Leaderboard

Half a million, what a milestone! Big congrats to the site staff who keep this site so stable despite the numbers. I wonder how many of that 500k are active?

So we have been invited to Maxis' studios at the main EA campus to get some first-hand impressions of the game and to interact with the developers. Up for this trip will be Zelgadis and myself to represent the Simtropolis community. We will be getting some hands-on time with the game itself, and some time to speak with the developers. We will also be attending the Maxis live broadcast the following day, where SimCity will also be a topic of discussion! This is super exciting and we're looking forward to seeing the new game in person and will be getting some chat-time with the development team. I'd love to bring down some of your burning questions to ask in person, so please use this topic to let us know what you want us to try to cover. I can't promise we can get answers for everything, but you know we'll try our best! Both Zelgadis and I will be visiting with Maxis Oct 8 and attending the live broadcast event Oct 9. We'll post frequent updates via the website and twitter, so let us know what you want us to say or keep an eye out for. We'll also give you a full debriefing when we get back, as well as our honest to goodness first-hand feedback of this new version of the greatest city simulation game. EDIT: Thanks for the feedback everyone, we'll take the top most voted questions down with us and try to dig up some answers as best we can!

First, thank you Maxis and EA for having us down there, our host and hostess were awesome. We had a great time, there just wasn't enough of it! We appreciate the opportunity to connect with you! Fellow Simtropolians, these impressions are for you (this is not a review). Sorry for the posting this a couple days later than intended, got distracted with some server stuff, and I also wanted to give it some more thought. If there's a topic I didn't cover, please feel free to ask and I'll try to get an answer for you. Do keep in mind, these are really early impressions, and I'm sure lots of things are going to change. Please share your thoughts, let me know where I'm wrong, or what you disagree with. ---- Oct 2012 Maxis Studios Visit, Thoughts and impressions In the hands of Maxis SimCity is back in the hands of Maxis. And last week, we were invited to visit their studio in Emeryville with an opportunity to interact with the team and to to get a detailed inside view of the development of the new game. I have a few thoughts and impressions to share with you guys, but I want to make it very clear that while we enjoyed lots of candid, insightful conversation, we simply did not have enough time to fit in an extended play session with the actual game. So it made writing this difficult because I wanted to be honest with what I saw, informative for you guys, but fair to Maxis, knowing that I didn’t really get a full experience with the game. What I did get was a brief exposure to a limited tutorial, and while I tried to take in as much as I could given the constraints, I just couldn’t get enough out of it without time to play freely. Again, this was just the unfortunate result of scheduling not conspiracy (I think). Anyway, even though our time there was condensed, it was packed with plenty of information, lots of demos were shown and plenty of discussion. I’ll share what I thought was interesting, but I’m not going into specific gameplay stuff that has already been shown or talked about. Before moving on, one caveat: given that what we saw was all based on early software, some behaviour we discussed was undemonstrated, and what in-game art we saw is not final, I may totally change my mind on any of these things as new information arises. The very limited tutorial I went through amounted to little more than click here, drag down this road, put down a zone and that’s about it. It’s a serviceable tutorial for a new player, but I didn’t get much out of it. I got a chance to draw a couple of roads; yes, it feels pretty good and intuitive. Painting down zones feels just as you might expect. I like how buildings sort of swing around as you drag them across the terrain before placing them. Yes, all pretty superficial. Sorry to disappoint, but if I get another chance to actually sink my teeth into the actual game, I’ll tell you something more meaningful. City sizes, repetition, and why Glassbox could play really differently But we did get to some talking about city-building, and city sizes. Yes, it’s 2x2, sorry, no change right now. I brought up the issue of building repetition. So from what I understand, to help mitigate this a little bit, the idea is that each building will have some slight variation, I’m assuming texture, colour, props, so that even a row of similar looking houses, should at least have a little variety between them. That’s good news. When I asked if it extended any further than just cosmetics, for example, will the simulator be able to recognize that 4 car washes are growing next to each other and, maybe, you know, not do that? The answer was no. It will still be possible to still get a bunch of similar stuff bunched together, like 4 gas stations all on the same street. It’s a small gripe for me, but maybe not for you. As long as the underlying simulator is fun, I can overlook that. About the simulator, I think Glassbox, based on the demos we saw, will really make the new game feel and play very differently form its predecessor. You already all about it, but I like the idea that every car, vehicle or sim is an agent with goals, that they will use whatever infrastructure you’ve laid down, to attempt to get to their destination. And if for some reason they can’t, you will see where things screwed up naturally as a result of your own boneheaded networks. I like that. It gives your city a sense of real physicality because you will see sims physically using your transportation network, and you will be able to see exactly what isn’t working and understand why. In SimCity 4 the simulator was purely statistical so trying to get the current state of your city meant staring at windows with rows of numbers, and looking at a value like “47%” and then trying to figure out what that means, what affected that, and what you should do to move that number up or down. There’s usually a lot of guessing, and then you just stop guessing, and just spam bus stops (or whatever) everywhere and