Future of SimCity Official Discussion Thread

[Nightfawx 0]

@thenext88: nice images! Where are they from?

[Namesys 3]

Nightfawx, it's WiC -> world in conflict RTS game.

[tomas1990 2]

Hi everyone, I have really big trouble, all my downloaded mods are working, but when is night they are without light, why?

[smstevenms 7]

thenext88, what's these shots taken from? They look awesome.

Tomas you need to go to maxis website and download the patch (don't remember the name), someone here knows what I'm talking about.

[KingTitan 6]

Those pics looks awesome.. Looks like i would have to buy a SUPER computer from another planet to handle any sort of graphics like that.

[thenext88 102]

The pics I took were in DX10 mode which runs slower than DX9 mode, which looks great on its own. But as far needing a super computer, maybe not. I'm not sure how computer intensive WiC is, but obviously no where near how intensive a full scale city simulation would be. If multi-core CPUs could be utilized fully for SimCity games, I don't believe this would really be an issue, especially for those who run quad cores.

As far as graphics goes, there are a lot of computer that could run the game just fine without all of the fancy effects (like real time cloud shadows, dynamic lighting, god rays, etc) especially on lower resolutions than the one I run. But throwing in the city simulation would most likely slow things down.

It's not the graphics that slow SCS down... because even Crysis runs better on my computer than SCS does.

[mayors 0]

There are other empire/city building games I think cimcity can learn from.

Civ IV -

Militiary - It would be nice to see invasions in Simcity, although it would be sorta wierd i have to admitt

Ethnicity - In Civ IV a city with varying ethnicities has detrimental effects on the cities loyalty and overall well being

Resources - A city with a copper resource gains a new trade item and also some projects are halved in building costs (eg copper havles the building cost of the Internet)

city specialists - At the start, when all or most of the population is required to work for food, but later on as technology and population increases, more food is available and some people are able to specialize, eg become scientists or engineers. In simcity, this could be implemented by having a threshold of an amount of citizens required to work and be productive but changes as with education, population etc. They would affect the city through things like altering building costs, affecting what buildings sprout in RCI zones.

Pharoah - (this is a really old game)

Kingdom Road - In pharoah, when you started a city, a road was already present running from the edges of the map. In simcity, a region should start with a road/highway going through it

Military - again.

storyline - in pharoah this is the story of your family line from predynastic periods to the new kingdom. sometimes you are required to build a prospering city, other times you are given a city that is in dire need of improvement.

Rank - if storyline was implemented, this would mean the player would need to ascend in rank in order to gain some advantages. eg, a player may start at the Council Member rank and work his way up to mayor. lower ranks would not have access to things like zoning high density and so on.

[smstevenms 7]

Thomas I think it's the SC4Update patch, I think, not positive.

[uhcougar31 7]

1. Would love to see free flowing roads in every direction, size, type, color, price, gender, flavor, smell, and species.

2. And then of course for all buildings and such to orient to them as necessary.

3. Different styles for the civic buildings, more than one design of school, police station, hospital, etc. To start with, which leads to

4. An easy interface for anyone to design a limitless amount of buildings of every type.

5. Instead of schools and police stations etc. covering a radius, let us select a district by drawing the boundaries for each school or station. And after a new school or station is placed you can redraw the boundaries to even them out. ( I have one school that covers the same amount of land, though less houses, that serves only 4 students, compared to the closest school to it that does encompass more houses, but serves 200+ students.)

6. Indoor arenas for sports/concerts. Outdoor concert venues.

7. The ability to choose which sport(s) you want played at a stadium and the correct field lignage shows as directed.

7b. More options for different sized stadiums, schools, hospitals, airports, seaports, etc. Or maybe they expand on their own depending on the usage they get.

