Discussion about City Tile Size

[macvirt 361]

Looks like someone finally dug it up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8WZImWpgVc. Remarkable isn't it?

 

Yeah, it made me grin a bit as well. But really, when you think of it, and put matters into perspective, it gets really, really sad, really quickly. 

 

Edit. Oh boy .... 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Welll... it just took them 12 years to release the game     

 

hey... nice "debug mode" cap !!!!

[aegozzi 0]

I agree with most of what has been written.  The cities are definately too small.  You spend so much time building a city only to run quickly out of space expecailly if you place the stadium and entertainment building, than some of the monuments are massive so what do you do!!!  Then you eventually have to move your water facilities because your ground suddenly runs out of water so oyu have to demolish a part of your city to place a new water pumping station.  Your industrial is attached to your residential, and at least in Simcity 4 you could keep a large green area between the two.  And what happened to farms??  I enjoyed having farms.   What really killed me was after been forced to watch all these incredible simulations I thought  Iwould be able to build nice large cities as well!!  I would need a city ten times the size to build a city like in the simulations. I can't choose the type of bridge, I don't think I can build tunnels.  And I hate when I want to switch a highway to a highway with streetcar access; it blows everything up, even if you just want to make a section larger it blows up everything touching the darn road.  And I don't like the things like parks have to stick to a road.  What if I want to place several parks together without touching the darn road.  Anyway, enough for now.

[site400 12]

This pretty mcuh sums it up,
 
SimCity Tile Size:
 

 
CitiesXL Tile Size:
 

 

I'm almost positive that a single Cities XL map is as big, if not bigger, than a 16-city SimCity region.

[Marla_Singer 46]

I'm almost positive that a single Cities XL map is as big, if not bigger, than a 16-city SimCity region.

Cities XL maps claims to be 10.5km x 10.5km = 110 sq. km.

SC2013 maps claims to be 2km x 2km = 4 sq.km.

That makes Cities XL maps about 27 times bigger than SC2013 maps. However, I'm not really sure any of both game is fully accurate in its claims. Some guy calculated the SC2013 map actually needed the small dirt roads to be 20m wide in order to actually represent 2km x 2km. As for Cities XL, I don't have the game but 110 sq. km. is freaking huge... That would be about the size of a whole region in SC4!

[trar 336]

The city sizes are definitely too small. They're more decent when you stick to rural communities: small towns and townships, plantations, non-organized communities, census-designated places and whatnot. The small houses and dirt roads work well here, I should think. They have a lot of those where I come from; heck the town I live in myself is just over 1,000 people in size. I know this description is common but it really does ring true: this is much more like SimTown than SimCity. I only wish my copy of the first SimTown worked.

[pennjersey83 25]

Next time, speak with your wallet because that's ALL that matters.  This forum, this thread, and your complaints do NOTHING

[elektrichead22 10]

ADMINS please take this sticky down! we all know the inevitable... there already is a bigger map size available and will be released as part of an expansion pack.... this is a mute point.... this is compared to the lack of toddler and child interactions in sims 3 vs sims 2 ... it's an on purpose removal of needed gameplay that we will pay for based on our emotional investment in the game

[alex macnamara 139]

This thread was started waaay before release and this thread still hold merit. 

[oldbrokenlink 43]

SimCity cities are actually ~0.5 km x ~0.5 km in size.

ttp://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a8kzd/simcity_cities_are_actually_05_km_x_05_km_in_size/

 

[DmainEvent 195]

The tile sizes are an absolute disgrace, I think we can all agree upon that (I contend if they made the cities contiguous then I wouldn't be as mad).  What we can't agree upon is whether or not they will give us larger maps, and if they do, will they be just slightly larger, or large enough to make us forget about contiguous tiles.  I think the only way to make us forget about contiguous tiles is to make our cities as large as the entire region.  But then that would break there precious online model (hip, hip horray I say).  After luccy bradshaw through stones in her Glassbox last night, I get the feeling they are going to be taking the lemmings for a ride over the cliff.  IE making us pay for more and more content (include larger maps and perhaps contiguous tiles) that should already be in the game.  I wonder if the developers feel bad about this at all?  Completely f'ing over the long time fans who have been playing this game since the beginning to appease the easy gamer crowd?  Probably not, they got their money.  Not from me though.  I can watch you tube videos of this game.

