new game Cities XXL

[zimmie 521]

The game will be available on 29 january !

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/313010/

 

That was fast! This thing must have been in development long before being announced. Or else like some concerns of slapping a new wrapper on an old game.

[Akeem J Lenoir 9]

The game will be available on 29 january !

http://store.steampowered.com/app/313010/

That was fast! This thing must have been in development long before being announced. Or else like some concerns of slapping a new wrapper on an old game. Considering the deep discounts they're offering, I'd venture to say it's the same old game with new packaging. It's sad really. How many times do they think selling the same game, however slightly improved, is going to go well with the gaming community? And, why would they even pull such a stunt with a more promising Cities: Skyline title on the horizon? Let's hope Cities XXL surprises us.

[Charlie_Zane 963]

Well they say you get a discount if you have the previous versions, but after looking into it more it seems as though all that has been does has been adding new skies and fixed bugs that have been present in the older versions for years. 

 

Maybe there's a better integration with mods from XLNation? I guess we don't have to wait long to find out. 

[kitapci 0]

no, it's postponed to 5 February.

 

I've always liked XL but it was unplayable due to memory leak and also stupid game dynamics. If these are fixed, I'd be more than happy to play it even with the same graphics.

Cities Skylines look promising with potential problems. I guess water simulation is a waste of time and source. Why would any city-building gamer pay that much attention to water? In all trailers buildings are extremely repetitive. Identical buildings everywhere, so unrealistic. Also seems to have lack of availability for freestyle zoning. That's what I love about XL series. You can freely define lands as parks, pedestrian areas, squares and most importantly agricultural fields. Skylines have same ridiculous agricultural zoning as SimCİty. A fenced square. Again, so unrealistic.

[Sim Trekker 41]

I broke down and preordered this. I hope I don't regret it.

[Akeem J Lenoir 9]

no, it's postponed to 5 February.

 

I've always liked XL but it was unplayable due to memory leak and also stupid game dynamics. If these are fixed, I'd be more than happy to play it even with the same graphics.

Cities Skylines look promising with potential problems. I guess water simulation is a waste of time and source. Why would any city-building gamer pay that much attention to water? In all trailers buildings are extremely repetitive. Identical buildings everywhere, so unrealistic. Also seems to have lack of availability for freestyle zoning. That's what I love about XL series. You can freely define lands as parks, pedestrian areas, squares and most importantly agricultural fields. Skylines have same ridiculous agricultural zoning as SimCİty. A fenced square. Again, so unrealistic.

 

Good! I'm not the only person thinking about that water. Glad to know I'm not. LOL.

 

Sure, the water thing looks cool, but if the rest of the game doesn't look good, or better yet, work well, then what's the point. And, the lack of free-forming zoning is a feature I really enjoyed in SC2013. It's actually a bizarre circumstance, because Cities XL has free-forming parks. Surely, they could throw in free-forming zones.  

[Screwballl 196]

I've been watching this and several other city sim games under development.

CXXL seems to be an expanded version of the previous game with bigger maps and twice as many buildings. One thing to remember is the original was sold off, so this is a different company. The bigger maps, modding, and other fixes seems to be doing just what the community said failed in the original game. So there is hope for this...

Skylines seems to be more focused on transportation and pretty graphics than the simulation side.

There was another I saw in the works that was combining the two with things like a hydroelectric plant you span across a river, and the water level behind it rises. They add to the realism so if there is a building in the rising water path, it is flooded and needed to be destroyed, and same happens if you build below the lowered water level below the dam, and it is destroyed.

Still, so much out there with modern computing and they still can't get it right, everything ends up so dumbed down.

[mgomrjsurf 16]

The only Dell All in One this might work on is XPS and because my Dell has Intel HD Graphics Card that can't be replaced so can't buy the Game I think that's better then Sim City 2013 at the moment because it has more Real Buildings like Best Buy,Home Depot,Wendy's,7-11 to Sim City 2013 that just has McDonalds and Burger King but no Custom ones yet

[poshbakerloo 186]

I just want to know about map sizes, it seems to unclear...I'm assuming there won't be a region (I don't know why as that would fix everything) 

Will it just be 1 'huge' map? 4km x 4km? 40km x 40km?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

The 1 huge map is either 10x10 km or larger. If they add maps larger than 10x10 km, it will remain backwards compatible with the 10x10 km maps.

