SimCity: Gameplay

[RedMist 10]

EA Maxis isn't Will Wright's Maxis, so we can't say how this SimCity will be. Just I'll wait and see.

[Jack³ 291]

Most of the pictures look like something you would see on the game case cover. I can't wait for actual screenshots!

It's just amazing that this is actually happening. A new forum and everything. I'm curious as to what buggi thinks.

[Azurespecter 506]

I think people are worried that Sim City 5 won't have the game mechanics that Sim City 4 now has with help from the community. A legitimate concern of course. However, when it comes to custom content, it's time to let it go. Yes, there are thousands of magnificent BAT's and lots that have been made, but it's time to let them go. I'm sure that Sim City 5 (assuming that Maxis creates a game that has the base mechanics that are at least as good as Sim City 4 is with the custom mods/NAM that stuff) will see a whole host of new custom content from the fans of the series. It will take some time, but it's time to move on to bigger and better. Now lets just hope that Maxis gets the foundations right.

[Cob92 360]

^There's been plenty of alleged SimCity 5 pictures and screenshots before, including one I remember seeing at least a few years ago. All it was, was a random 3D rendering of a beachfront with the 'SIMCITY 5000 SCREENSHOT' text pasted on there...

I honestly don't give a darn about 3D or whatever, if it means sacrificing even a third of the detail we're allowed to render in SimCity 4 right now. Even today I get comments from people about how good the SimCity 4 graphics are while I'm playing it (of course I explain that most of the stuff shown is third party content, but still..).

If all they would do is provide a proper fix to end all the stupid crashing on newer machines for SimCity 4, I'd be perfectly set. It'll sound so cliché, because it's been said so many times, but it's very true:

With the truly enormous variety of custom content available, we the community have created SimCity 5.

And after seeing the screenshots from P57 and the new NAM, the Toronto Dominion Project, and projects released previously like the UN building and Manhattanville I'm not inclined to think that this game will be succeeded anytime soon.

I'm the other way around. I'd gladly give up the custom content for SC4 if it meant a game with full 3D graphics, freeform building, larger maps, and deeper gameplay. The mods we have are nice, but they're little more than 5000 Band-Aids plastered over a gaping wound. The NAM will still require puzzle pieces and workarounds until the end of time, and I don't see the mod community coming up with a way to make the game run faster or have bigger cities any time soon. As much as the mod community has contributed to the growth of SC4, it is not and can never be SimCity 5.

I see where you're coming from but I can't really agree with you. For one thing, the community has made more than just mods; there's literally thousands of buildings available for download, and the new SimCity would have a few hundred at most. Quite quickly the architecture of the cities would become stale, repetitive and boring; just look at Cities XL. Yes Cities XL looks really nice and flashy with beautiful sunsets, what appears to be a weather simulator and such but beyond that there's no substance when it's not nearly as versatile in city style as SimCity 4 (it's much harder if not impossible to create something that isn't a generic American concrete jungle or European contemporary town). Even with free, open building tools it would take a long time to make as many buildings for this new game; even if not as long since the tools like BAT4MAX have already been developed...

Also, while the NAM does have workarounds and puzzle pieces, they're still fully functioning and after a while they do create things like diagonal bridges which were previously thought impossible. It took a very long time but they continue to surprise us and deserve a lot of credit for the amount of work they poured into so much free content.

I'm not sure how the game could possibly run any faster shy of upgrading a computer; if you mean loading times, well with the size of many users' plugin suites it's sort of expected to take a while to load the game. I'm willing to be patient since this is a very leisurely hobby type game, not a fast paced FPS or MMORPG type thing, after all.

Lastly on the topic of larger cities, well larger tiles would be nice but it's pretty easy to turn several tiles into one large city/metro area, it requires a bit of work but I don't really think it's a problem. I personally don't mind breaking down the metro area into tiles to work on them, though I suppose its all personal preference.

I guess this new SimCity, if valid, could show quite a bit of promise, but it's going to take more than simply being in 3D and having free drawn roads to make me want to accept it. If the gameplay was deeper and more realistic, with a traffic simulator that accounted for more than just commuters (this is one of the things I don't like about SC4, I will say), then there would be a worthwhile investment IMHO.

