Speculation & Discussion

[CXLMachine 17]

I would figure that when visiting another region and coming into another's city that your computer would have to temporarily download the mods used. Seeing as how EA would hate to support that without charging a fee, likely youll only find EA creating real life buildings instead of anything incredibly imaginary that you can decorate your city with. The more they create, the more the cities will vary. I just wish they would tour skyscrapercity.com and model everything they can find time to and sell it as DLC.

Or wait for the offline expansion and then well be free. Give it four years..

[cirugo 1,889]

Many of the things that people are unhappy about with this game can be, I think, traced to the necessity of balancing the game for multiplayer. I can't see how anyone will be able to mod it like they expect they will because of this.

Separating multiplayer and single-player would remove this concern and would make many of the things people aren't happy about resolve themselves.

[snick25 384]

Yep. I've suspected that from the beginning of this whole downward spiral. And it will certainly be interesting how modding will be handled on the online, Origin-run cloudware.

[Joss_Development 1]

If you any of you guys have played EA's other games you would see that custom content can function across users even without the files downloaded locally of everyone's hardware. I play the FIFA soccer series. Custom content (teams, players, logos, ect) all work just fine when playing online. The other player can see my custom content. It's possible. I just don't know how it works. I'm certainly not a techie.

Perhaps modding will be limited, and the modding tools will all be online tools. I'm just certain that these tools will eventually become, and EA will probably charge a fee to access them. This is just how EA operates. They might even incorporate some way for users to design custom content that can be traded for "coins" so you can "buy" someone else's custom content. Or you can just buy "coins" with real money.

This is all just speculation, but I'm trying to take what I understand about the online component of EA sports games and apply that to SimCity.

[macvirt 361]

If you any of you guys have played EA's other games you would see that custom content can function across users even without the files downloaded locally of everyone's hardware. I play the FIFA soccer series. Custom content (teams, players, logos, ect) all work just fine when playing online. The other player can see my custom content. It's possible. I just don't know how it works. I'm certainly not a techie.

Perhaps modding will be limited, and the modding tools will all be online tools. I'm just certain that these tools will eventually become, and EA will probably charge a fee to access them. This is just how EA operates. They might even incorporate some way for users to design custom content that can be traded for "coins" so you can "buy" someone else's custom content. Or you can just buy "coins" with real money.

This is all just speculation, but I'm trying to take what I understand about the online component of EA sports games and apply that to SimCity.

Don't give them any ideas ...

To be honest, I can actually see such an approach be part of strategic focus. I just can't see such an approach as anything other than simple greed, putting shiny short term gain even above things like flagship value, heck even above brand value.

I can't see the oldies at Maxis being happy about such a mentality either. I just hope that someone has made a presentation slide at some point on the value of options on the customer side to nurture the product.

[spa 970]

It was mentioned in a few other threads that the game's manual was released on reddit. In it, there is a reference to the Sim City store where free and paid for content will be available. Makes you wonder how this is really going to work? There is no way that Maxis and EA can match the quality or the output of the custom content Sim City community. They can't because they're paid to do it whereas we do it as a hobby for free! Hopefully any EA content that you have to pay for is for stuff that broadens the game. If they're planning on charging us for individual building downloads, that doesn't bode well for a open custom content creation by the community because we would, effectively, be competing with EA. One silver lining though is that with a central EA exchange, dependencies should be a thing of the past! The game should be smartly download whatever is needed.

[NCGAIO 562]

Impressive ... still there who did not realize or maybe have lost the information.

All executives of publisher have talked explicitly what is the way that EA will follow.

The games must be optimized for portables and not only refer to notes or laptops but tablet, smarts etc... in short, anything that allows log in ORIGIN

have doubts .... so pay attention on the GUI

This is the new market of games where you might think that this buying something ... but in this case you are the most interesting product they have to sell.

