Future of SimCity Official Discussion Thread

[helomoto 28]

wow, how could ive missed this thread...it has some of the best ideas for the game that i have ever heard.

[subedei 3]

I personally think SC4 is the last you will see of this type. Sadly games want interactive or online stlye games. TS2 is their money maker now till they come out with a online version of it. I think all we can do is improve upon this game.

Subedei

[RiverCocytus 0]

As for the 'personality' thing it can be acheived easily.

If you had a tool under the 'styles' section which let you set the relative desirabilities for each building type, you could lay some zones, and set the desrabilities, making it so that you limit the buildings that could appear-- and make the others more likely (given that you have the other requirements) so you could make a neighborhood a particular type, and make it historical. You could create the personality of your city, but with growables.

I don't know- but it would awesome to have a tool that did this, even if it was in SC4. But if they had it in SC5-- totally off the hook!

[kujoe 0]

I really like a lot of the suggestions in this thread. I like the idea of police/fire/hospital/educational jurisidictions. It would be awesome to define an actual "city limits" and as needed the city could annex more land just like in Real Life. I also believe that having a city/county/state levels would be a huge improvement.

We also need to fix the power system to a more realistic system. I even want to see transmission lines with proper connections to power plants. The transmission lines should also run to sub-stations at which they get split down into distribution power lines that go to homes and businesses. These distribution lines should be available above and below ground like in real life.

Also, I hate building an unrealistic number of schools, fire stations, police stations, and hospitals just to give all my sims adequate coverage. In real life, even in big cities the city merely hires more workers and vehicles and assigns them to patrol or be available for certain areas. In such cases where an area grows too big a sub-station is built, and "precincts" are even established. Look at NYC for example. Even the City of Austin, TX has Precincts and patrol districts.

However one thing that I've seen a lot of people request that I disagree with is having to have a visable water source for water pumps. This is innacurate. You do not always have to have a visible water source. There is ALWAYS an underground water table that can be tapped. What really makes this even more possible is underground aquifers. Take for example the Edwards Aquifer that provides water for most of Texas.

I want curved roads, and conforming property lines. I don't want EVERY zone to be the same exact size. I have double the lot size of my neighbor, but he has a bigger home. I have more land, and a 1 story house, but he has less land and a 2 story house.

I'd like to see more in the way of road and rail transportation. More realistic railways in which trains travel both directions on the SAME EXACT set of tracks. There is a reason sections have 2 sets of tracks side by side attached to a switch. I'd also like to have more flexibility in road/street types. In some big cities there are 8 lane roads, that are still regulated with stop lights. I want to be able to have these in SimCity. I also want to be able to have a country dirt road up to a rural ranch house and be able to seamlessly integrate all road/street types without messing up other areas. I want all emergency services to be able to handle crisis on their own unless I can choose to take control. I also want city advisors to be able to be more proactive, and even have a possibly elected city council.

I really love the developer/sub-division ideas. I would love to have a lot more control over the economy too.

That's all I can think of for now, I'll chime in more later when I'm less sleepy.

[jmjselect 0]

hey I just thought of this.

What if EAgames releases both the sims and sim city 5 at the same time?(just speculation).

It could be kinda like how simcopter was to sc2000. You could make a city in sc5 and then live in it in The sims. you could travel(cars, walk, planes, copters, boats, trains,....) you could upload your city for others to live in too.

wouldn't that be something.

EDIT: oh and like in sc2000 how "at this date" "highways" are now available" and "at that date" airports are now aviable(like in real life.  instead of having everything open at once.  this was something that was overlooked imo.

[heyden_simcity_4 5]

i would hope to see simcity 5 buy 2009

[Karybdis 34]

jmjselect: You can already do that

Terrain made for Simcity4 can be imported and played in Sims2, including the roads, but not houses since you make those yourself.

