Sims are dayflies?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

^ That is a very interesting article. Maybe my faith is a little more pumped up, but I am still waiting in the weeds for a live demo.

[meowza 230]

Here's what they've said lately about it,

"The sims themselves also operate at a very detailed level. Katsarelis allowed that they don't quite do 1:1 "sim-tracking"—in other words, every sim in the game doesn't have a name, and you couldn't track one from college to his career to his downfall, homelessness, and redemption. While all of those things can happen to a sim, they still happen to groups and not individuals."

"Looked at broadly, the sims' behavior is similar to past SimCity games—you make them mad enough, they'll start to protest. Humorously, more highly-educated sims like to complain a lot more. But there's much more of a sense of the sims as people this time around—they may not be trackable as individuals, but they are graphically viewable as individuals, which gives a heightened sense that you're dealing with a city full of people."

http://kotaku.com/5896976/simcity-is-more-expansive-and-detailed-than-ever-yet-remarkably-true-to-its-roots

I don't see the big deal. There is still social mobility and progression, it's just happening on a larger scale and not down to individual sims. Hasn't Simcity always been this way(actually, this is far more detailed than ever before)? The computing power it would take to track hundreds of thousands of Sims on top of everything else is just not feasible yet.

Yeah, that's cool. Hopefully that seems what it is, that is, citizens can actually change class. I don't have any issues if it only occurs in groups, as long as it takes place and can be influenced by the player.

I'm still crossing my fingers though. For now, I'll assume the problem on social mobility as solved. Thanks for clearing that one up.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

^ what we are really looking at is the city components get to be raised up in class which automatically enfranchises the day's Sims.

[croxis 150]

The end behavior of social mobility, or of gentrification, is where there was once a low income sim, there is now a medium income sim. How the actual data is manipulated to achieve that really isn't that important as long as the results make sense, is balanced, and is fun.

[LucasK336 54]

Could the "Sims day" be something like this?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Education promotes wealthier businesses. Uneducated R$ worked in fast food franchises (CS$), farms and dirty industry, highly educated R$ worked in CS$$$, CO$$, and High Tech Industry. The decreased pollution and increased industry tax certainly helped even if you taxed away wealthy sims and have no parks.

That flow chart does not take leisure and service buildings like bars, bowling alleys, museums, sports fields, stadiums (which were shown in the trailer) and schools.

  Edited March 30, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Cool chart Lucas!

[Jahnri 21]

So basically at this point we have a proper flow of sims. Rather then a per consistent simulation.

Hrmm, this doesn't bug me at all. Thank you greatly for the clarification Moose!

What this means is, we will see the flow of people going to work and consistently the same amount going home.

That is a immense achievement. This all ties in with my belief there is a exchange system in place. There almost has to be. A sim may not benefit from a school but his class does. Eventually a exchange of sims has to occur where a better opportunity arises and the class subtracts a sim from one class and adds it to the next or a new sim is tacked to the new class from immigration. Its so.. alive. I love it.

[meowza 230]

The end behavior of social mobility, or of gentrification, is where there was once a low income sim, there is now a medium income sim. How the actual data is manipulated to achieve that really isn't that important as long as the results make sense, is balanced, and is fun.

Actually I'd prefer social mobility and gentrification visualized (or atleast mentioned in simple text format) separately to distinguish the two.

Moving on.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Gentrification from parks, plazas, landmarks, and hospitals would force the poor sims to move elsewhere, while high education and low unemployment might improve social mobility. Seeing as sims only exist a day each, social mobility could occur overnight when a sim brings a bunch of money and education resources, which would tell the house to upgrade.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I think some of us are putting too much emphasis on the state of individual Sims. This does not appear to be in the design. The objects that get updated are the buildings, and the overall city, not the ants scurrying about the streets. One has to take a more management outlook on this from the point of view of the Mayor who is the CEO of the city. The rest is being delegated to the (programmed) lower level management. If that sounds brutal, well, that's life.