--Ocram

[joeymozzer 0]

Will it ever make it onto Mac?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I don't think it will be available for Mac at release. For niche games, it is often too expensive to be cross platform.

--Ocram

[poshbakerloo 186]

The 1 huge map is either 10x10 km or larger. If they add maps larger than 10x10 km, it will remain backwards compatible with the 10x10 km maps.

--Ocram

 

For me, thats a good try...but no where near big enough! For a full size city you need a map that is about 50km x 50km, having a region of connecting maps would solve this!

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I read somewhere that there was a screenshot that showed a map with 200 square kilometers visible (and more left off), which would could mean that there might be 15x15 km maps or 20x20 km maps, or maybe the fan that made the calculations miscalculated. Unfortunately, SimCity 4 seems to be the only game I have ever seen with regions of connected maps. Cities XL has planets with 50 (2012) to 500 (Planet Offer or Platinum with mods) 10x10km cities that do not touch. SimCity 2013 has their largest regions having roughly the same area as a Cities XL map (with most of that area unplayable regional space) and Cities: Skylines will have maps where you can choose up to 9 2x2 km tiles of a 5x5 tile playable map (surrounded by map that cannot be played on) with the possibility of mods to open up the whole 100 square kilometers for buying and playing on.

10kmx10km in SimCity 4 (which had odd and incongruent scale) would be 5x5 medium maps, which if I am not mistaken is the size of the Fairview region (the smallest default region).

Don't get me wrong. I would absolutely LOVE to see a game that has a 60x60km region with a 25x25 grid of 2x2km cities and a 10 km area around there that cannot be built on. This type of region would also be great if it had a choice of 10 starting positions (city tiles in strategic locations) that a player could start at (so up to 10 players on such a large region would mean that each player could have 62 city tiles with 5 tiles left over which could either be unplayable, possible to be shared for regional works, or that certain players would have more cities than the other). In offline mode, the computer would only simulate a couple of these tiles at a time (depending on what the player is doing, it could simulate only the tile the player is playing on, that tile and the 4 tiles surrounding it that have been claimed and developed by the player, or a square of 5x5 tiles that have been claimed and developed around the main one). Maybe even have different levels of simulation in addition to different levels of detail of graphics. I think it would be pretty neat to be able to have 5 LOD's plus a billboard LOD for far distances in the background not being simulated. The problem is that it would be very difficult to implement that. Cities: Skylines approach might work and SimCity 2013's approach might work with minor works or a combination might work for the really large regions (with regions that have 50x50 km of playable area).

--Ocram

[deimo5 52]

 

no, it's postponed to 5 February.

 

I've always liked XL but it was unplayable due to memory leak and also stupid game dynamics. If these are fixed, I'd be more than happy to play it even with the same graphics.

Cities Skylines look promising with potential problems. I guess water simulation is a waste of time and source. Why would any city-building gamer pay that much attention to water? In all trailers buildings are extremely repetitive. Identical buildings everywhere, so unrealistic. Also seems to have lack of availability for freestyle zoning. That's what I love about XL series. You can freely define lands as parks, pedestrian areas, squares and most importantly agricultural fields. Skylines have same ridiculous agricultural zoning as SimCİty. A fenced square. Again, so unrealistic.

 

Good! I'm not the only person thinking about that water. Glad to know I'm not. LOL.

 

Sure, the water thing looks cool, but if the rest of the game doesn't look good, or better yet, work well, then what's the point. And, the lack of free-forming zoning is a feature I really enjoyed in SC2013. It's actually a bizarre circumstance, because Cities XL has free-forming parks. Surely, they could throw in free-forming zones.  

 

 

LOL add a third to that water thing. I was watching the videos and thinking to myself... "so, they spent all this time on the water, but the farms are 4x4 lots with fences... ...." After seeing that and hearing that there are no tunnels and no night view out the box, I pretty much wrote off Cities: Skylines and have turned my attention to Cities XXL. I am pretty impressed right now with Cities XXL, and that's really just based off of watching Keralis play Cities XL Platinum on YouTube. If you haven't seen those, watch them! FHI does a particularly poor job of selling their own product because if they were good, they would have highlighted being able to establish bus routes, bus lines, and schedules, building towns on the water, etc. I was blown away. Gotta be careful with Keralis though, he's so excitable and entertaining to listen to that he could sell garlic to a vampire.

