CitiesXL will never function properly!

[YannickSHE 0]

Where to start.

Let's just say that I'm one of the few people out there that really enjoy CitiesXL. I enjoyed the 2009 version, and the 2011 version is much better, and as a city-builder fan, for me CitiesXL is perfect.

I spent 60$ last year, I paid 3 months of Planet Offer, so I paid 75$ last year.

With all the bugs the game had and the poor Planet Offer amount of players, I stopped playing for a while until the solo mode was expanded last spring, and then enjoyed the game again.

When I heard the fantastic news of CitiesXL 2011, I was really hoping that bugs would've been fixed.

So I bought a brand new computer 3 weeks ago, got the Metaboli version at a discount, so I paid another 25$ + 1700$ for the new computer.

And to my surprise, the game is still full of bugs. I read all the technical forums on CitiesXL website, I read all the threads here, but at the end, I asked myself that question:

Why do I need to be computer savvy in order for a game to work? I spent tons of dollars and a brand new computer, hoping I could just play the game. I don't care about minor bugs like road details, or highway intersections, those things I don't care. But when it comes to a point that game crashes all the time when it auto-saves, then it corrupts the city, then you can't replay the city you've spent 2 weeks on it, etc etc.

I mean, it's not my responsibility to send emails to tech support, I shouldn't have to play with all the system files and I certainly don't need to start a computer programming school program just for a game to work properly.

I've been playing computer games all my life, never had to go through such pain to play them. CitiesXL is just full of bugs and I feel cheated as a customer.

My computer is far and beyond exceeding the minimum specs required, and we can't still play the game properly. It seems that a ton of different players are all having those problems, and we have no control or power on the situation.

I just want the game to work. I just want to build cities with all the fantastic tools provided in the game. It's all I want. I never installed mods, I never played with the files, I'm not touching anything. I refuse to. Plain and simple.

We should definitely think of a massive lawsuit.

[soltangris 42]

Start thinking of what? Boycot Focus Home? Like we boycoted Monte Cristo? What did that lead to?

Don't think that I don't feel your pain, I'd also like to play a game that works fine every time i start it.

The fact is that in the world of PC gaming this rarely happens, even with the simplest kind of games (shooters, racers), and CXL is far from simple. Besides, I'm tired of pointing out that a small game developing company simply can't afford to release a perfect game on the market - it doesn't have neither the developing time, nor the sheer number of programmers needed to completely clean the code. Nor the money to do all that.

You can wait until EA decides to field another Sim City. And hope it won't be a joke like Societies.

Or you could stick with CXL, encourage and support its developers, and get a fair chance at a good game soon. Actually, you're already supporting it (sinse you bought CXL 2011), but I'm asking you to cool down and see clearly the future - there's no other city builder in sight but CXL.

So, my advise is: take a deep breath and hope for the best.

[YannickSHE 0]

Well, I'm all up for everything you said. That's not the point!! I will probably be one of the few that will ALWAYS encourage that game, no matter what, I think it's a fantastic game!

I just want to play the game without worrying if I'm going to lose everything. I mean, I want this to succeed and be the best game ever, but the kind of bug I had 24 hours ago with the game decreased my interest by a lot. All other regular bugs I was fine with them. But now it's not even a matter of bugs, it's a matter of losing your cities. I was able to always play my cities on CitiesXL09 even with the thousands of bugs. In CitiesXL, I lost the entire city because apparently the file got corrupted while autosaving. That should be the basic real major bug that should be taken care of. Otherwise, it's pointless to play (and I'm just dying to play!!! believe me!!!)

[Ocram's Razr 963]

It works well with me.

[parrotti 11]

Well, i think YannickMtl has it by the right end.

Those days the gamecompany's lanche crapy games on the market, cause the moders and other wis people will fixed it for them and change the things they want.the onley thing they do is perhaps if we luck launch a patch and thats it.

I

[parrotti 11]

Originally posted by: parrotti

Well, i think YannickMtl has it by the right end.

Those days the gamecompany's lanche crapy games on the market, cause the moders and other wis people will fixed it for them and change the things they want.the onley thing they do is perhaps if we have  lucky they  launch a patch and thats it.

I still think its a very cheap upgrad of citylife.

I've play sometimes cltylife 2008 and some things are copyed right away from citylife.

[soltangris 42]

I have to say that I haven't had a single crash so far, Yannick. Granted, my largest city has only 750 000, but I haven't experienced most of the other bugs people are complaining from either. No problems with saving so far, loading, very minor problems with trading (sometimes when I buy from Omnicorp it doesn't deduct the cash right away, it does it after a several transactions). I've built only one Megastructure (Tokyo tower), but without any problems.