8. BRING THE NEWSPAPER BACK!

9. Weather effects, seasonal effects, Mother nature effects.

10. Manually drawn routes for mass trans.

11. Free screen rotation (every 3,000 miles)

12. Larger palettes for a single city. Or as someone else said, make a region one big city.

13. MMO play. Create a country or a globe and let users pick a section of land for their region. Make city deals with other users, Sports leagues form between city's, olympic events, the World cup, Super Bowls are bidded on and awarded to different cities. Cities gain or lose population to neighboring cities if adjacent cities are more attractive, taxes are better, crime is less, etc. Some cities are more of tourist attractions if built that way. A space program , FBI agency, Halls of Fames, Specific museums can be awarded to a city or maybe a city is named capital of the country or it can be relocated to a more desirable city. Wow I can go on and on on this one........

I'll stop there for now......that's a lot to chew on. Forgive me if any ideas I posted have already been listed (roads)

[smstevenms 7]

Man, I have no time to chew on all that. lol

[terzetto 0]

Originally posted by: mayors There are other empire/city building games I think cimcity can learn from.

Civ IV -

Militiary - It would be nice to see invasions in Simcity, although it would be sorta wierd i have to admitt

Resources - A city with a copper resource gains a new trade item and also some projects are halved in building costs (eg copper havles the building cost of the Internet)

city specialists - At the start, when all or most of the population is required to work for food, but later on as technology and population increases, more food is available and some people are able to specialize, eg become scientists or engineers. In simcity, this could be implemented by having a threshold of an amount of citizens required to work and be productive but changes as with education, population etc. They would affect the city through things like altering building costs, affecting what buildings sprout in RCI zones.

Pharoah - (this is a really old game)

Military - again.

storyline - in pharoah this is the story of your family line from predynastic periods to the new kingdom. sometimes you are required to build a prospering city, other times you are given a city that is in dire need of improvement.

Rank - if storyline was implemented, this would mean the player would need to ascend in rank in order to gain some advantages. eg, a player may start at the Council Member rank and work his way up to mayor. lower ranks would not have access to things like zoning high density and so on.quote>

Slippery slope here.  I've always dreaded the idea that SimCity may become a strategy scenario based game in line with the original Warcraft and all its various decedents.  Simcity is heavily dependent on strategy and could be considered as such a game but it is primarily an open ended city simulation.  As such, it is almost one of a kind; there are very few games out there where the goal is to build for the sake of building.  The game mechanics would suggest that your goal would be a functioning successful city as defined by achieving positive in game ratings and stats but these can be worked around for the sheer fun of building a custom city (cheats, special lots, mods, etc).

To introduce restrictions into the core mechanics of the game that would limit your freedom to scenario specific objectives would decrees the value of this very special franchise.  It would become one of the many instead of a singular one.  There have been scenario's in previous installations of the series but I'm guessing they've met with limited success, hence they're lack of inclusion on sc4.  The first Simcity I played was for the SNES and I do remember there being a Bern traffic scenario and a Tokyo "Godzilla (Bowser)" scenario even way back then.  I didn't find them particularly interesting or useful now or in any other version since.  Another scenario editor might be fun but, in my opinion, it shouldn't be worked into the core mechanics of the game.  It should be bundled as a separate function or add-on.

My objection to any kind of military activity would fall under the same criticism as the scenario idea.  It would add a level of strategy to the game that isn't in synch with the original intention of a city simulation.  I'm also a fan of the Civ franchise and find that the newer versions are much more pleasant than the older due to the fact that you can avoid war in many instances.  The custom game option even lets you set a permanent peace parameter if you wish.  I believe that the ability to build without the fear of unintentional destruction is at the heart of the Simcity series.  The stress and anxiety that would normally come from the threat of conflict in those other types of strategy games comes from the threat of economic collapse, aband

[smstevenms 7]

^^ MAN WOW ^^ that's more than a mouth full, lol

[terzetto 0]

When one's passionate, the words vomit forth without consideration to brevity... at least that's how it seems sometimes .

btw, liked your music.  It was very fugue-like and some of the tracks were pretty atmosphereic (nice pictoral allusions too when used).  Good job.