moved on. For me, playing SC4 sometimes felt like balancing a spreadsheet. So with Glassbox, I like how the data is presented like a real-time animated info-graphic style, allowing you to see what’s going on right now. It’s nice to not have to comb through rows of data while playing the game to understand a situation. I do see some value for having charts though, perhaps more like a summary, or annual report, where you can see a nicely plotted graph of trends in crime, pollution, population, what improved, what’s declining, that sort of thing. It’s info fluff for sure, but it would give the city a growth history. The complexity of buildings, and modding As we walked around the studio, nearly every wall it seemed was covered with large format print-outs of concept artwork. I was impressed with the attention to detail that went into the design of every building. This stuff makes a SimCity geek happy. And looking at them, I started to appreciate just how much more there is to consider for each building now that they are in 3d, animated, and can be expandable with modules. That’s going to take modding and custom content to a new level. There are still a lot of questions with modding and custom content support. I can tell you that Maxis is very keen to support modding, but don’t expect any tools until well after launch. Right now, they just don’t have any solid answers or solutions on how modding could work in a persistent world with these online regions. How does a modded building affect that global economy? Would it? Should it? What about other players in your region? Maybe if you play with modded or custom content, you play in your own region, and you affect nothing else, including the global economy. But should you get to access the global economy? Does that not just isolate you, you know, just as if you were playing a single-player offline game? The other thing to consider is the leap in technology and tools just needed to create a building. In SimCity 4 the buildings were essentially static sprites. Buildings in the new SimCity are fully 3d objects. And I’m assuming with the Glassbox simulator there’s even more to account for: Building have animations to indicate their state, such as doors opening, or conveyor belts moving. Lighting is now volumetric, no longer simply baked onto the texture as in SC4. Buildings that provide services can be upgraded and expanded with snap-on modules; those snap-on areas must be considered in the over all design. All buildings require road access, so the artist must plan where road connections on the lot would be ideally placed. I’m certain there’s more that goes into creating a building. Additionally, all models are now built in Maya (along with some proprietary tools and palettes that Maxis developed to work in Maya for the project). So if all the above requirements are true for Maxis-made buildings, it seems reasonable to expect that custom content makers must follow the same standard. It’s a lot to consider, but I know it’s on their minds. When the time comes, content creators can expect a big leap in both complexity and creativity. While Maxis doesn’t have all the answers to modding yet, they are open to a dialogue with the community and to hear your feedback. Road geeks win with 3d The other great benefit of everything in true 3d, is roads. Because roads are now full 3d paths, Road Geeks will literally have a whole other dimension to play within. Ocean Quigley gave us a demo of the road tool and it was pretty sweet to see just how easy he was able to create a three level overpass by using the free-form tool and dragging out an elevated road, dragged another one beneath it, and one on top. Elevated roads create their own support pylons, and if there’s sufficient space beneath, you can run another road or rail under it. The road tool is smart enough to try to solve bumpy or hilly terrain for you. At times it will suggest a bridge as a solution to span a gap, other times it might draw a road down one incline and up another. But if you want finer control, you can still create your own solution by inching the road tool along and clicking to commit as you go along. There seemed to be endless possibilities, and unlike previous titles, making these complex configurations looked pretty effortless. Also, I loved the fact that as you draw your road, you’ll see a dotted line hinting the optimal space required for zoning. So if you wanted to carve a winding road down a hill, the zone hinting line will make sure you leave enough space to zone your hillside houses. Zoning, changes and omissions On the topic of zoning, you no longer specify density for your zones. The density of the building that will grow there will depend on the type of road its adjacent to. Busy roads with lots of traffic will result in high density, but low volume roads will create low density buildings. There will no longer be an agricultural zone. No farms. When asked, the team felt that farm zones offered no real gameplay value. Well, two things to say about that: they may not add much to gameplay, but it did allow players to design a city with that distinct agricultural look so it’s a shame it’s gone, we lose variety. Second thing, what about actually adding a gameplay element to farms? Make farms produce goods that would be sold on the global market. Now people have a choice to specialize even further if they want to export grown goods for income. There’s a built-in trade-off since farms take up a lot of space and there are risks such as pollution, disasters, drought. If you get a good yield one year, you might make a lot of money selling high wine (or whatever) sold to rich sims everywhere. But you may not always get a profitable year, so it's risk versus reward. It’s also a challenge to operate a purely agricultural based city; you’d need to support it with neighbouring cities and deals to ensure your other needs are met. If anything it’s just more interesting choices for the player. In other words, turn agriculture into a challenge. People might enjoy the challenge of trying to sustain a profitable agricultural city. It could add another dynamic to both the global market and multiplayer regions. Anyway, just an idea. Speaking of multiplayer, when I first heard that the new SimCity will be an “online multiplayer SimCity”, I probably had the same reaction as some of you. Honestly, the term “multiplayer SimCity” must, to a core fan, confuse as much as it offends. Multiplayer