Patch 3.0 released

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

Source: http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9437292.page#28136320

 

Adding:

 

Hi Mayors – below you'll find the notes that will appear in Update 3.0 scheduled for release later this week.

Update 3.0 Notes

• New: Added more Hotel models to increase hotel variety.
• Traffic: Updated routing system to improve traffic. Routing system now understands more information about u-turns, required vehicle stops, and vehicle behavior on certain road types. This should make traffic smarter.
• Traffic: Commercial and industrial buildings stagger their work shifts to start throughout commute hours instead of at the top of the hour. This should reduce traffic.
• Traffic: Fixes one issue where a car won't move causing traffic to back up behind it.
• Traffic: Vehicles can now make right turns on Red. This should improve some cases of traffic.
• Traffic: Trading polish that will improve regional traffic when one city has a lot of jobs and its neighboring city has a lot of workers.
• Air Pollution: Fixed more issues where cities that placed air polluting buildings received large amounts of air pollution from unknown sources.
• Service Vehicles: Fix for disappearing service vehicles on cities that whose vehicles had disappeared before update 2.
• School Buses: Fix for issue where school buses were getting stuck at neighbor's city or arcology.
• Audio: Tuned audio on French Police Station.
• Trading: Fixed issue where fire servers were not trading consistently between Brakeman's Folly and Twain in Whitewater Valley.
• Trading: Sewage trading: Sewage will now take a more direct route to regional sewage plant instead of throughout the city.
• Trading: Made gifting more reliable.
• Ferry Terminal: Ferry Terminal can now send its sewage to the output pipe and treatment plant.
• RCI Tuning: Fixed issue where sims going to a park via transit would sometimes lose their money or happiness on the way home.
• RCI Tuning: Bulldozing abandoned or rubble buildings will now prevent new developments for 6-12 hours.
• RCI Tuning: Less Happiness is taken from wealth 2 and 3 buildings when rent is due when no money is present.
• RCI Tuning: Fix for issue some users experienced where buildings would stay abandoned because moving trucks would not be able to move in.
• Trees: Trees now last longer, but also do not eliminate as much ground pollution.
• Radiation: Radiation causes less ground pollution than previously.
• Transit: Changed thought bubble suggestion to add more trains to deal with crowded passenger trains to suggest that you add more train stations.
• Transit: Improvements to lights to make rail look better at night.
• Transit: Streetcar stops can now be placed directly on standalone streetcar tracks, and passengers can walk along the tracks to them.
• Transit: Tuned the chance buses or streetcars will go to high-traffic stops first as a minor traffic improvement.
• Roads: University pedestrian paths can now cross streets.
• Manufacturing Trucks: Fixed issue some users experienced where manufacturing trucks left the city and were lost permanently.
• Delivery Trucks: Fixed issue where some users would experience a loss of resources is their delivery trucks returned to garages without proper storage.
• Sports Parks: Tuned the amount of skateboarders and neighborhood athletes at the sports parks.
• Data Layers: Zones are now visible in heavy data layers.
• Edit Mode: Added more valid snap points in edit mode. This improvement is most noticeable on Parks.
• Buildings: Addressed some cases where buildings would stack on one another.

  Edited May 9, 2013 by Cyclone Boom  
Changed thread title to "released", as the patch is now live.

[simfanheatermayor 17]

Fixed: Made the game moddable  

[Xenocity 343]

I'm glad they are hard at work patching this game!

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

Ferry Terminal: Ferry Terminal can now send its sewage to the output pipe and treatment plant.

 

Was it just dumping in the river then?

[Dashafrash. 34]

 

• Trees: Trees now last longer, but also do not eliminate as much ground pollution.

 

 

 

[fpdlskf 5]

I think that we will be on version  51.0  by the end of this year.

 

Whats up w/ the version numbers.... 

[Xenocity 343]

I think that we will be on version  51.0  by the end of this year.

 

Whats up w/ the version numbers.... 

Each company has its own numbering system.

 

Apple gave us 10.4.11 for OS X 10.4

[tnobles 38]

 

 

• Trees: Trees now last longer, but also do not eliminate as much ground pollution.

 

 

 

 

Agreed! Seemed to work fine as was.

[xdsxblazinxdsx 2]

Well don't understand the reasoning for the tree fix? But fingers crossed they at least fix some traffic issues. Lol!!

[MINIggy03 227]

I like the tree fix, what kind of trees vanish like that? 

 

 

Transit: Streetcar stops can now be placed directly on standalone streetcar tracks, and passengers can walk along the tracks to them.

 

This is going to be SO helpful.  You can have tracks branching off the avenue's through alley's.  I hope they one day give us roads where the trains actually share the street with the cars.  

 

 

• Edit Mode: Added more valid snap points in edit mode. This improvement is most noticeable on Parks.

