I'm having a lot of fun balancing the issues that I'm being faced with!

[rhenry 1]

Alright. I took some screenshots this morning to share of my city, Lo, which is the only city I have worked on. I have tried every terrain and I keep coming back to this particular map because I love the combination of the two lakes and the river. I like the autumn leaves, too. It's the wetlands map in solo mode.

I have to say, I was very hesitant to use "expert mode" because it felt like cheating but after I could not get a city to survive I decided to give it a shot, using it sparingly, to see if I could get ahead a little to keep the city afloat. It was actually harder in expert mode because you have to think for yourself as for what to build as the game is not really walking you through by adding one plus at a time for what you need next. I found myself building the wrong things and forgetting about other things and it was actually more challenging so if you haven't tried it yet, maybe you should.

It also made or a little more creative control over the looks of my city.

One thing I've figured out (because I'm so smart) is that two high density skyscrapers will fit into the same sized lot as the lower density buildings with a bit of room for a plaza or park left over. I have never seen a city with 6 skyscrapers grouped together on one block. The really big buildings usually have a whole block to themselves, which I am thinking about removing these and arranging them that way.

It's up to 200,000 + this morning and it seems to be chugging along. I started buying fuel as often as I could, which turned out o be very useful. when I was making 50,000 per round, I bought 40,000 of fuel and I did this several times and now Omnicorp is offering to buy it back but I ain't selling.

I managed also to hang in there until I was offered a water storage facility that I didn't even know was there (not everything unlocks in expert mode - not the rewards) so I think I got past the water issues and I think it was thanks again to expert mode.

anyway, so I seem to have enough of everything and I've even managed to keep the elites moving in though in smaller quantities than everyone else. They're still not happy. Nothing makes them happy.

So here are my screenshots of Lo. Forgive me if I don't have a back story or any district names or anything and I am just starting to work on suburbs so it's a bit incomplete from the ariel shot.

Shot of downtown from the upperclass suburbs across the lake:

another one:

from out on the lake:

from above downtown towards the upper class burbs:

another from a different angle:

into downtown from the upperclass offices (I caved on the revolving restaurant because it's the only thing that seems to appease the elites remotely):

here's one of my industrial district which is also where the low density unqualified workers are living. They're riff raff so screw 'em. lol. This is all the way in the farthest corner of the map:

another:

here's a nice shot of downtown again from the upper class suburbs:

and two more from the other lake which is on the other side of downtown (so the first lake would be behind this skyline:

finally, an ariel view. Here you can see my plan but also that the city is incomplete. Big enough to get some nice shots but no nice arial shot yet:

So there it is. I don't plan on doing any CJ just because I am not really good at that. I could come up with something totally ridiculous and maybe amusing but I don't know about that for this. Maybe but probably not.

thanks!

[rhenry 1]

Asheroo, those plazas you made are ingenius. I didn't even think about that but it's a great idea the way you did them. with the pathways and stuff. Very nice.