[pyanodon 218]

It was mentioned in a few other threads that the game's manual was released on reddit. In it, there is a reference to the Sim City store where free and paid for content will be available. Makes you wonder how this is really going to work? There is no way that Maxis and EA can match the quality or the output of the custom content Sim City community. They can't because they're paid to do it whereas we do it as a hobby for free! Hopefully any EA content that you have to pay for is for stuff that broadens the game. If they're planning on charging us for individual building downloads, that doesn't bode well for a open custom content creation by the community because we would, effectively, be competing with EA. One silver lining though is that with a central EA exchange, dependencies should be a thing of the past! The game should be smartly download whatever is needed.

RIP mods

[Mikie 9]

It was mentioned in a few other threads that the game's manual was released on reddit. In it, there is a reference to the Sim City store where free and paid for content will be available. Makes you wonder how this is really going to work? There is no way that Maxis and EA can match the quality or the output of the custom content Sim City community. They can't because they're paid to do it whereas we do it as a hobby for free! Hopefully any EA content that you have to pay for is for stuff that broadens the game. If they're planning on charging us for individual building downloads, that doesn't bode well for a open custom content creation by the community because we would, effectively, be competing with EA. One silver lining though is that with a central EA exchange, dependencies should be a thing of the past! The game should be smartly download whatever is needed.

I somehow tend to beleive that Maxis/EA are going to be heading towards an "app store" like product and where as all the modders out there if the want to make money off their cown creations can upload them and say you wanna buy a particular sky scraper.. it'll set yuou back like 10cents or something silly like that.. then you OWN the building sorta like itunes works

[flyer2359 92]

I won't be surprised if the only "modding" that people are be able to do will be re-texturing buildings and stuff like that. I just can't see Maxis allowing full blown modded buildings and stuff with the constant-online connection.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I have some ideas about new resources for SimCity 2013. They might be in the game already but I don't know since I neither preordered nor registered for Beta.

1. Food:

a) Cloned from consumer (factory-produced goods) AKA has similar properties

b) Produced by food processing factories, algae vats, fisheries, farms, (skyscraper/modular) greenhouses, slaughter houses, ranches, community gardens and P-Patches/urban farms.

c) Could be divided into (raw) Food, Processed Food (uses alloy or plastic, made in factories, waste is recyclable), and Organic Materials (fibers, inedible). Raw Food would be consumed by Sims at home or purchased at grocers or restaurants. Processed Food would be purchased at grocers. Raw/Fresh Food would be preferred by upper and middle class sims and processed food would be preferred by lower class sims.

2. Regional Minor Works:

c) Modified from Boxes, specifically Great Works

b) Fills up parts of regional space with farms, landfills, plantations, ranches, orchards, suburbs, national (or regional) parks, wildlife habitats, working forests, paper/lumber tree farms/plantations, or eco tourist spots (similar to parks but with small, fancy, self-sustaining accommodations).

3. Telecommunications and Office Services:

a) Cloned from Electricity

b) Required by Factories

c) Produced by a new occupant type: Commercial Offices. Commercial offices consist of commercial buildings that look like offices or mixed-use developments. Mixed use retail and offices would behave similar to default commercial buildings only with resource production and consumption changed. Customers to retail/services buy manufactured goods (or food) and get happiness like normal, workers lose happiness. Customers to plain offices might gain happiness as a side effect but I would rather have offices treated more similar to factories, which have no customers.

d) Offices require paper and some electronics (or high tech manufactured goods) in addition to utilities. Offices will not produce services without electricity.

e) Telecommunication/Office Services travel along roads and power lines like electricity and are consumed by factories. Factories either require telecommunications to turn a taxable profit or telecommunications boost taxable profits.