EDIT: I just found this article on Gamespot. The use of the word 'confirmed' stands out to me particularly, since it means a lot more than "Will Wright seen taking pictures of skyscrapers -- this must mean SC5!!11!!1!ONELEVENTEEN"

I don't count buildings; they're just eyecandy, and though they take a lot of work to make they don't really change the game. Cities XL doesn't fail because of a lack of variety (it has more buildings than SC4), it fails because the gameplay is shallow and static and there's no reason to play other than to build a pretty cityscape to stare at. And yes, the NAM functions and adds a lot of good functionality to the game, I don't deny that. But it's limited and less than what it could be because it's jerry-rigged into the game (for example, the RHW does a horrible job in mountainous or waterlogged areas because it has no tunnels and bridges that barely work).

As for how the game could run faster: Writing code optimized for dual- and quad- core CPUs and capable of utilizing my full 6 GB of memory instead of code for hardware that is several generations outdated. I don't care about loading times; what bugs me is that once I have about 250,000 people in a city the game slows to a crawl and the clock can take several seconds to update one day at the fastest speed. I shouldn't have my game lagging out on a gaming PC with a brand new $200+ video card, state of the art multicore CPU and giant sea of RAM.

And I hate the metro area thing with a passion; it is the one feature more than anything else that has driven me away from SC4 over the years. I live in a city IRL that has a land area of over 600 square miles compared to SC4's largest city which is only 4 square kilometers (even smaller than 4 square miles). SC4's large cities are the size of neighborhoods, maybe small suburban towns at best. I got so sick of flipping cities so that I could build a realistically sized city that I've just given up on realism altogether.

I agree with you that an SC4 sequel needs to bring real gameplay advancements in addition to graphical improvements; that's why I abandoned CitiesXL, and I view the thousands upon thousands of custom buildings and cosmetic mods for SC4 in the same light.

[Dr.Rockso 0]

I dont understand why they cant make it like google earth? Dont get me wrong. Im glad they're developing something. But Google Earth is the way to go.

[nashville nelson 51]

The interview or preview sounds like SC5 is a mix between CitiesXL and Sim City with a good amount of complexity. I am a little sceptical about that the prices for raw materials are set by the online modus, even when you play as a single player.

[Vlasky 1,803]

Well this surely brought a smile on my face. I do not believe this for a second!! One of the pictures features Maxis SC4 bridge (the arch Sydney-like one) and one of the images displays slope that is covered with SC4 square grid. The style of the buildings is different from shot to shot, looking cartoonish at one, looking serious at other. General impression of photoshop is in many non fixed perspectives, so I won't be holding my breath till official EA announcement. It's very exciting to see the whole community worked up though.

[fatschmo 6]

By the way, including SimCity 2000 Network Edition in 1996 offered a multiplayer mode to connect to the network and share materials with other mayors and cooperate in the development of cities or compete against each other. The new SimCity is based on this idea. We manage a region along with our friends, visit and share resources on land, sea or air. As in the solo mode, you can create a specialized city according to our wishes. We dream of an elegant residential, leisure and you need to find jobs and electricity? No problem, our friend might like to be the largest coal producer in the world.

[TekindusT 3,809]

Can't avoid to be skeptical about these pics, at least, until an official announcement is made. Knowing how the videogames market is evoluting these days, the appereance of a SimCity Social is more plausible than ever, you could call it a "CityVille: Professional Edition". And this is only the first of my worries about it.

The new SimCity is based on this idea. We manage a region along with our friends, visit and share resources on land, sea or air. As in the solo mode, you can create a specialized city according to our wishes. We dream of an elegant residential, leisure and you need to find jobs and electricity? No problem, our friend might like to be the largest coal producer in the world.

Well, this is not new. At first, SC4 had the SimCityScape.com site, which allowed to share your cities with other players (never tried it). This option lasted until the appereance of the BAT, which made these exchanges terribly difficult. Guess that, if this system was ever implemented in SC5, the same would happen.

