Picture Analysis

[GMT 389]

Since a dedicated thread is missing, I want to go ahead and create a picture analysis thread, so in depth talking about what we're showing ends up in one thread.

I took inspiration for this from other forums about different games that do similar analysis with screenshots and trailers.

I only focus on the 2 screenshots we're given, because the concept art does not represent ingame content.

To ease this, I cut - yes cut, not just put a grid over it. this prevents covering stuff - the screenshots into several pieces

anyway, lets go, first picture

A1

empty ground, avenue, mixed midrise

• buildings leaping into B1 suggest to be residential
  
• nice roof detailing on the building at the bottom right, but seems to have shadowing issues (check left facade)
  
• empty ground of different shades
  
• different levels of details between buildings show different progress in development of the game
  
• a closer look reveals that the building on bottom right leaps over the street, alignment issues?
  

B1

streets, mixed midrise

• different levels of detail even within a building, check the building at the center which seems to be further in designing it around the base
  
• sidewalks cut right through the blacktop at the intersection
  
• the midrise building top left of the center is repetitive throughout the screenshot, might be condos
  

C1

parallel streets setup, monorail with train, grass

• different colors of the ground (dirt, grass) suggest we get basetextures for lots (again)
  
• nice monorail line with very modern look
  
• repetitive houses to the lower right, similarities to arabian building styles. maybe tilesets show more variety as in SC4
  
• parallel streets setup is clearly no avenue, looks more like what we know from the NWM, seems we get more variety to the traffic network(s)
  
• bright green line between the parallel streets, also throughout the screenshot at such a street design, supposed to be the median or what?
  

D1

Grass, bits of a park, nice tower, coastline

• the centerpiece-tower seems to have clipping issues along it's base, while the lower left seems to be floating, the upper right bushes into the ground
  
• top left, the shadow of the monorail - while it either makes a bend or the ground below slopes up - doesn't continue to the edge of the screen, so the monorail ends here
  
• there seems to be a dirtpath going under the monorail
  
• slight wave effect towards the coastline
  
• another parallel road setup at the right side seems to randomly end behind the round tower
  
• under the repetitive buildings top right we see what seems to be a street running under the building, another bad placement I guess
  

E1

water

• nice shades of blue towards the coast
  
• close to the coast the darker spots might come from a ripple effect
  
• white something towards the bottom end looks like a reflection from a cloud
  

A2

more towers, open land

• while the buildings seem to miss textures, the windows do have reflections
  
• bottom right tower's top shows similarities to an NYC highrise
  

B2

ave cutting parallel streets, mid- and highrises

• again sidewalks cutting through the blacktop, seems like intersections are not at all in creation at this point
  
• nice roof-details on the building at the left side
  
• to the top center, the black surface suggests to become a billboard
  
• bottom right we see shadowing issues, the shadow does in no way match the midrises to the left
  
• trees on the avenue are green balls on sticks, no detail here yet
  

C2

few houses, weird structure

• the weird structure of copper-ish color could either be modern art or placeholders for different sorts of trees than the green trees
  
• another 2 black surfaces on the building lefthand, placement underlines billboard-idea
  
• small building bottom left shows a tiny tower to its lower end, overall look reminds me of a church
  

D2

park, marina, parallel road

• the street mentioned in D1 starts here
  
• nicely curved parallel street running through the park
  
• park seems of fair design, nice meandering paths and tree placement aswell as nice grass texture. are we able to design them ourselves this way or are they more like the autofill-method we know from Cities XL?
  
• marina wall matches the coastline well, can we decide the size or does it autoattach upon placement?
  

E2

water, seawall, boats

• the shadow of the boats underline the idea of a cloud reflection
  
• different types of boats "not docked", are they automata or just static props?
  

A3

highrises

• on the highrise to the right, we see billboard-ish structures with a more grey shade to it, placeholder for a different type of add than the black surfaces maybe. are we getting static and animated billboards?
  
• the highrise top center seems to be of different age/design than the others (older), do tilesets consider eras again?
  

