SimCity: Gameplay

[Something_started 5]

hey this makes me wonder, if they're calling it SimCity 2013, that means two things right off hand,

1-they are planning on picking up a series (unless that's just to get the year 2013 in our heads)

2-it better be good or i'ma be MAD lol.

[mapboy 106]

They aren't calling it SimCity 2013. It's just called 'SimCity'.

[waybig 35]

Interesting quote from the Kotaku preview:

There are no more right corners in the game—roads and zones can be as curvy as you like, and cities will flow much more organically as a result.

[jacksunny 741]

More interesting quotes from the article:

Each city could only be so big, and once you reached the edge of the map, that was pretty much it. No longer.

there are leaderboards which contribute to something of a global economy

While it will be possible to piss your neighbors off, SimCity won't allow for any sort of military option. After all, the idea is that all of these cities are under the same flag. It's not a conquest game, or a wargame—it's a game about cooperating (or not cooperating) with your neighbors. If you're fighting, you're fighting on a market level.

SimCity's other big direction for growth has been downward—the street-level of SimCity will be far more detailed than its predecessors. That carries across every aspect of the street-level view, from the audio to the graphics to the behavior of the sims.

Sounds like we're getting a lot of the things we want...

[waybig 35]

From Gamespy:

"By himself, he doesn't seem too complicated," observed Lead Designer Stone Librande, with the game camera focused on a lone, ant-sized Sim citizen. "But what I love about it is that when you get 10,000 people, it's really fun to watch. Even though everybody's basically a stupid, very simple little algorithm, when you get enough of them, and some people are shopping, some people are at schools, and some people are at parks, you get these really rich flows through your city."

It may be a stupid little algorithm, but it does a great impression of a crowd of pedestrians. A few hundred Sims strolling around a small loop of road bears a striking resemblance to the movements of a real crowd you might see leaving a movie theater after the show. It's an impersonation made possible by a mind-bogglingly detailed simulation -- one that simultaneously keeps constant tabs on up to 200,000 of these guys as they go through their daily lives. By comparison, the four prior SimCitys are primitive, basing their simulations on statistical guesswork that has only a foggy idea of where a particular Sim might be at any given moment.

I wonder if this is saying that city populations will be capped at 200k?

[Frode789 70]

I'm guessing it wont track more then 200k pedestrians.. Obviously we can have bigger cities.

[meowza 230]

A barrage of new articles, bittersweet I suppose.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/28/first-look-simcity/

http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/28/an-in-depth-preview-of-simcity-reveals-a-crafted-intricate-experience/

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A barrage of new articles, bittersweet I suppose.

http://www.rockpaper...t-look-simcity/

http://venturebeat.c...ate-experience/

Time to make sure you have an assured copy of SC4, well backed up.

What this looks like from those articles is that the new release is a jacked up Sims game. It is confirmed that each Sim starts anew each day and is unemployed. When he goes to bed each night, it is the big bucket in the recycle bin for him.

Not said, but implied, no night time mode at all.

If I wanted to play an All-in-Together-Girls My Sim, this is what I would get. It is starting to look like simulating the Sims is the be-all, end-all of this game with the overtones of city play in the background. There was a definite declaration of a cap of 200K Sims. There is also an implication of a single (medium?) city size, and that it is fixed.

If this is true, we have a case of people who are not up to what Maxis was in the past. The society has been dumbing everything down, so here you are.

I don't find it surprising that GlassBox is no bigger than a breadbox.

[rackam77 2]

A barrage of new articles, bittersweet I suppose.

http://www.rockpaper...t-look-simcity/

http://venturebeat.c...ate-experience/

Time to make sure you have an assured copy of SC4, well backed up.

What this looks like from those articles is that the new release is a jacked up Sims game. It is confirmed that each Sim starts anew each day and is unemployed. When he goes to bed each night, it is the big bucket in the recycle bin for him.

Not said, but implied, no night time mode at all.

