New Screenshots

[Towel 76]

Well I am of the opinion that games should get different levels of leeway on graphical issues based on their scope.

 

Simcity has a very tiny scope to your comparison of a FPS for example. while an FPS might have less complexity overall (which is questionable, depending on whether the game has a physics engine and whether the weapons are hit scan or not and all the scripted crap that seems popular with FPS these days...). All the action in simcity takes part in a 2x2 cube, while an FPS is in a always changing environment. So a graphical mistake in an FPS is more forgivable and ultimately less visible than one in simcity would...

 

Its like how your less likely to notice a damaged box in a warehouse full of boxes then if you had only 4 boxes in a 2x2 get up.

 

Simcity insists that it take place in a tiny little box...so that box better be perfect if they want my 60 bucks is all im saying.

 

Scope is key.

 

Actually, with simulation games such as SimCity there is a phenomenal amount of work that goes into coding the engine and how things work together. Not to mention the code integrating every city and the global economy. The closest you would get to this in a shooter is the enemy A.I. and in the example of Aliens: Coloniel Marines, it basically does not exist.

 

I'd wager quite a significant sum that the scope of this SimCity is significantly larger that of most AAA titles on the market. Perhaps not in the volume of assets, but certainly in relation to coding and the engine.

 

Having said that, most graphical mistakes in a shooter are unforgivable. Most shooters are a controlled experience where all things are mostly a known quantity.

[CaptCity 4,753]

We're wandering off the "Screen shot" topic here...

[efgrib 45]

Its not just one graphical bug, there have been several showing up even though the game is in gold state already. From the trains stopping at intersections for cars, to the lack of correct rail crossings, to the civic center roads, to the road intersections, to the trees in the road, etc etc...

 

My point was never the one mistake, but the several taken together. It shows that the game never went into polish stage before gold. And when you take into account the small maps...you have to wonder where all the dev time has gone and why? Its the engine. They are running into issues with the engine they hadnt anticipated and its pushed them well behind schedule..and typical of EA, instead of delaying they are pushing it out in a no polish state because they know people will buy it. 60 bucks is a blockbuster PC price point. If they demand that price point, and expect the limited map sizes to be okay, the lack of landscape editing to be okay, the lack of regional freedom to be okay, the always online to be okay, and the general lack of mass transit to be okay , then then sure as hell have better have what limited stuff they have in the game at launch to be god damn polished to gleaming... and yet they havent done it.

 

Its not just one picture. Its the big picture, all off the bugs already seen. Where was the dev time spent? It wasnt on polish thats for sure, it wasnt on building signage, thats for sure....soooooo the only logical conclusion is the engine..

 

 

your interpretation of what "gold-status" is meaning is totaly outdated, very outdated... and a lot of the things are already polished out (whatch oceans newer videos with trains e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMHxtoAfY3I )  

but you want hate, you will hate, and all what i can say is senseless at this point i think...

[rawls 39]

Relax, this was fixed already. 

 

 

[The_City_Builder 299]

The one on the right (the way we see it) looks rather sloppy, but at least they acknowledged it.

 

Edit: And now my comment makes absolutely no sense because the picture I was replying too is gone. What is this?

 

Edit 2: Yay, it's back.

[SirChick 184]

We're wandering off the "Screen shot" topic here...

 

Maybe you should of left it a sticky...until game is released

[Towel 76]

From Ocean on twitter:

 

Ocean Quigley @oceanquigley

Starting with City Hall base, then: Dept. of Finance, Safety, Transportation, Tourism, Utilities, Education & helipad

 

 

 

 

[CaptCity 4,753]

We're wandering off the "Screen shot" topic here...

 

Maybe you should of left it a sticky...until game is released

 

Being stickied has nothing to do with staying on topic...

[SirChick 184]

 

We're wandering off the "Screen shot" topic here...

 

Maybe you should of left it a sticky...until game is released

 

Being stickied has nothing to do with staying on topic...

 

 

I know but i wanted you to sticky it again We are still getting nice screens after all I keep having to find the thread

[Wildcat67 12]

You do realize that Tokyo is the largest city on the planet and has 35 million people in an area the size of everything between Philadelphia and New York City? Essentially taking up the entire northern half of the state of New Jersey.

 

Tokyo itself is divided up into dozens of districts, with the 23 central ones (also known as Special Wards) each being large enough to fit on a 4x4km SC4 tile (and the outlying ones are even larger). The core districts themselves have populations that are between a quarter and half a million people. Some of these districts have sooo many businesses that during the daytime there's nearly a million people moving about in those special wards.