[simcityplayer15 33]

simcity tile size is almost the same size as simcity 4 small region to me. They could had made medium and large size cities, but I just don't know why. They knew they could had made simcity tile sizes like simcity 4, but they act like they can't  . Rather play simcity 4 then simcity 2013 because it's annoying tile sizes.

[bixel 1,224]

This thread was started waaay before release and this thread still hold merit. 

 

I concur.

 

One theme that seems to be playing in this thread is that: Ooh the simulation may be instense can my computer even run larger cities??

And then there a lot of posts to either support this fear or assail it.

 

My thinking is that, with all that Maxis/EA junk about server-side calculations and all this we modeled it to run on low end PCs... we may consider larger cities if PC hardware advances..... blah blah blah. Personally... all of this misleading information is pure BULL.

 

it take more calculations to rotate all the vectors and realign the matrix data of a 3D model and print view matrix from the viewport to your Screen than it is to calculate the age of each person each year of 1,000,000 persons.

you want proof? consider...

 

or(int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
{
      sims[i].Age++;
}
///one million additions - this is actually very fast

FIRST EXAMPLE is just math on some variables... or you can say the Simulation mechanics

we are aging each Sim by one year. And we have One Millions Sims.

 

for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) ///to be fair - lets use only a hundred thousand buildings
{
   Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[model.Model.Bones.Count];
   model.Model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms);

   foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Model.Meshes)
   {
       foreach (BasicEffect effect in mm.Effects)
       {
           effect.View = camera.view;
           effect.Projection = camera.projection;
           effect.EnableDefaultLighting();
       }
       mesh.Draw();
    }
}

2nd Example uses MUCH more work, even though we have 1 factor less amount of items to calculate

And todays GFX cards can do this easy... which means our CPU can do the 1st example....very easy

 

we can have large cities... this small city restriction is part of the MMO grand stratedgy they are trying to force on us...

[cortezz 25]

This thread was started waaay before release and this thread still hold merit. 

 

I concur.

 

One theme that seems to be playing in this thread is that: Ooh the simulation may be instense can my computer even run larger cities??

And then there a lot of posts to either support this fear or assail it.

 

My thinking is that, with all that Maxis/EA junk about server-side calculations and all this we modeled it to run on low end PCs... we may consider larger cities if PC hardware advances..... blah blah blah. Personally... all of this misleading information is pure BULL.

 

it take more calculations to rotate all the vectors and realign the matrix data of a 3D model and print view matrix from the viewport to your Screen than it is to calculate the age of each person each year of 1,000,000 persons.

you want proof? consider...

 

or(int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
{
      sims[i].Age++;
}
///one million additions - this is actually very fast

FIRST EXAMPLE is just math on some variables... or you can say the Simulation mechanics

we are aging each Sim by one year. And we have One Millions Sims.

 

for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) ///to be fair - lets use only a hundred thousand buildings
{
   Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[model.Model.Bones.Count];
   model.Model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms);

   foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Model.Meshes)
   {
       foreach (BasicEffect effect in mm.Effects)
       {
           effect.View = camera.view;
           effect.Projection = camera.projection;
           effect.EnableDefaultLighting();
       }
       mesh.Draw();
    }
}

2nd Example uses MUCH more work, even though we have 1 factor less amount of items to calculate

And todays GFX cards can do this easy... which means our CPU can do the 1st example....very easy

 

we can have large cities... this small city restriction is part of the MMO grand stratedgy they are trying to force on us...

They also recently said on a blog(march 13) that sims cant have a set home or job because it would be taxing on computers. That is complete garbage, if they added that information it will only increase stored information on the game servers.

[simcopops 37]

 

Looks like someone finally dug it up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8WZImWpgVc. Remarkable isn't it?

