Discussion about City Tile Size

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

 

 

 

Old to the forum, new to using it (couldnt recall my 10+ years old account details, using newer one, tho date like 2002 would look cooler)

Guess as i decided participate in discussions ill start with 2nd most disturbing thing about game

 

As long as I know. Maxis propably gonna make city tiles bigger as PCgamer told http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/01/simcity-city-size-maxis/. Would be good I think.

 

Most things in this topic has been for sure said and ppl generaly are bit relieved by info that there are bigger maps coming to game, but i wonder if ppl realize that it will be standard, probably very, very easy to make (they just decided to strip it) DLC that you will have to pay 10$ to enjoy the game ( i honestly dont know what i will do after a single week after creating like 4-5 small cities...) 

They couldn't simply include the larger map size at launch because what it would do to the minimum system requirements and overall sales of the game. 

This is why you scale your engoine, and allow users the choice to scale up if you have a beefy PC, would not effect the min required specs at all. Give me a break.

Tell me, specifically, how the game would not need higher minimum specifications with larger map sizes?

The low spec or small maps will still be there, allowing bigger maps for people with good PC's wont effect people with lower end PC's, it's called scaling. They could easily allow big maps for people who can run them, the small maps will still be there, wont effect min requirements at all.

 

It is EA's fault for making an engine that scales poorly and allowing gameplay to be severely limited due to poor engine effeciency. Bigger maps are really holding the game back. Games should move forward not backwards.

 

The reason is not the required specs anyway game has low requirements and people in the beta were maxing it out easy on 3 year old hardware. its because the game will be partly running on EA's serves.

[simmerboy 19]

Do you have any idea what scaling is?

[cirugo 1,889]

Well, at the end of the day, your option are

a) A release that is profitable for EA/Maxis.

b) No release at all.

I'm not really trying to defend anything. I'm just trying to explain why the game has to run on a computer owned by more then 0.3% of their target audience.

If thats the case then maxis launched glassbox before its time. When simcity was first announced we were told that the wait was for technology to advance. That implies that glassbox was ready and to a reasonable person that means fitting an engine to a reasonable sized map. After all a jet engine doesnt work well on a bi-plane.

yes, and the drastic scaling back for a CITY BUILDING game to focus on things that are more suited to the Sims. 

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

 

Well, at the end of the day, your option are

a) A release that is profitable for EA/Maxis.

b) No release at all.

I'm not really trying to defend anything. I'm just trying to explain why the game has to run on a computer owned by more then 0.3% of their target audience.

If thats the case then maxis launched glassbox before its time. When simcity was first announced we were told that the wait was for technology to advance. That implies that glassbox was ready and to a reasonable person that means fitting an engine to a reasonable sized map. After all a jet engine doesnt work well on a bi-plane.

yes, and the drastic scaling back for a CITY BUILDING game to focus on things that are more suited to the Sims. 

Yes, agreed, total mismanagement of resources. The game is severaly gimped now with tiny build spaces.

[dysonraf 37]

City tile size is a non issue and will of course be a non issue after many weeks of gameplay.

Maxis planned this all along as an interesting challenge.

LOL... Quality post to lighten thd tone

[CoolColJ 42]

They should have made the main Engine loop multicore, would have helped - I have 6 cores on my machine...

 

edit - legit?

 

[BravoGreenONE 120]

City tile size is a non issue and will of course be a non issue after many weeks of gameplay.

Maxis planned this all along as an interesting challenge.

That post was priceless. Thanks for the good laugh

[Vorret 49]

Epic fail at quoting sorry about that.

 

 

 

Re: Large city.

 

It does look larger doesn't it? Probably fake.

[nhgriffith 179]

The low spec or small maps will still be there, allowing bigger maps for people with good PC's wont effect people with lower end PC's, it's called scaling. They could easily allow big maps for people who can run them, the small maps will still be there, wont effect min requirements at all.

 

It is EA's fault for making an engine that scales poorly and allowing gameplay to be severely limited due to poor engine effeciency. Bigger maps are really holding the game back. Games should move forward not backwards.

 

The reason is not the required specs anyway game has low requirements and people in the beta were maxing it out easy on 3 year old hardware. its because the game will be partly running on EA's serves.

I've already posted this several times.

Map size is a gameplay option.

An options on graphics are sound are quality options.

The minimum system requirements tell the buyer that a computer with these specifications can run ALL aspects of the game. EA/Maxis can't release a game where my computer meets all the minimum requirements, yet will crash if I pick a certain set of gameplay options.

And please understand that it's not the graphical component of the game that has any impact on the system requirements. It's the simulation calculations that are chewing through your processing power that is limiting the game.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

The low spec or small maps will still be there, allowing bigger maps for people with good PC's wont effect people with lower end PC's, it's called scaling. They could easily allow big maps for people who can run them, the small maps will still be there, wont effect min requirements at all.

