SimCity: Terraforming

[jacksunny 741]

Good point. I would never pay $15 for a map though, that's just getting ridiculous.

[Urban Cartographer 601]

Good point. I would never pay $15 for a map though, that's just getting ridiculous.

I must agree. That would rip fans off completely in the name of greed. $3 is much more reasonable.

[McMurray02 55]

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.

In a real life situation, no doubt terraforming an entire city isn't a realistic proposition. Of course, the ability to do so was part of the draw in SC3K and SC4. Understandably, it will be missed. Civil engineering seems reasonable. It means that it'll cost money (use limited resources) and bring more realism to the game.

That said, in a multi-player version of SimCity, terraforming just isn't feasible and here's why: SimCityScape! Does anyone remember that from SC4? I sure hope someone on the SimCity development team does. That feature was a disaster! It was such a disaster, I couldn't even remember what it was called until I dug up the box the game was packed into, and found the manual. I can't even find a screen shot of it, nor a mention of it in Wikipedia. (It deserves a mention in Wiki, simply to warn others.) The concept sounded beautiful: build an online region by taking control of one sector, and collaborating with other players. The problem was that there was no collaboration. The map ended up looking like a really horrible piece of patchwork made of discarded scraps found out of the dumpster behind a homeless camp. Roads, zones, mountains, oceans - none of it matched. So, the lack of terraforming seems to avoid the pitfalls of this, while at the same time, it supports realism.

As far as those who really want terraforming, chances are they also want a single player game. I think that should be considered, but the influence of a solo game (which has a sandbox mode) should have a limited influence on those who play online. It wouldn't be right to set up a map and dump lots of resources to be exploited and then influence the economy of the online cities.

Personally, I'm ready for online collaboration, and regional play that actually works. That's a tall order! I know it's a change from the past and it brings some new limitations, but I think it'll be a great feature. I've sat out and have waited for 10 years. I've avoided buying Societies, and the other city simulators. I'm putting my trust in Maxis/EA to get this one right, because they can't afford to do otherwise. Also, I don't think I can wait another year without getting my SimCity fix!

  Edited September 19, 2012 by McMurray02  

[MrCinatit 30]

The lack of terraforming is a huge personal disappointment - but, hey, it is EA's decision.

Terraforming was one of those unknown surprises of the game. Once a player mastered it, this pre-game game could overshadow the city building concept of the game itself. The ability to build mountain ranges covered with trees, rolling realistically through the terrain until dwindling into a bay was an awesome feeling, when done right. And once the modifications hit, the game was a pure addiction. Deserts, great redwood forests, mountaintop lakes with collections of dead trees, waterfalls, huge volcanoes, small creeks surrounded by flowery meadows - billions of opportunities to create a distinct landscape that breathed life into itself and into the city which inhabited it, giving both their own personality. Castles on the side of cliffs, small villages on the side of a mountaintop, island prisons, great bays with marinas and loading docks - cities which, when blended into the landscape at the hands of experts, were so realistic, many wanted to live in them, with those cities telling their own stories.

All now tragically unavailable. So it goes.

[SoftcoreGamer 352]

“god mode as a pregame-game and great addiction” - totally relate to that sentiment.

To moir, God Mode is a must. Or don’t call it Simcity.

I still recall that moment I first ran SC4 – the game opens with vast expansive rolling green glittering waters beautiful paradise of God Mode complete with animals and birds and swaying trees of all colors and awesome angelic soundtrack. OMG. THIS is all MINE to shape and mould? I fell in love.

Some simple Q&A to enlighten the jaded ones at Maxis:

Q: Why was God Mode named GOD mode?

A: Once upon a time Maxis creatives understood Simcity Freaks as the ultimate GOD GAMERS. Yes, ultimate, that’s right. Today, however…

Q: What are GOD GAMERS?

A: Intelligent humans who are obsessed with God games, as in, playing DICTATORIAL GOD in an artificial world, shaping and manipulating everything in it to our heart’s content. The Sims is Sim-Family-god. Spore is Sim-Evolution-god. Simcity is Sim-World-god. Simcity2013 MMO collaboration is not a god game but “Sim-union”, or maybe even Sim-socialists. This is not to say Maxis is not trying to pose as the single dictatorial god in their Sim-Union, and reduce Simcity God Gamers to mere hapless sims to be owned and exploited. Trouble is, god gamers are really not dumbo sims nor “game units”, so the more effective and profitable method is to listen and cater to the wishes of City-building God Gamers.

Q: What is so awesome about SC4 God Mode anyway?

A: You get to raise mountain, cut cliffs, plunge valleys, shape river curves, make tiered slopes, carve steep hill sides for rails, form calderas, even create Plato’s triple rings of Atlantis. You get to spray on trees, shrubs, beasts, rocks, sand, grass anywhere you want. A truly godly experience, indeed.

