Future of SimCity Official Discussion Thread

[Zegai 0]

Not sure if this has been said... but what about homeless Sims? I find it weird how we can bulldoze a home or a home can be abandoned and the people who lived there just vanish. Lets be able to make real cities, like DC and NYC.

On that note... where did the riot disaster go?

[dogscarletnyc 0]

Maybe they will have every landmark in the World!

[Imprezza05 1]

i don't know is anyone has said this but if freight went to commercial services buildings instead of just going to the city boarder would be great

[Iron Man 0]

I have something to say about abandoned buildings - in real life when people move out of a building the buildings doesnt automatically turn black and scruffy - it takes time to end up like that.

Placing water at higher levels and land below sea level would be a good suggestion.

[bearmans 0]

These are all great ideas but what we got with SC4 was pretty damned good. I'd like to keep most of it but I want to see some serious basics changed. Firstly we need to have diagonal tunnels and bridges, and airports having a regional effect. I think we need to be able to build things underneath bridges too such as road and rail and allow them to be built not just over expanses of water. Of course the community has come up with some great ideas around certain problems. Because of these ideas theres no point changing the fabric of something that works and we can modify to our needs. I'd like to see SC5 tackle the issues we can't and these are all very basic problems that everyone faces and finds annoying at a very low level. I've mentioned the bridges and tunnels. I think we should have changes in the water and subway systems because trying to drag them across a deep expanse of water is impossible! Another must for me is to make SC5 even more accessible then SC4. There are people in simtropolis who have created things to allow us to do wonderful jobs with our cities, far more then i think the creators of SC4 ever dreamed! This should be taken to the next level. We want to create more transport options? Sure add some blank transport options there. They should not be seen until someone develops something like HSRP. We download it and suddenly its a new transport option but it doesnt replace any of the default ones yet is completly dragable!

Finally I'd like to see SC5 easier for the user to manipulate. I have no idea how to BAT and no idea how to change menus in SC4. Have a basic knowlege of the LOT editor and thats about it. This is mainly due to time issues but I think SC5 should make it easier for people to change the game. Have an option that allows people to EASILY select what they want in what menu and where. Let the user easily change settings on rail speed etc. Perhapes not change these in the default transport networks but allows us to easily do it for custom transport networks.

Oh and I agree with Iron man about the water levels.

So this may seem a lot but really it is just improving something we already have. Not re-writting it simply making it more easier for us to re-write it for our needs! If you see what I mean? Anyone??

[Merauder 0]

Ah, I can still remember me playing simcity one. ( that's the first version were you couldn't even descide how big your zones were.)

One of the nicest things about it, or at least one of it's patches, was that you could RADICALLY change the style.

Want a medival city? you've got it! Cityhall would change into a castle and the icecream store would become the local tavern.

Want a city on mars? CAPOW all residential zones turned into bio-domes and the grass became red rock.

Want an azian city/cavemen city/European city/American City/ Western city/ (the list went on and on.)

It would be sweet if simcity 5 could incorporate these ideas again. Allthough they would need to sacrefice a bit on realism...... Hard to inmagine traffic congestion in a medival town and what would the train lines become?

Also an INCREASE of realism would be nice. Simcity 2000 had weather variables. Windmills would speed up in a stormy autumn, while the solar plants would become useless. Also the chance of floods changed with the time of season.

How about a military base you can actually use BTW? I can still remember me fighting those huge mechanical, city-leveling spiders with my cities army! That was cool!

Also, whatever maxis should does, they should give us better manuals for pitty sake!

Simcity had a manuel the size of a bible.

Simcity 2000 had 188 of infromation goodness, including poems, historical backgrounds and in-depth explenation of all the systems.

Simcity 3000's manuel was allright, though I picked most of the info of the net.

And don't even get me started on Simcity 4's manual!!! 88 pages is nothing for a game this complex and how DARE they suck the money out of us by letting prima publish a better guide shortly after publishing the game, that you have to pay EXTRA money for! Preposterous.

Anyway, all my new idea's are concepts the previous simcities allready had. They should get back to their roots.

