SimCity: Welcome to the Glassbox Simulation Engine

[BIWDC 2,296]

I fail to see what zoning has to do with the simulation engine except that they are part of the map as a special class.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well it is a part of the engine in the player control aspect.

  Edited April 23, 2012 by BIWDC  

[soltangris 42]

There he meets Betsy Woodtrot, his half sister's cousin's niece, and they discuss the latest financial policies of the Conservative Party.

Yes, yes yes, but what colour where her shoes, and did they coordinate with her handbag and glasses? Also were her shoes, handbag and glasses produced locally or at least in the same region... or where they produced in some off-shore, out-sourced, developing Sim-Nation, with 'inferior' labour laws, working conditions, medical entitlements and superannuation? After all we are now all living in a global economy and not some glass box bubble...

You people are forgetting they would need to discuss the latest soap opera on the TV channel 5, which could change their political views (because the main character is a mean old Republican), their job needs (because he works at a Chines Multinational), their food habits (he's a vegetarian), their sports preferences (he's a Nickers fan) and finally their general happiness (because the series is generally bad).

Oh, and it might affect the woman and the man differently

Seriously, the observation about the similarity between Glassbox and Caesar/Pharaoh is spot-on! I remember all these 'agents' running around - engineers to keep the buildings from falling, sentries to keep peace, market sellers to supply access to the markets, jugglers to supply leisure.... It seems this is the absolutely same concept, although taken in the present and distributed via different means, not only people running around.

And yeah, I'm really curious to see how this beast would perform.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

TV stations would most likely only change resource consumption of houses subscribed (within radius of tower). Remember that Sims are extremely basic agents in SimCity 2013. Going to a place that is busier than another equal place might change what the sim brings home (satisfaction) that would in effect be that conversation previously quoted.

[Mark Waybill 242]

If happiness or entertainment is a 'resource' variable, then tv stations could affect this, and a 'rule' could be 'keeping up with the Jones family', so that neighbourhoods without that happiness variable would complain more?

[DemonHunter 0]

Glassbox yeah!!! such a great name. Sounds so professional. I would certainly buy this game because of its cool Glassbox-ultra-super-mega-combo-engine.

Let's keep it real, all we want is no bugs in the AI transit and sims. If I build a highway, pls use it. I don't even want to get started with the sims. Let us hope, this is the first solution to the buggy AI.

  Edited May 11, 2012 by Blue Lightning  
Watch your language.

[Dijego 66]

..."an arcane language such as C"...

Not a big fan of windows eh?

[DamonT 5]

I have watched all of the tech demo videos for the simulations. After some thoughts I have some questions, and possibly concerns.

1) In the economic simulation it shows that the "agents" leave business (industrial/commercial) facilities each morning looking for workers in residential areas. My question is this: Does 'Joe Sim' get a different job each day or does it lock him to the first one assigned? This could effect traffic planning a ton if you decide to rezone or build a new business area closer and thus changing what agent would assign 'Joe Sim' Also once assigned what rules define when, how, and if a sim changes jobs?

2) In traffic I can see another issue. What rule determines what form of transportation is used? With out knowing this it will be almost impossible to plan a proper transit system using all forms from cars, tramways, buses, to trains.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

1. Joe Sim only exists as an agent during one single commute. Agents carry resources and once those resources have reached their target destination, the agents enter the building and stop existing, with new agents coming into existence when needed (morning commute and evening commute).

2. Agents for "I need a job" come out in several forms with walking commute being the first requested.

[DamonT 5]

1. Joe Sim only exists as an agent during one single commute. Agents carry resources and once those resources have reached their target destination, the agents enter the building and stop existing, with new agents coming into existence when needed (morning commute and evening commute).

2. Agents for "I need a job" come out in several forms with walking commute being the first requested.

I understand that the agent itself is a one time use. If though a specific sim, from a specific home works in a different job/location everyday you have NO way to plan your roads properly for a commute.

[Vahr 343]

Not necessarily, the engine is rather deterministic. Sure, day to day you'll see that sim A takes various different routes, but when he's at House 1 he's taking the routes that sim B took when sim B was at House 1. Basically a giant game of musical chairs with an extra chair, which means that traffic patterns develop in effect the same way as if each sim had a definite house and job. Course it'll change if you build/destroy roads, new zones pop up, etc. but that's expected (just like in SC4).

[loerelau 5]

It will only work if we still have different transport options (with different travelling speeds). As already written before is your powerplant at the end of the map most likely in trouble... It seems that the engine is not capable of 'sharing' loads of agents.