 

Not having owned any previous "Cities" titles, I'm not as particularly ornery as some other folks that have purchased previous versions of the game. I would typically wait for the reviews, and based on what I saw/heard from the previous titles, I wouldn't spend my money. However, a big thank you to the martyrs who did purchase the previous titles, because without them, we wouldn't be where we are today---a great looking city builder with multi-core support and (hopefully) a remedied memory leak. As consumers though, we have to be smart and not expect the memory leak to be fixed. To my knowledge, they haven't acknowledged that there IS a memory leak, and they haven't reported that they fixed it, so...

[Adnoxaei 0]

 

LOL add a third to that water thing. I was watching the videos and thinking to myself... "so, they spent all this time on the water, but the farms are 4x4 lots with fences... ...." After seeing that and hearing that there are no tunnels and no night view out the box, I pretty much wrote off Cities: Skylines and have turned my attention to Cities XXL. I am pretty impressed right now with Cities XXL, and that's really just based off of watching Keralis play Cities XL Platinum on YouTube. If you haven't seen those, watch them! FHI does a particularly poor job of selling their own product because if they were good, they would have highlighted being able to establish bus routes, bus lines, and schedules, building towns on the water, etc. I was blown away. Gotta be careful with Keralis though, he's so excitable and entertaining to listen to that he could sell garlic to a vampire.

 

Not having owned any previous "Cities" titles, I'm not as particularly ornery as some other folks that have purchased previous versions of the game. I would typically wait for the reviews, and based on what I saw/heard from the previous titles, I wouldn't spend my money. However, a big thank you to the martyrs who did purchase the previous titles, because without them, we wouldn't be where we are today---a great looking city builder with multi-core support and (hopefully) a remedied memory leak. As consumers though, we have to be smart and not expect the memory leak to be fixed. To my knowledge, they haven't acknowledged that there IS a memory leak, and they haven't reported that they fixed it, so...

 

 

I was part of the Beta for Cities XL and have owned every version up through Platinum because they kept offering me 75% off each new generation. I'm disappointed that the discount is only 50% off this time because the new game looks like a series of bug fixes and some pretty skies. With that said...if this fixes the memory issues and multicore support problems, then this should be a nice little city builder, especially if you haven't owned it before.

 

Cities XL approaches things differently because you have to zone wealth levels and density instead of just density and letting things organically develop based on the desirability of an area, but wealthier levels won't develop unless their needs are met, so it doesn't just let you go wild. Their are also a lot of "cheat" buildings built in to compensate for really weird shifts in costs and demands as you grow. There are buildings that add 5% or 10% to a given category of output (like Offices or Oil) instantly for a monthly cost. Those buildings are included for a reason (this also happens in real life, think of a state funded university building a research wing for a particular industry...or even something like farming subsidies). Cities XL has a complex system of interconnecting influences and the balances never seem to have been worked out quite right, so sometimes you need a boost to keep from hitting a wall or having extreme diffculty. Definitely play through a bit where it unlocks each new thing because it knows about when you might need or want those new buildings. Afterward you can choose to play with buildings completely unlocked and kind of manipulate the system as you see fit or not manipulate it to see if you can make it without those boosts.

 

Also, Expect a Cities XXL 2016 with 50 new buildings and 5 more maps and a XXL 2016 with 50 new buildings and a special landmark, but none of the fixes for bugs in Cities XXL 2015 lol it's just how they do things.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Cities XXL has been released. I preordered it but I cannot play it until Friday afternoon. I plan on making a "First Impression" Let's Play then.

 

--Ocram

[vallamir 25]

Hi guys !!

 

I have the game since ... a long time ^^ So I'm ready to answer to your question !

But before, I want to show you some of my video about Cities XXL.

 

The first one is about the game beauty. Yes because Cities XXL is a beautiful game. I speak about graphics. Not conviced ? This first video is for you. I have decided to show you only the map without any building in order to view what i call a beautiful game.

 

 

Then you may have seen the lastest trailer ? No ? What are you waiting for ???

=> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIKp_1Qs7ZM

I've participate to this trailer (so it represents one or two seconds in the video ^^). That's why i wanted to show my city entirely in a second video. 

 

 

For those who speak french (i guess that you are not so much ^^), i've made a third video about the gameplay. It shows all the new content added by this version.

 

 

Thanks for watching

If you have any question about the game, i can speak about it freely !

