The problem is the glassbox

[efgrib 45]

Because you implied that if Maxis simply separated the leaderboards by map size, it'd be problem solved and we could all have bigger maps.

That doesn't solve the problem. Leaderboards separated or not, if Maxis included bigger maps, they have to change the minimum system requirements of the game. Already there are people on these very forums who have mentioned their computer is not good enough to handle the new game. Each time Maxis ups the system requirements, they eliminate tons and tons of potential customers.

They can't just include bigger maps, offer separate leaderboards, and not change the system requirements.

 

no. you misunderstand me! i wantet only to point out that leaderboards are not the reason that there is only one mapsize (like sunfighter was saying), you can simple make different leaderboards if oyu have different map size. maybe youz should read the post i was quoting...

[tp_ryhansen 4]

I really want to love this game.  I do.  But when I played, I didn't even see the benefit of glassbox.  It is supposedly amazing but the traffic coming from my neighboring region entered my city and immediately moved to a side street that ran parallel to my main avenue.  It caused a traffic nightmare and made no sense.  The citizens wouldn't take the supposedly faster option.  So if we are trading city size for simulation complexity shouldn't it be darn near perfect?  I know everyone says "region play is exciting, it is like a series of connected cities".  But what made SimCity 4 fun for me was creating a city with character.  I had a ton of room to experiment with a downtown district.  I could survey the land for a new freeway to connect the suburbs to my rising downtown.   I could put in a shopping district.  The city contoured around large areas of varying terrain. (from what I have seen so far SimCity 5 doesn't have the diversity in terrain within the cities themselves).  I had intricately designed neighborhoods that look nothing like the ones I have on the other side of town.  I love evolving my city to have areas with character.  And they all make up one huge living organism that I can see and play with all at once.  The map size in the new simcity is so small that I don't get that.  And forget being able to design a huge transportation network, that was done for me before I even started.  The cities in different regions felt exactly like what they are, separate cities.  I didn't find them to connect all that well.  

 

The new simcity has some great features.  I love their version of expanding schools, hospitals, police, and fire.  It is so much more fun than plopping generic schools.  I also love that the city hall serves a purpose.  These things are fantastic.  But come secondary to me personally.  After a while the newness of plopping an addition to the school and building an expansion on the city hall wears off.  Watching the coal move in the factory gets boring in my 6th city.  And filling my cities boarders in a day is old hat.  

 

I am looking forward to spend more time with the game when it is is released but I really feel like those of us that are frustrated about the change in gameplay are being forced to accept that "it's better this way" by Maxis and other players.  I get it, it isn't for everyone.    There are different play styles and unfortunately mine is not present in the new game.  

[SirChick 184]

 

 

The only realistic simulation i need is transport + interactions with other cities, the way the fire stations etc worked i prefer how it was in SC4 because its simple and would not be such hard work for our computers.

 

The fact that every single sim simulated wasn't needed in my eyes, it just needed to represent heavy traffic going to and from the industry/commercial/homes, as long as i saw that at the right time of the day cycle, then I would believe it to be a breathing city... the graph data is what tells you the true issues. That would make it more spreadsheet but it would allow us to focus more on creativity, i only watch traffic for so long before its a novelty.

 

Foot traffic plays a huge part in realism. The physical walking between transport options (rail to bus, etc) is an important part of any realistic transport system. The same goes for quantity ... I mean if 20 people want to go and play a game of baseball in a park, simulating that is well, realistic ... 

 

 

I'm almost never that zoomed into see it I'm not interested in watching people walking to a train stop I'm too busy building a city... which is what i like to do. I'll go to my local train station and stare at people if that interested me - so it seems wasted half the time to create exactly that rather than simulate the idea. People walked in SC4 too between transport exchanges. You never see it visually but it happens in numbers.

 

What he means is that we are seeing things like park usage, ambulance movement, school buses, police patrols, shopping and tourism, etc. that were either abstracted greatly or ignored altogether in SC4. We had animations for people walking in SC4. Maybe you don't see it if you are always zoomed out or build an overly car-centric city, but the pedestrians are visually represented in SC4. Just like we had animations for each crime, animations for schoolchildren, and dozens of other little ones that almost nobody saw. The animations in Glassbox are not significantly more numerous or demanding than what we had in SC4; they just happen to accurately reflect the underlying simulation rather than being a representation of it.