Obviously future versions will have more integration though, so hopefully they'll just merge in the next several versions

[brancra 1,165]

Does anyone think there'll be screenshots at the upcoming E3? Because I would love to see some hard evidence of development.

[Awful Waffles 0]

Fascinating thread.  I certainly hope its being read by the right people

Personally, I just can't see a release of these titles before Vista gets out... more specifically DirectX 10.  The roadmap for everything is changing later this year, supposedly.  AMD's new socket, Intel's new chips, MS new version of Windoh's.  I can't really see a company like EA being blind to those developments, and until that settles, you certainly won't see SC5.

On the upside, there has been four versions of SC spanning a decade or so.  All versions of the product have been a success.  Deluxe is still selling copies despite its age.

Having said that, I think you'd have to be nuts to think there won't be a SC5, its just a matter of when, not if.

My 2 cents.

[RiverCocytus 0]

well, some people or companies might judge a game a 'failure' that didn't sell as many copies as Halo 1. But its all about the cost of making the game. (This is generally how Nintendo stays well afloat in the market- lower costs.)

Yes, we do need county/state/national governments, but they need to be able to be selected. So you can decline to have any national/state/county govt's -- they won't interfere with you, but they also will not do things like offer to construct and pay for highways, schools, police stations, etc.

City Life does -NOT- solve the multidirectional road problem; you need to be able to force a corner to 90 degrees so that it is realistic, no matter what angle it is at. To my knowledge this is difficult to do at best in City Life.

Would be good to have polygonical zones (defined with a formula or by manually assigning the edges) curves would either be 1. splines or 2. defined by a series of segments. Depending on how far vector-type graphics stuff has come along vis a vis video card support and other stuff we might see curved roads, or we may be stuck with a very fine grid but with polygonical curves only.

a good thing to do is to just look at a satelite map and see how the transport networks are laid out; mimicking this is the key to making it more realistic.

I think that building zones should also be allowed to be concave (not just convex) - farms, of course already can... a formula to find 'largest rectangular area within the zone' would be simple, and would suffice to figure out how big of a building foundation could be on that zone. Of course, not all buildings are rectangular... you would also need sub-intersections, that is- the little access intersections for parking lots and driveways-- they would not cause a slowdown unless there was a bottleneck in that parking lot (too little parking)

Parking needs to be tracked and taken care of as well; there needs to be a demand for parking and zones need to not have to face a road but simply have some kind of access to a road or transportation that takes them to work, and allows them access to some place to shop or acquire food/water/supplies.

Man, I would love to be in the design team.

Edit: Was thinking; would be cool if you had two types of buildings -

Generic: floors/layout/style determined by a formula, so can be built by the sims to fit available zone sizes; thus if you make med density zones and small ones, you might see taller buildings sooner

Unique/Specific: Like a mcdonalds, or a specific bank, or some such, that has particular, or a small subset of sizes/styles that it can have.

Of course, seperating the BUILDINGS from the Commerce/Industry/Residence would be a big step-- depending on who moves into the building it would change appearance... would be totally off the hook!!!!! =P

[codyg1985 0]

I think that there will eventually be a Sim City 5, but the big question will be when.  As many have suggested, perhaps Spore will help to lay a framework for the next version of Sim City.  I really hope that Maxis will take some of the ideas out of this thread and apply them into the game.

As nearly everyone has suggested, curved roads are a must for the game.  Abandon the grid system.  

After playing Civililzation IV for a while, I thought that some of the ideas from that game can be applied to Sim City.

Better Suburbian Simulation

A intergral aspect of almost any city is its suburbs.  In SC4, it is difficult to create bedroom communities that dump all commuters onto a single thoroughfare to get to the downtown area.  If one attempts to create a neighbor city that is almost completely residential, no one will have jobs and all the properties will abandon.  In SC5, the traffic model should be reworked so that commuters can commute from far away into the central city.   The model should also calculate total travel time, even if the path takes the commuter into another city.  Currently, travel time is calculated from the point of residency to the neighbor city border.  As a result, there is usually a mad exodus pouring into a neighboring city, even if on the other side the commuters are turning around and going back into the city they started in.