 

Tokyo itself is the conglomeration of all these districts and all the surrounding edge cities, sprawl, and suburbs. The thing is a colossal continuous titan of a city.

 

The little town-sized tiles in the new SimCity, are realistically able to be as large as a small country town. After a certain size, once the high-density buildings come into play, the unrealistic edge of the city becomes a huge let down. You can tell by the city boundaries and the surrounding No Man's Land in most screenshots.

 

Goodbye SimCity... Hello SimTown (aka The Sims 3: Small Towns Expansion Pack)

 

Tragic indeed

I didn't mean it was literally like Tokyo, just in the sense that it is very densely packed.

 

Non of the cities in SC4 were as big as Tokyo either.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

I didn't mean it was literally like Tokyo, just in the sense that it is very densely packed.

 

 

Non of the cities in SC4 were as big as Tokyo either.

 

Well sure, none of the cities in any game will be larger than 4x4 ever... That's just incredibly unmanageable (if i do remember correctly though, SC 3000 had 4 city sizes... Not sure how they scaled them).

 

The whole point is that having all the city tiles right next to each other allowed the user(s) to create a vast continuous Metropolis (1 Million +) or a Megalopolis for those up for the challenge (10 Million +) in SC4. This game doesn't allow for that... I'm sure the casual gamers and many others don't really care, but for me and several others, it really grinds my gears.

 

 

Staying on topic:

 

 

^ I feel like that's the same city they used in a demo video for a rotational view, which inadvertently revealed how silly it looked to have a dense city-core die off at the city's boundaries into empty green spaces. Having a city-core stand by itself without the rest of the surrounding sprawl, edge cities, inner-city ghettos, mid-urbs, suburbs, and even farmlands? There's not a single urban area on Earth that looks like that.

[guitarmatt99 27]

Found some pics of regions!

 

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Did they really only make three resources for the vanilla game?

 

-____-

[nhgriffith 179]

Did they really only make three resources for the vanilla game?

 

-____-

I think the "ore" is different types of metals... not just purely "ore." But there are far more than three resources. Those pictures just show the raw, in the ground, resources.

They can be refined into other resources, and then refined further into final products (that are still "resources" in a sense).

Oil is extracted as crude oil, and can be refined into Fuel or into Plastics, just for example. The plastics are used as a resource in the Electronics city in order to produce consumer electronics, and the fuel is used in Oil Power plants. Additionally, fuel is one of he resources needed to construct the space shuttle great work.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Did they really only make three resources for the vanilla game?

 

-____-

I think the "ore" is different types of metals... not just purely "ore." But there are far more than three resources. Those pictures just show the raw, in the ground, resources.

They can be refined into other resources, and then refined further into final products (that are still "resources" in a sense).

Oil is extracted as crude oil, and can be refined into Fuel or into Plastics, just for example. The plastics are used as a resource in the Electronics city in order to produce consumer electronics, and the fuel is used in Oil Power plants. Additionally, fuel is one of he resources needed to construct the space shuttle great work.

 

WOW! Now we're talking!!!!

 

I wonder if the ores actually yield something like aluminum, iron, gold, silver, copper, and even uranium (for nuclear power plants)... If the resources are anywhere near as diverse as that of Rise of Nations, then that gives me another reason to buy the game.

 

Still though, I almost feel like that screenshot should've had more than just three resources on it. Rather misleading for many people.

 

[nhgriffith 179]

The only reason I know about fuel vs plastics is from one of the developer blogs or something like that.

I'm sure there's some diversity with the ore, though I'm not as clear on that. And I don't have a clue about coal (although I'm pretty certain that you can use coal in combination with ore to make steel).

One thing I do know is that with the right upgrade, your recycling center can get alloys out of the recycling. So if you're running a city with industry that needs alloys, it can be extraordinarily beneficial to invest a ton of money into a massive recycling center and buy as many recycling trucks as possible and send them across the region to collect your neighbors recycling so that you can get the alloy out of it.

As for the screenshot... the thing is, in the ground, oil is just oil. It's crude oil. That's how it's extracted. That's the only way to extract it. If you found a real life oil deposit, you can't just dig a hole, scoop some into your car, then drive off. It has to be refined. So whether you make fuel or plastics (or both) (or neither) out of it depends entirely on how you develop your oil city.

It'd be pointless to mark the map with fuel and plastics as resources... because there's no fuel or plastics in the ground. The only thing that's in the ground that can be extracted is crude oil.

[nats 99]

Those maps look much more fun than the default SC4 ones. I could have some fun with this game I think.

[Zukunftstraume 220]

 

I didn't mean it was literally like Tokyo, just in the sense that it is very densely packed.