 

 

Again i don't zoom into watch the park being used i click it and look at the numbers in the GUI box...so the graphical simulation is so what "over detailed". Easing the workload to allow larger cities is a much better sacrafice that watching repeating animation of kids running in the park ..

[Cob92 360]

 The graphics are NOT what slows the game down, it's the simulation!

[SirChick 184]

The graphics are a representation of the simulation. SC4 is a simulation too don't forget. It just didn't do every individual person like the new one does, which is not really necessary given none of us ever watch a given person for that long during the game we focus on the city as a whole. So to simulate each person individually was a waste.

They wouldn't simulate every person uniquely in the city if they had no intention of graphically showing it, it would be a waste... but it wasn't a necessary thing to do in the first place. SC4 shows X amount of people using airports but it doesn't show EVERY single sim like this game does....but the effects to the city are the same thing in the long term for the city. All this extra maths now is to what end... losing alot of flexibility on the creative side of the game..... which if mods are an indication of, was the main driving force to SC4 once the other store got a little boring - creating great cityscapes is what prevails.. it feels like maxis totally missed that in their research on what made SC4 so successful for so long.

[BravoGreenONE 120]

Exactly. That and I dont understand the logic of maxis saying well we waited 10 years for the technology to advance. And then what do they do? Put it on a single core. I cant even begin to describe........

[SirChick 184]

I couldn't find a source for that information but if its true thats ridiculous decision to make I agree. Granted its not easy to make games utilize CPU cores effectively but they Maxis hire those that are in the business they should know how to do it

[Zpike 79]

Maxis already said they are looking at expanding city size in the next release because of the feedback they have been getting. My guess is they will offer several sizes over time. This whole discussion is pointless. They could not offer everything in the first release. From the feedback they got in this release they will make decisions on the next and so on and so forth.

Play the game.... Enjoy it for what it is... Wait for the next release if you don’t like this version.

[SirChick 184]

Maxis already said they are looking at expanding city size in the next release because of the feedback they have been getting. My guess is they will offer several sizes over time. This whole discussion is pointless. They could not offer everything in the first release. From the feedback they got in this release they will make decisions on the next and so on and so forth.

Play the game.... Enjoy it for what it is... Wait for the next release if you don’t like this version.

 

 

They initially said they could not expand it due to limitations of performance, so they can only wait for pc tech to improve if that is the true answer... or they will re-design the engine mechanics for the game, but that would be a new platform again so not an expansion set.

[Msprintz 25]

Yea, no point arguing with OP in this thread. He just wants to hate the new game. Logic can't be applied. CPU speeds aren't improving? Please.

I would be excited to see a good new SIm City game, and I don't really have that high expectation, but one of my expectations is that it keeps what made Sim City 4 good. One of the reasons I think Sim City 4 is good, is regional play. That was a huge improvement from Sim City 3000, but at least Sim City 3000 had a quite big map. I can live with a lot, but I can't live without proper regional play. 

 

Also, I am not sure what you mean by "logic can't be applied" and CPU speeds are not improving as you can see below. Don't overlook the yellow line, which is laptops, Most people use laptops these days. CPU is not doubling every 2-3 years anymore. CPU speeds are stagnating, hence there won't be 10 GHZ computers who can run larger cities in the near future. Maybe they can start threading, but if that is possible then I suggest doing it today. 

 

There won't be any 10 ghz computer chips ( well at least for a decade or two, barring a change of chip material ), because the chip makers realized that more cores at lower clock speeds of around 2.00-4.00 ghz provided less heat and better performance.  As for that graph it still shows speeds improving ( which goes counter to your argument ), in short you need a better graph.  CPU clock speeds have hit a wall, but performance has increased because almost every chip manufactured now has at least two or more cores these days.  When you're gaming you want better performance, and that's not always available at the highest possible clock frequency.     

 

The mobile market isn't cut and dry anymore either as you can add your Ipad, Iphone, and other tablets and smartphones into that list.  I wouldn't go as far to include Laptops in that category, they can be lumped in with PC's.  Performance wise most laptops today are easily on par with their PC brethren ( graphics though might be a different story ).

 

I understand you're not to happy about the new Sim City, but if you give SC2013 a chance you'll be pleasantly surprised at what the Glassbox engine you're arguing against can do.  Yes it's giant leap, and yes it's a reboot for the series.  Getting over that and acknowledging the positives rather than the negatives is a better way to look at it, the modular features to the buildings are one positive ( which was most likely influenced by the SC4 community ).   