I like the screenshots so far. My only worries are the one above and the smaller map size/bigger buildings.

[TEBB_Dipsy 13]

Have they specified how large populations the engine will be able to simulate and still have a smooth game?

[Vahr 343]

That ultimately depends on your computer, but they did say (I believe) hundreds of thousands of agents at a time.

Going more technically...

By saying "at a time" that implies that in reality the capability is much higher, as you can spread out simulation over the course of a time period (instance 1 of the simulator runs at 5AM and ends at 6AM, taking care of the early morning workers and utilities. Instance 2 runs at 6AM to 7AM, taking care of rush hour workers, and so on). This is purely speculative and how I would implement the simulator, but it's possible Maxis is doing this (and I hope they do).

[ziroi 14]

Ocean Quigley was interviewed recently about the development of the simulation and the ideas that drive it: http://www.gamasutra..._in_simcity.php

It's a little long, but an interesting read all the same, especially if you are worn out from reading about the multiplayer aspect. For the impatient, a couple of the highlights that I noted are (they are not exact quotes, so my own bias might creep in somewhere):

-Developers have worked to make every graphic element in the game communicate something. Ocean later mentions that while they pushed to convey this kind of aesthetic in as many elements as possible, there are still data views and graphs to help communicate the most abstract information.

-Tilt shift and model-train style graphics are implemented in an effort to make cities look more realistic than ever before. Ocean specifically mentions that buildings are not set to "real-life" scale on purpose. The scaling is still being worked on to give the feeling of a real city. The reasoning behind this is to show as much detail as possible in every building, no matter how you are viewing it.

-Developers have thought through and researched social elements and their ties such as crime to education, etc. and how they affect one another. Specifically he noted that "something we would not want to bind is crime to social class, because that's outside of the player's control." This quote is a little out of context; the jist is that Ocean says they are trying to allow player's the ability to control the destiny of their city.

-Many buildings are notably era-based and change depending on how you build your city. A coal plant, not regularly used today, looks like it comes out of the 50s. Industrial buildings are constructed in a more contemporary and up-to-date style as the education level of your city increases.

-Ocean unofficially confirmed that there is not a "Fusion" power plant in the current build of SC with no plans to add one. He also unofficially noted that time and date does not operate like it has in previous titles, or (this is my speculation) there may not be a specific date at all now. This is Ocean's summary of it: "So it's not a linear march of time that we're binding to the aesthetics. It's just that we're tracking the education level and the technological sophistication of your city, which can go up and down."

-For the "political agenda" concerned, Ocean stated that Simcity is not designed to push an agenda of environmental conservation or otherwise. He reiterated that the game is being balanced to allow you to take your city on many different paths. I think for most of us, we already knew that.

-There were not mentions of gameplay specifics other than anything noted above. This isn't an interview about game mechanics either; just some simulation aspects of Glassbox and a lot about how it ties into the aesthetics of the game. Just FYI.

  Edited June 22, 2012 by ziroi  

[gweed123 33]

That ultimately depends on your computer, but they did say (I believe) hundreds of thousands of agents at a time.

Going more technically...

By saying "at a time" that implies that in reality the capability is much higher, as you can spread out simulation over the course of a time period (instance 1 of the simulator runs at 5AM and ends at 6AM, taking care of the early morning workers and utilities. Instance 2 runs at 6AM to 7AM, taking care of rush hour workers, and so on). This is purely speculative and how I would implement the simulator, but it's possible Maxis is doing this (and I hope they do).

I would imagine that the commuting agents (i.e. the sims) would be run in one batch, and then the resource agents would be run during the daytime when the sims are "at work". That would probably prevent the system overload of having all of the agents calculating at once.

-Tilt shift and model-train style graphics are implemented in an effort to make cities look more realistic than ever before. Ocean specifically mentions that buildings are not set to "real-life" scale on purpose. The scaling is still being worked on to give the feeling of a real city. The reasoning behind this is to show as much detail as possible in every building, no matter how you are viewing it.

Is this just for the concept graphics or for the actual game graphics? Because it'll look really weird in the actual game when you try to put in real-life buildings and the scale of them relative to everything else is off.

[ziroi 14]

Is this just for the concept graphics or for the actual game graphics? Because it'll look really weird in the actual game when you try to put in real-life buildings and the scale of them relative to everything else is off.

The way I understood the article is that they are setting the scaling like this for the actual game graphics. He was describing their vision for the games aesthetics, so I assume that means Maxis intends to scale this way in the end. How that affects modding in real-life buildings? I don't know.