4. New Goods:

a) Cloned from factory produced goods:

b) Includes heavy industrial products or cheap goods, produced in Dirty Industry and (special kind of "up teched dirty industry" will be explained below) Heavy Industry Factories. Also includes Manufactured goods (name change, no difference, produced in Manufacturing Factories and Clean Manufacturing Factories. Also includes High Tech Goods, produced in High Tech Factories and Future Tech Factories (some existing high tech factories will go in one category, some will go in the other). Future Tech Factories are as clean as offices while regular High Tech Factories produce as much pollution as Chinese electronics factories. Also includes luxury goods, either produced in Clean Manufacturing or a new Big Business (Jewelry), which requires a new metal to be mined, "Precious Metal" (Gold) and a new type of Mine (Gem Mine) with a new type of resource, "Gems." Finally, we have Paper which would come from recycling plants or paper mills (made from Wood produced on Regional Minor Works).

5. New Growable Businesses:

a) Includes a bigger resource chain and makes factories more similar to corresponding big businesses. Each original type of factory (Low Tech/Dirty/Heavy, Manufacturing, and Hi Tech) now produces a unique resource consumed by different types (wealth levels) of commercial buildings and has two tech levels. Shortly before you education standards are high enough for Manufacturing Industry, your Low Tech Dirty Industry becomes cleaner (almost as clean as Manufacturing Industry) Heavy Industry. Shortly Before your education standards are high enough for High Tech Industry, your Manufacturing Industry upgrades to Clean Manufacturing Industry, (which has the same amount of pollution as High Tech Industry). High Tech Industry will now produce more waste and pollution, and some will produce minuscule amounts of radiation (comparable to typical Coal Power Plants, with SimCity Coal Power Plants now producing some radiation as well, depending on upgrades, the dirtiest one producing the most, the most efficient producing none). When your education standards are sky high and you have a special University upgrade, your High Tech Industry will upgrade to Future Tech Industry. These look like the sci-fi factories visible in some of the videos.

b) What grows is dependent on the supply and demand of products and your education levels. For Instance, if you want cheap goods for your low wealth hardware stores and typical manufactured goods for everything else, you could reach the education level up to the threshold for Clean Manufacturing Industry before you have to make your Heavy Industry Factories Historic landmarks. Once you do that, you can have lower polluting Heavy Industry coexisting with Clean Manufacturing and even High Tech Industry.

--Ocram

[fatbuster 44]

Here's a reply Ocean gave someone regarding creating their own vehicles for the game.

I'm anxious to start working on 3d models of cars to add to the game (eventually)! Any polygon limits I should know?

Let's see - they're 5 LOD's, from 800 tris at highest down to like, 20! on the lowest. Also a 256x256 normal/spec/diffuse maps

Even though these are just the requirements for a vehicle I can imagine anyone creating a building would need to know at least this much (and potentially much more). It would seem that anyone used to creating building in CitiesXL may have a head start if/when custom content is allowed.

[JaceTwice 115]

Here's a reply Ocean gave someone regarding creating their own vehicles for the game.

I'm anxious to start working on 3d models of cars to add to the game (eventually)! Any polygon limits I should know?

Let's see - they're 5 LOD's, from 800 tris at highest down to like, 20! on the lowest. Also a 256x256 normal/spec/diffuse maps

Even though these are just the requirements for a vehicle I can imagine anyone creating a building would need to know at least this much (and potentially much more). It would seem that anyone used to creating building in CitiesXL may have a head start if/when custom content is allowed.

Wow, I'm actually surprised he gave that much detail at all. If they're any indication of modding in the future I'd think this is it.

[croxis 150]

I think the devs have always said they want to have modding eventually (remember it took a few months for the mod tools for sc4 to come out), the issue is how to manage it with the online system.

[macvirt 361]

Moddability is a concept which in the eyes of publishers is a cheap means of perpetuating a product past its support lifecycle.

So, do we still not have more tangible information into whether the toolsets will be online or offline, or what licensing requirements there are going to be, or what things people will not be able to create in order to not compete with content or functionality created by the studio itself?

Remarkable. And this while such a big component of the marketing was to attract the SC4 users who still play exactly because of moddability

[JaceTwice 115]

I think there's a comment by Mr. Guillaume floating around somewhere that said Maxis was going to talk with the modding community itself to try and figure out how to approach making the modding tools once the game was released.