 

Yeah, it made me grin a bit as well. But really, when you think of it, and put matters into perspective, it gets really, really sad, really quickly. 

 

Edit. Oh boy .... 

does that picture suggest we can create our own tile sizes??? 

[macvirt 361]

Yes. The capability is already present within the client. Ofcourse it is problematic now, as while Maxis states modding is allowed it is EA who states that hacking is disallowed and will result in banning but they do not make any mention of what constitutes hacking. Arbitrary judgement. SC2013 is indeed built to be extremely easy to mod through package editing, extension, addition. But since the past few days EA went into paranoid mode again we have no idea what is allowed now or not.

[DmainEvent 195]

This thread was started waaay before release and this thread still hold merit. 

 

I concur.

 

One theme that seems to be playing in this thread is that: Ooh the simulation may be instense can my computer even run larger cities??

And then there a lot of posts to either support this fear or assail it.

 

My thinking is that, with all that Maxis/EA junk about server-side calculations and all this we modeled it to run on low end PCs... we may consider larger cities if PC hardware advances..... blah blah blah. Personally... all of this misleading information is pure BULL.

 

it take more calculations to rotate all the vectors and realign the matrix data of a 3D model and print view matrix from the viewport to your Screen than it is to calculate the age of each person each year of 1,000,000 persons.

you want proof? consider...

 

or(int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
{
      sims[i].Age++;
}
///one million additions - this is actually very fast

FIRST EXAMPLE is just math on some variables... or you can say the Simulation mechanics

we are aging each Sim by one year. And we have One Millions Sims.

 

for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) ///to be fair - lets use only a hundred thousand buildings
{
   Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[model.Model.Bones.Count];
   model.Model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms);

   foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Model.Meshes)
   {
       foreach (BasicEffect effect in mm.Effects)
       {
           effect.View = camera.view;
           effect.Projection = camera.projection;
           effect.EnableDefaultLighting();
       }
       mesh.Draw();
    }
}

2nd Example uses MUCH more work, even though we have 1 factor less amount of items to calculate

And todays GFX cards can do this easy... which means our CPU can do the 1st example....very easy

 

we can have large cities... this small city restriction is part of the MMO grand stratedgy they are trying to force on us...

 

While I would like to think that they COULD be able to do it.  I think you may be overthinking some things.  You have to remember that everything in the simulation is an agent.  So each agent has to find paths, across the city, and all that jazz.  I am not an algorithms guy by any stretch of the imagination.  But I imagine that it might be slightly more complicated than you letting on here.  Let me just say for the record, I think that they could and should give us larger cities with contiguous tiles, I am not entirely convinced it is easy as you suggest.

[macvirt 361]

No, not everything is an agent. There is also an agent collection system, and an agent transaction system. If everything were an agent you would have an interesting high complexity simulation, but that is not the case. Unfortunately. This is where fudging comes in, a common instrument in game design, it's just that usually publishers do not lie and state that they do not use it and then have their pants dropped

[London-b 90]

I still can't believe they thought this was a good idea. It's like the makers of Angry Birds thinking the next version should have 1/4 of the levels or the makers of COD thinking reducing the number of guns to 3 would be a cracking idea. 

[macvirt 361]

That is the crux though. If you can find a way to sell it, anything is allowed. Lying and manipulation of information is crucial to this kind of venture development. Long term consequences are never prioritised because in order for the format to succeed you have to keep repeating it constantly. 

 

It is the games industry equivalent of "too big to fail". Short cycle management. It's remarkably similar to short selling. And the irony is, both are done with other people's money  

[DmainEvent 195]

No, not everything is an agent. There is also an agent collection system, and an agent transaction system. If everything were an agent you would have an interesting high complexity simulation, but that is not the case. Unfortunately. This is where fudging comes in, a common instrument in game design, it's just that usually publishers do not lie and state that they do not use it and then have their pants dropped

 

 

Well, I was under the impression that everything was an agent.  If that is not the case, then they have no freaking excuse for not giving us larger maps.  That is true that they fudge the population numbers.  So then why the hell can't they give us larger maps?!?!?!?!