and always-online So far, we have no real idea how online multiplayer, global markets and global economies will play out. I’m guessing the Beta is where we’re going to discover all that. My initial resistance was based on the fear that I would be forced to play in a region with other people and I had no choice. For me, leaderboards and group challenges hold almost no appeal whatsoever, other players might dig that. I hope the online component offers some surprising dynamic that we haven't already seen before and that serve to engage more than to annoy. So we know now that you can still play an entire region by yourself - though you still have to be online. So that brings us to a burning point of contention which has been debated all over the forums here and abroad. I don’t think I can add much more to the conversation, but I did bring up the topic with Maxis at dinner the one night: “Ok, so hey, let’s say I had a long day at work, and I just want to go home, relax and load up SimCity. In fact, I can’t wait to get home and work on my city. I’ve been thinking about it all day. So I get home, I load it up, and the servers are down. I can’t play… so… now what?” The only answer I got was about the only answer I deserved for such a loaded question. Kip shrugged his shoulders and offered a “c’est la vie” face. Really, what else could he say? We are told that online play is asynchronous, so temporary outages will not disrupt your game. And yes, occasionally Origin servers may be down for maintenance, and you won’t be able to login or you may be kicked out of the game, but we can be assured that plenty of notice will always be given. While not new, I still reject the idea of “always online” but I am accepting that it will be the way many games will go. Still at the risk of being obnoxious on the topic, I wanted to press the point another way: “Ok, so you look at SimCity 4 released 10 years ago, and I can still load it up today and play it. I can load it up five years from now and still play it. I don’t need to sign in, I don’t need a server, I just load it up and play. How can this always online requirement be able to assure me that I can still play my game, say, a year or 10 from now just as I can with SimCity 4?” As an answer, Kip hunched over and waved his fingers: “Hmmm… let me look into my crystal ball…” There was laughter, it was kinda funny. And really, what did I expect? Still, however glib Kip’s response, within it contained about as much truth and assurance as I could have hoped to extract on the matter. The honest answer of course is that no one really knows for sure, and there really are no promises. There was no answer that could have satisfied. Not to paint Kip as completely glib and dismissive (he’s actually very patient, great to talk to and good humoured) he did address my concern as best as he was able to: Maxis values SimCity greatly, it’s one of their flagship titles, and that we have every good intention of making sure it has a long life. Something along that line. So there you go, that’s the best answer they can possibly give us, whether that affects your buying decision is up to you. Final musings Some final thoughts, I have noticed that the SimCity coming out in February has a disconcerting lack of version suffix. We’ve just been calling it the New SimCity. Is it possible that this is the Final SimCity? From what I’ve seen, and I have not seen it all, the concepts and the intents behind the ideas all support a distinct possibility for a great game. While I am mostly, cautiously, optimistic by what I have seen so far, and despite a few points on which I disagree with -- if I have any meaningful reservations to share with you it would be the overall visual style. I’m not warming to it yet. It could be that I just haven’t played the game enough, and that I’ve only really seen very early builds and demos, but the truth is right now, I’m not connecting with the visual style which feels to me overtly cute, bright and cartoony. SimCity 4 had a clean stylized realism to it that felt right, at least for me. In the new SimCity, there’s something about the scale of the city in general, the look of the buildings, the awkward spaces between buildings (ugh), the way all the cities we’ve seen look and feel sparse. I’m not looking for realistic, just believable. So for what it’s worth, there’s my big disconnect right now, perhaps real gameplay may cure that at some point. Overall, Maxis is doing a lot to move the game forward. And I believe them when they say that having a deep simulator is important, we’ll wait and see how deep it is, but it’s looking promising. It feels like they want to make SimCity more connected, socially engaging, encouraging you to partner up to build “great works” and complete challenges. There’s lots of evidence that Maxis wants to make the game more appealing and more accessible to bring in new players without, hopefully, alienating the dedicated fans (too much). I can see this effort in some of the design choices, super friendly interface, the way data is rendered in a more friendly way, the new music is friendly and relatable (unlike the electronic, abstract mix of SC4), and mostly in the art direction; the brighter palette, the sense of scale. The tilt-shift style makes it all look miniature, like a toy … like a doll-house city, maybe? At the Maxis Live broadcast event, one thing about the presentation format did not escape me. The SimCity portion of the live event was bracketed by two major The Sims 3 announcements. I mean even the “promotional” mystery box for SimCity, required owning some Sims 3 expansions. Now there’s nothing wrong with this. It was just an observation and I’m not suggesting anything more nefarious than just savvy marketing and PR. Whatever the intention, I think it was a good thing. Maxis is known for The Sims and SimCity (what’s Spore?). The difference, is that The Sims 3 has approximately nine thousand expansions. SimCity 4, has one. If there’s any hope for the title to be a commercial success (and more than just fan service) -- which means continued support, more expansions, servers remaining online -- it’s got to appeal to more players than just us core fans. So, core fans, in February what we’ll see will be the next generation of SimCity. I for one hope that the game has enough in it for me so I can include myself in this next generation, too. That’s all I have to say for now. Thanks for reading. Dirktator

