Why We Won't Have Larger Map Sizes

[catman232 12]

Yeah, I can't believe I am doing this, but I am going to play devil's advocate and attempt to verify why Maxis isn't going to increase city sizes. People are complaining all the time about how Maxis is lying about how it can't be implemented, and I want to show that there is some truth behind their claims.

 

My Specs

• Windows 7 Pro
• Intel Core i5-2520M @ 2.5GHz (dual core w/ hyper threading)
• 8GB of RAM
• AMD Radeon HD 6770M w/4GB of memory

As you can tell I don't have the most amazing gaming PC in the world. (it is a laptop, if you couldn't tell by the CPU and GPU) I think it is representative of "good enough" enthusiast gaming hardware, which I would assume is the main target for most AAA games. SimCity has a much more diverse install base than something such as Crysis 3, for example, so I can see the average specs of a SimCity player being considerably lower than these. 

 

SimCity's Resource Usage

I used Windows Task Manager to measure the resource usage of SimCity while playing on a reasonably demanding city.

Let's start with the RAM usage of SimCity alone.

 

 

This is just showing that SimCity is using ~1.18GB of RAM. Normally that'd be pretty low, considering I have 8GB of ram to use. However, SimCity is running in 32 bit which means it can only use up to 4GB of memory at a time. This dramatically limits the size of simulation SimCity can handle. Consider the fact that the layout I was using for this city was by no means the optimum layout to fit in population and that there is easily potential to fit in several times more sims than I did. (My population was around 130,000, but I think it can get as high as 600,000 with some layouts)

 

Taking this into consideration, my resource usage was far from the highest it could be. Even with the small city plot sizes, I feel that reaching that 4GB limit is closer than some might imagine. If I were to continue the same non-optimal layout and make it four times the size, I am sure I'd be well over the limit. The easiest solution I see for this is for Maxis to distribute separate 32 and 64 bit versions of SimCity, but I am not sure how difficult that would be to do.

 

 

Above you can see my total CPU and RAM usage from all of the programs running on my computer. In the previous image you can see that SimCity's CPU usage was at 36%, meaning only 1% of the other CPU usage was from programs other than SimCity. This is another place where we will hit a limit. Theoretically quadrupling the size of the simulation would also quadruple the CPU usage, (not scientific) which would put my CPU at 144% of its limit. 

 

Conclusion

I think I have showed why implementing larger city sizes is a challenge, however this is a piss poor reason for Maxis to not include larger cities. They should see this as a reason to implement smaller cities to fall back on, but they shouldn't have let the fact that most people couldn't run it prevent EVERYONE from running it.

 

PLEASE try to prove me wrong, as I seriously hope I am. SimCity is a game I enjoy very much and would enjoy so much more with larger map sizes. I just don't want to get to optimistic about that happening in the near future...

[StoNe220022 159]

The same applies as to what was said then...the game's design is fundamentally flawed. They simulated the wrong aspects and never made an engine capable of scaling.

Poor game design, buffing computers with new powah won't allow for larger maps as the software simply won't scale.

  Edited January 1, 2014 by Cyclone Boom  
Language please.

[Sleeping Politician 32]

Apparently Maxis thinks most of their gamer base is running slower, more dated computers and for this reason, Maxis will not be considering any bigger maps in the future.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

The engine is just terrible, games with agent systems have existed in the past, Rollercoaster Tycoon comes to mind, and that worked on my first computer just fine - which for the record was 200Mhz, 32mb ram and a 4mb graphics card

[Xenocity 343]

Apparently Maxis thinks most of their gamer base is running slower, more dated computers and for this reason, Maxis will not be considering any bigger maps in the future.

Well Maxis is probably right.

People pretty much stopped buying new PCs around 2007 as seen by the massivle declines each quarter in PC sales and shipments continuing to this day.

(this is not meant to spark a discussion on whether or not  smartphones and tablets are cannablizing the PC market)

 

Most developers are focusing on lower specs for their games.

 

The reason for this is simple:

People with lower spec computers (Running Graphic Cards with less than 2GBs of RAM)  is far greater than those with higher end specs by a large margin.