I have encountered those clear gameplay bugs: Skilled workers Stilted houses don't fill up, some roads don't link with the roundabouts, the metro rate of use is way bellow what it should be. But that's basically it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the situation is not that dire - there are plenty of people that manage to play without problems. Of course, I'm not suggesting that you're doing something wrong! I'm just saying that the problems you and the others are having are probably easily fixable with a patch, on which Focus Home is reportedly working as we speak.

So heads up!

[YannickSHE 0]

Originally posted by: soltangris

I have to say that I haven't had a single crash so far, Yannick. Granted, my largest city has only 750 000, but I haven't experienced most of the other bugs people are complaining from either. No problems with saving so far, loading, very minor problems with trading (sometimes when I buy from Omnicorp it doesn't deduct the cash right away, it does it after a several transactions). I've built only one Megastructure (Tokyo tower), but without any problems.

I have encountered those clear gameplay bugs: Skilled workers Stilted houses don't fill up, some roads don't link with the roundabouts, the metro rate of use is way bellow what it should be. But that's basically it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the situation is not that dire - there are plenty of people that manage to play without problems. Of course, I'm not suggesting that you're doing something wrong! I'm just saying that the problems you and the others are having are probably easily fixable with a patch, on which Focus Home is reportedly working as we speak.

So heads up!quote>

Well, give me your secret then! I can't believe you played CitiesXL and that the game played without crashing after 4-5 hours. Since 2 weeks, I restart the game every 2 hours when I realize that the game is starting to lag.

All those little bugs you mentioned I'm fine with them, not a problem, and CitiesXL on my brand new computer is working really well (on small cities!) ... when I reached 1.5M, and the map was almost full, that's when crashes started to happen. And then BAMMM ... last crash, the auto-save-crash corrupted the file, which was the fabulous city I was working on. So that's why I'm so pissed.

Any city post 1 million, this game works really well. As soon as we are taking the game very seriously, with lots of cities, 2 million people, lots of tradings, etc etc, thats when the game starts to crash.

I mean, I can assure you I do nothing wrong. I bought a new computer 2 weeks ago, I doubled minimum specs required, I installed the comp, I installed the game and I played the game. It's simple!!!! I haven't modified or changed, or tweaked, or whatever. I just want to grow my cities, and build 100 cities on the planet without worrying if I'm going to lose everything.

Don't worry, you will get to that famous file corrupted. It seems inevitable when it grows.

[zwr100 2]

Originally posted by: YannickMtlBut when it comes to a point that game crashes all the time when it auto-saves, then it corrupts the city, then you can't replay the city you've spent 2 weeks on it, etc etc.quote>

  I am an extreme supporter of this game too, and I'd also be very upset in your situation!

I've played very user friendly, completely polished games, with every feature and all the content you could want and more...but it doesn't matter if you don't really like the game (world of warcraft).  I'd rather play a broken, incomplete game that I enjoy (cxl).

You can manually save in CXL 2011... if you did that would you have a restore point in case the file gets corrupted in an autosave?  Is there a way to turn off autosave?  I'm not at my gaming computer to check, but I think the OP is genuinely looking for answers, as opposed to a typical crybaby...though I might tone down the message title.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Also, the type of processor that runs Cities XL best is a pentium 6. The hyperthreaded processors cannot handle it.

[Ant1-b0dy 0]

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle

Also, the type of processor that runs Cities XL best is a pentium 6. The hyperthreaded processors cannot handle it.quote>

Pentium 6? You mean Intel CELERON. Then the Core 2 Duos showed up and revolved into Core 2 Quad & Core 2 Quad Extreme; now revolved again to core i3/i5/i7. Only reminants of Pentium now are the Intel Atoms which are in nettops and netbooks, and Celeron 2.

Hyperthreading has nothing to do with the game; all hyperthreading does is add an extra thread per core. So a regular Dual-Core processor sees 2 cores; a Dual-Core with hyperthreading sees 4 cores.

----

The game has a memory leak in it somewhere due to probably some small fault of which someone forgot to add a "break;" in the line or some newbie that doesn't know how to memory & error manage; and only utilizes one core since it would have taken a complete rebuild of the game's code (at which point some devs really start to question if they should either stop and sell the code or build a whole new game from it)

I haven't hit 1 mill with any city yet but with 12GB RAM and an i7 I hardly see any lag except for when the game bumps thread 7 to 100% (of which I assign to it). I think the biggest thing asside from graphical errors and the issues mentioned above is the auto-save function. I hope the first official patch adds a slider in with the options panel to turn auto-save off-save every minutes and how many saves to keep.

