YOU are the lead designer at Maxis. What will you imagine?

[l_rubbo 34]

So we discover now that SimCity 2013 is a reboot, rather than the next step in a gradual evolution of the franchise. That's cool, but imagine (as I'm sure we all have) that you are the lead designer at Maxis and wondering what SimCity 5 would look like as the successor to SimCity 4.

Imagine...

The game starts and you are greeted with a large slab of earth floating in space, much like SimCity 4 - it's about..meh.. the size of 9 large SimCity 4 cities, forming a square - however, there are no outlines for city boundaries, and this baby is 3D, you can grip it and rotate it however you like.

As some funky ass jazz music plays in the background you notice a plethora of glorious 3D tools to terraform this slab, and indeed, terraform you do. You raise mountains till snow appears, you lower valleys into deep oceans, you paint the landscape with tropical tress. You're happy with this region and now decide to start a city.

You scroll your mouse wheel forward, zooming into an area of choice. You click the 'city boundry' icon and drag a square on the region to any size you see fit (up to a quad core processor processable size of course, which, by the way, is about the same size as a medium to large SimCity 4 city). Wallah! It's time to name your new city.

You're city is named and you continue to scroll the mouse wheel forward into a few acres, the Glassbox engine kicks in and you immediately zone a large farm....

When you're done and want to create another city, you zoom back out, click that city boundary icon and create another one, any size you see fit. You marvel at the wonder of 1980's snap-to-grid technology, allowing you join the city to your previous one.

It's nothing radical, just the logical next step after SimCity 4 methinks. And one the fans would be proud of I believe.

[macvirt 361]

"YOU are the lead designer at Maxis. What will you imagine?"

Heh. A studio independant from EA.

[Urban Cartographer 601]

I will imagine that I would break away from EA, set up a crowdsourcing website to fund the new SimCity, and create SimCity the way it should be, a successor to SC4 (while the current SC2013 would be slightly remodelled as SimCity Social "Deluxe").

[pyanodon 218]

I will imagine that I would break away from EA, set up a crowdsourcing website to fund the new SimCity, and create SimCity the way it should be, a successor to SC4 (while the current SC2013 would be slightly remodelled as SimCity Social "Deluxe").

i cant wait to see a citybuilding game prototype in kickstarter to throw my money over it.

[Dewm 177]

So we discover now that SimCity 2013 is a reboot, rather than the next step in a gradual evolution of the franchise. That's cool, but imagine (as I'm sure we all have) that you are the lead designer at Maxis and wondering what SimCity 5 would look like as the successor to SimCity 4.

Imagine...

The game starts and you are greeted with a large slab of earth floating in space, much like SimCity 4 - it's about..meh.. the size of 9 large SimCity 4 cities, forming a square - however, there are no outlines for city boundaries, and this baby is 3D, you can grip it and rotate it however you like.

As some funky ass jazz music plays in the background you notice a plethora of glorious 3D tools to terraform this slab, and indeed, terraform you do. You raise mountains till snow appears, you lower valleys into deep oceans, you paint the landscape with tropical tress. You're happy with this region and now decide to start a city.

You scroll your mouse wheel forward, zooming into an area of choice. You click the 'city boundry' icon and drag a square on the region to any size you see fit (up to a quad core processor processable size of course, which, by the way, is about the same size as a medium to large SimCity 4 city). Wallah! It's time to name your new city.

You're city is named and you continue to scroll the mouse wheel forward into a few acres, the Glassbox engine kicks in and you immediately zone a large farm....

When you're done and want to create another city, you zoom back out, click that city boundary icon and create another one, any size you see fit. You marvel at the wonder of 1980's snap-to-grid technology, allowing you join the city to your previous one.

It's nothing radical, just the logical next step after SimCity 4 methinks. And one the fans would be proud of I believe.

Can't I already do most of this in SC4?

[Royalkin 11]

i cant wait to see a citybuilding game prototype in kickstarter to throw my money over it.

I could not agree more! After participating in the Demo (errr... Beta), I was really disgusted and dissapointed. I'm really sick of the Big Publishers pushing out polished turd after polished turd.

As far as City Builders, there are currently two good possibilities...

1. Boomtown - http://community.sim...ity-5-boomtown/

2. Synekism - http://www.synekism.com

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Yeah, if I could make any game with any engine, I would make BoomTown, utilizing Glass Box for simulation. Really, there are only a few dozen things proposed in BoomTown that are not in SimCity 2013, most of those being possible to be added in expansion packs.

--Ocram

[l_rubbo 34]

Can't I already do most of this in SC4?

No. SC4 is 2.5D, it's completely static, the city boundaries are chosen for you and you are locked to a grid.

I'm simply saying, make a 3D version of SC4, give more freedom of control to city sight selection and size, ditch the grid and old engine, adopt Sandbox.

I think the entire competitive and sharing aspect of multiplayer and the consequent expense of the servers hosting all this cloud data could have been wiser spent on making the region terraforming aspect.