SimCity: Terraforming

[whiteshade 4]

It's been a long wait to get a new SimCity. I guess I will be waiting for a teraforming mod too. Pre-made landscapes are essential for getting a feel for the game, but I burned out on them pretty quickly. I liked to give myself both a challenging terrain and a realistic feel after I learned to build a self-sustaining city.

I shall wait for terraforming before buying. It wouldn't feel like I was getting my money's worth otherwise.

...a sandbox game where the sand can't be moved?

[alex macnamara 139]

ill buy once terraforming is in, a real single player is in, an official statement from Maxis saying once we pull the servers we will give you an offline patch, and last not least, regions fixed. I will not change my stance on this no matter what Maxis has to add.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I personally don't mind a super ton that there won't be terraforming. I feel like something that gives real cities their character is the way that they respond to topography. But in SimCity for a very small amount of money (or for free with the god mode cheat) you can completely change the topography.

But even if it's hard to completely change the landscape once the game is going, I think it's very important to have some kind of a map editor.

Before it seemed like they really understood that SimCIty was like a model train set, in that it was an open ended creative hobby, but not having terraforming is definitely not in that spirit. :/ It's really hard to imagine how they could have their development meetings and "no terraforming" survived.

[elavery 1,013]

No terraforming just means another nail in the coffin of an increasingly irrelevant game.

[jacksunny 741]

I don't mind no terraforming. It does make the game more realistic, usually the mayor of a city doesn't have the power to create mountains and oceans.

[ThePear 0]

I don't mind no terraforming. It does make the game more realistic, usually the mayor of a city doesn't have the power to create mountains and oceans.

While I fall into the same boat in some ways as I wouldn't mind having to just terraform through the mayor mode. Yet default maps would be blandish.

[iamihop11 19]

I don't mind no terraforming. It does make the game more realistic, usually the mayor of a city doesn't have the power to create mountains and oceans.

That's interesting, because I never use terraforming to radically alter a region. It's more fun to develop a city around the topography. However, I use terraforming all the time to create sunken highways, industrial areas, seaports, airports, and lots of other elements. In real life, these projects DO require huge amounts of terraforming. Look at the airport that Hong Kong recently built - entirely on "reclaimed" (ie terraformed) land.

[Mark Waybill 242]

Maxis say there will be 'civil' engineering, so one assumes tunnels, canals, cuttings etc will exist. In the concept art there was an embankment style viaduct.

[aparrot7 82]

Maxis say there will be 'civil' engineering, so one assumes tunnels, canals, cuttings etc will exist. In the concept art there was an embankment style viaduct.

Yes that means mayor mode terraforming will exist. And i would assume they would use a tunnel system similar to the one CXL uses.

As long as Maxis provides us with a large variety of maps- with different climates and textures, I'll be fine with God-mode booted. You'll still be able to smooth out the bumps and lumps with mayor mode tools, or create elevated systems. [Most likely]

[Catmando 7]

Maxis say there will be 'civil' engineering, so one assumes tunnels, canals, cuttings etc will exist. In the concept art there was an embankment style viaduct.

My guess is that when modding tools come out some clever player(s) will create something akin to smoncrie's hole digger lots, except hopefully those would let us change larger areas of terrain at a time. Using tunnels and viaducts and such to carve out the terrain bit by bit would be very tedious.

[~Dee~ 215]

ill buy once terraforming is in, a real single player is in, an official statement from Maxis saying once we pull the servers we will give you an offline patch, and last not least, regions fixed. I will not change my stance on this no matter what Maxis has to add.

I totally agree, those are the essentials a Sim City game should have, without them it's just not Sim City, whatever Maxis want us to believe.

[Lantentine 4]

I'm going to hold my reservations about no-terraforming. Call me boring but terrain never did much to me - I much rather preferred seeing the city itself grow and evolve on a convenient coastal plain rather than cutting ugly terraces into mountains. However, I do want some variation in terrain.

Put it this way - if we get varying climactic conditions (snow and desert would be awesome, and thinking fancifully, so would a tropical / pacific island setting as well) and interesting, varying terrain, I won't mind that I can't change it myself. I'll just adapt to the new terrain, or just create another region if the old one was too unpleasant.

However, from what I've seen, it isn't promising. The terrain does look awfully boring and temperate. What is especially ugly are those vast, treeless, open plains between cities. They really need to sort that out. Adding rivers, fields, forests, ridges, mountains or gorges would sort that out.