Multiplayer

Yeah, traditionally Sim City has not been a multiplayer game but a city simulator.  A region would consist of several cities, just as in Sim City 4.  However, each city would be controlled by a different player, either through LAN or the Internet.  Each player would broker deals with the neighboring city for garbage, power, water, and so on.  If resources were brought into the game, those could also be traded.  This could also be applied one level higher by having neighboring regions where each region and its cities are controlled by one player. A multiplayer concept may extend beyond the scope of just a simulation, but it would make Sim City a little more of a competitive game than it is now.  Of course, this would be a different mode from the traditional mode of play.

Variable City Limits

Again, from Civilization IV, each city has a border that is controlled by how much influence the city has on the surrounding area.  The more culture a city has, the more expansive its borders become.  In Sim City, the game could work by allowing the player to choose a point where the city would be founded.  Initially, the city would have city limits a set radius from the point chosen for settlement.  As areas are built up, those areas are automatically incorporated into the city, and zones can be placed in your city limits or outside of your city limits, but not in another city.  The more the city develops and the more zones a city creates, the more expansive the city limits become.  Infrastructure would not count towards being built up.

Interstates

I think that major highways, or interstates, should already be in a region before any cities are founded.  These would be a common denominator for each city.  Smaller roads and interchanges can be built from here, and more freeways can be built by the city if needed.

Cross-region traffic

What happens to the freight when it reaches the neighbor city?  It can't just disappear!  I think that interstates and freeways should have traffic that travels across the region, mainly from freight trucks making deliveries, but from some people that randomly go from one city to another on the other side of the region.  Moreover, these people should stop somewhere in between to get gas, eat food, or stay in a motel.  With the addition of cross-region traffic, beltways and loop freeways can be a viable option in Sim City.

Originally posted by: rabanne 

What I would really like to see in Simcity 5 (and I know it's not gonna happen, because it's a city simulation)

is a resource based industry model. What i mean by that is

there should be a (automatic) region generator, which also generates (natural) resources.

Most cities in the world *that I know of* were founded at places where there was access to crucial resources. quote>

 

Bingo!  Many other games have resources that you have to tap into to get ahead in the game, and I think that different resources in SC would lead to city specialization.  I am all for this idea.

Originally posted by: A.D.

3.Since when was transportation used solely for commutes? There should be traffic from residences to other residences, city buildings such as schools, shops, and out of the city. Tourism should generate traffic.quote>

Amen to that.  People don't just go to and from work; they go on vacations, go have a night on the town, and so on.  

Originally posted by: sparkythepenguin

Another thing: I read somewhere that Will Wright wanted the next SC5 to be more basic, easier to play. Is that true? If it tanks, I'm sticking with SC4...quote>

 

How much more basic does the game need to be?  If anything, Sim City needs some sort of competition aspect so that one does not get bored of the game when good mods for it are not being released.  I think most people can handle the complex aspect of the game that most of us here would like to see, as long as it is presented well.  I tried to get a couple of my gaming friends to play Sim City, and they did, but got bored of it in about a week.

Originally posted by: kujoe

We also need to fix the power system to a more realistic system. I even want to see transmission lines with proper connections to power plants. The transmission lines should also run to sub-stations at which they get split down into distribution power lines that go to homes and businesses. These distribution lines should be available above and below ground like in real life.quote>

 

I agree with that one!  You don't have high voltage power lines delivering power directly to homes; that would blow fuses all over the place!

[Androv 6]

I think that one of the big problems is the complexity of the traffic simulator. When you have a city with thousands of streets, roads, avenues etc etc, the simulator can't handle people travelling more than a couple of kilometres (which is entirely unrealistic in a big, or even a small city).