If I wanted to play an All-in-Together-Girls My Sim, this is what I would get. It is starting to look like simulating the Sims is the be-all, end-all of this game with the overtones of city play in the background. There was a definite declaration of a cap of 200K Sims. There is also an implication of a single (medium?) city size, and that it is fixed.

If this is true, we have a case of people who are not up to what Maxis was in the past. The society has been dumbing everything down, so here you are.

I don't find it surprising that GlassBox is no bigger than a breadbox.

Troll spotted!

I doubt that you've read the reviews. You're totally wrong : SC5 seems to be a SC4++ when I read them.

  Edited March 28, 2012 by rackam77  

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

A barrage of new articles, bittersweet I suppose.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/28/first-look-simcity/

http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/28/an-in-depth-preview-of-simcity-reveals-a-crafted-intricate-experience/

I just read those two articles and I must say I love the direction they are trying to take this. Sim City will be more of a game in tune with physics on a massive scale making it a true simulator. No more arbitrary crowds produced by statistics that generate a crowd animation and if a building is on fire it actually affects the air quality of the city. Think about it, the crowds you see in Times Square are made up of many individuals who have lives. A crowd is not just a crowd. The only thing I wonder about is if the indivuals will live out lives over years. It would be cool if say Jane worked at a factory that got demolished or went out of business and if she couldn'nt find another job in time you would see her homeless in the street and eventually leave the city.

I see many worrying about the game being more like the "Sims" but think about it, in addition to managing the city design you can see how your decisions impact every individual. This to me makes Sim City deeper in detail.

If the city is capped at 200k I don't mind as long I I have a region that is fully connected. 1 million sims in a medium sized city is a bit much anyway. From what I read they are already playing with disasters and seeing how the desructable city reacts. Also regional play is obviously in their plans as connected roads being crucial to online play is mentioned. CitiesXL did not have a realistic approach for their online mode remember? So yes your powerlines and trucks have to actually go to the next city.....cool. I know they are still in early stages but the very vision that is described in those articles got me exited all over again.

And for those who remeber, we knew nothing about the intentions of Monte Cristo till the game was at release so give thanks for the flow of info coming at us, good or bad.

[meowza 230]

Another preview

http://www.g4tv.com/games/pc/65940/simcity/articles/76948/simcity-preview-more-like-simglobal/

Kip Katsarelis interviews

http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/28/kip-katsarelis-simcity-designer/

http://www.shacknews.com/article/73061/one-on-one-with-simcitys-mayor

http://mashable.com/2012/03/28/sim-city-preview/

Seems like Maxis created their own press conference at Emeryville.

Kotaku:

Each city could only be so big, and once you reached the edge of the map, that was pretty much it. No longer.

^ If this statement is not just meant in the subjective sense, then that'd be awesome. It'd be cool to actually see my neighbor manage his city while I do my own. Especially during disasters - smells likes region-wide catastrophes are coming...

  Edited March 29, 2012 by meowza  

[Asheroo 53]

This thing about how the Glassbox Engine can only simulate so much, well of course the game will not run smooth if you have 1 million+ citizens to simulate to such an amazing depth.

Maxis have gone so deep into the city simulation it's incredible, absolutely incredible! I don't mind how each day they have different jobs and so forth, it's just part of the simulation in the end. You'd be wasting your time city building if you were to follow every single little person and house. It's city-simulating, not life-simulating. I focus on my cities when city building and I look at the statistics. Here and there I may click on some houses and citizens just out of interest to see what different Sims are like, but there's no point paying so much attention to each single Sim and watching the same ones each day.

Also, an interesting-to-look-at quote from the G4TV preview...

If the prospect of having a crime-ridden, polluted wasteland only a bridge away from your prospering utopia sounds scary, then I suppose you can simple play offline...

...and then in one of the interviews above...

ShackNews: Does the game work without multiplayer? Some people don't have friends; some people don't like their friends...