[smstevenms 7]

terzetto, thanks. You can join and leave a comment, I'd send you a invite but that feature doesn't seem to be working. (I get more upload space for invites).

[stratusmonkey 0]

Originally posted by: moganite The thing i would add is very simple and probably solve the water table issues. Use 24 bit images for the tarrain imports red channel can be land, blue water and green vegetaion. As a mapper i am sick of having dry rivers and lakes or gorges. I am also sick of painting trees with the god tool as it takes forever and you have to do each tile. I waould also like to see the importing feature made easier to use no secret key combos that you can't find easily ARRRRGGGHHHHHH i didn't even know that you could import an image till i came here. A radom terrain generator would be nice too.quote>

I was just thinking about RGB elevation + vegetation + surface water maps yesterday, and checked to see if anyone else had thought of it.  You rock.

[Ramona Brie 121]

Maxis needs to rebuild SC5 from the ground up and support SC4 custom content if possible. The main thing I want is a universal binary for Mac OS X. (I'm not running a patched-up SC4 Mac with no nightlighting when Fusion could do it if I got it!)

[Godzillaman 21]

Pfft. Once man has perfected virtual reality helmets then we will have a true Sim City! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[smstevenms 7]

I was born with mine on, lol. Just trying to find the exit.

[texico11 3]

personal, i think the actually mechanics of sim city are at peak. i dont think we need any changes, like energies and stuff. what i do think is that we can use some more abilitys, so we can better control our citys. for example, laws that you have the write to pass, customisable fares like bus fares, tool booths, parking fines, all those kind of things. next, which would be a nice little feature, is detailed taxes, so having the ability to pass laws requiring you too pay taxes in different forms, and then having the ability to change the tax percentages, for example, high-welth residents would have to pay like 40% inheritent tax etcetra. this would then have a negative VS. positive effect on health, because high-health would mean a larger workforce, which means more industry, but it also means that less people are dyeing, therefore you're gaining less inheritent tax.

another feature would be the ability to put resources on a map, like coal, oil etc. these would give you enhancements in there required elements, for example, oil plants could be twice as efficient. you could also have petrol stations. maps with alot of oil for example would allow you to put down the prices of petrol, therefore meaning more R$ could drive, meaning less mass transit maintenance costs. depending on what difficulty you play at, you could have this as a requirement, in that, oil acts like power plants, and all cars/electricity and everything requires resources, or you could have it so it justs acts as a benifit and can enhance your efficient in some areas. of course, there would be a down-side, like undesirability in areas of dirty crude oil, or protests.

another addition could be an advisor team that you could manage. for example, you could higher different advisors that are good at different things. they could have marks out of 20 like 19/20 for "independance" would mean there really good at dealing with problems themselfs, and would tweak spendings in there field, for example, eduation advisor would tweak education spending if there where strikes. if you didnt want your advisors doing this, you could get one with 1/20 for "independance" and therefore they would not edit any of your data and alert you too everything going on. advisors with different stats could cost different amounts of wages, depending on how good they are. there wages would be expensive, because they are pretty much second in line to the city. you could also allow people to customize the appearance of there advisors using the sims 2.

on top of those, you could have new buildings, graphics, animations, buildable items etc that just make things more fun. also, it would be good if there where more advanced map making tools, or even an individual map editor.

[smstevenms 7]

Godzillaman, that's what I'm talking about. We have the technology, but the cost isn't attractive yet, plus it's part of progression. If all the best is out there then what's left?