Maybe they should alter it so that you have 'neighbourhoods' in which you could find a bunch of houses (fifty or so), with their streets linking them all up. Around the 'neighbourhood' run the arterial roads. The sims leave their neighbourhood, then use the arterial roads to get where they want (an industrial or commercial neighbourhood) and then enter that neighbourhood. This would reduce the number of calculations that the game has to make, since people can only really drive on a limited number of arterial roads instead of all the small residential streets - I HATE it when Sims think 'oh, it would be much faster to just drive through the curvy, low capacity residential streets, because it is so much closer distance wise'.

I agree there needs to be some cross-region traffic/tourism/freight etc, rather than the 'sole city on the planet' style we have now.

Curved roads would be lovely, but I'd be happy with roads similar to City Life.

Also, the hospital/clinic/school/police/fire department/everyotherthingwitharadius radius is hopeless in this game. With police and fire departments, you should require a single building for a city (as mentioned above), and just increase the funding to get more services. A single hospital should suffice until your city reaches at least one hundred thousand people. You don't need clinics at every residential corner, usually they're simply found in the central business district, or when a city is large enough, in the smaller commercial districts in each suburb. People walk further than two city blocks to get to school; a school should cover at least an area of 1-2 square kilometres in radius, not 100-200 metres. And libraries??? How many libraries do you normally find in a suburb? I think you need about five in SC4. /rant So, improving civic services, yeah. Not done well in City Life either, I might add

Water pipes . . meh, I think you should provide the water tower/pump but maybe forget the rest of it.

Power lines . . I think in Melbourne (3 million people) we have a few of the really big ones running about, but not in every city, and defintely not connecting a house that's just a bit out of town.

Roads have a capacity of 1000 cars a day . . streets have a capacity of 100 cars a DAY . . . I don't know who came up with that, but . . . thank god for the NAM

I'll leave it there for now.... getting City Life tomorrow so we'll see how that compares.

[HawaiiBill 0]

Please help this newby understand how to contact the EA folks to learn why they show SimCity 4 is "not available at this time" at the store. There seems to be no way to contact the sales folks or get answers to this question with the possible exception of right here!

Therefore, would appreciate some information on that. Meanwhile, I have ordered a brand new, unsealed, SimCity  4 DeLuxe and will soon have a chance to join you folks in a more intelligent fashion.

Thank you. bill@hawaii-island.com

[RHMgerards 7]

i would love to see an aprovement about a lot. like zoning, i would loved to be able to zone typical suburban area's, so that you won't have to build every road piece by piece. als something that can make a distinction between luxury, moderate, and poor dvelopment. so you can choose wich part of the city tou want to have poor, wich rich. because it's annoying if you want an area filled with luxury appartement towers, and you get those ugly things. also something like mixed zoning.

Further on. i want to be able to change the climate. at simcity 4, i often want to change of climate. but for that i have to delete the former modds and dowload new ones. and what if i want to go back to the other climate??? i have to do it all over again.

also i would love to see more building stles. and that you can change that also very easily. so one part can be an historical part, while a other part a new, modern part. and that al the public buildings like hospitals do the same

also if you compare simcity 4 with simcity 3000, i've noticed that you can have much more, and more easily office towers. i hate it at simcity 4 that i often have to wait. i don't want it do be as much and as soon as simcity 3000, but a bit sooner and a bit more than siimcity 4. i also want the cit to be able to be connected to the enire world. if you build a highway to the edge of a region, and connect it to the world. nothing special happens. no cargo goes out of the region, no traffic . and also the airport has to be improved. no tourists use the airports, no one of the city uses it, only commuters. and those don't use tfaffic, if you want to build a realistic airport. with monorail and highways and all that stuff. the only people that use it, are the ones who work there!!!

and as last. i want the city to be able to choose in which country it is, or make an own new country. and that you can make it the capital of an country. and if that's the case, that you will be able to build more governmental buildings. and that your city can be whealty by trade, by just building a port. not that you have to choose it by yourself. like at simcity 4 and 3000, that you can only choose of garbage, power and water.