Q: Will Sim City (2013) be playable in solo mode without being connected to the internet?

At last, the new Real Highway (RHW) Interchange Guide board has been completed! All RHW interchange tutorials throughout the SimCity 4 community can be found there. Each guide has been indexed by type, and organized in a way that it is easily accessible from the table of contents. ----- For those who are new to the RHW Interchange Guide, or do now know what it is, here is a brief introduction: With the release of RHW 3.0 (and subsequent releases), there is virtually an infinite number of ways you can construct your highways and interchanges. However, this is not a simple task, and takes quite a bit of getting used to. Many folks have looked at several pictures of RHW interchanges and asked "whoa! How'd you do that?" and have tried to construct something similar themselves, sometimes with much difficulty that eventually causes them to give up. This guide will show examples of various interchange types and will describe how they were made. Feel free to ask questions after a guide has been posted if you are having difficulty. I will attempt to show how to construct these interchanges as simple as possible, using only the necessary downloads. If you'd like to submit your own guides to this thread, please post your guide in the submissions thread to have it reviewed. Also be sure to follow the format set up in previous guides. Thanks!

Will we see flowing rivers, streams, waterfalls, rapids, or other bodies of water that are above sea level?

Well, here we are, ten years of Simtropolis -- and we're only a scant few months away from the next version of SimCity. Long-standing members -- thanks for sticking around, or for at least popping back every once in a while. And greets to all members old and new. This place is going to be hopping in March...! Can't wait! Happy Holidays, everyone... And Happy 10th Anniversary! The Trixies will start in January this year, and we're going to do something a little extra special for our 10th this time around. We're going to try to make it worth your while to nominate, and nominate often. More details in a few weeks... Have a great one! Free bunnies for the rest of the month... :bunny: :bunny:

EA has released information. => Users receive this information. => Users think about this information. => Users will have an opinion about this information. => Users will want to exchange their opinion with others via communication channels such as this very forum. That's what a forum is for, by the way Yell "HOLD YOUR OPINION" all you want, it's no use. (It's also funny how you voice an opinion yourself directly before screaming at others not to do so.) Imagine you had booked a beachside holiday resort with sports facilities, and now you get told that the resort is actually far away from the sea and doesn't have any sports facilities, but a spa/sauna. Yes, once you start your holidays there. it might be ok - different, but ok. But you don't need to travel there first to know that it's not what you wanted and what you expressly indicated beforehand. IMO, what's pointless talk is that constant "Oh, it's still 6 months". What exactly do you think will they do in the remaining months? Does anybody here really, sincerely, reckon they will turn the game concept inside out? Make terraforming possible after all? Introduce a full-blown single player mode? Totally change the region concept and the game engine? That would boil down to throwing out the entire game so far and starting from scratch. I guess the community has sensed rather well that we're beyond some points of no return already. The concept stands, the game engine stands, the game mechanics are standing, next steps will probably be general programming to put the concept into practice, artwork, fixing glitches, UI programming and design, testing and balancing, documentation. Don't forget the server back-end, which will require a huge portion of the entire effort, because it's basically a client/server game with heavy bias on the server. I seriously doubt that in 6 months we will be any more able to make a metropolis region out of seamlessly connected city tiles than based on what we know now. The same applies to terraforming, realistic-scale stations, railyards... heck, I don't even want to think about airports! Or sea ports, for that matter. Or even just the possibility to say "I want a highway connection to the neighbour city right here and right this way." If the concept so far is to your liking, then these points of no return don't matter, and the following 6 months can be full of excitement and more interesting details. If it is not to your liking, then... well... I have scarce hope that anything to happen in the following 6 months will make that fundamental change it would take to get you on board. ______________________ Back to topic, I was more skeptical than excited from the get-go, and for the third time now I find myself not really caring at all. If this continues, I guess my reaction to the next so-called SimCity game (or SimCity-style game) will be reduced to shrugging, turning around and forgetting about it immediately. Personally, I feel pretty relaxed. I mean, the cards had been lying on the table for 10 years now, and they were speaking a rather clear language - in this context it's almost amusing to see how one contestant after the other fails to acknowledge what's in plain sight and goofs it up. I must confess that this entertains me to some degree - the usual hullabaloo in the forums explicitly included. EDIT Whoa, I'm slow. Guess you shouldn't interrupt posting for other things. I was picking up the thread from nukeu's post, of course.

