Your Questions for Maxis (for March-April 2012)

[mattyriddy 12]

I know this isn't a question. But it can be deleted after being red by the mods.

Since the site redesign all of the reputation points seem to have disappeared. So as it stands no of the posts have been up voted. Even though there have been lots of votes. Is this being looked into?

[The_City_Builder 299]

I'm assuming they have a copy of the website that was before the redesign, and it still shows the reputation points.

[Wiimeiser 452]

I can see reputation points just fine.

[CoolGaming 1]

My questions, it's good if everyone of them are answer.

Questions are sorted in these colours:

• red for questions which are not needed to answer if they are stupid enough
  
• blue for questions which needs to be detailed
  
• green for questions which only have one-liner answer
  

Q: I preordered the game, so do I have to wait for the game release to download or I can get it a few days/weeks/months before the release?

Q: I got the game on digital deluxe edition. What are the extra benefits I will get than the normal edition game?

Q: Will there be a transport system where I can choose different routes for buses, trains, ships and planes (with scheduling of time)?

Q: How will the time pass? (will the time be 1 day per real life second or 1 hour per real life second)

Q: What can the minimum and recommended specification requirements be?

Q: Will there be a debug mode we can use? If so, how shall I access to it?

Q: Will there be a simple map editor (map, not region - city tile) when playing IN the game?

Q: Can we construct curve roads?

Q: Do we have options of these category (eg: normal, diagonal, curve, etc) when building a road?

Q: Will we have the same zones we can plan like in SimCity 4?

Q: I noticed mining on the trailer. So, is it possible that I can choose whatever categories of job (eg: mining, business, selling) whenever I zone these commercial/industrial? If so, how are they categorised?

Q: Do we have different choices of cultural-themed buildings (eg: country-, asian-, British-themed)?

Q: What are the different sizes of city tiles? - if only maps have different sizes of city tiles

Q: Does the game have an offline mode?

Q: (Multiplayer) Can I see other players' town? If so, what are the limits to this looking-on-the-towns?

Q: (Multiplayer) Can I share resources to the other players? If so, how?

  Edited April 11, 2012 by CoolGaming  

[nuyokcity 22]

Hello,

I had 3 questions for the game developers if they have the time, which I have highlighted in italics.

1 - I wonder how much research the game developers have done or will do into the history of the SimCity series as well as the history of the city-building videogame genre?

That and listening to fans experience with previous games and new ideas might help them in making a new game that will be unique and balanced. I have which lists the SimCity series and related city building games for those interested.

  Edited April 16, 2012 by nuyokcity  

[Mootilda 76]

Note that we can't vote on your questions if you insist on putting multiple questions into one post. Why not follow the rules for this thread and create one post per question?

[nuyokcity 22]

2- Also, will full modding capability and custom scenario building be incuded in the final version of the game?

I was thinking of the classic Urban Renewal Kit for SimCity 2000 and how players could design their own buildings. Since the technology has progressed in the past 10 years, maybe now the developers can allow the players to mod the game to suit their vision of what urban cities can look like?

For example, we're most familiar with the modern industrial style city, but what about historical modern pre-industrial and current post-industrial cities, or even alternate methods of urbanization? Some people might want to build a low-populated cultural and artistic "ecotopia" while others might want to build a special infrastructure and industry for the eventual goal of a spacefaring civilization.

Some of these ideas were explored in SimCity Societies but as players we were restricted to what the game gave us, instead of being able to create our own vision of what a city could be like - either based in history, alternate and "what if" history, as well as our own imaginations. So it would be interesting if we could pick and chose paths from various urban planning schools of thought.

  Edited April 16, 2012 by nuyokcity  

[Mark Waybill 242]

Will we have a cap of regions to begin with, and have to pay for new ones, and will we have to pay a subscription if we have more regions than our initial lot?

Not of terrible importance, but still a question that would be nice to have an answer to.

[nuyokcity 22]

3 - Lastly, a related idea to the above is will we see cities transition through phases and cycles of boom and bust, sprawl and decay in a historically natural way?