[Lightning War 1]

Simcity 5 will come out soon. Once Will is finished with Spore, he and Maxis will start working on SC5.

[UrbanLegend 63]

Unfortunately City Life kind of makes SC4 look like crap now what with it's roads at any angle and full 3D view.  It seems to lack the depth of SC4 (I mean there are no limited access expressways for Christ's sake!) but it really set the bar for what we should expect from SC5 graphically.

What I want to see is Sims actually living in the cities I create.  Too much of SC4 is simply eye candy.  If I plop down a pizza place (or better yet, Sims demand causes one to be built in an appropriate zone) I want to see Sims eating at it during lunchtime or at 3:00am after coming from the bars.  I want to see Sims going to and from work and school.  If you've ever played a game like Evil Genius you know what I mean.  You plop (or zone) a particular item and the Sims will go and interact with it.  

[Shinnie02 17]

I reckon city life isnt really that great... i dont like the textures. they are just to plain. You know what would be really wierd but fun? Online simcity lol. in 1 large region, people are able to join and build cities next to each other in their own land. People get to declare war on each other and you get to command tanks, planes, soldiers like u drive it. You make "real" deals with your "real" neighbours. Ally with each other and help each others demand(this would be tough). take out other neighbours and take over the region and its your to keep. Its only a suggestion..

[Yisginlasvegas 5]

I don't think this is city life folks.

[isc91142 0]

There have always been a few flaws in the game that are incredibly rudimentary in my mind. Most of them have been listed here *cough*transportation and budgeting*cough* and the way that cities are plotted on the map (I think they should have a much bigger region with no predefined boundaries, where we can just draw our choses borders and have the borders grow as the city grows, and be able to access all of the cities without having to save and go out onto the region map), but some are things that I have never seen mentioned before.

Take zoning for example. I've always had a problem with the way they've done that. Now, it's true that they do zone areas for specific development, but the buildings don't magically spawn from the zoning map onto the landscape. Developers design subdivisions and submit them to the city for approval based on various regulations. Those proposals spend countless weeks beign tweaked and negotiated, and are finally approved and implemented. The city makes alterations like "if you want to put in these 500 single-family homes, you have to create X amount of parkland, Y amount of area for commercial shops, blah blah blah." There should be a way that we can do that -- have random developments proposed where we can take a basic plan and alter it to suit the city's needs (or mayor's desires), have that development installed, AND THEN the buildings will come. Like we could have downtown areas where they'd beg to build condos and offices and stuff, suburbs with duplexes and little apartments, districts of apartments, and the occasional trailer park or ghetto. That's kinda how they do it in the real world, why not in Sim City.

Regarding transportation: I think there ought to be a way for us to put a road, highway, street, oneway, or whatever in, and when demand is high enough, tell the game to put an extra lane in, but have it show what things would be destroyed in the process, for approval. I also think that the Mass Transit system could be adjusted. Ideally, the game would have artificial intelligence that we could use to tell it "Hey, put in a bus network" (on an overlay view of the city), and have that AI know where to logically place bus stops or subway stops or whatever in order to make the most good out of the stops. We could then edit from that map.

Regarding Education: I think that schools should have specific zoning boundaries (non circular, rather by street boundary), more like real schools. I also think that AI similar to what I mentioned for transportation should be developed to suggest optimal placement of the various educational buildings to best affect the population residing in a given neighborhood. For example, if you've got a district of a buch of 18-24 year olds, you'd want colleges (or vocational schools), and in a district of middle-aged adults, you'd want an area with elementary and high schools, and musems and stuff in downtown areas, with library branches scattered throughout.

Also, another pet peeve of mine is the city loading time. It takes forever to load or save cities (probably in part due to my computer, but not totally), when most other games (like Civ 3, AoE, MS Flight Sim, GTA, or whatever) don't take nearly as much time to get up and running. I think that could be fixed or tweaked. 