B3

highrises, monorial

• the monorail seems to end here aswell, a close look to the top center reveals it's sudden end. furhter the building top right would be blocking it and there's no further monorail visible
  
• again nice reflective glass
  

C3

avenue, midrises

• blank bases of the highrises from B3, no groundtextures at all
  
• building on the top right seems to be of a very early state of development, nothing but the basic shape of it exists yet
  
• in contrast, the building at the lower left with the pyramid roof looks close-to-finished
  

D3

marina, ave intersecting parallel street

• shape and color of the buildings at the right (marina plaza) suggest to immitate classic styles visible throughout Amsterdam or Hamburg
  
• the intersection happens at a curve, are we able to build intersections everywhere along a road?
  
• nevertheless, the sidewalk-cuts-blacktop-issue is best visible here
  

E3

marina again

• at the right end, it seems like the area stands on poles, similar to what we know from Peg's pier and OWW sets
  

A4

Industrial complexes

• center piece of the picture seems to be of brick-build age, but with very bad placement right on top of the street
  
• flattop building right of it reminds of these multipurpose industrial halls with huge square footage that can be used for whatever need, many of them seen in the US (Check Vernon, CA to see what I mean)
  

B4

commercial highrise, residential midrise

• the commercial highrise seems to be of early state aswell, no details visible
  
• the residential midrise also lacks detail, same building in white visible in A2, what do the different colors mean?
  

C4

modern building, carpark

• the modern building might be a hotel/casino complex or an event center
  
• carpark shows no parking textures whatsoever, to me a clear indication that base textures for lots are not done yet
  

D4

more marina, dirty water

• there's a bus to the top right, only streetside vehicle throughout the screenshot. it's color matches the median-like structure between the parallel streets, coincidence?
  
• more buildings along the marina plaza underlining the suggested origin of the design
  
• dirty water looks as bad as in SC4, I hope they change it
  

E4

dirty water, bow of a container ship

A5

industrial complexes

• the building at center left seems to have an open gate, maybe a bus depot?
  
• the building at the bottom left has what seems to be a trailer on it's right corner. if so, is it a static prop or can we see vehicles enter and exit lots?
  

B5

industrial complexes and residential midrises

• the residential midrise seems to be highly inspired by the projects at Manhattanville
  
• lack of detail on all buildings here
  

C5

bridge

• most prominent here is a bridge with a lot of placement issues. It goes over the parallel street, but on top of another parallel steet, no on/offramp visible, no lanes on the driveway of the bridge, building sits where on/offramp is supposed to be
  
• more black soon-to-be-billboard surfaces on building in bottom left corner
  
• more parked cars on center left side
  

D5

another bridge, highly detailed industrial

• although the industrial buildings are highly detailed, their placement is random and off, blocking the street with the bridge
  
• bridge is of equally low detail as the bigger bridge, suggesting early state of development here
  

E5

more industry, container ship

• again high detail but bad placement of the industrial buildings
  
• overall square seems to be thrown together
  
• nice seawalls here
  
• also nice detail to the container ship, but missing dock props like cranes
  

So much for this screenshot.

Overall look of it gives me more a feeling of just a wild mix of what's done so far badly thrown together rather than an actual city.

My idea is that there's little to no usefull progress to the simulation engine itself (mabye still in scripting progress and not working yet) so the devs just "faked" the city by placing what's available to create a showcase.

in general, the screenshot is full of logical mistakes and a lack of concept.

Also it perfectly reveals how the designers work, that there's different designers at it and that they are at different stages of progress.

Another thing that got to me , there seems to be some slight perspective errors aswell (compare the NYC-ish highrise in A2 to it's copy at A4). Another idea could be that it's the same building, but different designs, what I doubt tho.

off to the next screen

A1

river, treets, boat, weird step

• first of all, the weird step at the bottom right. while other elevations are shown correctly, we got a gap here. Reminds me of the views of Sims 2 where you can see the neighboring lot. Is this how we see the neighboring city tile? if so, do we get improvements to regional gameplay?
  