For example, parts of cities are abandoned and ruins become overgrown - take Detroit as a real-life example, or the massive rapid construction projects of Dubai and China's ghost cities which stand empty. Another example of a city abandoned and overgrown is Prypiat in Ukraine, which was abandoned in 1986 after a nuclear meltdown, same as the recent Fukushima disaster in Japan. Seeing and helping the citizens adjust to various challenges and managing the city within those ever-changing situations would be interesting.

  Edited April 16, 2012 by nuyokcity  

[drdru7029 52]

One thing I love to try to do with SC4 is generate statistics about different 'districts' within my city. For example, I want to compare the current and historical commercial capacity of my downtown area with another 'new center' on the periphery. Or I want to see how the residential population trend of District A compares with District B. Or I want to select an area of my choice and generate a report about the aggregate daily traffic volume of all the streets contained within it.

With SC4, coming up with these stats is exceedingly difficult and, where possible, quite time-consuming.

Question: will it (or would it) be possible to have a vector-like area selection tool which would allow one to see 'micro-statistics' for whichever area falls within the selected range? I have a feeling that this type of data observation freedom would make a great many fans happy.

[Mustacio 5]

1. Are you able to build Roads and other transportation on top of each other, like a rail on another rail on a road?

2. Will Disasters occur naturally?

3. Will SimCity have a view layer for building roads underground?

4. Can you access the neighboring city by directly moving the camera on to Its area?

[Shishka 14]

Question

Refering to the multiplayer of Simcity, we know there will be multiplayer lobbies, but have you guys thought of implementing an world wide region for online play? It is pretty much based off of Cities XL "Planet" mode where it was a planet with multiple users cities but instead of it being a planet it would be a custom region (or world) for everyone around the world to build their own city and share it with other users. Im fine with the multiplayer lobbies but the idea of adding that in (since I enjoyed it on Cities XL) would be just awesome.

Thanks!

  Edited April 17, 2012 by Shishka  

[TMorgan 19]

Q. Is there a regional terraforming tool? Trying to handcraft a region in SC4 was very difficult. Luckily SC4 Mapper and Terraformer came to the rescue. Is anything like this planned?

Q. Will I be able to accurately recreate a city the size of London, New York, Tokyo? I understand that it will take place over multiple city tiles but would it be possible.

Q. Will ploppable buildings still exist? I loved being able to plop an entire city to get exactly what I want, this was especially possible thanks to modding communities.

Q. Are regions size dictated for us or can we create mega regions? By mega regions I am thinking sizes roughly 50km x 50km.

Q. Can you look into other cities with ease from your own, or do you have to exit to region view? Such as moving the cursor over to view the cities around your current one.

Key:

Red: Important

Green: Some what important

Black: Not Important

[jakehh 52]

Will there be rivers and lakes above sea level?

[CoolGaming 1]

Note that we can't vote on your questions if you insist on putting multiple questions into one post. Why not follow the rules for this thread and create one post per question?

I have tons. so yea, I'll be spamming then. p_p

[DmainEvent 195]

Are you guys considering some kind of simulation granulation determined by the depth of your view. For instance, if you are on a view that many would say is a regional view (maybe you could see 100km x 100Km) were maybe only transactions between cities are simulated. When you are at a level where you can view the entire city (Maybe 10km x 10km) Maybe business interactions and interactions between individuals agents will occur. And finally, when you are in your lowest zoom level, all the simulation aspects of glass box will be running at full steam.

I ask this because I am a little worried that you are attempting to simulate to much and you are loosing focus on the game that should be built. If we were simulating a small economy, then 200,000 Maximum agents would be a great thing. And that would probably be a great game. But simulating a city is a little bit higher level than that. In a city there may be several different economies, and some of the minor details may be overkill. An alternative way of granulating simulation would be to allow the user to determine how deep the simulation should run. The less details simulated, the larger his city can be.

I am one of the users that didn't mind when cars disappeared however, so what do I know.

[Kevin 101]

Locked until next time... we're compiling questions... hopefully you'll all see the results of this soon!