[croxis 150]

Multithreading the phyics, sound, graphics, and simulation is a mostly trivial task. Multithreading the simulation itself is anything but. First multithreading makes code much more difficult to debug and adds another layer where bugs can live in. Multithreaded games are often compiled to be single threaded during testing. It would not surprise me if glassbox has multithreaded architecture but EA chose not to open that box of worms for its grand introduction.

 

Multithreading the simulation might not make it faster either. Memory can only be accessed by one thread at a time. Things called locks and sephamores are used to protect memory in multithreaded stuff, one thread will lock out other threads that are trying to work on the same bit. Those other threads will stop what they are doing waiting for the lock to let go. This isn't much of an issue in programs like a web browser where the different tabs don't really need to talk to each other much, but in a game the performance hit from locks are much bigger.

[Zpike 79]

Maxis already said they are looking at expanding city size in the next release because of the feedback they have been getting. My guess is they will offer several sizes over time. This whole discussion is pointless. They could not offer everything in the first release. From the feedback they got in this release they will make decisions on the next and so on and so forth.

Play the game.... Enjoy it for what it is... Wait for the next release if you don’t like this version.

 

 

They initially said they could not expand it due to limitations of performance, so they can only wait for pc tech to improve if that is the true answer... or they will re-design the engine mechanics for the game, but that would be a new platform again so not an expansion set.

 

Maxis created the engine. This whole thread assumes the engine is static. The engine is not static. Six months from now after a team works on optimization they will be able to expand the city size.  You don't have to redesign the engine to optimize the code.  They can also offer several city sizes and let the end user know they will suffer performance loss if they choose a size to big for their computer.  There are many ways they can offer larger cities in the near future.

 

And as to the post title... There is no problem with the GlassBox engine.  It works great and the game is tons of fun.

  Edited March 2, 2013 by CaptCity  

[SirChick 184]

 

Maxis already said they are looking at expanding city size in the next release because of the feedback they have been getting. My guess is they will offer several sizes over time. This whole discussion is pointless. They could not offer everything in the first release. From the feedback they got in this release they will make decisions on the next and so on and so forth.

Play the game.... Enjoy it for what it is... Wait for the next release if you don’t like this version.

 

 

They initially said they could not expand it due to limitations of performance, so they can only wait for pc tech to improve if that is the true answer... or they will re-design the engine mechanics for the game, but that would be a new platform again so not an expansion set.

 

Maxis created the engine. This whole thread assumes the engine is static. The engine is not static. Six months from now after a team works on optimization they will be able to expand the city size.  You don't have to redesign the engine to optimize the code.  They can also offer several city sizes and let the end user know they will suffer performance loss if they choose a size to big for their computer.  There are many ways they can offer larger cities in the near future.

 

This thread is pointless speculation from people that have no idea what's going on over at Maxis.

 

And as to the post title... There is no problem with the GlassBox engine.  It works great and the game is tons of fun.

 

You assume it is not already optimized... unless you have knowledge the rest of us don't have..... the point is maxis said they couldn't do larger cities and the games does slow when you hit 200k population currently... i can't see how they can optimize it that much, engines are complex things. They will spend more time on expansion packs for content for money than optimization. I'm not saying they won't optimize but you get SC4 size out of it till our PCs are many more years advanced than now. (Plus they need to allow more than one core use which they don't). Which would require a re-write of the game. So thats out of the question.

[Camlon 50]

 

Yea, no point arguing with OP in this thread. He just wants to hate the new game. Logic can't be applied. CPU speeds aren't improving? Please.

I would be excited to see a good new SIm City game, and I don't really have that high expectation, but one of my expectations is that it keeps what made Sim City 4 good. One of the reasons I think Sim City 4 is good, is regional play. That was a huge improvement from Sim City 3000, but at least Sim City 3000 had a quite big map. I can live with a lot, but I can't live without proper regional play. 

 

Also, I am not sure what you mean by "logic can't be applied" and CPU speeds are not improving as you can see below. Don't overlook the yellow line, which is laptops, Most people use laptops these days. CPU is not doubling every 2-3 years anymore. CPU speeds are stagnating, hence there won't be 10 GHZ computers who can run larger cities in the near future. Maybe they can start threading, but if that is possible then I suggest doing it today. 