 

This is also nice.  Many times there'd be just enough space to fit a nice $$ or $$$ strip and if there were just a few extra snap points it would fit without having to wreck something. 

[DVDGuy 16]

 

 

Transit: Streetcar stops can now be placed directly on standalone streetcar tracks, and passengers can walk along the tracks to them.

 

This is going to be SO helpful.  You can have tracks branching off the avenue's through alley's.  I hope they one day give us roads where the trains actually share the street with the cars.  

 

 

 

This caught my attention as well. Could radically change the current road placement strategies. Let just hope the path finding for streetcars are better, then maybe cities can finally have complex streetcar networks that actually works.

[tnobles 38]

 

 

 

Transit: Streetcar stops can now be placed directly on standalone streetcar tracks, and passengers can walk along the tracks to them.

 

This is going to be SO helpful.  You can have tracks branching off the avenue's through alley's.  I hope they one day give us roads where the trains actually share the street with the cars.  

 

 

 

This caught my attention as well. Could radically change the current road placement strategies. Let just hope the path finding for streetcars are better, then maybe cities can finally have complex streetcar networks that actually works.

 

All right, I don't have to do this anymore. Yea!

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

On the subject of snap points, it would be nice if the game would let you encroach a little outside the city limits.  The "suggested" line for an avenue along the edge of the map will let you plop things, but the snaps won't fit on the city border side.  Just a little over the edge would be nice.

[voodoodoy 0]

School Buses: Fix for issue where school buses were getting stuck at neighbor's city or arcology.

 Finally, i've stopped playing for weeks because of this bug. This bug will crash the cities trafic just in a few minutes.

[FourWinds 29]

 Trading polish that will improve regional traffic when one city has a lot of jobs and its neighboring city has a lot of workers.

 

 

Blimey, I wonder what % of commuting this will allow.

 

Interesting list.

[Mxlppxl 2]

Good to see a patch so quick...thanks Rufus for the copy/paste

[CosmicSpeed 28]

• Transit: Streetcar stops can now be placed directly on standalone streetcar tracks, and passengers can walk along the tracks to them.

• Transit: Tuned the chance buses or streetcars will go to high-traffic stops first as a minor traffic improvement.

• Edit Mode: Added more valid snap points in edit mode. This improvement is most noticeable on Parks.

 

THIS IS PHENOMENAL!!!!

 

• RCI Tuning: Bulldozing abandoned or rubble buildings will now prevent new developments for 6-12 hours.

• Trees: Trees now last longer, but also do not eliminate as much ground pollution.

 

Not cool, but I can see how this is more "realistic"

[mayor_w 0]

Air Pollution: Fixed more issues where cities that placed air polluting buildings received large amounts of air pollution from unknown sources.

By far, the most important one to me - totally stopped playing the game because of this; otherwise I did pretty OK during launch day all the way until 2.0

 

Trees: Trees now last longer, but also do not eliminate as much ground pollution.

Fair enough.

 

Radiation: Radiation causes less ground pollution than previously.

If it meant shorter periods of high radioactivity, then I disagree. Pripyat is still uninhabitable by people until now. Otherwise, Maxis should tweak the frequency of disasters or reduce the chances of a meltdown to a more realistic level.

 

Transit: Streetcar stops can now be placed directly on standalone streetcar tracks, and passengers can walk along the tracks to them

Awesome. Got tired of building high density avenues where they are not needed.

[Cykik Visage 0]

I have to admit I am replying after only the second bulletin. Does it strike anyone else odd how there is uncertainty in their statement about [changes] making traffic smarter? It "should" or it "will", Maxis? Is this stuff even getting tested before its shoved out the door?

[macscfan 117]

"Traffic: Commercial and industrial buildings stagger their work shifts to start throughout commute hours instead of at the top of the hour. This should reduce traffic."

 

So rather than simulate a city using the vaunted, supposedly partially cloud-based, all-powerful, Glassbox engine to simulate traffic, they are going to cheat?

[MINIggy03 227]

On the subject of snap points, it would be nice if the game would let you encroach a little outside the city limits.  The "suggested" line for an avenue along the edge of the map will let you plop things, but the snaps won't fit on the city border side.  Just a little over the edge would be nice.

 

I would love this.  You could put your larger lots like airports, solar and wind farms right outside the border with a road up against the edge.  

"Traffic: Commercial and industrial buildings stagger their work shifts to start throughout commute hours instead of at the top of the hour. This should reduce traffic."

 

So rather than simulate a city using the vaunted, supposedly partially cloud-based, all-powerful, Glassbox engine to simulate traffic, they are going to cheat?

 

 

How is this cheating?  What city all wakes up and goes to work at the same time?  It makes more sense for some to leave at 6am, some at 7, 8, etc.  

