Discussion about City Tile Size

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I would assume that U drive it mode would be seamless though a border should be visually crossed when driving between cities with the name of the city displayed right after the transition (like in GTA). I would hope that the whole "nested boxes" aspect means that regional construction will become easier.

[XXProtoXX 6]

Well, this whole issue wouldn't be here if we could stop thiings how city tiles worked in sc4. This is a new version of the game and we haven't seen anything of the region play or roads or

what the size of everything is. We don't even know if you will have to use the same save and exit procedure yet, so as we say here in Mississippi, hold your horses.

[Tarkus 6,932]

I think this is a case, again, of folks simply bellyaching. We don't know how they're going to interface the different tiles. Not in the slightest. But I'd imagine after 9 years, they've probably found a way to improve upon the situation in SC4. But we're still in speculation mode. Let more details emerge.

mrhindscountry--right on, my friend.

-Tarkus

[packersfan 666]

Yeah, definitely, let's open our minds and hope that Maxis has improved on ten year old methods. I mean just look at the leap between SC2000, SC3000, and SC4. I understand the concern of being locked into 2x2km regionplay in SC4, but we don't know what regionplay will be like in SC5, yet, so take it easy.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Boomtown suggested having 1 km chunks of the region being rendered and simulated at a given time with the legal boundaries between cities being 10 meter squares.

I actually make the assumption that the 2 km city tiles are said chunks and that individual muninciple district borders going along those borders. One concept art screen shot (concept art is indicative to alpha gameplay, trailers are non indicative of gameplay) showed a visible gap in elevation between 2 rendered and simulated cities (as if the move terrain up button was clicked without border reconciliation).

[alex macnamara 139]

I would assume that U drive it mode would be seamless though a border should be visually crossed when driving between cities with the name of the city displayed right after the transition (like in GTA). I would hope that the whole "nested boxes" aspect means that regional construction will become easier.

IF they have U-Drive it in this version

I think this is a case, again, of folks simply bellyaching. We don't know how they're going to interface the different tiles. Not in the slightest. But I'd imagine after 9 years, they've probably found a way to improve upon the situation in SC4. But we're still in speculation mode. Let more details emerge.

mrhindscountry--right on, my friend.

-Tarkus

Lets hope if we are ultimately stuck on 2km, Id like to see these few things

-Progressive saving (game saves constantly in the background and i mean ANY TIME the game is idle)

-Progressive tile loading with ability to see neighbor tile so we can see what the heck we are building a road to

I had a huge problem in SC4 lining up the freeways and pipes between tiles! Grrrrr

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I am sure, especially with the small granularity, that switching between cities will be easy and fast. Since the whole business will likely be on a very large server, there is no reason why the entire region can't be in (virtual) memory, updated on-the-fly, and quickly available to people who are allowed into it. With the multi-player aspect a player who does not have write permission may easily be able to "look but don't touch" at will. This might even be in a window within the player's city window.

[XXProtoXX 6]

Good everybodies thinking more optimistacally now!

Good everybodies thinking more optimistacally now!

[JcCali1214 34]

^^^Yay for Optimism!!^^^

Anyways, lol, I am totally on this let's focus on and have rendering (or however you say it) that 1x1km/2x2 km square while our city is bigger than that defined area. It would be vastly disappointing if our cities were limited to those dimensions. It would be awesome if we could merge different 'districts' as some have likened to calling them and have them form one's overall larger city. And, let's hope that if this is the case, that a whole region isn't defined as a city but, however many different districts you would want to join up to make cities within a region. That's what I'm hoping for.

And another thing: Why do our cities/districts have to have the stringent rectilinear boundaries? That's one thing I had a hard time with when I was building cities in Simcity 4 (Love Simcity 4!), I would have this region with various geographical features but, when I built cities, I felt as if the boundaries should have corresponded more with the river or the mountain rather than some arbitrary border..... I feel as if, for me, that's a more pressing issue atm ...