Kip Katsarelis (developer): This SimCity is multiplayer, and that is what this game is built for. But we understand that some people don't always play games online, and especially with SimCity, you're used to playing by yourself for long periods of time. You can set your game to private and you can play by yourself however you like. We're trying to build a game that satisfies a wide audience and different play styles as well.

SN: Can you take a game that's multiplayer, play it private for a little while, and then hook up later?

KK: You have to be online to play.

SN: So it's one or the other?

KK: I don't want to go too much into offline, but since we're asynchronous, you pull your plug out, it's not catastrophic.

I think from this, we can include that we can play by ourselves, but you need to be online to play (my guess is because of Origin - DRM issues) and pulling your internet cable out won't affect playing private. I already have Origin and I'm fine with it. I also have Steam for some games which I do play offline. I honestly don't mind whatsoever having to be connected to the internet to play single player. It's no issue for me. Though, still would like to find out if by playing by ourselves, we can use cheats or if we have to go with the flow. No assumptions shall be made for now.

  Edited March 29, 2012 by Asheroo  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Glass Box is primarily a resource simulator, the Sims and traffic simulation comes second. The only things that Sims do is check their status (am I healthy/sick/injured, employed/unemployed, educated, hungry/need to shop, bored, etc), then they become agents to fulfill their needs. This game keeps sounding better and better with every press release but the proof is in the pudding so we must wait until E3 to make an educated decision.

Also, the 200,000 Sim limit would probably mean that population density will be lower and more realistic (in tune with American/European density rather than Chinese/Hong Kong density).

  Edited March 29, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[flowmotion 24]

A barrage of new articles, bittersweet I suppose.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/28/first-look-simcity/

http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/28/an-in-depth-preview-of-simcity-reveals-a-crafted-intricate-experience/

Another preview

http://www.g4tv.com/games/pc/65940/simcity/articles/76948/simcity-preview-more-like-simglobal/

Kip Katsarelis interviews

http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/28/kip-katsarelis-simcity-designer/

http://www.shacknews.com/article/73061/one-on-one-with-simcitys-mayor

http://mashable.com/2012/03/28/sim-city-preview/\

I have to say that the city simulation aspects seem amazing - Each individual sim guy getting into his car, driving to work, getting caught in a traffic jam, leaving work and going shopping or to a movie. (Then he heads home and gets tossed in the bitbucket!?) I know there is concern about the smaller city sizes and populations, but there's going to be so much going on just on the street level that this game should be very entertaining.

The one thing I'm not so keen on is the resource aspects, e.g. buying and selling coal. That seems to me too far afield from traditional SimCity.

[Mark Waybill 242]

"Despite all of that, the game is designed to run well on PCs that will be about five years old by the time it launches. It should have sufficient speed to run without boring gamers to death because it is too slow."

Good. I have a laptop from 2010 with i7 so hopefully it will run tolerably well. A large city in 4 runs quite slowly for me though.

" If you build a dirty, coal city, that’s a win state. That’s success"

Thankyou, Maxis, for acknowledging that.

  Edited March 29, 2012 by Mark Waybill  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

All the press so far is encouraging. It is still not clear how much of this has anything to do with SimCity as we know it. They keep talking about a reboot (start over). I expect some aspects will be totally different. Running individual Sims looks possible, and this might be of great interest to some.

I am still waiting in the weeds for something concrete. Hope they will have a live demo at E3.

[Zombeast 69]

Waiting for this game is torture. I'm already impatient and I have a whole year. I guess I can really work on SC4 until then. My biggest city only had a 100,000 people. I'm pretty weak at it, but gosh darn it do I love it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Waiting for this game is torture. I'm already impatient and I have a whole year. I guess I can really work on SC4 until then. My biggest city only had a 100,000 people. I'm pretty weak at it, but gosh darn it do I love it.

One gets better and better. You achieve a goal, set another one, and so on. Waiting will fill, but the new kid on the block may not be to your taste, so hang on to your game. You can always have both, you know.