 

There won't be any 10 ghz computer chips ( well at least for a decade or two, barring a change of chip material ), because the chip makers realized that more cores at lower clock speeds of around 2.00-4.00 ghz provided less heat and better performance.  As for that graph it still shows speeds improving ( which goes counter to your argument ), in short you need a better graph.  CPU clock speeds have hit a wall, but performance has increased because almost every chip manufactured now has at least two or more cores these days.  When you're gaming you want better performance, and that's not always available at the highest possible clock frequency.     

 

The mobile market isn't cut and dry anymore either as you can add your Ipad, Iphone, and other tablets and smartphones into that list.  I wouldn't go as far to include Laptops in that category, they can be lumped in with PC's.  Performance wise most laptops today are easily on par with their PC brethren ( graphics though might be a different story ).

 

I understand you're not to happy about the new Sim City, but if you give SC2013 a chance you'll be pleasantly surprised at what the Glassbox engine you're arguing against can do.  Yes it's giant leap, and yes it's a reboot for the series.  Getting over that and acknowledging the positives rather than the negatives is a better way to look at it, the modular features to the buildings are one positive ( which was most likely influenced by the SC4 community ).   

First off, Sim City 4 is not a multithreading game, hence all those cores in i5 and i7 are useless. The reason they started increasing the number of cores was because the clock speed was hitting its physical limitation. As many programs are single core, there is still a high demand for higher processing speeds.

 

And I never said CPU speeds do not improve slightly. I am stating they are not improving very fast anymore, Right now SC2013 can run about 100K people in a city. If it is going to be possible to have 300K people, then processing speeds need to improve from 2 GHZ to st least 6 GHZ, probably more due to the increase in options. That will take forever.  

 

What excactly can the glass box do that is so amazing? Its not that I don't like the glassbox. I just think the cost of implementing it are too high, and the returns are too low. 

[Ma8thew 77]

They wouldn't simulate every person uniquely in the city if they had no intention of graphically showing it, it would be a waste... but it wasn't a necessary thing to do in the first place. SC4 shows X amount of people using airports but it doesn't show EVERY single sim like this game does....but the effects to the city are the same thing in the long term for the city. All this extra maths now is to what end... losing alot of flexibility on the creative side of the game..... which if mods are an indication of, was the main driving force to SC4 once the other store got a little boring - creating great cityscapes is what prevails.. it feels like maxis totally missed that in their research on what made SC4 so successful for so long.

This is not the case. Simulating each person does not benefit the graphics. It makes the simulation more realistic and allows for emergent behaviour (complex behaviours arise as a result of simpler behaviours). The effects on the city are not the same. In the real world, scientists and engineers perform agent based simulation without any graphical engine. The simulators used by traffic engineers in particular are very close to SimCity's traffic system, which is much more accurate than Simcity 4's.

One could create SimCity without the agent based simulator and have visually identical graphics. The computational cost is completely down to the simulator and is unconnected to the graphics. The simulator does allow the graphics to better reflect the reality of the simulation, but this does not incur any significant cost.

[magicrobbie 77]

I don't think Glassbox is the issue. Most limitations seem to come from forced online multiplayer and DLC.

leaderboards -> no terraforming, small map sizes, no adjacent cities (to prevent "unfair advantages")

DLC -> always online, no moddability

Aside from all that - I don't know why Glassbox has to simulate ALL sims in a city. I'd assume that simulating just 10,000 sims in a city with a population of 1,000,000 would be a good compromise between simulation detail and performance?

[nhgriffith 179]

And I never said CPU speeds do not improve slightly. I am stating they are not improving very fast anymore, Right now SC2013 can run about 100K people in a city. If it is going to be possible to have 300K people, then processing speeds need to improve from 2 GHZ to st least 6 GHZ, probably more due to the increase in options. That will take forever.

With the currently listed system requirements, GlassBox can simulate AT LEAST 500,000 people. Probably significantly more. But the population requirement to get every upgrade on your city hall is 500,000. So GlassBox can already handle a lot more then what you're claiming.

Heck, people were getting 100,000 in the first two betas purely with medium density...

And that 500,000 number is just counting residential population. Your city could potentially have even more Sims in it than this by the time you account for anyone who may commute in, or any tourists that are visiting.

Moreover, just because GlassBox's current limitations require X Ghz doesn't mean that tripling the limitations would suddenly mean 3X Ghz.

What excactly can the glass box do that is so amazing? Its not that I don't like the glassbox. I just think the cost of implementing it are too high, and the returns are too low.

First and foremost, traffic in the new SimCity game is actually real traffic. Now, the traffic simulation needs some work, as far as I can tell, but it's already leaps and bounds ahead of what SimCity 4 was. And that's to be expected, we're 10 years into the future. But the reason it's so much better is because of GlassBox.