[macvirt 361]

I think there's a comment by Mr. Guillaume floating around somewhere that said Maxis was going to talk with the modding community itself to try and figure out how to approach making the modding tools once the game was released.

That would be rather silly. Considering how strategic DLC tracks are today it would thoroughly surprise me if such things had not been provided their own planning cycle. It's an EA studio, EA has a very specific strategy on these things, something it always puts in directives. Maybe they think they have some marketing maneuvering room for this or that little detail choice, but what was once moddability today is the territory of DLC first. There is no ad hoc winging that. Any interaction with the user level is just marketing.

[thehandyman 11]

If modding means terraforming comes back, I might just buy the game. But I'm still kind of skeptical of online play........ hmm...

[Fornix 4]

It was mentioned in a few other threads that the game's manual was released on reddit. In it, there is a reference to the Sim City store where free and paid for content will be available. Makes you wonder how this is really going to work? There is no way that Maxis and EA can match the quality or the output of the custom content Sim City community. They can't because they're paid to do it whereas we do it as a hobby for free!

The reasoning there doesn't sound quite sound. Because they're paid they can't match freebie work? Anyway, as for how it'll work, it's probably going to work like the exchange sims 3 has. Where both users as well as EA can upload content which can be delivered for free, as well as include paid content.

Hopefully any EA content that you have to pay for is for stuff that broadens the game. If they're planning on charging us for individual building downloads, that doesn't bode well for a open custom content creation by the community because we would, effectively, be competing with EA. One silver lining though is that with a central EA exchange, dependencies should be a thing of the past! The game should be smartly download whatever is needed.

EA will probably stick to releasing packs and expansions, similar to as to how they handle The sims. Whilst users can create the individual items. So for example a harbor expansion pack, or a shopping mall/center item pack, etc could come from EA officially.

[macvirt 361]

So on top of the mention of charging for individual building downloads, what would you all feel / think if modding tools were made dependant for availability on expansion / DLC packs .......

[pyanodon 218]

i dont see how they will support modding in that Simvillage. Few things that make things complicated:

1- Shared simulation between servers and computers.

2- Online dependencies.

3- "Why they add modding support if we can mod the DLC´s for free?" Like the deluxe pack with german pack for example;..we could just mod the train and the gate for free.

4- Cheating buildings. I can make a black hole waste diposal..so, nobody can compete with me.

[Hoipus 292]

About the cheat buildings. They confirmed that there is a sandbox mode that is disconnected from the global resource economy.

[fatbuster 44]

Here's just a small interesting thread I found on reddit. Specifically the answer to this question here:

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but are mods completely out of the question for end-users like myself? I know that I were to mod a game like Diablo 3 with the online DRM, my Blizzard account would be banned faster than I can hit the button on my Blizzard Authenticator.

Its not advised that you mod the game until we release official tools. Not sure what will happen, but nothing good can come from it.

and no, i dont know when we will be supporting mods.

I don't really read too much into smileys but that's an interesting way to phrase that answer. I wonder to what extent we can already modify the game if someone were to figure out something like the algorithm they're using for the package files.

[macvirt 361]

Here's just a small interesting thread I found on reddit. Specifically the answer to this question here:

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but are mods completely out of the question for end-users like myself? I know that I were to mod a game like Diablo 3 with the online DRM, my Blizzard account would be banned faster than I can hit the button on my Blizzard Authenticator.

Its not advised that you mod the game until we release official tools. Not sure what will happen, but nothing good can come from it.

and no, i dont know when we will be supporting mods.

I don't really read too much into smileys but that's an interesting way to phrase that answer. I wonder to what extent we can already modify the game if someone were to figure out something like the algorithm they're using for the package files.

In a practical sense, even if, you still can't. You'd get banned. One of the things that does take place between server and client is validation of packages and packets. Mismatches do not yield good results.

But yeah, the wording there is interesting. In simple terms: we first want to milk you for tons of stuff which all combined might make a complete game experience, and once we move towards new projects and plan for discontinuing primary maintenance of this product then we may give you some tools so you, the paying fan, can do our work for us and keep it alive and growing like you guys were so nice to do with SC4.