Q: Is Simcity the only game with so-called God Mode?

A: NOOOOPE. Almost every popular MMOs today have God Mode equivalent. Simcity2013 should come complete with this STANDARD, BASIC, MAP-EDITTING FEATURE. Moreover, MAP EDITING is a FUNDAMENTAL part of SIMMING a CITY!!

If we God Gamers can’t even terraform (!!!) or spray trees anywhere we like(!!!), don’t call the new game Simcity. Call it Maxis-Sim-Lazy-Unimaginative-Loveless-Subscribers.

Q: Any “rational” reason why they would limit God Mode and terraforming?

A: False economy of map packs, perhaps. Technically, no justification. Auto-terraforming is a built-in feature of zoning, buildings and roads; the resource math is cheap. For single-play, there’s zero excuse. For MMO, firstly, there is apparently huge terrain gap between microcities and regions; two, city and region border edges could easily be auto-reconciled and smoothed out when exiting/loading or auto-updated at regular time intervals; again, cheap math. EVEN CitiesXL soloplay has this simple yet EFFECTIVE feature of color-coding map areas to shape-able or not. The borders are, of course, highlighted in red as reminder that this area cannot be morphed. No fuss, really.

Q: Should Maxis implement this ECONOMICAL and DESIRABLE GOD MODE TERRAFORMING feature?

Yes. No brainer. They better. God Mode terraforming was the most addictive SC4 feature before the mod/BAT scene took off years later. The lack of God Mode terraforming alone will alienate 50% of guaranteed customers. Why do that? Oh I forgot, Maxis geniuses are into the concept of engineered deprivation in MMOs - apparently someone told them Simcity hardcores are masochists who enjoy not being fed what they want.

In reality, however, it is pointless to deprive SC core gamers of EVERYTHING WE LOVE ABOUT SIMCITY – from terraforming to customizing to saved multiple versions to the most basic gamer’s right: playing the game WHENEVER WHEREVER HOWEVER we want it in our little god fantasies.

[anytownUSA 32]

I paid $20 dollars for SC4. Its safe to say that I have more than gotten my moneys worth since I've been playing it for I don't know how long. Its one of the best creative outlets I have.

Therefore if I spent $60 on SC5 and it was a total waste I wouldn't feel bad about it at all. Even if I came back to SC4 exclusively. I just feel like I owe something back since I've loved SC4 so much for so many years.

I'm giving SC5 a chance no matter what.

  Edited October 9, 2012 by anytownusa  

[Screwballl 196]

One article states there is no terraforming (http://kotaku.com/59...im-city-preview), but I have to believe this is was a misunderstanding.

Anyone else have information one way or another?

They just said in the live video stream today that there is no terraforming.... I suspect someone will find a mod or developer edit that will allow it...

[kwetzel345 101]

Screwball, a mod for terraforming I am pretty sure Ea will not allow. Only reason I could think of is because of resources and that could possibly mess with your resources, such as by giving you more resource deposits than they want you to have. I am also pretty sure, as is other people, that mods will probably be have to sent to some mod store, where they can dictate which mods are okay. Like such a feature the sims 3 has with the sims 3 store. I'm guessing you could not upload ones such as money tree's or infinite resources or something of that manor. It is quite unfortunate.

[Screwballl 196]

Screwball, a mod for terraforming I am pretty sure Ea will not allow. Only reason I could think of is because of resources and that could possibly mess with your resources, such as by giving you more resource deposits than they want you to have. I am also pretty sure, as is other people, that mods will probably be have to sent to some mod store, where they can dictate which mods are okay. Like such a feature the sims 3 has with the sims 3 store. I'm guessing you could not upload ones such as money tree's or infinite resources or something of that manor. It is quite unfortunate.

Thats not to say people will not figure out how to mod/hack local maps and resources, causing the leaderboards they are planning to use be literally useless. It is an unfortunate side effect that I doubt they are prepared to handle.

[jacksunny 741]

Screwball, a mod for terraforming I am pretty sure Ea will not allow. Only reason I could think of is because of resources and that could possibly mess with your resources, such as by giving you more resource deposits than they want you to have. I am also pretty sure, as is other people, that mods will probably be have to sent to some mod store, where they can dictate which mods are okay. Like such a feature the sims 3 has with the sims 3 store. I'm guessing you could not upload ones such as money tree's or infinite resources or something of that manor. It is quite unfortunate.

They could make it so we can use modding tools to create our own maps, but resource deposits are generated by the game to prevent this from happening.

[kwetzel345 101]

But whats the use of such a tool if the area they give us is so small that we need all of that available space to build a city. Wouldn't mountains or water take up like half of the map. That to me wouldn't seem beneficial to have if they would cut our build area to be even smaller as it is now, thanks to the already small maps we have?