Why won't 4 km by 4 km cities be available? I can see that entry-level hardware for this game wouldn't support them, but I don't see anything that would prevent top-of-the-line machines from playing them. This is especially true considering the order of magnitude performance improvement of D* Lite pathfinding over A* pathfinding. I'm also assuming that you'll be multithreading pathfinding. Why not make the larger cities an option that those of us with quad processors (eight threads on Intel) or more can use?

I got to play it today, I have to be honest, I didn't like it. WAY too simple, way too restricting. Copied and pasted from my Work/Uni facebook group. Names and pics of others removed. 34 minutes ago · Daniel R Tonks Firstly, I feel like how die hard C&C fans must have felt. Just to let you know what to expect from this... I opened up the game, the first thing I noticed was that the map was bloody small, I mean seriously small. The game map does not get much larger. If you want to build a sprawling Metropolis (very possible in 4), forget it. I zoned a few buildings, standard SC gameplay right there, no grid which is something the community has wanted for a while. I noticed I was losing money so I clicked on my Power Station to lower its funding. In SC when you have a new city, it's good practice to lower utility funding to provide only what your city needs as otherwise you are just burning money... I was provided with the option to turn the Power Station on or off... no micromanagement in Sim City!? Surely not! Zones overlapped, the things like fire stations and town halls took up too much space. You can't build a dense compact city in this game, you seem limited to US Midwest. The modding community can get around this though. You had the option to add bits to buildings which was a nice touch, credit where credit is due. They added the option to build Tram Tracks on your roads (but only big roads and no off-street running like the community modded into SC4). Whilst limited it was nice to have, though the tram tracks didn't match up visually at junctions, offset by a metre or so. A minor irritation I suppose but sloppy. Overall, I ended up telling people they were wrong to play it. I became 'that' guy. 34 minutes ago · Daniel R Tonks Essentially, EA have taken a massive, in depth game where the community has demonstrated time and time again in the 9 years since Sim City 4's release that they want to build massive, sprawling metropolises and micromanage the $%&^! out of them... then turned it toy town Sims extension. 32 minutes ago · Edited · Daniel R Tonks Now I know many of you are reading this and thinking 'Dan, get a life', but when a game manages to maintain an active community of this magnitude (a community I play a huge role in might I add) 9 years after the games release, I cannot understand how EA can get it so wrong. They have aimed this at The Sims crowd, completely ignoring the crowd which got Maxis where it is in the first place. Total abuse of a franchise to milk as much as they can out of another. This is Sim City, a geeks city builder, not The Sims. Rant over. Skyrim time. 29 minutes ago · How does it honestly play in a non ultra hobbyist way? I'm a casual player and I think societies was painfully $%&^!. Meta-critically, what do you think it would get? 25 minutes ago · "Firstly, I feel like how die hard C&C fans must have felt." YOU'LL NEVER KNOW OUR PAIN!!!!!!!! 24 minutes ago · I've waited for really niche simulators which have been ruined by spastic publishers. 22 minutes ago · Can you still zone, build schools and raise taxes for the poor? Or do you have to place individual buildings and roads? 21 minutes ago · Wait wasn't Sim city going to be a facebook game? 20 minutes ago · That's already out 19 minutes ago · Is it bad to the point where 4 modded is more worthwhile or is this game just a disappointment considering the improvements that could have been made??? 11 minutes ago · Daniel R Tonks You can zone, but it doesn't always work quite right with the curved road system (this will probably be fixed to be fair). The taxes/micromanagement system seemed to be missing/extensively cut down. Sim City with Mods (and a Computer that can cope with that large a plugins folder) is infinitely better if you make sure you don't unbalance it. about a minute ago · Like