[KipCurry 3]

I wrote a tool that connects to the Simcity beta server and downloads the latest available beta files.

The files are in an unprotected domain.

This tool doesn't hack the servers or anything, it just downloads the files from public domain. (http://update.beta3.simcity.com)

The downloaded version is not playable, but it does give modders a head start for analyzing content structures.

Disclaimer: I am not responible for any actions done using this tool. Use this on your own responsibilities. It may also kill your puppies.

Source code is included for the curious and paranoid

Download: https://mega.co.nz/#...MC-wf6zvQWQtJAU

[fatbuster 44]

Just been looking for more info:

Found this from Ocean's twitter feed:

Will it be open to mods from the start such as texture packs?

I'm guessing that people will be poking and prying it open almost immediately, but official mod support will come later.

Mostly just surprised that he didn't try discourage it and acknowledges that it will happen regardless.

The biggest piece of info I found though was this. It seems that someone has figured out how to read the files the game is using! It also seems that he is looking for some help.

[macvirt 361]

Yeah, it is a bit ironic, but there is a growing potential where it is the customers who will end up determining the timetable for release of proper moddability tools. To be honest, I suspect that it is not something the actual developers are averse to. To be blunt, it would probably push quite a few interesting decisions to a point where they feel more comfortable either way. In spite of the publisher, so to speak.

Question is though, will the customers pick up that challenge, or will the types who tend to do that first wait and see the DLC strategy come to life. If that is the case, things will end up quite differently.

[arcology 224]

I think there's a comment by Mr. Guillaume floating around somewhere that said Maxis was going to talk with the modding community itself to try and figure out how to approach making the modding tools once the game was released.

That would be rather silly. Considering how strategic DLC tracks are today it would thoroughly surprise me if such things had not been provided their own planning cycle. It's an EA studio, EA has a very specific strategy on these things, something it always puts in directives. Maybe they think they have some marketing maneuvering room for this or that little detail choice, but what was once moddability today is the territory of DLC first. There is no ad hoc winging that. Any interaction with the user level is just marketing.

 

and this, is, i think the reality of how this will play out (or already has - just not outright conveyed to their potential consumers)- unfortunately.    

 

i guess, if one were to read very carefully the wording used in EA/Maxis replies, especially recently, it would make sense that they already decided. 

 

i think in one of your previous posts in this thread you pointed it out - EA DLC vs player's own "free" creations = direct competition. 

 

with all of the amazing creations on this website that they have "lost" money on for SC4 - they should have found a way to harness that "power" from their consumers - not take away the things that have been a proven success for SC4.

 

"perceived" player control (modding, terraforming, "ownership") = success for EA, long-term. 

[nuyokcity 22]

Hi all, I've been reading up on the modding of Simcity (5) and as usual it seems some developers don't want to go that route upon release or even later as an addition for various reasons.  One thing that I wonder if people know is a possibility is that there have been many independent modern city builder games made which you can read about and some people are still discussing these ideas here and

 

So if the new Simcity disappoints as a game as well as for modding, there's still Simctiy 4 and other games, as well as the potential for a fan-supported independent game.

[Buggi 685]

Please keep in mind that as it was designed SC4 wasn't moddable at all. The DBPF archive was encrypted AND compressed making getting into it a challenge, after that everything was binary so I had to break into that as well. The modding of SC4 as it is today does not reflect how it was in the beginning. Only after years of some very dedicated people do you get things like the NAM as decoding the transit system was not pleasant.

 

The lot editor was only available after launch and the building renderer as well, I think the only rendering tool they supported for buildings at the time was gMax. It was 10 years ago, so memory is a bit hazy here. And the lot editor seemed to lack quite a bit. It was like they tried to polish their internal tool rather than spend time making something nice.

 

If the new SC is to meet with these expectations, as I know the data back-end is still in DBPF, don't expect miracles.