 

 

Also most people aren't willing to spend  more than $500 for their desktops and $800 for their laptops (NPD has the market research).

 

Go to Dell, HP, Acer/Gateway, Asus, etc... and see the specs for their computers.

 

For computers (includes laptops and ultrabooks) costing less than $1200 on a general rule the base specs are:

• iCore 3 or 5 CPU
• 4 GBs of RAM
• Intel HD Graphics 4000 or 5000 (is it out yet?)
• 500GBs - 1TB HDD

Dell does sell performance and gaming PCs both Alienware and Dell brands stating at $700.

Though they only come with 1GB Nvidia Graphics card.

 

If you want a better graphics card it will cost you a few hundred more.

 

HP does sell desktops with 2GB graphics card, though they will run you at least $1,000

 

Even Apple charges you extra if you want a dedicated graphics card now.

Most Macs now ship with Intel integrated HD graphics as the only graphic card.

 

The main reason for this is the fact that for 20+ years now consumers have been taught cheaper is better when buying PCs, thus leaving higher performance  models and graphic cards as being perceived as "overpriced"!

[Rian Gray 12]

I'm not quite sure whether it's the question of "base-level computer specs" in any regards.

 

Hate to bring this up again, but Simcity 4 lived in much harsh and outdated world, yet they managed to simulate it. Because they got it right, they simulated the numbers, not every single objects running in the game. Not even so-called supercomputers can run that kind of simulations in a city-scale. I know it, because I've done it before. Not to mention poor optimization as well.

[heat33330 26]

How many cores is SimCity running on? If it's only one they could make it multicore. I wouldn't call a computer with 1GB of VRAM as "low spec".

[Xenocity 343]

How many cores is SimCity running on? If it's only one they could make it multicore. I wouldn't call a computer with 1GB of VRAM as "low spec".

1GB - 2GBs of VRAM is considered medium specs when it comes to gaming, especially on the forum. 

 

4GBs + is considered high end.

 

I mean the OP views his hardware as good enough for gaming.

[heat33330 26]

Oh Ok.

[Sleeping Politician 32]

If you ask me, I would at least allow for the OPTION to increase city sizes...

[AkemiAzula 280]

Well before it got a virus I had an i7 laptop that cost 1500 dollars. Dunno about specs etc as I'm not terribly initiated into that world, but it sounds good enough. Any rate a filled city with a high population (greater than 200,000 in some of the larger cities) ran fairly ok. However only on lowest graphical settings. On higher graphical settings and lighting etc it ran much slower and I got framerates of like one or two per second at the highest settings from pretty much flawless smooth motion at the lowest.

 

So I don't think the number of agents has anything to do with this. Agents are just numbers you can't see. The animated figures walking about are purely representative no matter what Maxis tells you about 'seeing what they sim'. They are not the entire population just a representative percentage of it. They cease to exist as soon as they enter a building...

 

Also this doesn't excuse the no man's land, but I'll refrain from going off topic.

 

Anyway as has been mentioned before agent based sims have existed before. Look at Cities in Motion. Much better AI system. That never lagged on my pc at highest settings (I can't remember what settings were). Cities XL lagged quite a bit but I think due to some bugs.

 

Simcity 4 did lag a lot, even for a small city at highest settings. That makes you think. Agents responsible for lag? Methinks not.

[SAGGG 47]

Look, why couldn't they have at least pushed the tiles together, giving the APPEARANCE of a big city, and eliminating those no-man's land spaces? I mean, for example, it's like, whoever heard of floor tiles separated while on the floor, am I right? They could've sort of had their cake and have eaten it too.

No, my beef here with EA is simply that they tricked me (or us). Had they announced that they could and would not have given us larger maps for their so-called spec reasons BEFORE selling the game to us, I wouldn't have brought the game. Be honest, now: Who here would have done so, outside of any eager newbies? I'd guess not many, and you know what? I think EA KNEW that beforehand...

