Jobs & Time?

[WhereisSC5? 20]

So I was watching a video on how the simulation of jobs are done via agents. It seemed really interesting to me and gave me high hopes for SC5. However, this brought 2 topics to my mind:

Jobs

How exactly ARE jobs handled? It says that (invisible) agents are sent from factories to houses to get jobs. Will other industries do this too? What about commercial zones? What about structures built by the mayor him/herself? And in reference to the jobs themselves, are they consistent? Do sims keep their same jobs over time? Or do the agents from the employers seek out random units/individuals?

Time

How exactly will time be handled in the game? Will it move in rapid increments as it has done in the past? Or will it move slowly, hour by hour, to keep the movement of agents to pace? In the video I saw, it said that the agents to find jobs were sent at 6 AM. Does this mean that the clock in SC5 will run slower to keep track of hourly time? How will this affect the pace of the game? Will cities develop slower as a result?

(Keep in mind, I'm not looking for legitimate information, just speculative answers)

[mapboy 106]

Remember that with SC4 there were two 'clocks' running. There was a time clock, which mainly made day turn into night, and could have had influence on the traffic shown, and also there was a date clock which was used for the budget, etc.

[WhereisSC5? 20]

But now, the time affects the cash earned. As the workers go to their jobs, they begin to set the cornerstone for earning money by producing goods. Time and money are connected, so what will that mean for us?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

In all honesty, it is too soon to tell. However, I suspect that from the way the videos have been running, a player won't be able to see agents unless there is an option to do so (a debugging mode), nor will he have any access to the "rules" unless he is doing a mod. All of the Glassbox internals should be pretty much invisible to allow the player to concentrate on the city.

As for running in high-speed mode, why would you want to? You are going to pay a premium price for this game that is going to be full of fancy animation. Why would you want it speed it up to the point where you can't enjoy it? I have a feeling that this is going to be a totally different game from the one you can now force into producing skyscrapers in a evening of fast play.

[croxis 150]

Jobs

How exactly ARE jobs handled? It says that (invisible) agents are sent from factories to houses to get jobs. Will other industries do this too? What about commercial zones? What about structures built by the mayor him/herself? And in reference to the jobs themselves, are they consistent? Do sims keep their same jobs over time? Or do the agents from the employers seek out random units/individuals?

During the GDC demo each place of employement sends out an invisible agent with an "I need employeees!" message through the road network. House units respond to the message by creating an agent, putting a person in it, and the agent drives to that place of employment. It is a safe assumption that almost all industry and commercial will do this. The result is though that sims wont keep the same jobs

Time

How exactly will time be handled in the game? Will it move in rapid increments as it has done in the past? Or will it move slowly, hour by hour, to keep the movement of agents to pace? In the video I saw, it said that the agents to find jobs were sent at 6 AM. Does this mean that the clock in SC5 will run slower to keep track of hourly time? How will this affect the pace of the game? Will cities develop slower as a result?

(Keep in mind, I'm not looking for legitimate information, just speculative answers)

Time is probably variable up to a threashold set byt he game or hardware limits. Many game engines run on a tick per second system and sleep if it gets done with a tick early it sleeps until the next cycle. Game slowdowns happen when the engine can't finish a tick before the next one is suppose to happen. Speeding up the game is just a matter of speeding up the number of ticks in a second.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Jobs

How exactly ARE jobs handled? It says that (invisible) agents are sent from factories to houses to get jobs. Will other industries do this too? What about commercial zones? What about structures built by the mayor him/herself? And in reference to the jobs themselves, are they consistent? Do sims keep their same jobs over time? Or do the agents from the employers seek out random units/individuals?

During the GDC demo each place of employment sends out an invisible agent with an "I need employeees!" message through the road network. House units respond to the message by creating an agent, putting a person in it, and the agent drives to that place of employment. It is a safe assumption that almost all industry and commercial will do this. The result is though that sims wont keep the same jobs.

Well, if I were doing this, my Sims would have an attribute that says "employed at ..." and would ignore the hiring agent unless they were planning to quit. This would trigger a rule that says "go to work at ...". Changing jobs at every cycle would be rather inefficient and how could Sims improve themselves through experience?

[tSlater 134]

It could end up being much like Sim Tower which simulated workers and residents actually going to and from each place like glassbox does. 2 workdays and a weekend constituted a month, and 4 months equalled a season.

[Mark Waybill 242]

Well I hope that Sims will keep jobs for a realistic period of time, relatively speaking at any rate. It would be dissapointing if every day a Sim worked at a new place... Not to mention it would defeat the whole purpose of GlassBox and the new depth of simulation reality.

The same would go for buildings. I imagine buildings will be more concrete than ever before, and should hopefully not constantly be rebuilt.