I also want to add that I am up for such a tool if someone made one, just thought that with the multiplayer and all that it would be impossible. But if someone was able to make one, than that's awesome. I would not be complaining.

[Karybdis 34]

The lack of built in terraforming is a massive let down. Lack of subways is another let down, and I'm worried about density options for building.

However, don't assume just because maxis doesn't have built in terraforming that we wont add it ourselves. If there's a demand from us and the game is good enough, we'll add it I'm sure, even if it breaks online functionality. Mind you that would likely be done outside the game like the external terrain editor made for SC4. The other question is if the map sizes are even hard coded somewhere, or if it just puts an articifical barrier around a section of the map to improve performance.

[Djohaal 121]

Mr. Cinatit pretty much nailed it.Cities are the result of human interaction taming and modifying nature to its needs, and while not in the same magnitude as raising mountains, we do channel rivers, flatten hils, even sink whole rivers underground as cities grow. None of this seems to be feasible in sc2013

That sounds like an obvious manouver to turn more game content into capitalizable DLC (as if the base game isn't expensive enough).

More and more I'm getting the feeling this will flop. Maybe not as bad as simcity societies, but it will.

Not the proper place, but what will happen when EA decides to pull the plug on their servers? Maxis stated in one of their interviews. I read at rock-paper-shotgun that the whole game is built around a client-server structure. That means once EA pulls the plug on their end (and they have an habit of doing so), we'll be left in the void.

  Edited October 24, 2012 by Djohaal  

[nathanthemayor 1,261]

it's sad that they removed terraforming. But if SimCity is just about you being just a mayor and not a god I kinda see why.

[InCommandOfCars 22]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this but The Sims 3 has a map creator...

Maybe Simcity will get one one day?

Like realistically thinking terraforming isn't on their agenda, they want this game to be quite realistic (Glassbox for example). Who knows, maybe they will release a tool to make maps after launch. Just wait and see. It still looks like an amazing game!

[Jokurr 175]

Realism is not a good reason for not including terraforming, it's definitely not the real reason. The real reason, as previously mentioned is because it simply doesn't work in a multiplayer environment. Players would create rivers that lead into mountains, and other such discontiguous terrain.

[Screwballl 196]

This new version is more like being a city council member than a mayor or god. You can choose layout of roads and some zoning/building locations, but everything else is out of your control. SimCity classic from the 80s gets a facelift is what we are getting.

[Odainsaker 2,134]

Realism is not a good reason for not including terraforming, it's definitely not the real reason. The real reason, as previously mentioned is because it simply doesn't work in a multiplayer environment. Players would create rivers that lead into mountains, and other such discontiguous terrain.

Yep, the discontiguous terrain would have to somehow be reconciled between the player's city map and the automated regional map. What happens if my region is flatland, but I make high mountains in my city all the way to the city edge? Does the mountain mysteriously slice off at the border, or is there a "smart" region algorithm that adjusts the immediate surrounding terrain of the region to seamlessly match the city, and, if so, then how would all that work with fixed Great Works sites and premade connection routes that are outside player control? Those sorts of complexities with altering small portions of pre-baked regions make it very hard to just slip in terraforming after the fact, as reconciling terrain involves the nature of the underlying framework of regions. Either region maps are already programmed to be reconciliable from the outset, making terraforming already easy and the leaving out of terraforming a peculiar decision, or region maps are not so reconciliable, which would necessitate leaving terraforming functions out completely and creating significant programming and deployment hurdles to adding terraforming functions later. Groan, the everyone-always-and-only-online multiplayer setup simply forced them into these sorts of design decisions that sacrifice too much.

I speculated in another thread somewhere that the need to reduce filesize so that players could have a reasonable number of cities saved to their accounts, which Origin limits to 100MB, might have pushed them to keep terrain data almost entirely server-side. Afterall, if Maxis at the minimum allowed each Origin player account to have one single-player region of 16 fully-developed cities, then each cloud saved city could be no more than just over 6MB in size. Severely reducing map size is the easiest way to cut down file size. Among the next most impactful ways of reducing filesize is to make terrain data a universal template on the servers rather than a unique instance for each player which must be saved within their individual games. Hence, for such a setup, terraforming and even player customization of region maps must by necessity be disallowed. Indeed, widespread modding would be exceedingly difficult as well, as our current multi-gigabyte plugins folders all show. Of course, I am speculating and am depressive of this line of boxed-in thinking with so many unknowns...perhaps they realized other significant savings elsewhere in spite of GlassBox's increased simulation intricacies, say through heroic programming advances since SimCity 4 came out with its goliath filesizes, or perhaps we will be allowed far fewer save game slots than the minimum I suggested of 1 full region of 16 full cities. What we do know so far is that we have woefully small maps and no terraforming, and thinking of both makes me sad.