MORE VARIETY IN BUILDINGS!!! I'm tired of building cities with maindrag avenues downtown literally lined for several blocks with nothing but the same CO$$$ building about 60 freaking buildings in a row....

If I had more time, I coiuld probably come up with many more suggestions, but I don't so I won't. But maybe later.

 

~ Ian

PS: Yes, this would make for a much larger game. But I think that it would be well worth it. So be it.

[HawaiiBill 0]

A few more suggestions like the war-like Shinnie02 and I'll lose all confidence in any hope for the future of this nation. SimCity is 180 degrees away from this way of thinking and any suggestion of aggresssion should  be deplored.

[HawaiiBill 0]

isc91142 offers a thoughtful piece for the thread but, I humbly suggest, it contains elements seriously off-track for any concept of "planning."

The suggestion is that growth and change are reactive to suggestions by developers. A fundamental point of good planning is to encourage physical growth into areas set by the planning process AND to encourage redevelopment of in-city areas that are run down or blighted by time and poor usage. If we wait for developers to show up and then 'plan by negotiation' there is little certaintly except corruption of city officials who can insist on amenaties until their palms are greased. And that is not an unusual situation in real life.

The indication is that SimCity 5 is being shaped by the good folks who have brought us this far. That's great news and this forum is welcome as a place to lodge suggestions. The bad news from this old cowboy is that -- though ordered and money spent -- I still don't have my SimCity 4! So I continue to speak more from ignorance than understanding.

One suggestion that might fit despite that is to enable incorporation of existing concepts such as Smart Growth. This is a responsible and growing way of looking at the future that might allow a 'mod' or plug-in developed in concert with the Smart Growth folks. I don't think they have anything like a game but it would be worth exploring. See this non-profit at http://www.smartgrowth.org/

Not to be negative but the nation's dedication to city planning and all it entails is flagging. That shows in the steady detrioration of infrastructure from water to roadways and open space. Whether these issues can be incorporated in SimCity 5 I can't guess until I am able to get my hands on my "in transit" SC4! Needless to say, I'm anxious to get my toys so I can play!

[Yisginlasvegas 5]

There are many things that the next Sim City should take in to play. First of all, when a city is started up, the border shouldn't be a cut-off to nothing. Even though there is supposed to be a city on the other side. Past the border should be the next city's layout in a more transparent color. Second, you should be able to construct curved roads, one-way roads, avenues, parkways, boulevards, lanes, terraces, centers, etc. Like my post of the so called, "next Sim City" above, the slight cartoonish style of graphics should be cranked up to look almost real. There sould also be a much larger variety of skyscrapers. Weather is another throw-in that could improve the conceptual status of the game. Another would be the ability of buildings being able to be lined up to diagonal transportation lines. I would like a wider variety of underground options too.

[HawaiiBill 0]

SimCity 5 will have infinite interest for this old cowboy if it can be realized on an island, specifically the Big Island of Hawai`i. Curiously there are no "city" designations in Hawai`i, including Honolulu which otherwise looks mighty like a city. The only political subdivisions of the state are the five counties, Kaua`i, Oahu, Maui, and Hawai`i and a "sort of" county on the northern shore of Moloka`i which is the former colony for victims of Hansen's Disease. Maui County incorporates Lanai and Molokai, by the way. Oahu officially is knoan as "The City and County of Honolulu" for political purposes but we all know it's just another county. Sort of.

My ideal would be to have a model of the Big Island as the equivalent of a city for SimCity 5. The "city limit" would be the Pacific Ocean shoreline. Is that possible?

[Yisginlasvegas 5]

I don't think that would be possible due to the total size of the Pacific Ocean, unless your talking about the shoreline of the island. The Pacific Ocean's actual size happens to be 155.557 million square kilometers. That's about 15 times the size of the United States. If this could be made possible, the challenge would stress the developer(s) well over a year at least. I am sure that the island of Hawai`i can be re-created. In-fact, I think there is a map for that available to download.