But once again: ^^^Yay for Optimism!!^^^

[Tarkus 6,932]

I should also add, here's the official line from @SimCity. I've bolded the key words:

Not to worry! Right now the size of our cities are roughly equivalent to the SC4 medium sized city (2 kilometers square). RT @Mrluga: I get the vibe we're only really going to be making small cities -.-

Note: "right now" and "roughly equivalent". Take that for what it's worth.

-Tarkus

[Frode789 70]

Sounds good. I wouldn't be surprised if we get bigger tiles when the game ships

[JcCali1214 34]

Thanks for pointing that out Tarkus! I love when someone is able to 'find' something that the rest of us missed! Using context clues, hopefully this means they'll will change according to (what works) consumer demands! Alright!

[BurroDiablo 222]

Well, they'd be foolish not to let us have larger cities, especially those of us with more powerful rigs... it couldn't hurt to give us choices of how big we want our cities to be, even if they're the pre-set 1x1, 2x2, 4x4 sized tiles a la SC4. Having to enter & exit cities to produce a large, seamless metropolis will get tiresome when the cities become larger and loading times increase... it's harder to control a city in this manner; I know when I'm playing smaller cities in SC4 that if you build up one 2x2 city, you can go over to the next and build a second, then you can switch back over to your first city and within minutes you'll have Residential tower blocks popping up which can put a large amount of strain on a small citys infrastructure. Brings the money in, but you'll often find yourself demolishing quite a bit just to accommodate new infrastructure.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, they'd be foolish not to let us have larger cities, especially those of us with more powerful rigs... it couldn't hurt to give us choices of how big we want our cities to be, even if they're the pre-set 1x1, 2x2, 4x4 sized tiles a la SC4. Having to enter & exit cities to produce a large, seamless metropolis will get tiresome when the cities become larger and loading times increase... it's harder to control a city in this manner; I know when I'm playing smaller cities in SC4 that if you build up one 2x2 city, you can go over to the next and build a second, then you can switch back over to your first city and within minutes you'll have Residential tower blocks popping up which can put a large amount of strain on a small citys infrastructure. Brings the money in, but you'll often find yourself demolishing quite a bit just to accommodate new infrastructure.

I have done this switching around business in SC4 with smaller tiles. It does work. My rig is not the hottest rocket on the pad but it does the job. You don't have to sit in front of the box going gaga while the switch over is going on. I generally go get a snack or a coffee or do some little household task instead of watching grass grow at the screen. (I'm retired and live alone. Some of you can do homework while waiting, and others can kiss your loved ones.)

With the new system, assuming that switching will be occurring both at the user station and the server (at least in multi-user), the switch could be much faster provided the whole region can be in virtual memory at the same time. Virtualizing regions would make switching dependent on getting enough pages in RAM to get going, which can be few. The rest can be demand paged, perhaps with some predictive logic, and the user would likely not notice. I have a 20GB swap space, which should be sufficient for anything like this. If necessary, I can make it as large as I like. (That's Linux for you).

[Ishamael 3]

I just hope city-tiles have "sharp-edges" so to speak. I mean, having a small area where you can't build, and you want to build out completely can be a real drag!!

[Sandis_van_Great 346]

I totally agree with the OP, why limit our workspace, from what i read most think that becouse of the 3d and stuff it will lag, well you are wrong, tehnologies codes engines go with the tehnology and nowadays pc can handle much more. if you lag in big tile than dont play in big tile. but i personaly prefer to work in bi areas as i love to make 2-3villages in one tile or even 2 citys on the same tile, its annoying to switch betwen tiles alll the time. have you thought about that?

[harris126 0]

If the regions looks like Sim City 4, it will work for me. I'd like to see title of every sizes.. 1x1,2x2,4x4... It would be perfect for me.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I totally agree with the OP, why limit our workspace, from what i read most think that becouse of the 3d and stuff it will lag, well you are wrong, tehnologies codes engines go with the tehnology and nowadays pc can handle much more. if you lag in big tile than dont play in big tile. but i personaly prefer to work in bi areas as i love to make 2-3villages in one tile or even 2 citys on the same tile, its annoying to switch betwen tiles alll the time. have you thought about that?