At one time I had all four SimCity games loaded. No reason you couldn't have all five if you are good at getting old stuff running.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I'm still a little unsure about how each Sim is simulated. They change jobs and houses frequently, so on the one hand they sound fluid and can instantly evolve, but on the other they never change their status or educational levels, although their health level can change? Riiiight.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I'm still a little unsure about how each Sim is simulated. They change jobs and houses frequently, so on the one hand they sound fluid and can instantly evolve, but on the other they never change their status or educational levels, although their health level can change? Riiiight.

Let's think about that.

First, we know that each Sim is generated new every day and none are carried over.

We also know that depending on the results of the generation of new Sims, the Sim will either seek employment or some other destination.

The generator that runs at the beginning of each Sim-day should take into account the needs of the city together with some random things like the number of Sims that will be too sick to go to work, the number that will go shopping, etc. There has to be some allowance for growth through the day, and perhaps some shortfalls to cause adverse events.

After the generation, the Sims are populated (into the residentials, I hope) and the various agents now seek them out. And away we go.

At the end of the day, the Sims find a bed, and evaporate.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I thought that the Sims can increase in education level but not wealth level (gentrification would result in poor sims moving out and rich sims moving in, which makes sense)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

A Sim only goes to school one day in his life (which is one day), so he can't very well advance in much of anything. He can carry some kind of credit to his crash pad, and I suppose the pad gets upgraded which will influence the generation of the next Sim to start out in that location. Since Sims seem to be only carriers of incremental attributes, it won't matter about individual Sims who evaporate overnight. What will matter is the legacy each one leaves behind. I can see that over "time" the Sims picking up these legacies and, on generation, will "grow" by inheritance.

  Edited March 30, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[knighthawk75 56]

Are they seriously going to effectively cap cities at 200k population, or are they saying they will only simulate 200k people - fudging the rest based off the 200k? Seems insane to me if they are going the first route where you can't create 1m+ pop cities.

[Mark Waybill 242]

Sims regenerated as one day Time Lords, and 200k population cap? Oh great. Just as I was beginning to believe after ten years we'd finally get SC5. Instead it looks like we're going to get a pretty interactive advertisement for GlassBox...

[meowza 230]

We don't exactly know what that 200k is comprised of yet. That could simply be just the max number of agents on transit at any given time (afaik certain agents may contain more than 1 citizen, ie mass transit agents). We also don't know for which map size that number is assigned for.

  Edited March 30, 2012 by meowza  

[RenneCR 2]

last time they said 10 000 agents, now 200 000 agents..

what they are talking here is how many agents are calculated at once, not some population cap.

[jacksunny 741]

Perhaps they are still adding capabilities for higher numbers of agents. I doubt it, but that could explain the sudden number hike.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Think about it. How many buildings are you going to get in something that is "around" 2 Km². And how many people are you going to realistically get into it. We are not trying to build downtown Koli Kutt (Calcutta to those who haven't been keeping up). Since my very first city in the unsavaged original game, I have never considered population a goal.

Most cities with 1,000,000+ populations occupy a lot more space than that. I think a retreat to something more realistic rather than allowing the player to jam the city unrealistically full of people is better. If they are heading for a more real life sort of game, then it will be a whole new ball game.

Let's stand back and see what happens. Don't expect your playing capabilities from SC4 to carry over. They have said a number of times that this is a reboot. Now for those who are not computer wise, that means start over. When you reboot your system, everything you were doing is lost, and we go from the BIOS, yes?

I believe, by the way, that Sims are a mobile resource, not agents. They get carried around by agents and can pick up qualities on the way which they can deliver at various points. Agents carry things like a truck or bus, but the Sims are the sticky resource that carries the results. If this isn't the way it works, I will happily be corrected. My understanding so far is that the resource pool of Sims is generated anew every day cycle.

  Edited March 30, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

The absolutely highest density of people in a 4km area occurs in a special part of Hong Kong.

[waybig 35]

A couple of (small) pictures I hadn't seen before:

I think they're from a French magazine.