• the water shows nice reflections
  
• the boat, a large catamaran, is most likely a passenger ferry
  

B1

more river

• another catamaran very very close to the river bank, bad pathfinding, bad placement or even a hint to possible disasters?
  
• the trees, while just cones, seems to be conifers
  
• also nice water ripples are visible
  

C1

empty land

• what comes to the eye right away is the grid. Thank god we don't seem to be 100% freehand here.
  

D1

Nice curved road with vehicles

• unlike the other screenshot, the road here seems to have a more grey blacktop, also there're cars using it. maybe a newer (as in further down in development) screenshot than the first one?
  

A2

stadium roof, parked cars, visible underground, ground highway

• nice concept to the stadium roof
  
• 4 lane highway going to the neighboring city tile
  
• a hell of a lot of parked cars around the stadium. Just static or are they timed to give a feeling of something happening at the stadium? might they even be animated to drive on and off the parking?
  
• also a lot of peds splattered all over the parking lot. same question here: static, timed or animated? (my guess is the latter, would be state of the art)
  
• underground visible like we know it from SC4 at the edges of the city tile
  
• speaking of city tile, are there different sizes like in SC4 or only one size?
  
• if regional gameplay comes back, is there a size limitation to regions or are we as free to this as we are in SC4?
  
• to the top end, stuff fades away like with a field of view effect. do we get such a thing?
  

B2

more stadium

• building foundation visible, altough following the river bank. same question as with the park in the first screenshot: is it freehand or autofill?
  
• the roof seems to be either sliding open or close, can we see an animation here or is it static?
  

C2

street

D2

street and cars

• 
  
  
• here it seems like the games grid is smaller than the 16x16m in SC4, compare it to the cars
  

A3

Midrises, highway

• what directly catches the eye is the nice transition from ground to elevated highway at the bottom
  
• also the buildings look much more like a city
  
• it also seems like there's much more progress in designing the buildings
  
• further, the buildings all seem to originate one tileset
  

B3

bridge, parking

• the eyecather, the bridge, looks a little too low to allow the boats around the screenshot to pass...
  
• more parked cars and peds around the stadium, but one question comes up: how did they get there? no connection tho a road network visible
  

C3

bridge base

D3

empty land

• the tiny bump in the landscape shows how well the terrain strucutures are presented
  
• also best visible here, it seems like the very ground of the terrain has a bumpmapped texture
  

A4

more midrises

• buildings seem to follow the road that winds from the lower left corner of the screenshot to the upper right
  
• again good progress at building design
  

B4

highway over street

• again we see traffic on the highway, underlining that this screenshot is younger than the previous
  
• the lowrise commercial houses are a litte far off the street
  

C4

river

D4

nice boat

A5

more field of view effect, power line, lots of trees

• the field of view effect really stands out in this square
  
• at the right side we see the pole of a power line
  
• nice traffic on the road
  

B5

single family homes, nice lowrise commercial

• 
  
  
• the commercials underline the idea of a screenshot showing a city of one tileset (undeniably north american)
  
• nice small single family homes for suburban areas, but a lack of lot around them
  
• again the commercials are nicely aligned with the road
  

C5

trees

D5

water

Although this screenshot is not as full as the previous one, it's much more interesting.

This time, it really looks like a screenshot from a build city and not like a showcase of buildings.

As for the buildings, except the stadium we see a high state of development, close to finished if you ask me, maybe even final build.

Even more important, there's no wild mix of tilesets, probably a hint that we can chose them like in SC4

The overall feeling of the screenshot is of early sunset (colors, shadows) so expect a time-simulation like in SC4

Also, the picture is of much closer zoom as the first one, revealing more details.

In addition, I can't see anything that looks like a perspective error and I haven't seen any shadowing issues like in the first screen.

Plus, with all the cars and peds it really looks "alive", maybe this counts for the simulation engine aswell.