Yes, did you see my post about having the whole region in VRAM? Load time for a city in the same region consists of getting the first page into memory and transferring to the code, while the rest pages in on a probably about to use algorithm. Switching time should be nearly, if not, transparent.

[avalach21 2]

It's all great and dandy if you wanna do some mental gymnastics and call the small tiles burroughs or neighborhoods, but regardless, each one would have its own budget to balance, which really doesn't make that much sense. For the sake of any sort of realism in the simulation, the territory defined as City boundaries should be unified under a single budget. My mental gymnastics can't wrap around that one... any advice?

  Edited March 16, 2012 by avalach21  

[Mark Waybill 242]

In reality a borough/council area/region is not usually delimited by a perfect rectangular border.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

It's all great and dandy if you wanna do some mental gymnastics and call the small tiles burroughs or neighborhoods, but regardless, each one would have its own budget to balance, which really doesn't make that much sense. For the sake of any sort of realism in the simulation, the territory defined as City boundaries should be unified under a single budget. My mental gymnastics can't wrap around that one... any advice?

A 'regional budget' that affects several playing tiles or even the whole region that you are playing on is an interesting idea.

For example Auckland, NZ, which is a large city geographically, now has only one city council that governs the entire region.

[jacksunny 741]

That is a very interesting idea. I hope it is implemented.

  Edited March 17, 2012 by jacksunny  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If a player has write permissions on more than one city tile, a consolidated ledger should certainly be possible. With areas of only "about" 4 Km² I, for one, would like to be able to expand to something larger if I were so inclined. Let's not get excited about square boundaries, they haven't really said that.

I think everyone agrees that there has to be some kind of grid, but what if it was mostly irrelevant to play and might even be hexagonal. A honeycomb is one of nature's efficient structures. Just because land surveyors like rectilinear grids doesn't mean you have to have one in a game.

Don't kid yourselves, the world is divided into rectilinear segments by the lines of latitude and longitude unless you are a navigator in which case spherical trigonometry comes into play. Playing on a small simulated land area might just as well be square as not. Why not? Take a look at most maps. Mind you, boundaries often are not straight, but when they jog they usually do it in an orthogonal manner.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I don't know how exactly they'd allow for realistic boundaries as a real boundary can be pretty much any shape, and include enclaves and peninsulas and so forth. But as city government isn't realistic and probably shouldn't be too much more so anyway, it probably doesn't matter. A square is logical in that it doesn't make it difficult to build within, a circle would make sense if your city was to expand in a perfect pattern, and a honeycomb region could work but tbh I have no issues with a square.

If they were to for some reason have realistic 'borough' boundaries within a region, the region could remain square (and be delimited if necessary geographically or within itself by a 'regional boundary', outside of which the region tiles would just be blank, and within the region borough boundaries could be drawn as you fancy, but the concept would only make sense if gameplay were multiplayer.

[TekindusT 3,809]

If a player has write permissions on more than one city tile, a consolidated ledger should certainly be possible. With areas of only "about" 4 Km² I, for one, would like to be able to expand to something larger if I were so inclined. Let's not get excited about square boundaries, they haven't really said that.I think everyone agrees that there has to be some kind of grid, but what if it was mostly irrelevant to play and might even be hexagonal. A honeycomb is one of nature's efficient structures. Just because land surveyors like rectilinear grids doesn't mean you have to have one in a game.Don't kid yourselves, the world is divided into rectilinear segments by the lines of latitude and longitude unless you are a navigator in which case spherical trigonometry comes into play. Playing on a small simulated land area might just as well be square as not. Why not? Take a look at most maps. Mind you, boundaries often are not straight, but when they jog they usually do it in an orthogonal manner.