GlassBox makes it a simulated model, whereas before it was just a statistical simulation.

One of the side effects of GlassBox is that every single resident actually exists. So, from a Sims point of view, if you like that series, it lets you get really personal with your city-goers. You can follow a cop around on his beat as he arrests criminals, then at the end of his shift, continue following him to his home, and then see what he does in his free time, be it go to the park, go shop, or whatever. Now, you may or may not be interested in this (I'm not particularly interested in it, though I'll check it out at least once, I'm sure), BUT it is a very powerful new feature that is added specifically because of GlassBox. I mean, this massively increases City-Journaling potential for the CJers of this website, and I'm kind of looking forward to seeing some of those. And the fact of the matter is, even when you get up over 500,000 residents, all of those residents still actually exist. You can find and follow any one of them to work, play, shop, school, etc.

Another one of the things that is a result of GlassBox is the relationship between residential, commercial, and industrial. Workers produce actual goods at the industry, and the ship them to actual stores in the commercial, and then they're bought by actual shoppers. It's much easier to keep track of the give and take in this supply line then it was in SC4 where a commercial building will abandon for not enough customers because you didn't put a traffic jam on the part of the street they're connected to.

Additionally, the new way that civics work, be it fire, health, police, or education. This is all due to GlassBox. You don't need another school every other block, you just need to expand your bus routes and bus coverage. And the civic services what Sims it can reach by road, not the Sims that are in some radius.

Plus, all the ploppable additions to any building are a result of the GlassBox engine.

[Ma8thew 77]

I don't think Glassbox is the issue. Most limitations seem to come from forced online multiplayer and DLC.

leaderboards -> no terraforming, small map sizes, no adjacent cities (to prevent "unfair advantages")

DLC -> always online, no moddability

Aside from all that - I don't know why Glassbox has to simulate ALL sims in a city. I'd assume that simulating just 10,000 sims in a city with a population of 1,000,000 would be a good compromise between simulation detail and performance?

On the basis that there is no hard limit on the number of sims in a city, some have speculated that as an optimisation, several sims may be aggregated into a single agent when populations get high. There is certainly some level of optimisation, but it would be a commercial secret of EA what precisely they are doing.

[SirChick 184]

They wouldn't simulate every person uniquely in the city if they had no intention of graphically showing it, it would be a waste... but it wasn't a necessary thing to do in the first place. SC4 shows X amount of people using airports but it doesn't show EVERY single sim like this game does....but the effects to the city are the same thing in the long term for the city. All this extra maths now is to what end... losing alot of flexibility on the creative side of the game..... which if mods are an indication of, was the main driving force to SC4 once the other store got a little boring - creating great cityscapes is what prevails.. it feels like maxis totally missed that in their research on what made SC4 so successful for so long.

This is not the case. Simulating each person does not benefit the graphics. It makes the simulation more realistic and allows for emergent behaviour (complex behaviours arise as a result of simpler behaviours). The effects on the city are not the same. In the real world, scientists and engineers perform agent based simulation without any graphical engine. The simulators used by traffic engineers in particular are very close to SimCity's traffic system, which is much more accurate than Simcity 4's.

One could create SimCity without the agent based simulator and have visually identical graphics. The computational cost is completely down to the simulator and is unconnected to the graphics. The simulator does allow the graphics to better reflect the reality of the simulation, but this does not incur any significant cost.

 

Some times you have to sacrifice realism to cater for others aspects of the game i would've been happy with some simulation specially traffic etc..as that makes the city look alive but alot of other aspects they could do without to allow bigger cities instead..i wish they had

[Buggi 684]

Can I chime in here?

First of all that graph is misleading. The technological achievement of multi-core chips isn't taken into account. Just having 2 cores allows the OS to use one while other tasks use the other. This effectively doubles the throughput of the chip. So please, update the graph to include current hardware, 6 core chips exist and I think that needs to be reflected in the graph.

 

Second, remember the new Glassbox isn't just simulating Sim Agents. What about pollutin agents, water agents, power agents, trade agents, resource agents. There is a monumental number of agents that are not just wallking around. If the engine can support 200,000 agents, that number has to be distributed throughout the entire system, not just Sims.

 

And lets not forget the servers are firing agents to your city from other cities. Your game must pick up these agents and integrate them into your city. Think of it like a bucket of marbles. Each marble is an agent, the bucket is the maximum number of agents the game can handle in any given hardware config. As you use agents marbles from the bucket for non Sim related tasks it leaves fewer for the actual population of the city.