Bottom line is this can be considered the only real gameplay screenshot we have of the game yet. Everything looks logical and as if it comes from a running simulation.

so much from me, now it's up to you, add what I'm missing, talk about what's spotted

an organizational sidenote: to keep this thread well organized, I'll update this very first post here with whatever new pictures and spottings pop up down the road so feel free to throw in whatever you find

[Ocram's Razr 963]

It seems that for some weird reason, the normal maps were done before the standard textures.

[tSlater 134]

Overall look of it gives me more a feeling of just a wild mix of what's done so far badly thrown together rather than an actual city.

My idea is that there's little to no usefull progress to the simulation engine itself (mabye still in scripting progress and not working yet) so the devs just "faked" the city by placing what's available to create a showcase.

in general, the screenshot is full of logical mistakes and a lack of concept.

Also it perfectly reveals how the designers work, that there's different designers at it and that they are at different stages of progress.

Another thing that got to me , there seems to be some slight perspective errors aswell (compare the NYC-ish highrise in A2 to it's copy at A4). Another idea could be that it's the same building, but different designs, what I doubt tho.

I analysed this shot earlier in another thread with the conclusion that it is actually from the game itself. The game is still in development, even to a degree that most of what has been revealed is concept art. That means that whatever game engine exists, is very early in development and has a lot of glitches and unfinished elements that need to be worked on. The initial picture shows exactly that. Sidewalks ending in the middle of intersections, large blank areas, varying degrees of completion in buildings, lack of texture in places, and placement errors (buildings on roads.) Especially the "buildings on roads" is not something they would throw together outside of game to demonstrate what they have. Anything like that would be closer to the second picture which shows only completed buildings and no blatant errors.

It's thus my assumption that picture #1 is our first look at a very early-in-development game engine, and it's rather exciting to see.

[jacksunny 741]

I'm questioning if Picture #2 is actually a in-game shot. The grid doesn't appear to be very straight, and the buildings don't look like they're aligned with the grid. In particular, the 3 buildings on the bottom right. They aren't aligned with the grid, and they don't seem to be as close to the road like the buildings in the top right are.

I really like that stadium, however, and unlike the stadiums in SC4, it actually has parking.

Overall, it's looking pretty good so far.

[alcarcalimo2364 4]

Overall look of it gives me more a feeling of just a wild mix of what's done so far badly thrown together rather than an actual city.

My idea is that there's little to no usefull progress to the simulation engine itself (mabye still in scripting progress and not working yet) so the devs just "faked" the city by placing what's available to create a showcase.

in general, the screenshot is full of logical mistakes and a lack of concept.

Also it perfectly reveals how the designers work, that there's different designers at it and that they are at different stages of progress.

Another thing that got to me , there seems to be some slight perspective errors aswell (compare the NYC-ish highrise in A2 to it's copy at A4). Another idea could be that it's the same building, but different designs, what I doubt tho.

I analysed this shot earlier in another thread with the conclusion that it is actually from the game itself. The game is still in development, even to a degree that most of what has been revealed is concept art. That means that whatever game engine exists, is very early in development and has a lot of glitches and unfinished elements that need to be worked on. The initial picture shows exactly that. Sidewalks ending in the middle of intersections, large blank areas, varying degrees of completion in buildings, lack of texture in places, and placement errors (buildings on roads.) Especially the "buildings on roads" is not something they would throw together outside of game to demonstrate what they have. Anything like that would be closer to the second picture which shows only completed buildings and no blatant errors.

It's thus my assumption that picture #1 is our first look at a very early-in-development game engine, and it's rather exciting to see.

Unfortunately, and I hate to burst your bubble, but I'm finalizing another translation of the Gamestar article, which clearly states all of the pictures in the magazine are just concept art. Not that analyzing the concept art isn't useful, because it gives an idea of where Maxis wants to take this game, but we don't have any screenshots yet. Hopefully we will tomorrow.

[CWLGAMER01 39]

.... GREAT POST -- GMT!

I am still impressed even if this is concept art. The game has a very cool minature feel to it. I think it works well and can't wait for us to get some real shots soon....