It is often said (and it is true) that SC4 was designed with a very clear North-American mentality, specially SC4 vanilla where the only available tileset was a North American one. Taking a look to the map of any heartland state of the US is like looking a chessboard, squares and more squares. Designers took this reality as an excuse to implement a more resource saving region system in-game.

  Edited March 17, 2012 by TekindusT  

[§haÅ--Ñ€ §hÅŽo 370]

^ Do you honestly expect them to make every architecture in the world and place it into SimCity? That would most likely take another year to do.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

^ Do you honestly expect them to make every architecture in the world and place it into SimCity? That would most likely take another year to do.

No. Over time, the user community can certainly do so if the tool box is good enough. However, this topic is on city size and not tile sets.

I see no reason not to allow cities to be merged. That is, a city could take over one or more adjacent granules. Maybe this is a new concept, but if you think about the basic "city" as being a granule in a tessellation (or cell if you like), it may be possible to merge the administration of several cells into a unified whole. The problem may be that the player can only see into one cell and maybe the periphery, at a time due to graphics engine limitations. This militates for fast switching using modern VRAM capabilities, so that the other granules are simply paged back and forth.

Zooming out should be able to give a full picture of the region, or at least a big chunk of it. There may be a point in this where manipulation of the contents is not possible.

[Catmando 7]

I see no reason not to allow cities to be merged. That is, a city could take over one or more adjacent granules. Maybe this is a new concept, but if you think about the basic "city" as being a granule in a tessellation (or cell if you like), it may be possible to merge the administration of several cells into a unified whole. The problem may be that the player can only see into one cell and maybe the periphery, at a time due to graphics engine limitations. This militates for fast switching using modern VRAM capabilities, so that the other granules are simply paged back and forth.

I see virtually no reason either. As far as I can tell cities were meant to work together in-game anyway. The only problem I can think of involves exploiting the isolation of the cities. In my current region I have three extremely polluted industrial dystopias surrounding my clean, happy metropolis and contributing a hundred thousand jobs or so as well as taking care of the city's garbage and power consumption. In other words, I'm essentially exporting half my city's worries at a fraction of the normal cost. I've heard of this method a lot and it seems to be pretty common. I don't think this will be possible or at least nearly as easy in the new Simcity game, especially with the "balls of nasty" we've heard about, but we'll have to wait and see.

Zooming out should be able to give a full picture of the region, or at least a big chunk of it. There may be a point in this where manipulation of the contents is not possible.

This would be great. Perhaps it could be a "Region Quickview" feature. It would save your current city and then zoom out high enough to let you see the region and take a snapshot of it if you want.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I am all for city tile merging. I think if we could treat a region like MS Excel that would be good, and so if a city were to outgrow it's tile it could incorporate the surrounding tiles to save switching back and forth just to edit an outskirting suburb.

[drdru7029 52]

It pains me to say this but from the sound of it, Maxis doesn't envision these 2km x 2km to be components of a larger city; it really wants them to act as individual cities. Moreover, it wants them to act as SPECIALIZED cities each serving the needs of another. Now I don't know about the rest of you but to me this really sounds like they're doing this for the online multiplayer aspect of the game. Specialized cities which need to respond directly to the specialized needs of their adjacent partners would better fit such a multiplayer model.

This disturbs me, as it seems they're molding a critical aspect of the game directly to the needs of their online multiplayer aspirations, at the expense of the comprehensive metropolis and single player experience.

Read the quote by Maxis on this, and don't delude yourselves: at this point the planned maximum city size is 2km x 2km, and they want each to be a specialized city and not an integrated sub component of a larger metropolis.

What I suggest is that the community become very vocal about this fact, right now. We can't wait too long or else it will be too ingrained in their plan.

"Maxis:

[Dan] The size of our new cities are roughly equivalent to the SC4 medium sized city (2 kilometers square). That said, you can connect cities together inside a region and build out a network of connected cities - each city providing different resources and abilities to its neighbors and the region. For example, one city could be a residential suburb which provides workers every day to a nearby industrial city."