[nhgriffith 179]

The graphical representation of the simulation is partly an afterthought, partly feedback to the user to help them understand what's going on where. Why's there a traffic jam here? Who isn't getting water and why? Etc.

And in the end, visually representing all the agents is not the limiting factor. Not visually representing the agents doesn't suddenly allow a bigger tile size without better hardware. It's the simulation itself that is bottlenecking tile-size.

Now, you want to talk about sacrificing realism to cater for other aspects of the game, and I get that. I understand and to a degree, I agree with this point. However, traffic? Let's talk about traffic. Traffic is possibly the most important simulation aspect of ANY city-building game. And if you're not simulating traffic on an individual sim level via GlassBox, we're right back to SimCity 4 simulation. We're statistically calculating where a traffic jam might be, and graphically loading in a lot of cars at that intersection. Then a 50 yards down the road or so, where we've statistically calculated traffic is less congested, we've graphically represented this by having fewer cars on the road. So the problem is because spot A and spot B don't quite sync up right with each other despite being on the same stretch of road with no intersections in between, you've got to figure out how to graphically put fewer cars on the road... SimCity 4 did this by just making them disappear...

The new game handles traffic in a way that is not only more realistic, but better for gameplay.

[Ma8thew 77]

Can I chime in here?

First of all that graph is misleading. The technological achievement of multi-core chips isn't taken into account. Just having 2 cores allows the OS to use one while other tasks use the other. This effectively doubles the throughput of the chip. So please, update the graph to include current hardware, 6 core chips exist and I think that needs to be reflected in the graph.

 

Second, remember the new Glassbox isn't just simulating Sim Agents. What about pollutin agents, water agents, power agents, trade agents, resource agents. There is a monumental number of agents that are not just wallking around. If the engine can support 200,000 agents, that number has to be distributed throughout the entire system, not just Sims.

 

And lets not forget the servers are firing agents to your city from other cities. Your game must pick up these agents and integrate them into your city. Think of it like a bucket of marbles. Each marble is an agent, the bucket is the maximum number of agents the game can handle in any given hardware config. As you use agents marbles from the bucket for non Sim related tasks it leaves fewer for the actual population of the city.

In fairness to the graph, SimCity 2013's simulator only runs on one core. I suspect making it thread-safe would entail a complete rewrite.

 

PS, I am enjoying having Abby Normal's avatar back in my life.

[Cob92 360]

 

They wouldn't simulate every person uniquely in the city if they had no intention of graphically showing it, it would be a waste... but it wasn't a necessary thing to do in the first place. SC4 shows X amount of people using airports but it doesn't show EVERY single sim like this game does....but the effects to the city are the same thing in the long term for the city. All this extra maths now is to what end... losing alot of flexibility on the creative side of the game..... which if mods are an indication of, was the main driving force to SC4 once the other store got a little boring - creating great cityscapes is what prevails.. it feels like maxis totally missed that in their research on what made SC4 so successful for so long.

This is not the case. Simulating each person does not benefit the graphics. It makes the simulation more realistic and allows for emergent behaviour (complex behaviours arise as a result of simpler behaviours). The effects on the city are not the same. In the real world, scientists and engineers perform agent based simulation without any graphical engine. The simulators used by traffic engineers in particular are very close to SimCity's traffic system, which is much more accurate than Simcity 4's.

One could create SimCity without the agent based simulator and have visually identical graphics. The computational cost is completely down to the simulator and is unconnected to the graphics. The simulator does allow the graphics to better reflect the reality of the simulation, but this does not incur any significant cost.

 

Some times you have to sacrifice realism to cater for others aspects of the game i would've been happy with some simulation specially traffic etc..as that makes the city look alive but alot of other aspects they could do without to allow bigger cities instead..i wish they had

 

Again, I think the reason is not that present computer hardware is unable to handle a larger city with the same depth of simulation, but that they wanted the game to be accessible to a very broad market, including the millions of mediocre laptops in circulation. Sure if they designed the game around high end gaming PCs we probably could have SC4 sized cities, but then the system requirements would be quite high, and the game would suffer from the issue that CXL does: that 90% of computers struggle with it.