[KarloSim 0]

it seems that the resources are limited. mmm i think i know how the game will end, start the game, play, create big cites, resources depleted, economy drops down, then game over.

[whizard 45]

Here are the slides from the presentation.

1. Slide 13 shows the "mustardFactory" rule. Interestingly, it shows

[code] unitRule mustardFactory -rate 10 -global Simoleans in 1 etc, etc [/code]

So, I'm wondering if the operation of growable lots costs your city treasury? That's what it seems....costing one global simolean for each operation of the rule...

2. Slide 19 shows examples of paths, and includes flight paths...so its possible you can increase efficiency of your airports by deciding where your planes fly...a far cry from SC4 where airports merely added some CS/CO demand.

3. Slide 22 shows that even when zoned, houses won't automatically develop in forested areas (thus destroying a valuable resource). This means that your development decisions will be influenced by the terrain in far more real ways than ever before.

4. Slide 27 shows that roads have speed limits. The question is, are they changeable in game as part of mayoral duties?

5. Slide 35 claims "graceful degradation" (which means there won't be a catastrophic loss of functionality) in case of "server issues"...this points to a client based system which enjoys advantages of, but does not rely on, the server.

6. Slide 36 says that the sim won't be "chugging to a halt during disasters."

  Edited July 10, 2012 by whizard  

[whizard 45]

Now that I think about it, a zombie attack wouldn't be too hard, haha.

unitRule Zombies!!!

-rate 3

-people in 1

-zombies in 2

zombies out 3

lol

[Lantentine 4]

The glassbox is the saving grace of this game. I'm keen to know how a city will develop with it.

[spiritbw 111]

The glassbox is the saving grace of this game. I'm keen to know how a city will develop with it.

Sadly it's starting to look like the only good part of this game. I'm curious but more willing to watch youtube videos about it than try my hand at it as it currently stands.

[cirugo 1,889]

The glassbox is the saving grace of this game. I'm keen to know how a city will develop with it.

Sadly it's starting to look like the only good part of this game. I'm curious but more willing to watch youtube videos about it than try my hand at it as it currently stands.

I'm actually starting to wonder if it's the reason why they are shrinking the scope of the game so dramatically.

[snick25 384]

Well, considering how it's supposedly only able to handle the simulation of up to 200,000 agents, it would make sense that it's one of the chief reasons for limiting the map sizes, among other things.

[spiritbw 111]

Well, considering how it's supposedly only able to handle the simulation of up to 200,000 agents, it would make sense that it's one of the chief reasons for limiting the map sizes, among other things.

There is that I suppose. Still, it get's annoying quickly.

I remember when FIraxis redid the old Railroad Tycoon game shortly after thier successful release of Pirates! Maps turned out to be so tiny you could do much before you ran out of room.

When your use to sitting down and spending hours planning the layout of something it'sa bit jaring to find you can't do that in the newest version.

[Nique 291]

Remember that Simcity 4 lacked a lot of good stuff in the beginning too. It's just that we need to access the game API for modifications. I really hope they think about that because the reason why Simcity 4 is still being sold (after 10!! years) is the fact that there are so many improvements made by a very big community. If we as a community are able to tweak the game, then it is all about the Glassbox what it provides to us. And that is something that seems to be promising. It's our job to modify the graphics in a way that it looks more realistic just like we did in simcity 4.

[archelon2001 2]

Remember that Simcity 4 lacked a lot of good stuff in the beginning too. It's just that we need to access the game API for modifications. I really hope they think about that because the reason why Simcity 4 is still being sold (after 10!! years) is the fact that there are so many improvements made by a very big community. If we as a community are able to tweak the game, then it is all about the Glassbox what it provides to us. And that is something that seems to be promising. It's our job to modify the graphics in a way that it looks more realistic just like we did in simcity 4.

Well yes, but SC4 right out of the box looks a whole lot more realistic than Sim City does. It's all just so cartoony and bright, fake plastic colors. At first I was excited about the new Sim City title but it just seems to be imitating the success of 'casual' games like Cityville in order to make more money. As it stands, I don't really want to read more about this game in the event that I get my expectations too high and then get severely dissapointed, just like Sim City Societies and Spore...

[Nique 291]

Remember that Simcity 4 lacked a lot of good stuff in the beginning too. It's just that we need to access the game API for modifications. I really hope they think about that because the reason why Simcity 4 is still being sold (after 10!! years) is the fact that there are so many improvements made by a very big community. If we as a community are able to tweak the game, then it is all about the Glassbox what it provides to us. And that is something that seems to be promising. It's our job to modify the graphics in a way that it looks more realistic just like we did in simcity 4.