[macvirt 361]

Well, to keep it simple, it's nothing personal, it's business. In the present approach of format and directives it makes more sense to emphasise the commercial prospects of finishing a project after selling it. Deadlines are always an issue in their own right, but most of the time those too are carefully designed to create conditions that favour the beforementioned prioritisation approaches.

[elektrichead22 10]

lets take simtropolos reputation bets then... who bets bigger maps will be sold via dlc first or will the be sold as an ep?

[Discord 8]

lets take simtropolos reputation bets then... who bets bigger maps will be sold via dlc first or will the be sold as an ep?

As DLC, and they will give it away for free to some and charge it for others. In that way they can earn money while simultaneously looking like they're being nice guys.

[macvirt 361]

Yup ^^

[trar 336]

SimCity cities are actually ~0.5 km x ~0.5 km in size.

ttp://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a8kzd/simcity_cities_are_actually_05_km_x_05_km_in_size/

 

 

 

This thread was started waaay before release and this thread still hold merit. 

 

I concur.

 

One theme that seems to be playing in this thread is that: Ooh the simulation may be instense can my computer even run larger cities??

And then there a lot of posts to either support this fear or assail it.

 

My thinking is that, with all that Maxis/EA junk about server-side calculations and all this we modeled it to run on low end PCs... we may consider larger cities if PC hardware advances..... blah blah blah. Personally... all of this misleading information is pure BULL.

 

it take more calculations to rotate all the vectors and realign the matrix data of a 3D model and print view matrix from the viewport to your Screen than it is to calculate the age of each person each year of 1,000,000 persons.

you want proof? consider...

 

or(int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
{
      sims[i].Age++;
}
///one million additions - this is actually very fast

FIRST EXAMPLE is just math on some variables... or you can say the Simulation mechanics

we are aging each Sim by one year. And we have One Millions Sims.

 

for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) ///to be fair - lets use only a hundred thousand buildings
{
   Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[model.Model.Bones.Count];
   model.Model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms);

   foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Model.Meshes)
   {
       foreach (BasicEffect effect in mm.Effects)
       {
           effect.View = camera.view;
           effect.Projection = camera.projection;
           effect.EnableDefaultLighting();
       }
       mesh.Draw();
    }
}

2nd Example uses MUCH more work, even though we have 1 factor less amount of items to calculate

And todays GFX cards can do this easy... which means our CPU can do the 1st example....very easy

 

we can have large cities... this small city restriction is part of the MMO grand stratedgy they are trying to force on us...

 

Both of these facts make me a very sad mayor, yet also very grateful to own all four previous SimCity games.

 

lets take simtropolos reputation bets then... who bets bigger maps will be sold via dlc first or will the be sold as an ep?

 

I'll bet 1,000 Simoleans.

[Dark_Jedi06 13]

Tile size, the way the regions are set up and the lack of terraforming are keeping me from getting this game. The gameplay looks solid and I'm sure the bugs will be ironed out...I'd even be okay dealing with the always-on internet connection.

 

A shame too, as I had high hopes for SC2013 getting me back into Simcity. 

[SoftcoreGamer 352]

But that's the thing - the always-on connection is precisely why you are not allowed to have larger than 2x2 plots to play with.

 

If you think the current server fiasco is bad, wait til you get to play a 4x4 city!

 

The only solution is a 100% offline game. As in Offline expansion pack. All other server-induced syndromes will be gone gone gone.

 

But will they do it?

[USA_Pride 49]

Next time, speak with your wallet because that's ALL that matters.  This forum, this thread, and your complaints do NOTHING

 

I sure did.  After playing the demo and reading what was going on here I canceled my pre-order.  I have ZERO regrets.  I hope to one day buy SimCity when they take the functionality of previous versions, including map size, and put it in this one at a reasonable price.

 

The map size is SimCity is a joke.  It should be called SimVillage, or SimNeighborhood.

[mayorkodiak 0]

It's all just a scheme to offer more/bigger/larger/different cities and regions in a later DLC which you will have to pay for...