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

What we read on CXXL Steam page is startlingly, following the tip of users the game has changed almost nothing compared to the last.

[Rokugatsu 128]

If you have any question about the game, i can speak about it freely !

 

I have a question. How much did they pay you for this? Aren't you ashamed for promoting this game? Aren't you ashamed that people may spend their money on this thing because of you? All you showed was nice views because thats all there is to it in this game, nice views. Problems starts when you want some gameplay.

It's the same game for the 4th time, THE EXACT SAME GAME. I wouldn't be exited even if it would be a free patch, yet they ask 40$ for it. Have some self respect and don't buy it, people. The only positive review on Steams speaks for itself:

[BudgieSimBoy 4]

 

If you have any question about the game, i can speak about it freely !

 

I have a question. How much did they pay you for this? Aren't you ashamed for promoting this game? Aren't you ashamed that people may spend their money on this thing because of you? All you showed was nice views because thats all there is to it in this game, nice views. Problems starts when you want some gameplay.

It's the same game for the 4th time, THE EXACT SAME GAME. I wouldn't be exited even if it would be a free patch, yet they ask 40$ for it. Have some self respect and don't buy it, people. The only positive review on Steams speaks for itself:

 

Wow just watched quill18 review the stuttering low FPS are still all there, looks like a patch at best with community Mods attached that you have to pay for.

Agree you can get some great screen shots in this series. However I know why the info on this game pre release was kept to a bare minimum.

A link to quill18 review. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmzHCB4O8PI

[Nesral Sredna 62]

So the XXL means that this still is the same XL we've paid full price for patches before, but with an extra X as in DirectX? 

[Ocram's Razr 964]

What some SimCity 4 fanboys do not realize is that Cities XL has fanboys as well. None of us are paid to give positive reviews of Cities XXL. The game is an improvement over the previous game and the LUA code has been optimized to be faster and run in a different thread (thus a different core). What I like the least about the game is the way the words look in the new UI. They seem to be distorted, stretched, or cut off at different places.

--Ocram

[Ryanscities2015 0]

Hey guys just wondering if anyone knows how to play cities xxl on Mac I play cities xl on Mac using crossover but crossover hasn't updated cities xxl yet any one know would be appreciated thanks

[rsc204 21,867]

What some SimCity 4 fanboys do not realize is that Cities XL has fanboys as well. None of us are paid to give positive reviews of Cities XXL. The game is an improvement over the previous game and the LUA code has been optimized to be faster and run in a different thread (thus a different core). What I like the least about the game is the way the words look in the new UI. They seem to be distorted, stretched, or cut off at different places.

--Ocram

 

Every time you fall for the trick of making you pay for a new game (because from everything I'm hearing, this is like the 3rd time they've done this) it presents the opportunity of such shoddy business practices and the exploitation of everybody. The simple facts of business are if you don't get paid, you don't stay in business, so if as consumers and fans of games we demand a little more, perhaps the industry wouldn't be in the sorry state it is where all the big game releases are just rehashes of the same tired old games I played 10 years ago, but somehow made worse?

[Ocram's Razr 964]

There is not much difference between Cities XL Platinum and Cities XXL. If you can play CXL Platinum on your Mac, don't worry about it.

Anyway, I made a "first impressions" "Let's Play" video.

--Ocram

[Nesral Sredna 62]

What some SimCity 4 fanboys do not realize is that Cities XL has fanboys as well.   .

 

Oh we've got that, we just don't get why....

 

The game is an improvement over the previous game and the LUA code has been optimized to be faster and run in a different thread (thus a different core

 

• Bugfixes ARE NOT gameplay-improvements. The engine is close to the same as XL, I've read and seen claims you can even move your old XL cities over, without breaking anything...
• Changing the userinterface is not gameplay-improvements. BTW, its horrible and those achievements-popups seems just freakingly annoying.
• New music (for once) is not gameplay-improvements. I don't play videogames to listen to music, either.

 

So as I said in my former post, the only "real" improvement seems to be some new models and and a more power hungry direct-X engine, wich by reviews still don't perform very well. Seems a legit reason to add an extra X in XL... NOT!

 

There is not much difference between Cities XL Platinum and Cities XXL. If you can play CXL Platinum on your Mac, don't worry about it.

 

So even a self-admitted fanboy admits theres really no difference But since the X in XXL must mean the change from DirectX 9c in platinum, to directX 10, I really would not be so worry-free for someone who don't know theirs system specs...