So:

Auto-Save:

[On]

- Off

Save Every:

[30]

Minutes

Keep

[2]

Saves

This way every 30 minutes the game will save, after i've played an hour it will auto-save again and keep the previous save; this way if the last save corrupts itself you have your backup of which was taken 30 minutes prior. Of course you should be able to adjust the intervals of saves and kept saves. If anyone wants a demonstration I am willing to create a mock-GUI for it.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

The Intel Pentium 6 was the last Pentium (or was it 5) and suffered from overheating. I vaguely remember Celeron. What I was trying to say that Cities XL works on a single core and wants to use as much as that core as possible so the best processor for Cities XL would be a really good single core or an extremely good dual core if you have background tasks or are multi-tasking. Quad core processors have weaker cores that single core or dual core processors so a cheap quad core is the opposite of what you want for Cities XL.

I also have 8GB of RAM and my RAM usage remains steady from the time I first load a city through gameplay of upwards of 5 hours.

[Ant1-b0dy 0]

Pentium 5 was known as the Pentium D and Pentium 6 was the Celeron. Pentium D was (I think) the first Intel Dual-Core processor known as Prescott and did suffer from major overheating issues.

New quad cores like in the Core i series use a completely different scale for clock speeds since the FSB has been removed. You can get a i5 that runs at 2.3GHz to run faster than any Pentium 3.2GHz. But yeah like you I don't experience the memory leak issue after 5 hours.

[Cob92 360]

Game functions fine on my computer. No lag or crashes whatsoever.

[tomfoolery_79 85]

Works great here.

[YannickSHE 0]

Thank you. But you know what, I think I've solved all the problems I had with the game since 3 weeks.

1) I changed the way my computer is plugged. My computer has its own power source (where as before everything was at same place).

2) I realized that the "load" buttons are for manual savings of our games. Well, I made tests around with fake city and the manual save works! And then, from Planet, you can access the manual save from the load button instead of synchronize. Wow, I thought the only way to save the game was with the stupid autosave, but no, it does work with manual download. At least, when autosave will crash the game, I just have to load my last personal save. I'M LOVINN IT!!!

3) Also, all the manual saves I did now appear correctly into the save folder into game's folders.

Everything should be ok now. Thanks for your help mark, but I kinda answered my own questions.

***I copy-pasted this from my own other thread... just in case people wonder how i got around the problems I had! Problems gone by the way ! ***

[tomfoolery_79 85]

One note I've learned the hard way. Do NOT accidentally hit the load button when you mean to hit save. It's surprisingly easy to do and last night I lost 2 hours worth of work (yes that was even trying the autosave and manual save too).

[Mr. Cortez 11]

IMHO, City Life is better than Cities XL. I'm playing City Life right now...back to my social conflicts. Have-nots can't live with Suits, lol.

By the way, Cities XL worked well on my PC, and my PC didn't even come close to minimum specs.

[bluespottedhorse 49]

Originally posted by: YannickMtl

Where to start.

Let's just say that I'm one of the few people out there that really enjoy CitiesXL. I enjoyed the 2009 version, and the 2011 version is much better, and as a city-builder fan, for me CitiesXL is perfect.

I spent 60$ last year, I paid 3 months of Planet Offer, so I paid 75$ last year.

With all the bugs the game had and the poor Planet Offer amount of players, I stopped playing for a while until the solo mode was expanded last spring, and then enjoyed the game again.

When I heard the fantastic news of CitiesXL 2011, I was really hoping that bugs would've been fixed.

So I bought a brand new computer 3 weeks ago, got the Metaboli version at a discount, so I paid another 25$ + 1700$ for the new computer.

And to my surprise, the game is still full of bugs. I read all the technical forums on CitiesXL website, I read all the threads here, but at the end, I asked myself that question:

Why do I need to be computer savvy in order for a game to work? I spent tons of dollars and a brand new computer, hoping I could just play the game. I don't care about minor bugs like road details, or highway intersections, those things I don't care. But when it comes to a point that game crashes all the time when it auto-saves, then it corrupts the city, then you can't replay the city you've spent 2 weeks on it, etc etc.

I mean, it's not my responsibility to send emails to tech support, I shouldn't have to play with all the system files and I certainly don't need to start a computer programming school program just for a game to work properly.

I've been playing computer games all my life, never had to go through such pain to play them. CitiesXL is just full of bugs and I feel cheated as a customer.

My computer is far and beyond exceeding the minimum specs required, and we can't still play the game properly. It seems that a ton of different players are all having those problems, and we have no control or power on the situation.