Hi there, My name is FerryV and i just came back from GamesCom 2012! The first thing I did was running to hall 6 were half of the hall was build up by EA. And wow what a amazing stands. My favorite: SimCity off course. So I went in line and waited 2 hours. This was the longest I waited for a game at GamesCom. I was amazed how popular SimCity is. In line I watched all the trailers and studied the whole stand with the amazing art. Finely it was my change to experience SimCity and I can tell you the following: Guys and girls. Its going to be a great game!!! We played the alpha version (not beta) with a basic prebuild city. Off course there was a lot wrong with the city (no power, no water, no fire stations, not enough housing etc.) so I had 20min to rebuild the whole city and watched it got destroyed in the end by an meteor shower Because it was an alpha version a lot of building/mass transit etc wasn’t available. This is more than logic but still Maxis gave me a real good feeling were the game is going to. This is what I discovered/experienced in that 20 minutes: - building road (and bus stations) The first thing I had to do is connect my city with the regional highway. I had 2 options to build my connections: Straight road or Curvy road. There was also an 3th option showing but not available. That looked like an zone function. I think it’s going to be the same function as SC4 automatic roads when zoning. I have to be honest that the curvy road system wasn’t flawless. But giving it’s a Alpha version completely logical. But the roads worked pretty good and looked pretty fine. I also build 3 bus stations and upgraded the bus stations with extra capacity. Because I build this more in the end I didn’t had enough time to really explore all the possibility’s (sorry for that one) - Zoning Yes zoning! No plopables! (only government buildings) And I was amazed by it. Here the glassbox revealed itself. If you build a plain road and then go to the option zoning you will get automatic zoning on the road. So even when your roads are curvy and makes no sence the zoning will figure it out. The best part about this was that I didn’t had to figure out exactly how the zoning will fit within the curvy road and I didn’t had any empty space! (like Cities XL) It was such a joy seeing the housing, commercials and smelly industry growing. My residential neighborhood was with a lot of gardens and green. But the houses closer to the commercial zone were more dense and were as my commercial area more of concrete. It was beautiful. Not like you see on the trailer with high skyscrapers and a grass garden around it. Now I must say I didn’t had really skyscrapers yet because the city wasn’t big enough yet. And for the people that want to control their own zoning completely. I could bulldoze everything pretty easy. And not all the zoning possibilities where available. - Popable (with upgrades) This is the best part I think. You can transform all your plopable building and transform them as you dement them to. I build the following: Coal Plant, Windmill Farm, Fire station, Bus station. All of the building had unique add-ons. Some of them you could plant around your building (see also trailer were they build a school and putt dorms around it) In my case I build a fire station, put a bell tower on it. Build an extra garage on the other side of the street and put a nice flag pole next to it J With the windmill I made 2 classic windmills (not the hypermodern you’ve seen on some screenshot from Maxis) and I build a nice sign that it was a windmill park in front of the building. Next I made dirt road from the office to the windmills for the maintenance truck. At this point I realized the game is going to be deep enough for SimCity builders. - Water tower (and groundwater) When I build my water tower I got the water table of the map. I build it on a splash of dark blue water instead of light blue water. This off course the get a higher output of the tower. Right away I seen the water run down the city. Finely not wasting my time on water pipes anymore! J At this stage I got also involved in the next item: - Graphs In the older SimCity I used my graphs a lot in combinations with the famous minimap. In this version Maxis does it different. The whole map interact in what you want to see. So I click on fire risk and seen that one house was burned down and was now rubbish and that there were some warnings at some local