[punkrockgoth1988 1]

I play both The Sims 2 and Sim City 4. About a year ago, I had a dream that I was walking through a store with a little girl, and then the little girl said "Mommy, look the new Sims game" And then I proceeded to look at the box. The dream proceeded to go into visuals of what the game would be like. There were several modes. World Mode, where you could control the seasons, weather, natural disasters, etc Then you could go into country mode, where you could be in control of an entire country, Then there was region mode, where you could oversee more than one city at a time. For instance, you could have a bunch of cities in an area where health care is really bad, and you would have to put more money to it... Then you could also control a City in Mayor Mode. You could also play each Sim in your city like one does in The Sims 2 but with the type of freedom that the upcoming Sims 3 boasts.

In the dream you could build a bridge as low as you liked, but if you wanted ferries to pass under, you had to make sure it was a draw bridge. Each mode of play had an effect on everything. If you had a lot of runaway Sim teens, lots of teens sneaking out, or even lots of Sims in the criminal career, you would have an increase in crime in the immediate area.

A city would be limited in size, only by the amount of land that is bought for it. For example, at the beginning, you would zoom into a part of a region, and want to build a city. You would be able to purchase the land you initially want for the city and start zoning areas.

Later when your city is jam packed full of Sims, and you need more space, you can purchase more land. Eventually, you can build all the land you want, and are not limited except by city budget.

Maybe my dream isn't realistic, but I would love a game that brings my two favorite things together.

[dark_lord 555 0]

I think it's pretty clear that another Expansion Pack is highly unlikely. Anyone who thinks another Official EP is going to be done, is crazy . Another version of SimCity will be made, some time in the future. Given how long it takes to make a game like SimCity, I wouldn't be surprised if it takes several years. What I will be interested in, is how it'll be done. From what I've read about Spore (the technical aspects), it could provide a game like SimCity the potential to do things that have previously not been possible to do, even for the likes of Maxis. Considering how rapidly technology is progressing at the moment, the further down the track a game like SimCity is made the better. It would be nice though, if users had more input into some of the ideas about the game though, before it is actually started.

[cdr165 0]

I have a question?!?!? sorry this is off t opic, but can anyone tell me where on this site can i download the add-on to get all the buildings in the game for free threw the landmarks section?

[mightygoose 92]

IF YOU KNOW ITS OFF TOPIC, PULL YOUR FINGER OUT YOUR REAR AND FIND THE TOPIC THAT IT IS RELEVANT TO, I KNOW THE OMNIBUS IS DOWN BUT GOD IF YOU CAN FIND THIS THREAD YOU CAN FIND THE "CAN'T FIND IT, ASK HERE THREAD"

sorry for shouting..... but i find the above post insulting.

[smstevenms 7]

LOL, I'm trying to adapt.

[psander5 198]

Haha! dark_lord 555: that's a verbatim quote of a post lef by Tripod on the first page! Is that a forum glitch, a quote without citation or a cheeky copy i wonder. Valid points nonetheless!

There are so many ways this franchise can be improved, and i'm sure the developers have their eyes on all the discussions. From what I hear, Monte Christo have the right ideas with Cities XL. SC4 still has legs though, thanks to sites like this.

[Muck308 55]

What simcity needs to do is break away from the grid format. Even with all the new diagonal buildings... it needs work. The obvious example is building bridges any way you like instead of just straight. Perhaps this has been brought up... I didn't read everyones post... cause I'm at work. Bottom line is.... if they keep making games, I'll keep sitting in front of a ten year old monitor.

[Joetropian1 1]

Monte Cristo seems to be covering most of our game issues and questions with Cities XL, but I'm sure many of us would rather keep SC4. I think that, looking at SC:S, Maxis is doomed, bu looking at SC4, ST is still healthy. A stupid comparison, yes, I know, bu it raises the point... we, the SC community, are holding on against the destructive idiotic, **** ****ing **** Maxis and their go to **** ****ing ****!

^ Oh dear! Was that me? ^ ;-)

JT1

[smstevenms 7]

Well never get what we want as long as we keep buying whatever they throw at us.

[mal7798 1]

Mal7798's Mega List of Sim City Changes
These are of course my own personal preferences, posted here because I wanted to post them somewhere and this thread seemed the appropriate place.  I apologize for any redundancies as I didn't bother to read through every post before posting--this is a three-year-old thread, after all...