  Edited February 29, 2012 by TekindusT  

[Cob92 360]

Well, this is not new. At first, SC4 had the SimCityScape.com site, which allowed to share your cities with other players (never tried it). This option lasted until the appereance of the BAT, which made these exchanges terribly difficult. Guess that, if this system was ever implemented in SC5, the same would happen.

Or they could do what FPS games do and have the game automatically download the custom content that you're missing when you load up someone else's city (of course, this would require a centralized exchange that the game could access to get the things you need). My guess though, is that SC5 will be a more in depth and polished hybrid of Cities XL and SC4, and that city sharing won't be nearly as important as players being able to influence and interact with each other's cities.

[Dirktator 2,327]

It does look cartoonish, but I take heart in the fact that these are not final in-game shots. This is all concept stuff, so the art direction will more than likely be refined closer to completion. Still, it's something to look at for now and it's serving its purpose!

[GrimJr987 15]

As far as I see it, we have a forum, so I now expect to see something official regardless.

However, I am very afraid of it being childish or really casual as in Cityville, part of me hopes Maxis will go back to it's roots, but the other half is braced for severe disappointment.

It it's childish, cartoonish, or casual I will cry myself to sleep for the next 10 years. I really hope that they will give us what we want.

You won't have to, some clever indie studio will build a better Simcity style game

[nathanthemayor 1,263]

Well, this is an exiciting announcement!Hopefully for the next game Maxis actually listens to the fans...

[jebus22 0]

If my laptop doesn't run this game, I'm going to be mad.

[hamsterTK 93]

Its cartoony, but there are some promising things available in those concept art pictures. I already see multiple types of roads and bridges, and possibly a streetcar and a exposed subway tunnel or water main. As well as disasters, which honestly I missed even if that makes me shallow.

Really I just love the core elements of the simcity games like rail, utilities, and emergency services. If V can at least have the same level of traditional simcity gameplay as 2000 plus whatever new ideas they have, then I am game.

  Edited March 1, 2012 by hamsterTK  

[Ocram's Razr 964]

1. SimCity social will run on your laptop. If you cannot get the Sims 2 to run properly on your laptop, give up hope now and get your anger out sooner than later.

2. Keep in mind that these are not screenshots but proof of concept advertising art.

3. The small size of the city tiles was a necessary crutch in order to have large regions play on the type of computers commonly available at that time. It is still impossible to have more than 200km of a large city running at the same time so city tiles or chunk based loading will be necessary for a long time.

[Wiimeiser 452]

http://kotaku.com/5889310/leaked-pics-appear-to-show-a-sprawling-gorgeous-simcity-5/gallery/7

Wait is that a gridless highway layout?

EDIT: Not a highway, it intersects at-grade. But it does go under that bridge.

I'm really hoping for something RHW-esque as well.

  Edited March 1, 2012 by Wiimeiser  

[squeaky024 14]

I have to say I am extremely exited, yet I also feel apprehensive. I do want a Simcity 5 with at minimum the depth of sc4, but I do not like the thought of a multiplayer mode where you play with everyone who has the game. The way I have always played Simcity 4 is on a fictional planet. I run everything on the planet, I make up the climate, the geography, the resources, the government, and so on. I do not want a "set" outside model imposed on the way I play my game and i find that extremely constricting. What if I want to play with my friends on my happy fictional planet, and deal with our own set problems. We can all agree to have say... a limited supply of coal. I don't want players around the world setting this and I especially don't want it affecting my single player experience. I however DO want some kind of multiplayer feature in the traditional sense where you host your own "world" or server, and the players that join you, or you allow to join, alter the world.

As for the screenshots, I have to remain open as the variables between the look of each one is vast. March 6th is not too far away and we all have waited since 2003 for the "next" simcity, with a little speed bump along the way (societies). I hope this will be a great continuation of the Simcity series, and I hope this will not be a disappointment in any way. But I am a little concerned about the hardware aspect. I am currently running a dated 4..... now 5 year old computer, with an ATI Radeon HD 3450. For those of you who are not familiar with that card, it has a meager 256mb on it. Today that is barely cutting it. Not only that, I have a 2.7 dual core CPU, and 2GB ram. Upgrading to the specifications that they may need for a 3D upgrade will be very costly for me, and I am personally not completely ready for this change unless they find a way to have older computers like mine able to run the game decently on the minimum settings. CXL I find is "ok" for me as long as its a little village. I can always throw graphics out the window and put it on lowest settings, but then I cannot even stand the look of the game anymore. They better take note of older systems and make the proper accommodations for it.