 

It is EA's fault for making an engine that scales poorly and allowing gameplay to be severely limited due to poor engine effeciency. Bigger maps are really holding the game back. Games should move forward not backwards.

 

The reason is not the required specs anyway game has low requirements and people in the beta were maxing it out easy on 3 year old hardware. its because the game will be partly running on EA's serves.

I've already posted this several times.

Map size is a gameplay option.

An options on graphics are sound are quality options.

The minimum system requirements tell the buyer that a computer with these specifications can run ALL aspects of the game. EA/Maxis can't release a game where my computer meets all the minimum requirements, yet will crash if I pick a certain set of gameplay options.

And please understand that it's not the graphical component of the game that has any impact on the system requirements. It's the simulation calculations that are chewing through your processing power that is limiting the game.

 

It's unlikely that the empty tile would crash PC's on the minimum spec, maybe at later stages though. I don't see why they couldn't include much larger tiles that would only unlock if it detected the right settings, that way everyone can play all aspects of the game.

Much more likely is that they (EA) know people want bigger tiles and are hoping we'll pay the priviledge for it.

[nhgriffith 179]

It's unlikely that the empty tile would crash PC's on the minimum spec, maybe at later stages though. I don't see why they couldn't include much larger tiles that would only unlock if it detected the right settings, that way everyone can play all aspects of the game.

Much more likely is that they (EA) know people want bigger tiles and are hoping we'll pay the priviledge for it.

Okay.

[jcole4lsu 32]

And please understand that it's not the graphical component of the game

that has any impact on the system requirements. It's the simulation

calculations that are chewing through your processing power that is

limiting the game.

This is true.  Which makes the decision to go single thread on the Glassbox simulation even more unforgiveable. 

[CoolColJ 42]

Epic fail at quoting sorry about that.

 

 

 

Re: Large city.

 

It does look larger doesn't it? Probably fake.

 

It's from an Arstechnica article so it's probably legit

There are different sized plots

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

WOW the tile size is even smaller then I feared, how can you release a sim city game in 2013 with such small build tiles? It's ridiculous.

[infoman96 27]

It's not as small as I thought it would be, I can still get what I need to get done. As a person who never really built industrial zones in SC4, I have enough room to build a 'research park' (as the SimCity in-game news feed said) within my city, build a university, hospital, two commercial zones, plenty of residential zones, and whatever else comes with a city. Plus in SC4 I was the type of guy to build on the large (16x16) block so I like my room but nonetheless I understand EA's current reasons behind giving us small blocks at the start, eventually they'll become larger. My main complaint is that I purchased the deluxe version yet I barely see what comes with the price, I thought I was going to get the building set of UK, Germany, etc but instead I just get a few landmarks, why charge extra for that? As far as I know, you can't even choose if you want your city to be a German, UK, etc type of building set, that would be good as it was done on SC4, but all I have is modern high-rises everywhere (which I don't mind to a degree).

[gmart530 6]

It really is cramped, it feels almost impossible to separate or at least buffer industrial zones with greenspace.  Not only that, some of the civics are crazy big.  In my one city the community college and university are so big they take up nearly an entire corner of the map.  Not to mention with the way the roads work, there's so much wasted space if one uses creative/curved road layouts.

[ebeyer 0]

Wait - larger regions with more cities have smaller cities than smaller regions with fewer cities... or no?

EB

[bluespottedhorse 49]

They should call it SIMTOWN until they can give us city sized maps. They will probably make the maps bigger in the near future. I'll buy when that happens.

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

The low spec or small maps will still be there, allowing bigger maps for people with good PC's wont effect people with lower end PC's, it's called scaling. They could easily allow big maps for people who can run them, the small maps will still be there, wont effect min requirements at all.

 

It is EA's fault for making an engine that scales poorly and allowing gameplay to be severely limited due to poor engine effeciency. Bigger maps are really holding the game back. Games should move forward not backwards.

 

The reason is not the required specs anyway game has low requirements and people in the beta were maxing it out easy on 3 year old hardware. its because the game will be partly running on EA's serves.

I've already posted this several times.

Map size is a gameplay option.

An options on graphics are sound are quality options.

The minimum system requirements tell the buyer that a computer with these specifications can run ALL aspects of the game. EA/Maxis can't release a game where my computer meets all the minimum requirements, yet will crash if I pick a certain set of gameplay options.

And please understand that it's not the graphical component of the game that has any impact on the system requirements. It's the simulation calculations that are chewing through your processing power that is limiting the game.