Churches (and cemeteries) should grow in residential zones.  Since when is it left up to a mayor to decide where these things go?  Also, an occasional private park to crop up in a R zone would be nice.

Private schools should grow too, not be plopped by mayor.  Also, private clinics and hospitals should grow.  I think it would be better for them to grow in R zones as that is where they are needed.  The public school and hospital systems would not conflict with this and should be left.

The same university in every city is redundant.  Universities should be zoned rather than plopped, and be part of the regular menu (not a reward).  Also, private colleges and universities should grow (either in R or C zones; not sure which is better)

Airports and seaports zones should return.  And as for any other zone type, poor zoning means poor development.  The in game ports can be too picky about where they can go, especially seaports, which take a lot of hunting to find a place.

Ploppable coastal items (ferry ports, marinas, etc.) should be less picky about where they can go.  Often in my cities, despite having miles of coastline to work with, there are no places that will accept these items, and massive and destructive terraforming efforts are often needed just to place the simplest of these items.

Maintenance budget and standing instructions.  Sim City was originally able to be left alone to play itself, but SC4's utilities such as power and water wear down eventually and the residents quickly leave without them.  There ought to be standing orders to replace power plants and water pumps when they get down to a certain level (at cost of course, and budget-permitting). 

Warnings about water and power emergencies!!!  When I first started getting into SC4, I despised the lack of a disaster-disabling function, with constant fires interrupting the game flow while playing at "cheetah" speed.  But then I realized that if this did not halt action, fires would quickly spread to burn down my city, and a disaster-disabling option would ultimately render fire protection useless.  But this stopping of game action should also happen during power and water shortages as well.  I remember developing a new district in a big city of mine that was over 200,000 in population without realizing that I clipped a power line to a water pump, and while my new development was going quite well, the rest of my city was completely out of water, and I looked down and my population had dropped from over 200,000 to under 800!  Blackouts and water shortages can destroy a city even faster than fires, so a warning is necessary.

Auto-dezoning of undevelopable zones--and less dependence on road access.  If the game can determine that zones are pointed away from roads, why can't it be made to rezone them towards roads?  Also, if a zone just sits there with the "no road access" icon floating over it, it should just be auto-dezoned (at the normal cost of dezoning, of course).  And lack of road access should result in limited development rather than a total lack of development.

Water; The salt-water/fresh water distinction of SC2000 ought to be brought back, as well as desalination plants.  Inland lakes with different water levels should be allowed, and rivers could be made to flow as well.  And water pumps should have optimal and less than optimal locations where they can be built (not just for pollution--there should be locations where more water is pumped).

The underground (and above ground) view options should be improved.  SC2000 was excellent in this respect, as selected building types could be eliminated from view in order to see certain things blocked from normal view.  In SC4, when installing subway stations, the subway itself cannot even be seen.  Also, finding certain small items to be bulldozed (such as water pumps, misplaced zones) can be nearly impossible, even when going through all angle views.  There should be an option to switch from above ground to underground view at any time.

Voting on ordinances:  The mayor should not be a dictator--if your city needs what an ordinance provides, they will approve it.  The "legalize gambling" ordinance should have growing casinos with varying revenue rates instead of one casino at the same rate, etc.

Eliminate the road access requirement for public transit stations.  Bus stops of course need road access because the buses run on roads, but there should not be the need to place subway and rail stations by roads.  Also, development should be allowed to occur along rails, els and monorails--limited, perhaps, but some development can occur.

I have a few more changes I'd like, but that's all I can think of right now.

Well, except for one:  If Maxis/EA/Whoever is going to go the way of Sim City Societies and completely abandon their efforts with the regular Sim City series, they should just RELEASE THE SOURCE CODE!  Let hobbyist modders and developers take over where the professionals left off.