There's my 2 cents, and I hope they take a peek at what sc4 has become with all our great additions to the game and they develop with that in mind. That's all for now.

Edit: Oh yes one more thing, remember that if sc5 turns out to be something too different or in the wrong direction, we always have sc4.

  Edited March 1, 2012 by squeaky024  

[hamsterTK 93]

2. Keep in mind that these are not screenshots but proof of concept advertising art.

I know, wrong choice of words. Either way they show a kind of direction they want to take the game, and I am hoping that by illustrating those features maybe at least one will actually exist in the finished product.

I'm probably wrong, but it feels good to be optimistic for once.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Why are we so quick to label things "Official"...

For me the "official announcement" will not be official until it is actually EA/Maxis doing the announcing.

Until then any 'announcements' are at best just speculation.

[Vlasky 1,803]

It does look cartoonish, but I take heart in the fact that these are not final in-game shots. This is all concept stuff, so the art direction will more than likely be refined closer to completion. Still, it's something to look at for now and it's serving its purpose!

Wait. Are you personally confirming this news? If anyone would know, it would be you, knowing that Maxis/EA had contacted you in the past, and if they have their data correct, they know that you own the most active SC community site. So my guess is, if this is for real, you'd be the one to know it/get confirmation. So, do you?

I'd hate to see everyone taking this for granted, getting all worked up, than ending up with nothing.

And people, if that happens, let's remember that, although we'd all love to see a new SC game, we already have amazingly upgraded game, built up and upgraded to extent that no game will be able to achieve that level any time soon.

[Jazzmaster 716]

I don't count buildings; they're just eyecandy, and though they take a lot of work to make they don't really change the game. Cities XL doesn't fail because of a lack of variety (it has more buildings than SC4), it fails because the gameplay is shallow and static and there's no reason to play other than to build a pretty cityscape to stare at. And yes, the NAM functions and adds a lot of good functionality to the game, I don't deny that. But it's limited and less than what it could be because it's jerry-rigged into the game (for example, the RHW does a horrible job in mountainous or waterlogged areas because it has no tunnels and bridges that barely work).

Fair enough, but considering how much work the NAM team has done for all of us for absolutely no money all the while continuing to surprise us, I feel like sacrificing a few menial things like tunnels and more bridges (both of which have workarounds for, they aren't amazing but they do suffice) is acceptable. The last thing we should do is complain; the amount of work that goes into the NAM components is insane, and the fact that they do this all for us for no money speaks a lot when the mentality of too many is "if you're good at something, never do it for free".

Also, the buildings add quite a bit to the game, simply for adding variety and its hard to plan a unique looking city with the same repetitive architecture; many members devote the entirety of their time planning out unique cities block by block which is only achievable with the thousands of buildings available.

As for how the game could run faster: Writing code optimized for dual- and quad- core CPUs and capable of utilizing my full 6 GB of memory instead of code for hardware that is several generations outdated. I don't care about loading times; what bugs me is that once I have about 250,000 people in a city the game slows to a crawl and the clock can take several seconds to update one day at the fastest speed. I shouldn't have my game lagging out on a gaming PC with a brand new $200+ video card, state of the art multicore CPU and giant sea of RAM.

Granted, I know how you feel since I once shared this mentality, and I still would like to see the program utilize multiple cores, not everybody has a hot-rod video card. Right now SimCity 4 is accessible to everybody in its full form including those on netbooks, but an updated game probably wouldn't be...

And I hate the metro area thing with a passion; it is the one feature more than anything else that has driven me away from SC4 over the years. I live in a city IRL that has a land area of over 600 square miles compared to SC4's largest city which is only 4 square kilometers (even smaller than 4 square miles). SC4's large cities are the size of neighborhoods, maybe small suburban towns at best. I got so sick of flipping cities so that I could build a realistically sized city that I've just given up on realism altogether.