[catman232 12]

Well before it got a virus I had an i7 laptop that cost 1500 dollars. Dunno about specs etc as I'm not terribly initiated into that world, but it sounds good enough. Any rate a filled city with a high population (greater than 200,000 in some of the larger cities) ran fairly ok. However only on lowest graphical settings. On higher graphical settings and lighting etc it ran much slower and I got framerates of like one or two per second at the highest settings from pretty much flawless smooth motion at the lowest.

 

So I don't think the number of agents has anything to do with this. Agents are just numbers you can't see. The animated figures walking about are purely representative no matter what Maxis tells you about 'seeing what they sim'. They are not the entire population just a representative percentage of it. They cease to exist as soon as they enter a building...

 

Also this doesn't excuse the no man's land, but I'll refrain from going off topic.

 

Anyway as has been mentioned before agent based sims have existed before. Look at Cities in Motion. Much better AI system. That never lagged on my pc at highest settings (I can't remember what settings were). Cities XL lagged quite a bit but I think due to some bugs.

 

Simcity 4 did lag a lot, even for a small city at highest settings. That makes you think. Agents responsible for lag? Methinks not.

 

This reason exactly is why I didn't include any information about FPS in my post, because Maxis has said that people's graphics cards aren't the issue.

[The_Balm 4]

How much VRAM you have (or your graphics card) is not the bottleneck for SimCity by far. And how fast your graphics card is not all that dependent on VRAM, you can have a very powerful card with 2GB of VRAM (VRAM is not the right way to determine how powerful a graphics card is). And again, I doubt RAM is a bottleneck for SimCity either. 4GB of RAM is not very much at all these days so needing 8GB or even 16GB of RAM for larger maps is not the big of a deal, but like I said RAM is not the issue, the CPU is the biggest bottleneck.

 

I agree that Maxis needs to make the simulation more efficient. One thing to note is, as you increase the map size the power needed for pathfinding grows exponentially not arithmetically, so a map 4 times the size needs a lot more the 4 times the CPU power for pathfinding. 

[The Pennsylvania Turnpike 252]

For me the game starts getting interesting when i run out of space, i want to expand my city  but i can't. It is agonizing that there isn't enough room in your city for a new Police station or school when there is A GIANT EMPTY LOT JUST OUTSIDE THE CITY BORDERS!

[fatkids_inc 2]

Someone said something about Roller Coaster Tycoon and that got me thinking. In rtc3 I remember buying more land square by square when I ran out of room. Why cant maxis create the same thing? That way I'm in control of my city size. My city will only get larger as I need it to. Once my city starts to lag I'll stop expanding its borders. Now city size is up to the player. Anyone can still play. Lower end machines will just play small maps and gaming machines can bask in their own glory

[socomseal45 0]

 

How many cores is SimCity running on? If it's only one they could make it multicore. I wouldn't call a computer with 1GB of VRAM as "low spec".

1GB - 2GBs of VRAM is considered medium specs when it comes to gaming, especially on the forum. 

 

4GBs + is considered high end.

 

I mean the OP views his hardware as good enough for gaming.

 

Since when did 1-2GB of VRAM become medium spec? 2GB is still more than enough to run 99% of games. VRAM is for storing data like textures so it can be pulled faster. The actual components of the graphics card matter much much more.

[Ndragonawa 37]

People pretty much stopped buying new PCs around 2007...

 

More like 2011, otherwise I'd be seeing more Vista stickers than 7.

 

For computers (includes laptops and ultrabooks) costing less than $1200 on a general rule the base specs are:

• iCore 3 or 5 CPU
• 4 GBs of RAM
• Intel HD Graphics 4000 or 5000 (is it out yet?)
• 500GBs - 1TB HDD

 

Ermmm think ~$700 for a respectible PC and ~$1200 for a equivalent Mac.

 

The "fat-ultrabook" I bought last year for $700 had:

• 3rd Gen. Intel Core i5-3315U
• 4 GB RAM (upgraded to 8 GB for $50)
• Intel HD Graphics 4000
• 500 GB HDD

I can run SimCity on medium settings, all the way up to 200k population fairly smoothly.  Looking at the Microsoft Store, 4th Gen. i7s can be had for $600.