[aparrot7 82]

I'm going to hold my reservations about no-terraforming. Call me boring but terrain never did much to me - I much rather preferred seeing the city itself grow and evolve on a convenient coastal plain rather than cutting ugly terraces into mountains. However, I do want some variation in terrain.

Put it this way - if we get varying climactic conditions (snow and desert would be awesome, and thinking fancifully, so would a tropical / pacific island setting as well) and interesting, varying terrain, I won't mind that I can't change it myself. I'll just adapt to the new terrain, or just create another region if the old one was too unpleasant.

However, from what I've seen, it isn't promising. The terrain does look awfully boring and temperate. What is especially ugly are those vast, treeless, open plains between cities. They really need to sort that out. Adding rivers, fields, forests, ridges, mountains or gorges would sort that out.

This is exactly how I feel. I'll be fine as long as we get a wide variety of maps with interesting natural terrains, centered around a climate/ region of the world. Kinda what CXL did.

[MINIggy03 227]

I think it was flat empty and boring because it's just what they were working with at the time. They've mentioned water connections between cities so we know there will be rivers, lakes, and maybe oceans. We've also seen variations in the terrain with hills and mountains, so an flat/empty/boring region was just what we saw for that specific one and wasn't an indication of what the maps will look like in the end.

  Edited August 10, 2012 by MINIggy03  

[Shark7 118]

As far as global terraforming, I don't think its that bad its not included. In fact it could add some challenge to the game as you can't go in with a big brush and change bad terrain to good.

Keep in mind, when a real city is founded, you don't go in first and say "Let's level 100 square miles of land by this river". What you do is build around the terrain that is present, leveling only spaces large enough for the house/building you are building at the moment. That is why real cities are never perfect grids...you build the way the terrain allows.

[Nevets13 27]

Even though sim city is considered a "game", most people I am aware of who play it (well at least most people on here), don't play it for the challenge. They play it to create their own little world. The model city concept. And part of creating that own world involves changing the landscape.

Maxis is well aware of the model city concept of how players play, because they mentioned it a lot in early interviews and video.

Example: From the tilt shift blog

"I’ve personally always thought of SimCity as a model city that you create and bring to life. It's like an elaborate model train layout, but alive and dynamic. And I'm fascinated with the fastidious, miniaturized detail of model train cities."

but yet unfortunately they decided to go with the multiplayer route, which doesn't fit in with the model city concept at all, and ended up costing us players terraforming.

  Edited August 13, 2012 by Nevets13  

[Helevitia 38]

Deleted by me

  Edited August 19, 2012 by Helevitia  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Well, The Sims 3 had the Create-A-World released sometime after the release of the base game. I think it coincided with an expansion pack. This has the repercussions of implying that SimCity 2013 *might* have a map editor released after the base game.

[Shark7 118]

As far as global terraforming, I don't think its that bad its not included. In fact it could add some challenge to the game as you can't go in with a big brush and change bad terrain to good.

Keep in mind, when a real city is founded, you don't go in first and say "Let's level 100 square miles of land by this river". What you do is build around the terrain that is present, leveling only spaces large enough for the house/building you are building at the moment. That is why real cities are never perfect grids...you build the way the terrain allows.

You are missing the point. Terraforming makes it FUN! And Simcity should be about choice. You could easily not terraform and make it "challenging". But why remove terraforming? Choice!

Not saying that it isn't fun. Just saying that Global Terraforming is not one of those 'I absolutely can't live without this in game' things.

Like I said, its not that bad...there are plenty of other things about the game that are far, far worse than not having global terraforming.

And sure it is nice to have, I do use it some in SC4, like to add in new islands offshore of my main terrain, but I don't have to have it to enjoy the game. Most of the time, I simply play the map as it is generated.

See I use custom maps, and to me that is of far greater importance than terraforming. I like being able to go into the STEX and download a new map to play on. Or maybe I create one myself (done that as well). Seems this new SimCity isn't going to have that, I simply have to play the map the game generates (if I am not mistaken).

[gweed123 33]

As long as there's some kind of a method to download real-world terrains, having or not having God-mode terraforming isn't that big of a deal to me. Most of the time, when I look to start a new region, I go on STEX and browse through the real-world terrains that have been uploaded to find one that best suits what I'm looking for (river, costal region, mountains, etc).