[Iron Man 0]

This probably has been said a few times but I think you should be able to view your city at different angles and levels - for instance, a street view.

[chimp_spanner 0]

Oddly enough, I'm not a fan of everything going 3D. Part of SC's appeal to me is that, while perhaps it doesn't look state of the art, it does look pretty damn good. Perhaps the only thing that would be useful would be a top down view for arranging transit networks. Other than that I think the hybrid 2D/3D system allows for a level of detail that simply won't be achievable in an entirely 3D game world. Not for most of us anyway. Let's face it, not everyone these days has dual core, dual processor, physics-card enabled, PCI-E SLI machines, even though some game developers seem to think we do!

Still, if Spore is anything to go by, I'm sure the next installment of SC will look amazing, but run like a slideshow for alot of us.

Anyways...I'll echo the calls for more transit options.

A variety of parking lots and garages.

Train/bus depots to actually originate the darn trains and buses and provide route termination points.

Greater control over mass transit routes so you can redirect public transport where it's most needed.

*Maybe* greater control over pedestrian walkways (zebra crossings, pedestrian overpasses/subways, etc.) but I dunno how that'd work out...might be too complex.

More miscellaneous ideas;

Town play, or city play. Creating a small rural town is, IMO, alot different than planning a vast city. Maybe when playing a smaller city, you'd have more manual/hands on control; good for keeping a smaller number of people happy. On a city scale, you could strip away some of the micromanagement, and automate some decision making to a degree. A mayor of a city with 500,000 people in it shouldn't have to manually send out the fire-brigade everytime a fire breaks out. Maybe you could have the option to do this, if you really wanted. But it'd be far more satisfying to put the systems in place and happily watch your fire crews actually do their job, rather than be pulled away from the task at hand to put out a fire at some end of the road warehouse!

Revision of the region system; saving, exiting, and entering is a laborious process, especially on some of the larger maps uploaded here. I think a master region in which you are always present would be better, and graphics/assets would be dynamically loaded as you cross from one district/borough/whatever, into the next. Benefit of this being, DD/MM/YY would be universal across all your cities, and zoning in one city to meet the demands of another will have instant effect in both cities...at the same time. Automated emergency service dispatch (mentioned above) would definitely come in handy here, as 'disasters' would unfold in real time across multiple cities, but would be seen to...as long as you have emergency services there! If not, you'd get a notification that something bad is happening and you could flit back and sort it. Or leave it, and return to a pile of ashes Would really add importance to buildings like the town hall as well. Maybe cities without town halls wouldn't be capable of such autonomy(sp).

Anyway I'll stop there, this is a long post. I have more ideas but I'll wait.

Oh yeah and............bring back nonsense news headlines!!!! A break in the play to read about the wierd and wonderful life of a Sim was always welcome in older installments

**Quick edit: in game content creator, ala Spore?

**Arghh!!: And, you should be able to build into the future!  Houses in 3120 wil NOT look like houses in 2006   I want bubble houses.  And hover cars!  Kay. Stopping now.

[DARKO 3]

An Undo button!!!!

Forgot that.

[chimp_spanner 0]

lol!! Yes.....definitely. Sometimes mistakes aren't down to poor planning. It's just a matter of letting go of the mouse button too early!

Or in my case, my cat attacking my laptop. GAH!

[GrayWolf115 0]

Ditto the undo button,  there has been many times where I have screwed up terraforming and just wished I could go back. But there are alot of other things that, thankfully with todays technology could be acheived and implemented. For instance (and some of these may have been said before) being able to see some kind of view of your neighboring city, if not that , an option to edit the entire region if your computer could handle it. The SC4Terraformer makes me think of this. The ability to make overhanging cliffs, and especially flowing water. I've spent alot more time terraforming landscape than building cities and sometimes I'm just struck by the things I can't do. What's also needed is an improved transit system, a kind of integration of our beloved NAM if you will. But, ah its late and I can't think of anything else to add for now

[Horus_Kol 118]

i thought of another one last night... i'm not sure how well I'll do explaining it...