 

And as a friendly tip: try talking into the microphone next time, and check your volume...All I hear is background noise, mouseclicks and pc-sound 

[Ocram's Razr 964]

1.

What some SimCity 4 fanboys do not realize is that Cities XL has fanboys as well.   .

 

Oh we've got that, we just don't get why....

 

2.

The game is an improvement over the previous game and the LUA code has been optimized to be faster and run in a different thread (thus a different core

• Bugfixes ARE NOT gameplay-improvements. The engine is close to the same as XL, I've read and seen claims you can even move your old XL cities over, without breaking anything...
• Changing the userinterface is not gameplay-improvements. BTW, its horrible and those achievements-popups seems just freakingly annoying.
• New music (for once) is not gameplay-improvements. I don't play videogames to listen to music, either.

So as I said in my former post, the only "real" improvement seems to be some new models and and a more power hungry direct-X engine, wich by reviews still don't perform very well. Seems a legit reason to add an extra X in XL... NOT!

 

3.

There is not much difference between Cities XL Platinum and Cities XXL. If you can play CXL Platinum on your Mac, don't worry about it.

 

So even a self-admitted fanboy admits theres really no difference But since the X in XXL must mean the change from DirectX 9c in platinum, to directX 10, I really would not be so worry-free for someone who don't know theirs system specs...

 

And as a friendly tip: try talking into the microphone next time, and check your volume...All I hear is background noise, mouseclicks and pc-sound 

1. I perfectly understand why there are still fanboys for SimCity 4. I used to be obsessed with SimTower and I still want to make an improved clone of it and SimTower was made about 2 decades ago. I used to be obsessed with SimCity 4. It was a great game for the year it was made. It was far better than City Life or SimCity Societies. Cities XL fanboys usually like creating large, beautiful cities with realistic 3D graphics. Most of us do not like the way pedestrians look but no one has the time or desire to replace every cartoon pedestrian.

2. I never said that gameplay was improved. As I have learned more, they took 2 steps forward and 1 step back with CXXL. Gameplay stayed the same with a new ecological gameplay function tacked on. They replaced the LUA code as well as the interface but high end computers utilize more cores now for worse performance, which is just a waste of electricity. I also find the new music rather bizarre. I wish there was a convenient way to change which songs are played. I would love to have a program in the background that changes the music playlist with the press of a hotkey (that doesn't interfere with my CXXL hotkeys)

3. Sorry if you misinterpreted what I said. When I said, if you play CXL Platinum on a Mac, do NOT upgrade to CXXL because there is not that much difference and don't worry about not having the latest and "greatest."

Thank you for the advice for sound quality. I will make a regular Let's Play (since I already have an impression of CXXL now) and take that advice into consideration.

--Ocram

[Nesral Sredna 62]

I really tried to like XL, as everyone complained about how bad SC Soc was, and for quite awhile I did,  So when I found XL 2012 priced as a new game in the local store, I bought it - but felt dissapointed. It felt more like an expansion pack, than a full new game. Features I actually liked got removed in the first game, and there was little to replace it. For some reason I never found out about the new ability to mod it. The box art never cared to tell, and neither did the game manual, and then it was to late. My love for XL cooled down, and I went back to playing SC4 - and getting a better grip of the mechanics. I've tried letting XL another chance, but it mostly been on the drive unplayed. Then I heard about XXL - I got fairly interested again, until I learned my GPU wouldn't handle it. After three years of milking the Monte Cristo developed franchise like it was Madden NFL and the plummeting fall of SC2013, I'm shocked that FHI have not spent the break wiser than they did.

 

It was not my attempt to bite you if I appeared to, but to express my suprise at XXL. Wich I couldn't buy anyway. So I prolly should have kept my time wiser myself instead of lashing a dead horse. It still is one developer left in the game, and maybe, maybe Focus starts to learn/(learn to start?) how to code something themselves now....

 

Good luck with your lets play!

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I did not think you were snapping at me. I apologize if I came off as rude or defensive. Anyway, taking the advice from the city-building community (across Simtropolis, XLNation, and Reddit), I made a new Let's Play. I sped up the video portion, recorded my voice on my phone saying almost exactly what I said while originally recording it, and made a new remix song.

Here is my video:

What do all of you think of my video?

--Ocram