[robangus 5]

To me the difference between SimCity 4 and SimCity is the same as the difference between SimCity 4 and The Sims. Its an entirely different game and needs to be treated as such. SimCity is the start of a whole new series rather than the continuation of the old. In the very same way that Grand Theft Auto San Andreas has a lot more stuff than GTA IV did. Well thats how i see it and am treating it. At first i was disappointed by the small cities, but since ive switched my mode of thinking i cannot wait for it.

[nhgriffith 179]

Again, I think the reason is not that present computer hardware is unable to handle a larger city with the same depth of simulation, but that they wanted the game to be accessible to a very broad market, including the millions of mediocre laptops in circulation. Sure if they designed the game around high end gaming PCs we probably could have SC4 sized cities, but then the system requirements would be quite high, and the game would suffer from the issue that CXL does: that 90% of computers struggle with it.

And it would never be released.

Let's really take a look at Cities XL and its publisher and compare it to SimCity and EA.

First off, Cities XL was originally published by Monte Cristo, a French company that has never published a smash hit game... and is not defunct. The most recent iteration of Cities XL, 2012, was published by Focus Home Interactive (because Monte Cristo is out of business now). Focus Home Interactive, like Monte Cristo, is another French company, and like Monte Cristo, doesn't really have any other successful games worth mentioning. In fact, I'm sure the only reason anyone here even knows about Cities XL is because you're city-building fans.

Meanwhile, what does EA have? First off, while Monte Cristo was busy going out of business, EA remained in business. So that's a good start for which company is more successful. But let's look at EA's slate of games...

EA, first off, has the Madden NFL games, which every year is one of the absolute best selling games. You don't have to be interested in sports games to have heard of Madden. EA also has Rock Band, which quickly overtook Guitar Hero, and again, I don't think you have to be a fan of the music/rhythm game genre to have heard of Rock Band. EA has Skate, which did to the Tony Hawk games the same thing that Rock Band did to Guitar Hero. EA has the FIFA games, which is the best selling sports franchise in the world. EA has the Mass Effect series. And EA has Spore, The Sims, and SimCity. EA has a ton of other games too. But in a lot of genres, the absolute best-selling game for that genre is an EA product. Part of that is EA's marketing strategy--they're just really good at selling video games. But some of it starts with the games simply being straight out better games. And ultimately, at the end of the day, EA isn't going to let objectively BAD video games out the door. The game has to run well.

If you buy SimCity (2013) and it doesn't run well, okay, yea, EA got your money for that game, but EA understands that if the game didn't run well for you, you're not buying any of the expansions, probably never any other game with "Sim" anything in the title, and maybe even no other EA games.

So the game has to run well on the computers that match the hardware requirements listed on the box... and those hardware requirements also have to match the demographic of people already likely to buy the game. The average sim gamer doesn't have a modern computer. You might, I happen to have a fairly up-to-date computer, but you and I are not the end all be all of the demographic. EA can't afford to fund Maxis' development of the GlassBox engine for a game that they'll only sell to people with top end computers. The target audience simply wouldn't match the cost to make the game.

So what would happen? Years ago, EA would've told Ocean Quigley "Sorry, we just can't fund this. Go back to making Sims expansions."

In 3-4 years, the people with 3-4 year old computers will have computers that match today's top end computers. But unfortunately, the average consumer of sim games doesn't have a top end computer, so a video game company can't design a game that requires a top end computer to run.

[msl_007 8]

I'm glad to see discussion on both ends of the spectrum. The new game definitely isn't what everyone was hoping for, but I think the game that everyone wants is either too processor heavy to be viable or too technical to be marketable. Either way Maxis had to compromise. Listening to interviews from the designers and listening to the live Let's All Be Mayor events, I think it's safe to say that the designers would love to design a game that everyone wants to play. The problem is simple. EA has to make money (sell a lot of copies). 

 

I think that if SC (2013) was more technical in nature—a direct, updated version of SC4—it wouldn't sell. Sure, everyone who likes SC4 would probably give it a try. But not all the new customers EA is betting on. 

 

Will SC (2013) have a ten year run like SC4? Tough to call. Of course, if the game sells well, there will be another one, not to mention DLC and other expanded content. If it were up to the designers, I think they would have modding open right now. Maxis loves modders. EA doesn't. But if Maxis was owned by someone else, Sim City may not have had such a long run. It's a love-hate relationship.

 

The fact that so many more people are willing to try or see the value in the new model is a good sign that this game will be successful, opening up the way for more. There were few sticking up for Societies. I waited until that game was on sale. It was fun, but I was done with it after a weekend. I might pick it up again. I've done that with other games I own. But I agree that it wasn't the right direction for the next Sim City. SC 2013 may not have everything, but I think it's heading in the right direction.