It's fun to see people continuing the hate when they actually make an improvement.  lol

[FourWinds 29]

"Traffic: Commercial and industrial buildings stagger their work shifts to start throughout commute hours instead of at the top of the hour. This should reduce traffic."

 

So rather than simulate a city using the vaunted, supposedly partially cloud-based, all-powerful, Glassbox engine to simulate traffic, they are going to cheat?

 

The companies in my town stagger to give their employees an easier time. I think it's a fair enough change to put this in the game.

[perafilozof 143]

"Traffic: Commercial and industrial buildings stagger their work shifts to start throughout commute hours instead of at the top of the hour. This should reduce traffic."

 

So rather than simulate a city using the vaunted, supposedly partially cloud-based, all-powerful, Glassbox engine to simulate traffic, they are going to cheat?

 

I would say the old way was illogical. If you live on the other side of the city of course you have to get going an hour earlier than your colleague that lives down streets form the workplace. It's only the fact that sims-worker agents find a new jobs each day that  makes that fact less illogical. If by any stretch of imagination you can call finding the closest open job each day logical...

[mayor_w 0]

I came here because I wanted to play and discuss the game, so I avoided /r/simcity and the official ea simcity forums.

Did I make a mistake?

[Mxlppxl 2]

there just some haters here, keep posting

[Rufus Honker IV 100]

"Traffic: Commercial and industrial buildings stagger their work shifts to start throughout commute hours instead of at the top of the hour. This should reduce traffic."

 

So rather than simulate a city using the vaunted, supposedly partially cloud-based, all-powerful, Glassbox engine to simulate traffic, they are going to cheat?

 

 

How is this cheating?  What city all wakes up and goes to work at the same time?  It makes more sense for some to leave at 6am, some at 7, 8, etc.  

 

 

 

Indeed.  I've worked nights in an upscale apartment building for 12 years.  Folks are still coming in from work at 12am (and I have bartenders coming in at 3am after closing time), other folks just starting their day at 4am.  The whole "9-to-5" job world is just the majority - but there's LOADS of non-9-to-5 out there.

[Cob92 360]

"Traffic: Commercial and industrial buildings stagger their work shifts to start throughout commute hours instead of at the top of the hour. This should reduce traffic."

 

So rather than simulate a city using the vaunted, supposedly partially cloud-based, all-powerful, Glassbox engine to simulate traffic, they are going to cheat?

 

More like making the simulation more realistic. There is no city where everyone leaves home to go to work at exactly the same time, then comes home at exactly the same time. This is one of the main things that was screwing up the traffic simulation before.

 

Some people have decided that SimCity is an inherently evil game and that nothing can possibly be an improvement.

[macscfan 117]

 

The companies in my town stagger to give their employees an easier time. I think it's a fair enough change to put this in the game.

 

 

Wish I lived in your town - I'm in a small city with around a million in the area, and there are people constantly going to work - industrial jobs and commercial jobs are not staggered in their start time based on traffic.   It would be wonderful if everybody with an industrial job was commuting at a certain time, everybody with a commercial job was commuting at a certain time, everybody with a service or government job was commuting at a certain time, and everybody with an office job was commuting at a certain time.  That's not how it works in my area, and that's not how it worked when I lived in Houston, which is fairly large.

 

They aren't doing this because of that though, they are doing this because they have serious problems with the AI and this is a way for them to spread the problem out rather than address it specifically.

 

Cheating was probably a strong word, but I just feel that if the AI, specifically the traffic, but also the residential/jobs, was better, they wouldn't need to do this, or they could offer it to us as an option.

[tnobles 38]

They aren't doing this because of that though, they are doing this because they have serious problems with the AI and this is a way for them to spread the problem out rather than address it specifically.

Yes, the A has very little I.

[macscfan 117]

More like making the simulation more realistic. There is no city where everyone leaves home to go to work at exactly the same time, then comes home at exactly the same time. This is one of the main things that was screwing up the traffic simulation before.

 

Some people have decided that SimCity is an inherently evil game and that nothing can possibly be an improvement.

 

 

This is not about making the simulation more realistic, it's about addressing a symptom (poor traffic management) rather than the illness (poor AI).

 

And if you think there is no city where you find people of all different jobs on the roads at the same time, then please, come visit Texas - Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio.  Trust me, you will find people from all walks of life and from all types of jobs on the road at the same time.   You'll also find some of the worst traffic, especially in the Austin area.

 

btw, I don't think it's an inherently evil game.  I think it was a game that needed about 6 more months of Q&A and polish.    That's not the game's fault, and it's probably not even Maxis' fault - EA seems to have a problem with announcing release dates for specific quarters and then forcing its studios to push them out the door, whether they needed more time or not.

 

I also think it can be fixed, starting with the AI, larger areas to work with, modding, and offline play.