I just want the game to work. I just want to build cities with all the fantastic tools provided in the game. It's all I want. I never installed mods, I never played with the files, I'm not touching anything. I refuse to. Plain and simple.

We should definitely think of a massive lawsuit.quote>

I did not purchase Cities11 nor the 09 version and I also beta tested the 09 version.  I would not sway anyone one way or the other to purchase 2011.  It's a personal choice that everyone needs to decide for themselves if it meets their expectations.  I don't have any sympathy for anyone who buys the game and complains afterwards.  Albeit, there have been some minor changes to the 2011 version it's basically a repackaged 09.  Right from it's initial release players have been complaining about one thing or another.

Cities2011 is quite a leap forward from SC4 but I personally don't care about the 3d aspect so it was never a selling point for me.  The biggest issue was and is the complete lack of detail in the game, i.e. lots sizes are 9 time the size of SC4.  This translates into very little customization of a city and drastically limits the amount of detail that can be achieved.  Further, because all the lots are a very large square the cities look completely unrealistic.

I'm sure that citiesxl will continue to improve and evolve if they want to sell more copies of the game.

[Screwballl 196]

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle

It works well with me.quote>

Works well on my system... sure it does slow down after 2-3 hours but never crashed, never had a corrupt city or file, none of that.

I have a modest system by todays standards:

Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P mobo

Intel dual core E6600 at stock 2.4GHz

4GB DDR2-1066

512MB 9800GT run on 19" widescreen 1440x900

WinXP SP3 and Vista x64

SATA3 main hard drives (Seagate 7200.11 320GB, WD 7200RPM 120GB server drive and WD 500GB backup drive)

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music sound card

One major thing that people do not realize is that if they run large resolution monitors, it can actually cause a lot more system slowdown on even every day activites, and this game just excaberates the problem. Try dropping it down to something more reasonable like 1600x1200 or lower.

[Waterclaw 80]

The game if fine for me, but once 20k-35k people hit, the game gets slow. (Off topic --&gt I have the super high graphics mod on and on absolute best graphics settings and I'm still disapointed, textures arn't the best. (Trees, buildings, etc.)

[karlohaduca 0]

is there a way to reduce the screen resolution of the game like 800x600 because the resolution that is on the game is 1280x768 and no lower than that..and make my game very slow

[soltangris 42]

Have you tried the Video options? There should be at least 1024X768, I think. Also, turn off 'Atmospheric display' - this helps a lot without inhibiting visual quality.

[PrAyTeLLa 0]

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle

Also, the type of processor that runs Cities XL best is a pentium 6.quote>

Originally posted by: Ant1-b0dy

Pentium 6? You mean Intel CELERON. Then the Core 2 Duos showed up and revolved into Core 2 Quad & Core 2 Quad Extreme; now revolved again to core i3/i5/i7. Only reminants of Pentium now are the Intel Atoms which are in nettops and netbooks, and Celeron 2.

quote>

Originally posted by: Ant1-b0dy

Pentium 5 was known as the Pentium D and Pentium 6 was the Celeron. Pentium D was (I think) the first Intel Dual-Core processor known as Prescott and did suffer from major overheating issues.

quote>

Ummm... you might wana google what the Celeron chip actually was. You are wrong. Pentium 6 is the Pentium M series, while the Celeron was basically a cut down budget version of the Pentium chips (with no L2 cache when first released). Started in the Pentium 2 days (a Celeron 400A was my first CPU). They were well known for cheap performance due to awesome overclocking potential.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I have a 2010 Dell Laptop that runs on a dual core pentium and it is super fast (about 3.4 gHz).

[tarrina 2]

I guess I'll chime in and say that I bought CitiesXL 2011 this weekend. I played up to a city of 75,000 people and I noticed that it was starting to lag just a little--not to the point it was causing game play problems. It did crash once with a much smaller population on a different city. Mind you, I was playing well below the minimum system requirements and was still happily surprised to see how well it performed.

I never had the chance to play the beta version or '09 because I don't have a PC--I'm a Mac, but borrow a PC when I visit family. But for the two days I had the opportunity to play, I was happy with the game overall. It's true it's not as detailed or diverse as SC4, but it is a fun game. And $40 is about the same you'd pay for any night out, and this game will entertain over and over again. I look forward to seeing where they take it if they should come out with subsequent versions.

[franky_83 8]

Cities XL works very well for me. I have had several SC4 crashes, yet CXL has never crashed or locked up on me yet. CXL 2011 is much better, more so than Planet Offer mode even. The only complaint I have is that there are no freight trains! What modern-day city has no railways?