 

 

Anyways, to the testing.

 

My current desktop:

• 4th Gen. Intel Core i7-4770K
• 16 GB RAM
• AMD Radeon HD 6950
• 256 GB SSD (OS) + 1.5 TB HDD RAID (SimCity game files)

SysInternals Process Explorer

 

I see that SimCity on fast with a filled city (220k population) takes up about 16% of my CPU.  My desktop's CPU Passmark score is 10,240, while my laptop's is 3,120. So, using grade school math, on the laptop it should take around 48% CPU, although in actuality it takes around ~80%.

 

SimCity uses around 1.6 GB of system memory.  This is well below the 32 bit limit of ~4 GB, however if we take graphics RAM into consideration...

 

SysInternals Process Explorer Viewer

 

...SimCity takes an additional 1 GB, having a total of 2.6 GB of total memory allocated.

 

 

[Darth Apple 54]

I see it as a lack of foresight with EA more than anything. The simulation is almost too in-depth, and it's not possible to realistically simulate every single detail about every single citizen in every city. It would simply place too much of a load on processing. 

 

That said, the in-depth nature of the simulation is one of Simcity's highlights, but surely they could have improved the engine's efficiency at least somewhat to allow larger maps. Unfortunately, I think it's a bit too late now. EA seems to have made an honest effort to expand city sizes, and they just weren't able to really make it happen with the existing engine without consuming more resources than Cities XL could ever imagine to consume.  Unless the engine is significantly modified, chances are that their honest efforts will not come to see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

[Xenocity 343]

 

People pretty much stopped buying new PCs around 2007...

 

More like 2011, otherwise I'd be seeing more Vista stickers than 7.

 

For computers (includes laptops and ultrabooks) costing less than $1200 on a general rule the base specs are:

• iCore 3 or 5 CPU
• 4 GBs of RAM
• Intel HD Graphics 4000 or 5000 (is it out yet?)
• 500GBs - 1TB HDD

 

Ermmm think ~$700 for a respectible PC and ~$1200 for a equivalent Mac.

 

The "fat-ultrabook" I bought last year for $700 had:

• 3rd Gen. Intel Core i5-3315U
• 4 GB RAM (upgraded to 8 GB for $50)
• Intel HD Graphics 4000
• 500 GB HDD

I can run SimCity on medium settings, all the way up to 200k population fairly smoothly.  Looking at the Microsoft Store, 4th Gen. i7s can be had for $600.

 

 

My post is based on the actually prices and specs on the sites of Dell, HP, Apple at the time of posting.

 

Yes I actually went to their online stores to get the prices and specs.

 

I know very few people who will pay more than $500 for a PC of any brand, without screaming about how over priced they are.

This includes the engineers and IT people I know.

 

The only reason why Windows 7 had lightning fast adoption rate, was due to Microsoft offering upgrades to Vista users for $50 or less in the first six months.

 

I upgraded for $13 for the digital download of Windows 7 at launch.

 

This chart also helps explain why many developers including Maxis have kept their software with low spec requirements.

 

People are begrudgingly moving on from XP, which for some reason commands 30-40% of the market share depending on the source.

Also this graph doesn't show 10.9, even though it is from November and 10.9 has the highest adoption rate for any version of OSX since 10.1

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-8.1-adoption-rate,24974.html

[Alonjar 13]

Look, why couldn't they have at least pushed the tiles together, giving the APPEARANCE of a big city, and eliminating those no-man's land spaces? I mean, for example, it's like, whoever heard of floor tiles separated while on the floor, am I right? They could've sort of had their cake and have eaten it too.

No, my beef here with EA is simply that they tricked me (or us). Had they announced that they could and would not have given us larger maps for their so-called spec reasons BEFORE selling the game to us, I wouldn't have brought the game. Be honest, now: Who here would have done so, outside of any eager newbies? I'd guess not many, and you know what? I think EA KNEW that beforehand...