[SIMpleton 2]

Is there any indication that there is a functionality issue here? If a sim wakes up and goes to work, I'm not concerned if it was an identical sim as yesterday.

Just because their behavior isn't long-term doesn't mean their actions are not going to be appropriate.

[Odainsaker 2,136]

We must also consider the time scales involved, and the truncation of time for game purposes. As we do not play with a time scale that has a 1:1 relationship to the real time scales of real cities, we must accept that game time, the day/night cycles, and even individual sim lives are merely representative of the concept, and we shouldn't expect to be following them day-to-day. The sims, like people, are indeed ants, with rapid turnover in comparison to the life of a city.

[TheRealDeadaim 38]

I voted yes because although I'm unsure on whether I'm getting the game or not - my decision is not related to this. The extra processing power required to give the sims memory would seriously limit the population size (From what I've read I suspect as it stands Sc5 will have a cap, yet to be confirmed or not). Developing a game is a give and take process, if they dedicate more RAM to this less RAM can be used for other, more game essential processes. It's not like the simulation on Sc4 was perfect, you'd frequently can a tower block of 1000+ residents all working at the same place. People didn't seem concerned about that (and I suspect that won't be happening in Sc5)

[Mark Waybill 242]

I'm fine with the game not having a 1:1 ratio with regards to days and months and years etc. However I'd like it if Sims were individual to the extent that I could follow them around. However I do understand that at present simulating all of them in such a way would be power consuming. Also the mention of specific characters like the arsonist and Maxis Man make me think that there will be in future more development in this area.

[~Dee~ 215]

I would have preferred a sim to have a longer live span then just a day, not all of them just a few. It would be nice to know that some sims have a home they return to every day and maybe move out of the city for whatever reason, or get to old age and end up in a retirement home.

It would have been a nice addition just for a few sims to give the impression that they live their lifes out in the city.

I like following a sim around town, not all day but a little while just to see what they get up to.

  Edited April 8, 2012 by ~Dee~  

[GrayAnderson 6]

I'd have to vote "other"...notwithstanding having a few hand-picked Sims be persistent (such as the ones chosen to follow in SC4), the situation is sort of irrelevant aside from its impact on processing power. We didn't have individuals in SC2K, and I don't think we did in SC3K.

Honestly, I wouldn't be opposed to some sort of variation on what existed in older versions of the game (possibly splitting things up by income level in the vein of SC4, or in some other way, so as to have a bit more nuance/consistency to the housing quality, types of businesses, etc.). Broad, quasi-statistical brackets for age and so forth (such as "X number in this part of the map/on this lot/in this tile" or something like that) wouldn't be bad...but there's no need to go down to the individual sim level. That's unnecessarily granular data, and it puts unneeded strain on processing power.

[mittfh 7]

How about a hybrid model - 99.99% of the Sims are created at the start of a sim day and destroyed at the end of it, but you can also select a limited number of buildings and ask the game to make a Sim or a family of Sims persistent and able to be tracked across time (so a similar concept to SC4's "My Sim"). So, just as in real life data analysis, the vast majority of the Sims are faceless statistics, but you can home in on an example and track them.

Even with faceless statistics, the game model could store a handful of different work patterns - for example, the majority would commute to work M-F, go shopping on Saturday, and either stay at home or go out on a Sunday - the frequency of the latter depending on the time of year (more likely in summer, less likely in winter).

Actually, tracking a Sim Family rather than a Sim Person would be useful - it wouldn't use much in the way of resources, and you could either track them via viewing a representation of the table (family composition, jobs, wealth, etc.) or view a snapshot of their life (not so much following their commute, but for example having a 'time of day' slider and viewing the routes they take to / from their daily activities: work / school / lunch / shopping / recreation etc.)

  Edited April 10, 2012 by mittfh  

[astronelson 339]

In all honesty, it looks like I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between what they have planned and actually setting each sim a particular job for them to go to. It's a simplification to make simulation easier, and a particularly minor one at that. Chances are the distribution of places sims come from at the start of the day will be almost identical to the distribution of places they go "home" to.