LMAo clueless, no its because EA insisted on running the game from their servers, how do you know what the performance impact on the CPU would be? Where is your proof? No matter how many times you say it your wrong, nothing in this game even makes my PC sweat.

 

ALSO< thats why they have scalable engines for if your PC cannot handle it use smaller tiles, simple, stop with the BS excuses.

[Benzos4Breakfast 2]

I'm really, really addicted to the game no matter what. But I am really feeling the cramped space grow on me quick. I agree with everyone that says "what's the point of curved roads if grid style is the most efficient". I found myself enjoying the curved roads, then quickly realizing that I have no space and need to just go back to grids.

 

Also, why in the world would you make every single build-able area a perfect square? My god that is boring. Once you find an effective way to build a city in a perfect square, why falter too far from that? 

[bluespottedhorse 49]

I don't understand why they develped the game in this manner with separate small blocks of 2x2 km areas to build on. They should of allowed us to build freely on maps of any size with a play area of 3x3 km that could scroll around the entire map freely. This method would of allowed us to create cities of any size since only the 3x3 km square would require animation. The rest of the map would continue to calculate behind the scenes based on what we are doing in the 3x3 playable area.

[nhgriffith 179]

LMAo clueless, no its because EA insisted on running the game from their servers, how do you know what the performance impact on the CPU would be? Where is your proof? No matter how many times you say it your wrong, nothing in this game even makes my PC sweat.

And where does your PC sit relative to the minimum system requirements?

[niqht 24]

[jcinsj 5]

They will never increase the size of the city tiles or even give you the option.  This game eats up bandwidth and computer memory like crazy. If you double or triple the size of the city it will only make matters worse. As it is there are insufficient servers to handle the people playing the game now.  And I don't see them quadrupling capacity now. 

[alex macnamara 139]

They will never increase the size of the city tiles or even give you the option.  This game eats up bandwidth and computer memory like crazy. If you double or triple the size of the city it will only make matters worse. As it is there are insufficient servers to handle the people playing the game now.  And I don't see them quadrupling capacity now. 

Because it was just confirmed on reddit that the game is SINGLE CORE!!! No map size increase folks, lets wait for a simcity 6 or other alternative

[YukiEiriKun 29]

And what exactly is the server doing if you can continue playing without any issues for about 20 minutes after your connection dies?

 

...

That's right. Nothing..

[mastorofpuppetz 199]

LMAo clueless, no its because EA insisted on running the game from their servers, how do you know what the performance impact on the CPU would be? Where is your proof? No matter how many times you say it your wrong, nothing in this game even makes my PC sweat.

And where does your PC sit relative to the minimum system requirements?

 I have the same what Greg Miller has at IGN, here is what he said:

 

For all its technical ambition, however, there's one place SimCity

really doesn't push hard enough. Maxis says it named this game engine

GlassBox because it shows off the inner workings of the simulation

machine, but it took on another meaning entirely when, far sooner than

I'd expected, an invisible wall prevented me from continuing to expand

my city. Just as I felt like my economy was picking up the momentum I'd

need to really grow this thing, space to plop down large buildings like

community colleges and recycling facilities became hard to come by. The

route to further growth is to increase the density of the city, not the

area, and that feels a bit constraining. EA says there may be larger

maps in the future, but there's no word on when or whether they'll cost

extra. To be fair, my biggest 100,000-population city never could manage

to slow down my PC, which is running a three-year-old Core i7 and a

GeForce GTX 570.

 

I have 8 GB ram also, built this PC 3 years ago.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I have an i7 laptop and Cities XL when it wasn't glitching ran smoothly for me. I'm not afraid of larger tile sizes. Besides it would be easy for EA to have a LOD slider for lower end pcs

[TylerD 16]

I think the city size is indeed a little bot too small, but my biggest
concern is how the region is created. You can create 16 different
cities, but they won't grow together as one big metropolis. In SC4 you
could melt them together, and then the smaller city sizes were quite
usefull. But in this case you create 16 cities of 150.000 people who are
disconnected from each other. The region view this way looks silly and
unreal if you want to create a metropolis, which most people who love
Simcity, want to create.

[prototypetom 1]

exactly TylerD

 

i wouldn't find small tiles such a problem if there wasn't gaps, ideally if you could plop your own tiles where you wanted them.

or even if they were pre placed in groups.

then you could at least treat them like bouroughs of a city, a single city.

you could avoid the allegedly terrifying stress on a processor because it
basically works the same way, you could keep the stupid online if they
must... but you could create something that resembled a city.

 

Too much Sim, not enough City.

 

the appeal for simcity since my first is that you're creating a city,
in both a practical and aesthet sense. the twist is that the city has to 'work',
so you have the sim elements.

I actually feel sad, like i've broken up with a chick called maxis, we've just grown apart... we want different things....