 

A truly profound statement.  Doing this would definitely have made a lot of people feel better... all they had to do was push them closer and rebrand it so that "regions" are actually cities, and the current "cities" are actually neighborhoods or boroughs.  Would have solved 80% of peoples hate.

[Darth Apple 54]

 

Look, why couldn't they have at least pushed the tiles together, giving the APPEARANCE of a big city, and eliminating those no-man's land spaces? I mean, for example, it's like, whoever heard of floor tiles separated while on the floor, am I right? They could've sort of had their cake and have eaten it too.

No, my beef here with EA is simply that they tricked me (or us). Had they announced that they could and would not have given us larger maps for their so-called spec reasons BEFORE selling the game to us, I wouldn't have brought the game. Be honest, now: Who here would have done so, outside of any eager newbies? I'd guess not many, and you know what? I think EA KNEW that beforehand...

 

A truly profound statement.  Doing this would definitely have made a lot of people feel better... all they had to do was push them closer and rebrand it so that "regions" are actually cities, and the current "cities" are actually neighborhoods or boroughs.  Would have solved 80% of peoples hate.

 

 

+1

[Ndragonawa 37]

My post is based on the actually prices and specs on the sites of Dell, HP, Apple at the time of posting.

 

Yes I actually went to their online stores to get the prices and specs.

 

And mine was based off of current market/sale price, not MSRP.  My apologies.

 

I know very few people who will pay more than $500 for a PC of any brand, without screaming about how over priced they are.

This includes the engineers and IT people I know.

 

Agreed, although I'm a tad disappointed in your IT friends.

 

 

The only reason why Windows 7 had lightning fast adoption rate, was due to Microsoft offering upgrades to Vista users for $50 or less in the first six months.

 

Not true.  By that logic Windows 8 would've sold even faster because it was $40 for the first 6 months.  When I said "stickers" I was implying OEM installs. PC sales peaked in 2011 because tablets began to eat into the low-end market. [source]

 

 

This chart also helps explain why many developers including Maxis have kept their software with low spec requirements.

 

People are begrudgingly moving on from XP, which for some reason commands 30-40% of the market share depending on the source.

Also this graph doesn't show 10.9, even though it is from November and 10.9 has the highest adoption rate for any version of OSX since 10.1

 

These charts include enterprise users, a slow-moving but HUGE market that probably shouldn't be playing SimCity anyway.  Where I work we're slowing rolling out 7 with Office 2010 (not 8.1 with Office 2013.)  About 70% of our 20,000 desktops are still on XP, and about half of our servers are on Server 2003.  I wouldn't be surprised to see the same elsewhere. 

 

Software is kept lower-specked because lower-specked computers are what sell, largely because of their price.

 

 

 

 

Look, why couldn't they have at least pushed the tiles together, giving the APPEARANCE of a big city, and eliminating those no-man's land spaces? I mean, for example, it's like, whoever heard of floor tiles separated while on the floor, am I right?   They could've sort of had their cake and have eaten it too.

No, my beef here with EA is simply that they tricked me (or us). Had they announced that they could and would not have given us larger maps for their so-called spec reasons BEFORE selling the game to us, I wouldn't have brought the game. Be honest, now: Who here would have done so, outside of any eager newbies? I'd guess not many, and you know what? I think EA KNEW that beforehand...

 

A truly profound statement.  Doing this would definitely have made a lot of people feel better... all they had to do was push them closer and rebrand it so that "regions" are actually cities, and the current "cities" are actually neighborhoods or boroughs.  Would have solved 80% of peoples hate.

 

I REALLY like this idea.  Though I think they didn't want the low-def models to be extremely close to the current play map, hence the space between.  I personally don't mind either way (In The Sims 2 you could have it both ways, close together or far apart) but it's the set-in-stone-one-exit-only maps that I don't like.

 

EDIT: Grammar and formatting.

[Xenocity 343]

 

The only reason why Windows 7 had lightning fast adoption rate, was due to Microsoft offering upgrades to Vista users for $50 or less in the first six months.