[Sunfighter 186]

I like the glassbox engine in the simulations it can do. Though I think the traffic system is messed up, ive seen too many videos with multiple lanes turning left down one lane roads and such..and various other quirks creating huge traffic problems........ and the scaling issues are terrible..........I just think their arbitrary decision to "standardize" the game to the lowest common denominator (aka a 3-4 year old notebook according to maxis) was a very stupid and cheap thing to do on a game that demands a 59.99 price tag.

[msl_007 8]

Because you implied that if Maxis simply separated the leaderboards by map size, it'd be problem solved and we could all have bigger maps.

That doesn't solve the problem. Leaderboards separated or not, if Maxis included bigger maps, they have to change the minimum system requirements of the game. Already there are people on these very forums who have mentioned their computer is not good enough to handle the new game. Each time Maxis ups the system requirements, they eliminate tons and tons of potential customers.

They can't just include bigger maps, offer separate leaderboards, and not change the system requirements.

 

First of all, I never truly realized how they came up with the min system requirements. Makes sense but I just never thought about it.

 

Second, I have a question. Are expansion packs or DLC required to have the same settings?

 

Here's my thinking. If an update later down the line includes a feature that most people can't utilize, offering it wouldn't hurt the average user from buying the game. So, larger cities might be offered as an update or DLC. That is, if the marketability of the first release is the reason for not including them in the first place, which it seems to be.

[nhgriffith 179]

Second, I have a question. Are expansion packs or DLC required to have the same settings?

 

Here's my thinking. If an update later down the line includes a feature that most people can't utilize, offering it wouldn't hurt the average user from buying the game. So, larger cities might be offered as an update or DLC. That is, if the marketability of the first release is the reason for not including them in the first place, which it seems to be.

Well, expansion packs also list minimum system requirements (part of this will also list the fact that you have to own the base game), but the system requirements absolutely can be different from the system requirements of the base game. It still follows the same criteria, however. Whatever the system requirements say means that a person with that system can run EVERY aspect of the game. Typically though, expansions don't have to sell nearly as many copies to make a profit, so EA/Maxis could potentially offer larger maps (and higher system requirements) via an expansion or some such thing later. Whether or not they will is another story, but they could.

By the way, one of the best examples of expansions increasing the system requirements is to look at World of Warcraft. The game originally released in November 2004. Since then, they've released four expansion packs and several major content patches. Over the past 8 years, the system requirements have gradually crept upward. The game still has low system requirements compared to a high-end system today, but the system requirements today would have been extraordinarily rare 8 years ago. There certainly weren't 10 million plus players 8 years ago that'd meet today's system requirements for World of Warcraft.

So long story short, there is precedence for an expansion having higher system requirements than the base game, but in the case of World of Warcraft, there are 2-3 years between each expansion pack.

[SirChick 184]

Can I chime in here?

First of all that graph is misleading. The technological achievement of multi-core chips isn't taken into account. Just having 2 cores allows the OS to use one while other tasks use the other. This effectively doubles the throughput of the chip. So please, update the graph to include current hardware, 6 core chips exist and I think that needs to be reflected in the graph.

It is well known moore's law is about to reach its peak - which is why graphene is trying to be pushed through and hard, if they can utilise graphene like they did with silicon hardware limitations are a thing of the past. As would most of these kind of discussions.

 

The reason the CPU's won't double soon is due to uncertainty principle. Also double cores does not equal double performance. It a downward curve:

1 core up to 2 cores might see 90% gain

2 to 4 cores you might see 50% gain

4 to 8 probably 20%

And so on - we will hit that limit v.quickly.

Given no consumer software does huge maths like scientific research etc we won't need 20+ cores its never going to get used.

CPUs still only input and output one at a time they just split the jobs into smaller chunks. So we won't be seeing 50 core CPUs for example, the time it would take to organise which job goes to what core would infact slow it down We are hitting CPU power that is simply reaching the limits of Silicon thats the real problem!

 

Note the graphene development is going 10 times faster than silicon did in its day for computers! So fingers crossed for graphene in computers, in i would say maybe 5 years time  They already have working prototypes... samsung has one running at 300GHz

http://news.softpedia.com/news/300-GHz-Chips-are-Now-Possible-Samsung-Shows-the-Graphene-Barristor-270420.shtml