I'm running off assumptions about how the engine works here, but let's take, for purposes of demonstration, a CBD. Lots of sims go in at the start of the day, lots of sims come out at the end of the day. The houses they go back to might not be the same as they came from, but there's a good chance that some sim from the CBD will go to a house near where some other sim came from. It might not be the same one, but it'll be close enough as to make no difference.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Closed tracks for things like going to work are not really necessary when you think about it. We are simulating a city, not the inhabitants.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Because MySims were part of the Rush Hour expansion pack, we should not be able to track individual families in the base game.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Because MySims were part of the Rush Hour expansion pack, we should not be able to track individual families in the base game.

Isn't that rather a non-sequitur? Wait until E3.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I've been pushing for the integration of Simcity with The Sims since I bought sc4 in 2004, but obviously not at the expense of either side of the game.

I wouldn't mind a MySim mode similar to what Rush Hour had though, as a temporary measure.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I've been pushing for the integration of Simcity with The Sims since I bought sc4 in 2004, but obviously not at the expense of either side of the game.

I wouldn't mind a MySim mode similar to what Rush Hour had though, as a temporary measure.

IMHO the attempt to jam the Sims into SimCity was a bust in SC4. I don't see any kind of UDI thing in this version. It just clutters up the simulation. A separate program that can access an existing city might be a viable product.

[mittfh 7]

"A separate program"

So something akin to a reincarnation of "Streets of SimCity" and "SimCopter" then?

Actually, it might not be a bad idea - use SimCity to create and develop the city, then the alternate program that takes your city at a snapshot in time and allows you to roam around it by whatever form of transport you choose. However, if it was to be done as a standalone product, it would probably only be able to work on 'baseline' (i.e. completely unmodified) cities. Alternatively develop something that could either be completely standalone or integrated into SimCity (to take advantage of mods). Even then it needn't be as seamless as UDI - clicking the activate button would save the city and load the new interface, then when you were bored you could either exit to desktop or reload the city builder.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

In modern systems nothing stops these programs from running concurrently. If the main simulation is running, any custom content would simply be there. The two programs could communicate by sharing some Interprocess Communication line. Whether you get a "snapshot" to play in, or actually join the simulation depends on the amount of work the developers can afford to do.

[Mark Waybill 242]

I've always been aware of the potential of this game to be a backbone for a framework of other connected games (SimCopter etc) that could 'plug in' to this game and use a city you've built to play another game. And personally I see nothing wrong with exploring those aenues as long as it doesn't detract from quality or time given to SC itself.

So I hope this present way of simulating the citizens is only a temporary method and the ship is being steered towards advancement beyond the seas.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Actually, all that has to happen is to give external programs read access to the city tables. Since these should be in a separate segment anyway, it is only a matter of knowing the layout. They could use a copy of the graphics engine to show a user prowling around the city. If you are in a building that gets bulldozed, that's tough luck, and you get killed.

  Edited April 14, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Mark Waybill 242]

Hopefully buildings will have more longevity than Sims. If cars don't dissapear and re-appear at least UDI won't end in a wizard magically apparating his vehicle in the same position as yours and blowing your vehicle up...

If simchildren can't grow up and simretirees are born retired... I am assuming the house itself is what changes, and it spawns a new Sim to reflect local conditions each day. So one day it might spawn a typical teenage worker of the area, and the next a typical female receptionist of the area. But as to children and retired people I suppose children get spawned when a grown up couple are, and retirees are either spawned separately or as part of a Sim Family mass creation?

I think from what I've read so far that a building changes, yet remains itself, whereas Sims are spawned and killed off each day by the building, almost like an orator giving speeches, closing a speech, reading a new work on oratory, and giving a new speech influenced by this new writer.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I wonder if the actual spawning mechanism won't be related to the housing. Each Sim appears in a residence, acquires the traits needed for the day from the property, goes forth. Some Sims return to the residence, drop off their experience and expire. The next day the updated residence ...

Simple, elegant, and eliminates the need for Sims to stay overnight.