 

Not true.  By that logic Windows 8 would've sold even faster because it was $40 for the first 6 months.  When I said "stickers" I was implying OEM installs. PC sales peaked in 2011 because tablets began to eat into the low-end market. [source]

 

Actually Windows 8 suffered from a huge negative public perception at launch which caused people to avoid the OS.

This perception was not due to bad code or lying about minimum specs requried to run it like Vista suffered from.

Windows 8 suffers from being new and different which caused an overall backlash from the development community and consumers.

People still believe Windows 8 has trouble or cannot run software made for Windows 7 or before.

People are still put off by the titles replacing the start menu.

Windows 8.1 was formally launched under the name Windows Blue, conveying that is a new OS not a service pack of 8 (which it is).

Windows Blue (8.1) launched to good public and developer reviews, especially that Microsoft conviced everyone they were allowing Wiindows 8 users to upgrade to the new Windows for free!!!

Windows Blue will see decent adoption rate, if not good marketshare by 2015 (unless Windows 9 launches next year as rumored).

The reason why Windows 7 adoption rate was through the roof even at launch was due to glowing developer and public perception and reception of 7.

Windows 7 is a damn good OS, which makes it all astonishing that it came from Microsoft of all people.

People couldn't wait to ditch the crappy OS that was Vista and upgrade to 7.

With that all said, I do hope Windows 8.1 gets the marketshare it deserves, I don't regret upgraded to 8.1 from 7.

It fixed all the issues that plagued 8.

I love my titles and the sheer snappiness of 8.1.

Long story short, Public and developer perception and reception will make or break an OS,

The tablet marketshare isn't hurting or helping Windows as a whole.

The only thing tablets are doing is causing some growth for Android.

[SAGGG 47]

 

Look, why couldn't they have at least pushed the tiles together, giving the APPEARANCE of a big city, and eliminating those no-man's land spaces? I mean, for example, it's like, whoever heard of floor tiles separated while on the floor, am I right? They could've sort of had their cake and have eaten it too.

No, my beef here with EA is simply that they tricked me (or us). Had they announced that they could and would not have given us larger maps for their so-called spec reasons BEFORE selling the game to us, I wouldn't have brought the game. Be honest, now: Who here would have done so, outside of any eager newbies? I'd guess not many, and you know what? I think EA KNEW that beforehand...

 

A truly profound statement.  Doing this would definitely have made a lot of people feel better... all they had to do was push them closer and rebrand it so that "regions" are actually cities, and the current "cities" are actually neighborhoods or boroughs.  Would have solved 80% of peoples hate.

 

That's an excellent point! One could have named an entire "region" as a city!

[Cyclone Boom 17,016]

I definitely agree with that suggestion.

 

It's a real shame continuous tiles haven't even been considered as an option. Yes, we'd all appreciate larger map sizes. But these gaps have been the deal-breaker for many people, myself included. There's all this focus on agents and realism of simulation, but from a regional view the cities look far from realistic.

 

Maybe the "great works" areas are the main barrier to this happening. I'm not sure how they'd fit if the gaps were removed. It's probably mostly due to the game being optimised for a multiplayer experience. Each player having their own "square" of land to build, making it easier to visualise who owns each city.

---

 

Note: Let's keep any discussion about operating systems contained to the General Off-Topic forum.

[Gregorfp 15]

just imagine the traffic jam in each neighborhood entrances then lol

LA i405 would be like a walk in the park...

[catman232 12]

How much VRAM you have (or your graphics card) is not the bottleneck for SimCity by far. And how fast your graphics card is not all that dependent on VRAM, you can have a very powerful card with 2GB of VRAM (VRAM is not the right way to determine how powerful a graphics card is). And again, I doubt RAM is a bottleneck for SimCity either. 4GB of RAM is not very much at all these days so needing 8GB or even 16GB of RAM for larger maps is not the big of a deal, but like I said RAM is not the issue, the CPU is the biggest bottleneck.