What I mean is just being able to see the neighboring city or division but kind of transparent. This would be like seeing land on "Rollercoaster Tycoon",but not being able to construct on it because it is of someone else's ownership. If this is possible, the borderline should be readily defined in city play and region play.

[ACEfanatic 7]

Some of my thoughts:

First, I'd love to have the curved roads, conforming lots, etc. already mentioned.

Also, some form of resource management would be cool.  Not overly complex, as we don't want to turn this into an RTS, but here's what I'm thinking:

Have several forms of resources:

Coal

Oil

Ores

Timber

and more...

Now, when a city is created (going into God-Mode) resources are scattered on the map.  The player also has the option of placing more resources where they see fit.  They affect the look of the map as well -- coal and ore viens on exposed rock faces, etc.  

When the city begins, the resources control how (dirty) industry develops.  Got coal viens all over?  The simulator will tend to grow coal burning factories and steel mills.  Oil fields?  More refineries.  If industry is zoned over a resource plot, a mine, oil field, logging camp, etc. grows.

Time and education also have an effect.  Coal industries are prosperous long before oil is.  EQ can help or hinder progress.

Farms also have their own set, with grain mills, silos, bakeries, etc.

Other stuff is also thrown into the mix.  The equivilent of I-M industries would be warehouses, distribution centers, and general light manfacturing.  I-HT would be research facilities, industrial parks, etc.

This would add a rich layer of apparent complexity to the industrial side of the game (which desperately needs it) without making gameplay all that more complex.

-ACE

[HawaiiBill 0]

Uh, actually, my note said the "city limit" would be the Pacific Ocean shoreline.

I've seen an offer to download the island of Oahu. Until my ordered, paid for and very slow to arrive SimCity 4 arrives, it's hard for me to learn about these matters so I appreciate your help.

[Yisginlasvegas 5]

If enough work is put into the creation of the island, then I can say that it IS possible. I have heard people say that you can do this with Photoshop.  I retrieved an image for you too.

[HawaiiBill 0]

It is a pretty island. Because of the work I do there are many maps available in my collection but -- and my ordered copy of SimCity 4 still has not arrived! -- I have no way to know which of those would be best for use in building an application. ESRI should be an available choice but the makers of SimCity surely had to draw the line on some level of complexity that would fit the program. No problem with that.

Below is a picture I took of Honolulu last Friday on my way home.

[IGGYMAN 101 1]

I love to play Simcity 4 in the Philippines to be proud to be a Sim citizen. I will start playing Simcity 2000 since I am 14 years old. To play that, I will write something about the ideals of city building system. Ok, I will list down some menus in the system which will be proud to become idealist of Simcity. I am still not to become far away to play Simcity 4.

I will make a visionary for Simcity 4 full edition will be on the Flash Drive system or USB connected whichever with the GMAX, Simcity 4 Autocad, Simcity 4 Autodesk Revit, Plugin manager, Simcity 4 lot editor, 5000 stex files, Top 50 modds and developments, and city building of the multiple rules such as a general contractor, governor of state or province, CEO of a company, chief executive head of nation.

After plopping the building I make choose a type of building according to generation such as Landmark, Plopable, Growable, Education, Heatlh, Fire, Police, Reward, etc...

I make a change for the advisors face like THE SIMS 2 face. I will customize face and their apparel.

Instead of shifting from one city to another city, I will make vision to play on the entire region bigger or smaller than the original.

In the flash drive, you cannot make an install a game from a CD just connect with a USB like a digital Camera onto the computer. It will make larger capacity while installing to dilapidate the hard disk.

So, many Filipinos whoe's be addicted playing simcity.

Thank you for everyone to become like a siblings in one family of Simtropolis.

Thank You! Godbless us all!