If they have a list of a hundred or so real-world terrains to choose from, I'd be a happy camper.

EDIT: This would also satisfy the 'real to-scale city building' crowd! (to which I occasionally belong)

  Edited August 19, 2012 by gweed123  

[Keigen Shu 17]

I guess they're trying to prevent people from god terraforming obscene landscapes, like how there were a lot of obscene creatures on SPORE. I'll leave the rest of the imagination to you.

[cirugo 1,889]

I guess they're trying to prevent people from god terraforming obscene landscapes, like how there were a lot of obscene creatures on SPORE. I'll leave the rest of the imagination to you.

they shouldn't be trying to prevent people from doing ANYTHING....that's the point of games like this.

[Patricius Maximus 236]

I guess they're trying to prevent people from god terraforming obscene landscapes, like how there were a lot of obscene creatures on SPORE. I'll leave the rest of the imagination to you.

they shouldn't be trying to prevent people from doing ANYTHING....that's the point of games like this.

Exactly. About the realism, there is a distinction between God mode and Mayor mode in SC4 - first you create your landscape and then you create the city and build on that terrain. There is an infinite array of terrain types in the world, and we should be able to create whatever terrain we please to build our cities on. To not be able to do this detracts from the city-building and world-building experience. If you don't want terraforming, you don't have to terraform if you don't want to. In the same vein, a "random-generated map" option would be a nice thing to have when you create a region. Options should be the name of the game when it comes to a world-building, city-building, and sanbox-type game that Simcity represents. And yes, we should have region-wide terraforming capabilities. To suggest that a new game, properly designed and implemented, cannot completely blow SC4 away when it comes to evolving the franchise, after 10 YEARS of time to develop it and advances in technology, strikes me as ridiculous. Evolving the franchise from the same basic game foundation, giving us more capabilities, options, flexibility, and graphics, is the essence of the whole idea of "Simcity 5". That is what we as a community want and need, and unfortunately EA is able but not willing to provide it with their Simcity 2013 effort.

  Edited August 23, 2012 by Patricius Maximus  

[JohnTheMutt 3]

I remember when Will Wright was interviewed about the success of his early SimCity games and when asked how he could explain their popularity he described his Sim City games as more of a 'Toy' rather than a game. A Toy is something you can play with and is only really limited by your imagination. A well designed toy and great imagination equates to a lot of fun.

That being said, it appears that the current creative direction for the Sim City franchise is heading towards 'more game' and 'less toy'. God mode terraforming was a big creative part of the Sim City series and is now removed. Perhaps this is all due to the 'game must be playable only online' edict that EA gave Maxis for DRM issues. For whatever reason, it means less creative satisfaction for city builders and those who enjoy playing with Sim City like the 'toy' it is and should remain. Rather than the increasingly limited 'game' it is becoming...

[Urban Cartographer 601]

Flexibility is significantly curtailed with this EA-imposed DRM. We can no longer design whimsical landscapes to design cities. We can no longer re-create real world city locations.

[nathanthemayor 1,261]

Hopefully even if there isn't terraforming, then at least all the maps will be like sandboxes(Aka a blank, flat map to start off). However, I have seen photos from EA(Note: Speculation) that maybe there will be pre-terraformed mountains and rivers in the new game. However, if my theory is true, then no slope mod needed!

[jacksunny 741]

We can no longer re-create real world city locations.

Perhaps EA will release maps of real world cities as DLC.

[Urban Cartographer 601]

We can no longer re-create real world city locations.

Perhaps EA will release maps of real world cities as DLC.

I really hope that those are inexpensive.

[jacksunny 741]

We can no longer re-create real world city locations.

Perhaps EA will release maps of real world cities as DLC.

I really hope that those are inexpensive.

I can see them being $3 at the highest. I wouldn't pay anything more than that unless the map was amazing.

[jdenm8 362]

I can see them being $3 at the highest. I wouldn't pay anything more than that unless the map was amazing.

Let me fix that for you.

I can see them being $15 at the lowest. I wouldn't pay anything more than that unless the map was amazing.

We've got examples of this, the EA-created extra neighbourhoods for The Sims 3. Yes it isn't as good a deal, but this is EA we're talking about, they're going to gouge us when it comes to this.

  Edited September 16, 2012 by jdenm8