 

I agree that Maxis needs to make the simulation more efficient. One thing to note is, as you increase the map size the power needed for pathfinding grows exponentially not arithmetically, so a map 4 times the size needs a lot more the 4 times the CPU power for pathfinding. 

 

I don't know if this was directed at me or not, but I'm going to reply to it as if it was. 

 

I had never implied that VRAM had anything to do with video performance, and if you read the specs of my PC you'll see that I DO have 8GB of ram. In my post I detailed about why SimCity can't use more than 4GB (compiled in x86), which is why I used a 4GB RAM limit.

 

You're also partially right that it is mostly the CPU, in that the CPU directly affects how much ram a system can have. Because it's safe to assume that maps twice as large will use over 4GB of ram, and x86 CPUs cannot use more than 4GB of ram, no x86 CPUs will be able to run the larger maps at all. If Maxis were to fix this by distributing a separate x86 and x64 versions of the game, then one would have a massive advantage over the other and the game would become fragmented. (x86 and x64 players would have be separated from one another)

[The_Balm 4]

 

How much VRAM you have (or your graphics card) is not the bottleneck for SimCity by far. And how fast your graphics card is not all that dependent on VRAM, you can have a very powerful card with 2GB of VRAM (VRAM is not the right way to determine how powerful a graphics card is). And again, I doubt RAM is a bottleneck for SimCity either. 4GB of RAM is not very much at all these days so needing 8GB or even 16GB of RAM for larger maps is not the big of a deal, but like I said RAM is not the issue, the CPU is the biggest bottleneck.

 

I agree that Maxis needs to make the simulation more efficient. One thing to note is, as you increase the map size the power needed for pathfinding grows exponentially not arithmetically, so a map 4 times the size needs a lot more the 4 times the CPU power for pathfinding. 

 

I don't know if this was directed at me or not, but I'm going to reply to it as if it was. 

 

I had never implied that VRAM had anything to do with video performance, and if you read the specs of my PC you'll see that I DO have 8GB of ram. In my post I detailed about why SimCity can't use more than 4GB (compiled in x86), which is why I used a 4GB RAM limit.

 

You're also partially right that it is mostly the CPU, in that the CPU directly affects how much ram a system can have. Because it's safe to assume that maps twice as large will use over 4GB of ram, and x86 CPUs cannot use more than 4GB of ram, no x86 CPUs will be able to run the larger maps at all. If Maxis were to fix this by distributing a separate x86 and x64 versions of the game, then one would have a massive advantage over the other and the game would become fragmented. (x86 and x64 players would have be separated from one another)

 

You are not understanding me. The CPU isn't the bottleneck for RAM (there isn't a shortage RAM). Maps twice the size won't need 4GB of RAM. The CPU is the bottleneck. Increasing the map sizes will need more CPU power more then anything. Very rarely does a game need to be 64-bit to access over 4GB of RAM (games just don't need that much).

 

Then again Maxis didn't really max-out anything. I use 1GB of RAM and I'm only using ~20% of my CPU power. This is on my laptop too (brand new, top of the line 15" Retina MacBook Pro, but still, it's no gaming rig).

[USA_Pride 49]

The same applies as to what was said then...the game's design is fundamentally flawed. They simulated the wrong aspects and never made an engine capable of scaling.

Poor game design, buffing computers with new powah won't allow for larger maps as the software simply won't scale.

 

I agree.

 

I appreciate Catman's analysis, but it's their job to either code around it, or make compromises to have a more fun game.  The current city size is pathetic and laughable.  The game should be called "SimTown", not "SimCity".  If the game is only 32-bit, then make it 64-bit, or code it to use RAM more efficiently.  If the CPUs are busy making all these calculations, either make the calculations more efficient, or compromise and make less of them so that city size can be increased.

 

The GlassBox engine wasn't all that it said it would be.  It's cool to be able to see some of the game mechanics in the different data views, but the majority of the game is spent with these data views hidden.  What we do see from the very moment we start a new city is a miniscule city size.

 

In SimCity 2013, you spend your entire time compromising your city design to fit onto the microscopic canvas we've been given.  Your dreams are muted and scaled from day one.