 

 

Non of the cities in SC4 were as big as Tokyo either.

 

Well sure, none of the cities in any game will be larger than 4x4 ever... That's just incredibly unmanageable (if i do remember correctly though, SC 3000 had 4 city sizes... Not sure how they scaled them).

Cities XL managed it just fine.

 

How big were they? 8x8?

 

And my fault, I meant to say "any SimCity" game.

[Sunfighter 186]

Whats the blue dotted line on the 2nd to the bottom region?

[nhgriffith 179]

Probably for ferries or something of the sort.

[The_City_Builder 299]

The fact that those are only a few of the available regions makes me super excited. Those are some really detailed regions if you ask me. I think I'm more interested in the 6th one. Looks challenging yet fun.

[Sunfighter 186]

Whats the blue dotted line on the 2nd to the bottom region?

 

The fact that those are only a few of the available regions makes me super excited. Those are some really detailed regions if you ask me. I think I'm more interested in the 6th one. Looks challenging yet fun.

 

Im curious how some of the regions dont have connecting highways to every individual map, and now the simulator deals with that aspect. Is one section isolated from the other since traffic cant get there...or?

[Zukunftstraume 220]

The fact that those are only a few of the available regions makes me super excited. Those are some really detailed regions if you ask me. I think I'm more interested in the 6th one. Looks challenging yet fun.

 

5 > 6

Whats the blue dotted line on the 2nd to the bottom region?

 

The fact that those are only a few of the available regions makes me super excited. Those are some really detailed regions if you ask me. I think I'm more interested in the 6th one. Looks challenging yet fun.

 

Im curious how some of the regions dont have connecting highways to every individual map, and now the simulator deals with that aspect. Is one section isolated from the other since traffic cant get there...or?

 

They're still accessible by either rail or boat. Probably designed that way to provide an interesting challenge to the city. I'm really liking that idea.

 

Similar to how Berlin was only accessible to the western powers during the Cold War via air-lifts. Not even rail or seas there!

[mapboy 106]

Those are some great regions. Especially the last one. Really shows how the whole 'barren wasted space' can be avoided through smart placement of cities between mountain ranges and waterways.

[bokrif 18]

Look at these. I really like all of them but I got two ideas based on these:

1. Look how close some of them are to each other! Actually barely a few block away is the next city. This is practically putting tiles next to each other. Than where did all those arguments go about "wierd looking freezed simulation is not good so we are spacing out cities"? So if these are actual regions than they really heard all those cries about empty spaces? Than it is almost possible to have larger city sprawls than one tile. Actually. (I guess the only problem is with the Glassbox engine. Maybe they couldn't code in the part that makes multiple entry/exit points for city tiles.)

2. If they heard the cries and did these than they are pretty good and eager to fulfill the fans' endless wishes...

Maybe I am overly optimistic but I hope you see the progress from wierd empty spaces to this.

[The_City_Builder 299]

I wonder if we'll ever get a region creator tool, like the Create-A-World tool in Sims 3. 

 

Also, about how close the tiles are. If you look closely to the left on the first one you quoted bok, it almost looks like we could have perfectly aligned tiles in between Settler's Rest and Pioneer Plains....but it looks like they purposely didn't put a tile in between them...

[Zukunftstraume 220]

Those are some great regions. Especially the last one. Really shows how the whole 'barren wasted space' can be avoided through smart placement of cities between mountain ranges and waterways.

 

This on partially solves the barren waste problem. From far away with only empty city tiles, it seems like this problem is nearly completely solved. But even in the final region, the barren waste problem will be back to haunt you once you realize there's still a 1km gap between your hi-rises and your neighbor's.

 

I wonder if we'll ever get a region creator tool, like the Create-A-World tool in Sims 3. 

 

Also, about how close the tiles are. If you look closely to the left on the first one you quoted bok, it almost looks like we could have perfectly aligned tiles in between Settler's Rest and Pioneer Plains....but it looks like they purposely didn't put a tile in between them...

 

Hopefully. Knowing EA, they'll probably release such a tool in a future expansion or as DLC which must be purchased.

 

So, we'll have the option of dealing with their pre-made regions with No Man's Land or making our own, with city tiles all lined up next to each other. The only thing that scares me is that such a "region-editing tool", I feel will be nowhere near as customizable as SC4 regions.

 

But, hopefully I'm wrong about all this.

[Towel 76]

I posted a bunch or screenshots from todays community day to my blog here: http://mysimcity.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/community-day/

 

Enjoy!

[AnyNameWillDo 6]

73 images from the community day here https://imgur.com/a/YRxB0

[AnyNameWillDo 6]

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