Well yes, but SC4 right out of the box looks a whole lot more realistic than Sim City does. It's all just so cartoony and bright, fake plastic colors. At first I was excited about the new Sim City title but it just seems to be imitating the success of 'casual' games like Cityville in order to make more money. As it stands, I don't really want to read more about this game in the event that I get my expectations too high and then get severely dissapointed, just like Sim City Societies and Spore...

Adjust the materials and shaders. Replace the models. I think ART is something we can do. I can't wait for the BETA comes out. I want to see the structure of the game and how things can be modified.

[highencast 11]

They should have never used GlassBox in the first place.

SimCity was never about micromanagement of individual sims and buildings - leave that to Tropico and the other lesser city building games. The way that it's currently designed, it's a tremendous waste of resources to simulate the actions of every single little sim and car on the street.. I'm not even going to bother clicking on them (does anyone even use the microphone tool in SC4?) so why bother giving them names and other simulations?

If they were so intent on keeping it online, they should've just stuck with the macro-level scale of actual city planning to allow the creation of larger cities and regions. Too late for that now...

[macvirt 361]

I wonder though ... whether an ability (regardless of introduced by a mod or present as a feature) to turn off the agent system would remove what kind of limits on the city size and the general size of the simulation. Think of it in terms of sacrificing "depth" for "width" of scope.

[macvirt 361]

They should have never used GlassBox in the first place.

SimCity was never about micromanagement of individual sims and buildings - leave that to Tropico and the other lesser city building games. The way that it's currently designed, it's a tremendous waste of resources to simulate the actions of every single little sim and car on the street.. I'm not even going to bother clicking on them (does anyone even use the microphone tool in SC4?) so why bother giving them names and other simulations?

If they were so intent on keeping it online, they should've just stuck with the macro-level scale of actual city planning to allow the creation of larger cities and regions. Too late for that now...

Perhaps, but not sure yet. We have not officially seen the actual product as a game yet. I am absolutely willing to agree that the "sims" user types represent the biggest volume of potential customers. Great portions of those however also fall in categories of "casual" and "leisure" type players. Which offsets that giant potential with the necessity to match a balance in design there.

Glassbox is less an engine than it is a model, something of interest. The development of it for SC2013 does not mean that for a next project it can only be taken along the same way for scope, focus as well as feature and content elements attached. And a next project does not have to be a next game, but can also be an expansion pack for not simply content, but also features - able to both widen and deepen both focus and scope of the game. Which obviously depends on commercially focused decision processes, ofcourse, still the goal is to make money using customers so there is always at least some presence of catering to a selection of user categories. Never just really one category. Games that do that tend to end up as either a niche game or a failed venture. Since Maxis exists to make monkey for EA, I doubt they would make such mistakes.

Sure, they may yet make the mistake to cross the streams, so to speak, trying to hybridise or use one to cater to all (but leave all with something missing). For example by taking the path of trying to hook a Sims incarnation up with SC2013. Possible. But as I said, there are very natural limits to such attempts, which all too quickly tend to end up in disasters that only look good on paper or briefings to a ceo distracted by browsing through a shiny catalogue shopping for his next car

If anything, it is reasonably fair to say that SC2013 in its first release represents a foundation product. More can be slapped on, and should, but only ever carefully (not even mentioning the risk of incorrectly utilising user synergy and ending up in competition with the customer for what can be hooked on to the established foundation). It will be a game that brings a decent amount of features to a selection of user types - including the armies that have nurtured SC4 - packaged in manners to appeal to other selections of user types (sims, so to speak) without kneecapping those into facing the deep end of the game (only the wide scope).

There will be enough to please both these rough groups. What comes after, is really much more important. SimCity is a concept which appeals to elements of our human psyche in ways that connect with both the adult and child aspects of our mentalities. The builder, the puzzle solver, the cruncher, the artist, and so forth. What comes after can address all those types without foregoing balance and thus building an empire with a franchise rather than just a game. Whether Maxis will do that, is up to them. They're smart enough to see and accomplish that as long as they know how to sell EA properly. Trouble is, most studios and publishers alike tend to be stuck still in the obsolete school of releases and product cycles. I tend to see much more room for a game like SC not as a product model but as a service model.

So, let's relax to wait and see what shows up. How it shows up and what they do right after that will really say a lot more on how viable and fun SC2013 is going to be for a john doe player to invest in. And yeah, hope to god they do not restrict it to Origin only. That would just be counterproductive for both short and long term prospects (both of and above the level of the game product). That would really just be a decision of ego under the guise of "lolstrategic vision".