The NAM puzzles pieces are great - I can make some nice terraces and stuff, and use puzzle pieces to bridge over a rail/highway and then drop down onto the next terrace...

having a system that could do this automatically with me just dragging from the start and end point would save a lot of time with the NAM pieces..

[anthraxienuclerradiation 0]

1) ideas for sim city 5 is that they do it like the tycoon sireis e.g. oil tycoon1 & 2 or railway tycoon 3

also you could terraform planets in our solar system e.g. you buy jupiter for say 100 mil which is reasonable

becouse you would need large funding facilitys which the game would ovbously provide and the you could go to jupiter

and set up regons and then start building citys the size of irland but it will depend on the size of the planet.

2t would be great that you could reaserch tecnologyies if anyone haz played master of orion 3, in the reaserch, that is wat im on about.

3)it would be great if anyone haz played the command & conquer series (i lov zero hour) becouse mybe you could build armies

land air and sea prefuably or space armarders i would luv that

4)it would be great if could link your reigons together

5)differnt airports e.g. large international airport on simcity four it drives me up the wall with small interantanol airports (i mean i'm only from manchester and i lov to build big or even massive)

6)signs, custum build hiways e.g. 2-12 lane hiways, custom built roads, underground road-rail ways and if im lucky underground hiways in my case moterways, dams (hydro dams).........

i will wait untill the year 2015if my dream comes true im only 13 then i will be 21

[ssc4k 1]

you should really look into spore. besides highways about eveything else you wanted is going to be in that game.

[anthraxienuclerradiation 0]

yea i know i just exicted lol, but wat would be good is build something like the tube (britan--france) which goes underwater instad of a bridge u could hav a chioce of a bridge or tube and u could hav a road or avenue or one way, ect

[smstevenms 7]

NSide359    

You make total sence, but the law thing could truly be confusing. I totaly love the idea of the president of the regions, that in of it self opens many possibilties.

[simsfan11110 0]

Two words: Property Taxes

=more revenue

[ssc4k 1]

i think they should allow you to draw indivudual lanes of road so that there are more intersections to make.

[Vivicas X. Strom 1]

i've only read the last page.

I've been playing SC4 for 3 years now. I have never 'finished' any region.

After reading all the suggestions on how the 'simulator' could be....

I just want to place my head in my lap and cry. No matter what we do to SC4 it will suck compared to these ideas.

Mum...i don't think i want to play anymore.....

[ssc4k 1]

well there would probably be a selection list so the game doesnt become to complicate . so you could have a trillion options and selct 5 and the game would be alot less complicated.

[Horus_Kol 118]

I agree - some ability to alter complexity/detail/realism... so you can have a total lego/sandbox city, and then hardcore ultra-real, I want the tri-state area on my hard driver types at the other end...

Just been thinking - why, oh why, does SC4 build earth ramps for elevated bridges? they don't in real life...

and better smoothing of roads changing inclination - too many San Franciso style terraces in my cities.

[andreluis_carneiro 0]

I'm not expert about Simcity... I've just started being addict... but one thing that I never heard is Regional Budget! I mean, why don't we have a regional budget instead of only a budget for city. It is common to conect cities and let them grow together, one only for Industry, other for commerce and one for Residential but we also know that a Industrial city has a really grand proffit and the residential normally has debt... Wasn't or isn't it possible to get all the budgets together in the region? I think it kind of makes sense...

Any way there

[smstevenms 7]

Stole my thunder, that is such awsome idea, but are the taxes were collecting now income then? Not sure thats right either, what about C, and I, is that sales tax? Hmmm....One question seems to beg for another.

[JWUT 2]

I haven't read this entire thread, but one idea I've had in my head for a while concerns the city limit lines. What if, in SC5, you could actually determine the SHAPE of your city, rather than merely have one of three sizes? What if one city could actually annex another city, or unincorporated areas, as they do in real life? Each city would have a completely unique shape and size! During the course of your gameplay, have you ever wished you could just expand that one little neighborhood on the edge, just a little bit?

On the other hand, what if one of your cities gets so large that it becomes difficult to manage? Perhaps there could be an option to subdivide the city so that you play in only a small area, but you can still see the rest of the city, and how your decisions affect the municipality as a whole, but without the lag times common to large cities in SC4. This would be much like the bouroughs of New York, or the Arrondissements of Paris.