factories. Next I switched to density and the whole city went white (buildings) and circle towers in different colors where shooting out of my city. I could see right away were all the people work, sleep, shop etc. It was very clear and much better than before. Than by accident I clicked on a car that was driving over the street. Guess what happened: - Cars, citizens, agents and routes etc. When you click a car it give you information about that car. Who is driving it. Were that person lives and were he is going to! It was so cool to see that the agent system from glassbox really is there. This gives an extra deep dimension to control your city and its transport system (if you want to micromanagement) But luckily the agents found their way also by themselves. So one of the cars that I followed didn’t took the shortest route (through my nice green residential zone) but was driving a bit around it on my bigger avenue. Soon my avenue got some bad traffic jam at the big intersection with the commercial zone. Suddenly I seen some care (not all) sneak around it through my nice neighborhood. I don’t want that off course, so I build even an even bigger avenue (the one with the light rail in the middle) now the traffic was getting this as preferred road.I didn’t figure out a way to upgrade the road, but then again I didn’t put much effort in it (had nice empty space) and I could not work with the light rail because at this point my time was up. I also think that the light rail didn’t work yet in this version. - Graphics OMG it was already beautiful. And I cant wait till the final result. For the first time in SimCity I really love the night time. I build my power plant by accident in the evening and blink blink blink.. all the lights in the city were turned on. It was amazing to see. And because not all are burning and some go off or on it really looks realistic. Well maybe realistic isn’t the right word because as you know SimCity works wilt tilt-shift. My brother found it looks like a bit cartoony because of the tilt-shirt. That its looked a bit more like sims and not like SC4. But still disagree with him. I feld like I could really see every detail in my city and still see everything that’s going on. But then again I love good tilt-shift movies. How suddenly a real life big environment still keeps all its details but looks like you can play with it like Lego. - Disasters (meteor shower) I’m not a big fan of disasters. Why would I destroy a perfect city?! But I guess it’s a part of SimCity and a lot of people like it. Well the meteor shower was a nice ending and it looked pretty amazing. Maxis/Dr Vu destroyed all recently build cities in one click. Maybe it was better this way because I really wanted to take the city home with me. Now it was destroyed it was easier to go outside of the stand. - 20minutes and feedback Because I only had 20 minutes I tried as many things as possible in that period of time. But every SimCity player knows how fast time goes away with that game. The thing I regret the most is also the time shortage I had. I really hope the beta comes out soon and hopefully (fingers crossed, wink to Maxis) I will be selected as a beta user. In this story I described my experience as accurate as possible. If you still have questions for me about my experience please ask. I will try to answer them as good and quick as I can. But remember I only played 20 minutes (way to short Maxis!!) So I only experienced a tip of the iceberg. As last: The computers were SimCity was running on was behind closed doors. Cameras were not allowed and they were made sure nobody was filming anything. I think they did that just to tease everybody that was not there. So im sorry I dont have any nice vids/screens. Also I didn’t talk to anybody from Maxis. So I had no change to ask my questions / give my feedback to them. If maxis still want my feedback they know how to contact me. But for now: Thanks Maxis, you did a really great job. Thanks everybody for reading my story and please give me feedback. Greetings, FerryV (origin/simtropolis accountname) Ps. My native language is not English as you can see and I am dyslectic. So sorry for the mistakes and please read over them. If you don’t understand a part please also leave feedback, Pss. Just reminds me: I did no terraforming / nor did i seen the option Psss. I build one beautiful park out of 4 options i had. I didnt check if that was upgradable