[MegaCitySim 68]

Small map and no terraforming makes me very sad too. I agree with the point about modding becoming difficult it is the same with other games, once they are pushed online it tends to take a long time to even start modding and even then a lot of the mods are not legit. Probably why they never really confirm modding even glass box is suppposed to be modding friendly. I don't really get the resource being used as the reason terraforming is removed (withheld?)...In many other games players get to do sandbox stuff and play with placing your own resource. Maybe they think the new type of gamers they want won't care about sandbox stuff but honetly to me it is not a citybuilder if you can't move the earth.

[mimzy 1]

Just read about this. HUGE disappointment! Indeed, it's becoming less of a 'toy' and more of a competitive 'game'. Damn capitalism and social media having to ruin everything.

And here I was, hoping to make entire nations with fully 3D views. If I wanted an MMO I'd just play World of Warcraft!

[macvirt 361]

One article states there is no terraforming (http://kotaku.com/59...im-city-preview), but I have to believe this is was a misunderstanding.

Anyone else have information one way or another?

They just said in the live video stream today that there is no terraforming.... I suspect someone will find a mod or developer edit that will allow it...

That depends entirely on the level of access the design allows for third party customisation. Content art is one thing, hooks and handlers to scripting is another thing on the other far end of the scale.

But now consider that today making money with a game after the sale of the game is more important than the initial purchase. Especially where it comes to EA.

What does that mindset bode for how deep moddability will be allowed to go? Well, I can easily see maps be DLC only, and that kind of acces not available by default to modding.

[AndisArt 2,066]

It makes sense to not allow terraforming in regards to the always-online and always-multiplayer setup of the game, yes.

But this just demonstrates what is so much missing here in this game: a single player mode!

I wouldnt even care that much if I had to be online to play if there was a single player mode that gave me the freedom we got used to know from the last installations of the game. As many people have said here before, this is one of the main things that made SimCity fun. Be the God, goddamit. No terraforming is going to be very difficult for creative city journaling (at least after a while when you've got to know all the available maps and you've seen them over and over again in games). This is also a no to recreating real regions.

There are features of the new game that sound good and promising, but overall it feels like the game will just be too different and too little appealing for someone that likes to tweak, mod, customize, or simply said be creative. I dont wanna judge too much before having played the game, and we dont know what Maxis is planning for after the release, but I am quite sceptical at this point. At least when comparing to the predecessor and what that game means to the community and how incredibly long-lasting it has become. SimCity 2013 might actually be a fun game in itself with many improvements, but from the looks of all the limitations that have also been added it will require Maxis to add a lot more afterwards to give the game a real chance to have a long life-span.

[Dewm 177]

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.

And we also have to remember its a game, the point of a game is to have fun, if they only have a few maps (SC4 had what 5 maps?) I will get burned pretty quickly. I liked creating interesting terrain and then spending the rest of the game trying to work my city into the landscape.

Or sometimes I would get bored and just create a flat map and see how many people I could cram in...

It was a sandbox!

  Edited January 16, 2013 by CaptCity  
Edited off-topic content.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

And we also have to remember its a game, the point of a game is to have fun, if they only have a few maps (SC4 had what 5 maps?)

SC 2013 will be fun without the terraforming (or more precisely no 'god-like' terraforming) I hope, but godmode terraforming added whole new dimensions to building cities and I hope this game has that for the single player mode. I also think the 'green belt' perimeter surrounding city tiles should be abolished, and instead city tiles connect up as then you can have more realistic urban developments when looking at the region view.

SC games have always had that sandbox quality and restricting the terraforming options could reduce the appeal of the game as a whole. Ultimately, lets not remove a great feature from SC4, at the very least bring back godmode terraforming in say an expansion pack of SC 2013...

[heat33330 26]

Screwball, a mod for terraforming I am pretty sure Ea will not allow. Only reason I could think of is because of resources and that could possibly mess with your resources, such as by giving you more resource deposits than they want you to have. I am also pretty sure, as is other people, that mods will probably be have to sent to some mod store, where they can dictate which mods are okay. Like such a feature the sims 3 has with the sims 3 store. I'm guessing you could not upload ones such as money tree's or infinite resources or something of that manor. It is quite unfortunate.

What do you mean? The Sims 3 Store is just for Eaxis content. You can still mod the game freely. Look at Mod The Sims or Nraas Industries.

[magicrobbie 77]

Dear Maxis, PLEASE bring back terraforming!!! Designing landscapes and freely creating maps was one of the best features in the old games and I used to spend hours modeling maps. So please bring back offline single player, terraforming and large, fully-connected cities. Please!