Another idea that pertains to both of the above: Unincorporated areas and bouroughs might have less power than fully incorporated cities. For example, an unincorporated town has no city limits, but cannot expand beyond a certain point or population without incorporating, and medium and high density zoning would be unavailable until then as well. Or perhaps some rewards are only presented before or after incorporation, as well as certain city services: say, for example, that you couldn't build a LARGE police station until then, or that you can build bus stops, but no subways, etc.

What do you all think of these concepts? Has anyone mentioned anything like this already? If so, my apologies! But are these ideas workable? Good?

[smstevenms 7]

I like the idea about unique borders, then you could truly create life like states even countries. I myself can't stand square borders. As far as dividing the cities, sounds good in theory but if I know game designers they would only put out a version the focused solely on that idea. If maintaining the same playing style (as is, and adding this concept) it would take a great deal of memory and a fast computer to operate. And unless they use blue-ray technology, they wouldn't be able to format the needed info on the disk to avoid crashes, lag, or just plain cohesion of all the data. The idea is great though.

[andreluis_carneiro 0]

Yes JWUT thats even more fantastic than my initial idea. This way you could create more reallistic cities with a down town where the C buildings would rise and the R suburbs all in the same city. Exactly what I meant but even better. I guess the Maxis guys will do it! Besides... it is not so diferent from the actual sistem of region.. I guess...

[andreluis_carneiro 0]

Well about the taxes... I wouldn't change nothing.. and in my idea of regional budget the proffits of some cities would join the debts of others... and in the end you still had to make finantial strategy not to end up with regional red budget.

SC5 please... fast... or not... i'll have to buy other CPU

[coasterman8 0]

1. you should be able to build the bridge first then insert the networks you want on one or more decks. This will prevent the building of to many bridges.

same with tunnels.

2. when building the bridges you should have the option of building a tunnel.

3. when zoning there should be a hybrid zone of both commercial and residencial zones. this will allow a tower with both jobs and pop..

4.double decker highways

5.more desasters and have the ablity to make them happen on their own. ex. hurricane, mudslides, highway pileup, car, plane, & train hijacking so on

6. more cars to choose from for the move in sims u drive it mode. there is currently more space (numbers) than cars.

[Horus_Kol 118]

hybrid buildings are definitely needed - the number of shops in my town with flats on top of shops (even new builds - with about 50 or so flats on top of a couple of largish shops)

[Coldwontrise 0]

A few nifty ideas (some have been mentioned, but Im elaborating)

All roads should be able to be drawn in any direction. The tool could work like freehand drawing on the 3d terrain, and when the line/curve is done, it rounds the edges. Could also have tools that allow drawing roads to customizable geometric shapes (large roundabouts, etc). There could be an algorithm that creates an intersection based on the roads involved. This would allow unlimited flexiblity in road design (usually a limiting factor in the SimCity series, as remaking existing cities proved frustrating).

The next obvious step to this would be to create buildings to orient themselves to the roads. There could be a orientation line springing from the building pointing out to the road, which would be perpendicular to a line tangent to the road. As for the rest of the lot size, it would take the shape as needed, elbow room as it were. You could have a rectangle house in a circlular lot, and have the same house in a triangular lot. Possibly residential yards could take the shape of the terrain (painting lawns/walkways/driveways to the terrain) whereas the house stays level.

For this to work, all buildings would need to be 3d. For closeup micromanagement, the buildings could have great crisp 3d detail. For citywide views, the level of detail would diminish so the game doesnt eat your computer, but still maintains the aestetic of a well designed city.

Having fares for public transit (micromanagement and city wide) could promote the use of mass transit instead of roads, or could be used to make some nice cash if your system is efficient. This would result in an emergent organization and budget balance and new elaborate strategies.

Id also like the return of hydroelectric power (word to 2000). This could be made possible for a new water engine, which would allow you to fill valleys with water at a particular level. One could have a city that cascades down a mountain by a river, deriving clean energy. (a new disaster could be a flood)

Ill add more if I think of some stuff.