Just a thought about the engine - Glass Box..... Is it me or do the images look as if we are looking through a "glass box" of shorts....

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Um, I made a "concept art" picture comprising of all the art I made for OpenTower and I was told that Concept Art is in fact early visuals within the game itself. They told me that my picture was either Advertising Art or Proof of Concept mock-ups.

That means that if those 3D buildings are concept art, those were from inside the game engine. Besides, I think someone would be crazy to make crappy looking 3D cities and use them for advertising.

  Edited March 5, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[GMT 389]

well maybe I should clarify that by concept art I mean (hand)drawn pictures to pre-visualize content, scenes, whatever.

like you would draw characters or props or something prior to realize them

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Wow... concept art or not... you really have gone to some trouble there GMT!

Shame, the trixie nominations are closed.

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Um, I made a "concept art" picture comprising of all the art I made for OpenTower and I was told that Concept Art is in fact early visuals within the game itself. They told me that my picture was either Advertising Art or Proof of Concept mock-ups.

Concept art is more than that, it can cover character design, building design, simulator design. It's a very broad area and an area that can have more than just early development pictures. It's very likely that Maxis decided to get some assets of theirs (from SC4 or other games) and drop them into a 3D scene just to see how things would look and something they wanted to aim towards.

Considering how many resources EA are throwing at it (two divisions!), this is going to be a big project. And the fact they have a significant talent pool to draw from (eg. DICE, EA Sims Division, Criterion, etc etc) means they are more than likely to achieve what we're seeing in concept art so far.

Why did I mention those divisions as possibilities for providing input into various processes on this game?

DICE - significant expertise in engine creation. Frostbite is probably the benchmark in gaming right now, considering its features - fully destructable buildings, terrain generation, working with massive maps with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of resources on it.

EA Sims Division - simulator side of things, while small-scale, they have proven they can work with non-cardinal-direction roads

Criterion - pathfinding and AI in particular, cases in point: NFS: Hot Pursuit and the Burnout series. Sure, it's simplified significantly compared to a full-fledged simulator, but I've never seen problems with their pathfinding. Hell, they might even ask for input into a new version of UDI.

Remember this picture?

It looks similar to what the final product was in SC4. There are some differences, yes, but we got by and large the majority of the "features" shown in this picture.

[KeanoManu 42]

I particilarly love two things about those pictures.

1. The parks seems to be uneven, like real parks, and not a plopped square. That will hopefully allow a more diverse environment.

2. The seawalls. We can see industrial seawalls and the road seem to be built partly on the water so that it makes a nice shoreline. Hopefully we'll be able to build plazas as seawalls too.

What i can't see though are a variaty of the number of lanes. Hopefully EA/MAXIS will take influence of the feature that Monte Cristo once had but scrapped - An option to let us choose everything from number of lanes, sidewalks (size and type), public transport (light rail), type of surface...

[uhcougar31 7]

Does anyone know that the stadium in the leaked game shot is a knock-off of the New Cowboys Stadium in Dallas? I'm surprised I haven't noticed anyway mention it yet.

  Edited March 6, 2012 by uhcougar31  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

The parks look like CXL areas, no one notices much from Texas (including Texans noticing copycats outside Texas).

[marquisite 2]

This seems like the most appropriate thread to mention this, but one of the earlier leaked concept images actually appears on the SimCity.com website in a more completed looking form.

Observe:

The comparison uses an early version of this view, albeit mirrored horizontally from http://rinconsimmer.jimdo.com/2012/02/27/simcity-2013-reportaje-de-gamestar-7-im%C3%A1genes/ and a later version of the view, straight from simcity.com (currently the 2nd image in the slider)

[Trioxis 32]

What is interesting to note is that there are various subtle differences between those 2 shots. Some of the buildings have been remodeled or replaced with different buildings, suggesting it shows an actual in-game shot, even if it is a work in progress.

I hope the finished models have a more realistic look. As it currently stands it's a bit cartoony for my tastes, but yeah WIP and all keeps me hopeful.