Iggyman 101

http://www.myspace.com/iggyman101

[crazycoders 0]

I know this topic is old, but i think i have good ideas to make the game better.

1) Finer control on everything and less work on the zoning part

It becomes increasingly hard to know where and what to place to do an effective layout of zones throughout your regions. I would be glad to see a real civic advisor telling me where i should zone for what and have some interaction with it. For instance, i'd tell him i want to develop a high-wealth residencial sector, then he'd give me different options as to where i can set it up and what i should try to build in surrounding zones like  work and services.  Then the game would be less of a puzzle piecing and rebuilding entire cities to get to balance everything.

Also, we should have new zones with finer details as to what can go where. I find it a bit funny to spam a large zone of CS and see no restaurant whatsoever appear but see 6 hairdresser one beside each other.

What would be nice is to have access to CS and CO zoning but also different sub zones in CS and CO to detail all possible services in an area... (This is a list of, but not limited to)

CS types i'd invent :

• Restaurants ($, $$ and $$$)

• Gas stations & Car maintenance
• Personnal care (Hairdressing, manucure, etc)
• Shopping (Boutiques, Groceries, Shopping malls) ($, $$ and $$$)

i'd invent a CR type (Commercial recreative) :

• Bars, Saloons ($ and $$)

• Arcades, pool, bowling, putting ($)
• Attractions (Movies, amusement parcs) ($$ and $$$)

CO types :

• Financial services ($, $$ and $$$)
• Business to particulars services
• Business to business services

And it could go on for a long time...

As i see it, Sim City has to evolve a bit to be more fun and challenging, because the mayor itself is not the one that does the zoning, the eletrical system and water system, he makes decisions based on the input he recieves from the advisors and the graphs... Right now its a bit the reverse, the advisors are only there to report problems and lets you take all the measures and calculations to see if you will build an adequate region...

2) Real-life situations ...

I live in canada, province of quebec and let me tell you that the american model of cities is far from ours... Here most of the things are public, cities pay for very little which is :

• Police and fire
• Streets
• Schools
• Water

We do not tend to the highways or provincial roads, neither do we care about hospitals or clinics... The goverment does... Gambling, Electricity and Health are all goverment business... thats where i want to go. I dont want the game to change at all for the canadian model, but wouldn't it be nice if your region settings when you create it would allow for govermental budgetting and laws and such. You could deal with the goverment to build an hospital somewhere and then you have nothing to care about... the funcding is done by the goverment.

How i see this is that you can't build too many hospitals this way or you'd have to increase the overall region taxation to allow more hospitals to be created.... anyway we're delving very deep in there for only small ideas

One last thing i'd like to talk about real life situations is the damn fact that you can increase speed, pause and modify or just bulldoze and rebuild in a jify... How lame... Real-life cities don't work like that, real life doesn't pause to rebuild or upgrade roads or change the electrical foundations... When you build a road and upgrade it to a boulevard, you have to live with the consequence of expropriating people and having a certain delay in the upgrade of the road or building of the hospital... That construction creates more traffic since you remove some lanes while the workers expand the boulevard, etc...

3) Last point, i swear... Remove the radius of effect...

Police departements can be big indeed but will contain a certain number of cop cars, cell blocks that are funded by the city. Next, the city officers will decide where the police cars patrol more than other places. Same thing for fire departement, road maintenance, etc... It is the city's choice to send some service somewhere, and i'd find it much more appropriate to tell the police to cover that sector since its more prone to violence than the rich sector wich has little need of surveillance.

Same thing for hospitals, damn it we have 5000-15000 places hospitals here in province of quebec, not 3000 places... and the radius of effect of hospitals is calculated in almost 50 km (35 miles) wide radius... not a few miles around it. Those are things that i find way out of touch for a game, its like they based the game on on city they studied and poof let it out... the world is huge and very different...

4) Multiplayer, one city per mayor, one country per server, realtime development, this explains everything

Hope you like my suggestions