I agree with you that an SC4 sequel needs to bring real gameplay advancements in addition to graphical improvements; that's why I abandoned CitiesXL, and I view the thousands upon thousands of custom buildings and cosmetic mods for SC4 in the same light.

Fair enough, but be honest: how easy would it be to develop a city that is truly the size of New York or Chicago, LA or Paris without being hastily grown and looking entirely too repetitive and boring, even ugly?

The region I have in the works currently is more than enough to last me a long time (it's so enormous, to be honest, that I am open to the idea of never really filling it up), and frankly anymore could prove overwhelming to many people.

  Edited March 1, 2012 by Yoshiisland  

[§haÅ--Ñ€ §hÅŽo 370]

I really hope this is SimCity 5, I know for a fact Maxis won't screw it up, like Tilted Mills ruined SimCity Societes. The only problem that Maxis has is EA, who will most likely try to mess up the game. Hopefully they won't, but even if they do SimCity 5 will still be grand.

[Cob92 360]

I don't count buildings; they're just eyecandy, and though they take a lot of work to make they don't really change the game. Cities XL doesn't fail because of a lack of variety (it has more buildings than SC4), it fails because the gameplay is shallow and static and there's no reason to play other than to build a pretty cityscape to stare at. And yes, the NAM functions and adds a lot of good functionality to the game, I don't deny that. But it's limited and less than what it could be because it's jerry-rigged into the game (for example, the RHW does a horrible job in mountainous or waterlogged areas because it has no tunnels and bridges that barely work).

Fair enough, but considering how much work the NAM team has done for all of us for absolutely no money all the while continuing to surprise us, I feel like sacrificing a few menial things like tunnels and more bridges (both of which have workarounds for, they aren't amazing but they do suffice) is acceptable. The last thing we should do is complain; the amount of work that goes into the NAM components is insane, and the fact that they do this all for us for no money speaks a lot when the mentality of too many is "if you're good at something, never do it for free".

Also, the buildings at quite a bit to the game, simply for adding variety and its hard to plan a unique looking city with the same repetitive architecture; many members devote the entirety of their time planning out unique cities block by block which is only achievable with the thousands of buildings available.

I'm not denying the merit of the NAM Team's work or of the buildings; I'm just saying that these things are not enough to make SC4 into SC5. We can probably say that we have SC4.75 at this point, but I say that you can't really call it SC5 until the things beyond the reach of modders are fixed. Modding can only help us approach SC5, and even if the mods continued to develop for decades to a point of near-perfection, as long as the same core problems remained unfixable, the game would still be SimCity 4.999999999999999999999999.

[The_Dalai_Llama 15]

Well I'm excited.

Also, how did I get here?

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Well I'm excited.

Also, how did I get here?

Well when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much...

(Nice to see you Your Hairiness)

[hamsterTK 93]

It could be both real and a hoax.

It wouldn't be too surprising if those concept art/mockup images are in fact the real deal and were leaked. If fake they are very good and took a lot of effort to pull off.

At the same time the interview with Lucy Bradshaw and news about re-uniting the Maxis team for a game officially titled "Simcity V" could all be BS. Actually I am betting on this to be the truth come early March when the official announcement of EA's big new thing happens.

  Edited March 1, 2012 by hamsterTK  

[pbmbfl 4]

This is almost certainly real, http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/13473480/Inside_the_GlassBox_%28Presented_by_EA%29 See this link.

"DESCRIPTION:

Join EA and one of their world class development studios as they give you a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the GlassBox Simulation Engine, the next-generation technology that is built from the ground up to power the next entry in one of their most beloved franchises."

Most beloved? what else could that be? well i guess theirs alot of things but still, its cannot be a coincidence. This is almost a confirmation, I guess we will know for sure really soon.

<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">

[Jazzmaster 716]

^Another franchise that comes to mind is Need for Speed...they are officially working on that game and the series has been a huge success...it could be some new engine for NFS 13 just like Frostbite 2 was used in the last one although somehow I doubt it.

[MINIggy03 227]

Lucy Bradshaw is working on it. That makes me very, very happy!