It's that time again . . . the first top-secret feature reveal video for the upcoming NAM Version 31 release is now up. The RealHighway system, celebrating the 7th anniversary of its first release on Friday, now "flexes" some new muscle.

Developer Maxis has released three screenshots for the new SimCity, depicting the reboot's in-game environments. SimCity is the fifth main installment to the long-running series by EA Maxis.

View Album A town that has struggled for a long time with the different water-levels from the surrounding rivers and lakes... We enter near the northern flood control station... The inland industrial complex... Click for fullsize... Nearby housing project... Edge of industrial zone... Turning toward the inner city... Wealthy residential area... The city garden with theatre, bandshell, aviary, museum... and some shopping opportunities... Financial and government district - celebrating the tamed waters with some artificial ponds... Nighttime... Large overview...

Feel the rush !

I just felt like voicing my opinion - I hope no one minds! Maxis is doing a new SimCity - that's great! I'm sure we can all agree, regardless of what we personally think of the new game, that we're all excited about it. Some of us have loved what we have seen so far - others, not so much. Personally, I've starting fearing their press releases, screen shots, and new videos. Instead of making me want the game more, its like with every release, we get told what's NOT going to be in the game. Am I the only one that feels like this? My issue is not that they are making a new SimCity game in their vision. Any game developer has a right to do so - they are, afterall, putting their own money up to design a game that reflects their image for it. I have no place to sit here and be mad or angry, simply because its not my money or effort that has been put into it. As an owner of several businesses, I can tell you that while setting them up, in the end, they were finalized in the image I wanted. At the same time, however, my ear was ALWAYS listening to my core client base, because at the end of the day, I am catering to them. Every game, like a business, has a risk of failing. SimCity Societies was an epic failure. It was also a representative of taking the SimCity franchise away from its roots and giving it us a more casual, user friendly (etc.) in hopes of attracting the "casual" fanbase. As we all know, it was a miserable attempt, and accomplished absolutely none of its goals. Having been through that experience, why do I get the feeling that its a slow repeat of what happened the first time around, with every new press release seemingly taking us further and further away from previous SimCity titles? Anyway, again, since its not my money, I can personally be frustrated with the direction they have taken, but I have no place to get mad and shake my fist at Maxis - It is my choice, afterall, to pay or not to pay for the game. No, my issue is this: Why claim, over and over again, in countless interviews, blogs, etc, that you've really "listened to your core fanbase?" This, I have a problem with - I AM your core fan base, and you have NOT listened to me. I wanted more, not less. More freedom, bigger city tiles, more data, a more realistic feel, an intricite (Is that how its spelt?) transportation system, more God-Mode terraforming options. I wanted realistic rivers and waterways, realistic airport construction, different tilesets, more control over my budget. I wanted seaport construction, billboards/advertising ploppables, smoother region terraforming. These are things I, and hundred of thousands of other loyal SimCity players from its "core fanbase" wanted. Multiplayer? Could be a nice touch, but a neccessity - I dont think Ive spoken to anyone who would take that over some of the things I listed above. To me, and I assume to most other players (I could be wrong here), multiplayer could add another dimension to the game, but in no way would I consider it as a core of it. If you listened to your "core fanbase", the very people that will either cause this game to succeed or fail, you would know that. You would know that we don't want to build Cityville type of towns where my downtown area is going to be half my city, surrounded by three cartoony residential neighborhoods with 10 houses in them. I read somewhere that terraforming was a no-go...seriously? If Maxis were paying attention AT ALL, they would realize that quite a few of us spend hours upon hours terraforming and plopping, making the perfect rural/forest areas. I read somewhere that there won't be any modding? Are you kidding me? As its core fanbase will tell you, the only REASON must of us still play this game is because of the modding that has been done by the SimCity community. I personally do not care how many achievements I get to unlock. Again, however, its not my place to tell Maxis how to develop their game. I do take offense, however, when you tell me you're listening to me, but everytime you say something about the game, its to tell me what I won't get to do. As far as I'm concerned, Glassbox can be the greatest innovation ever, but its not going to mean anything if you implement it in a glorified Simcity Societies. You have not listened to me, and dont tell me that you have. Release whatever game you like, in the end, it is Maxis that will feel the reward or failure from it, not me. Just dont rub it in my face, having waited 10 years for this, and tell me this is the game I wanted when it wasnt. As an ending to this incredibly long rant, I hope it does end up being the game we all want. These are all based on first impressions - I want it to succeed. I really do. I want to enjoy it. The release date is still a reasonably long way from now. Here's hoping that the final product will be worth it.

View Album Entering one of the town's residential areas, a mix of old and new... Passing some small scale industrials, large textile manufacturing, waste management... Entering the main industry - coal... The old quarry... Night time... Bye bye...

On the 19th I visited Gamescom with a few friends of mine. They wanted to see the StarCraft2 grand finals and I wanted to see SimCity. I figured why not go with them? After a roadtrip of about 3 hours we arrived around 12.00 at the conferance centre in Cologne on a very, VERY hot day. Luckely Gamescom had good airconditioning. After walking in around for an hour in very crouded halls and passing upcomming releases with wait times up to 240 mins(!) I started to wonder weither I still wanted to stand in line that long. When I found the Simcity stand I was relieved, the line was not that long. I immediately noticed the type of croud that was interested in trying the game. Alot of little kids and teens and a few 20+ The line was deceivingly long, I still waited for about 2 hours. After hearing the introduction presentation to the game German over 7 times, it was finally my turn. The demo started with a tutorial which zoomed in on the town hall explaining what can be done there. You are proted by one of your advisers there to learn camera movement. Next up tThere was a need for a road to the highway. Upon connecting the city to it, the next step popped up. I gues you know where this is going so I quickly wanted to dismis the tutorial. It follows the general Simcity gameplay in this, Maxis was not lying about those mechanics. I went to explore as much of the game as I could in the limited 20 minutes time. I used a few shot from trailers to elaborate my points as camera's were not permitted Movement: Somewhat unconventional movement settings compared to other games, leftclick drag, rightclick rotate and of scroll wheel zoom. I'm assuming this will be adjustable eventually Transportation & transit: There is little to explain here to be honest. We have the same options as Cities XL regarding to directions and curving. It works on a click drag principle as opposed to Cities XL though. What I notices was roads, avenues and larger aveneus. Basicly SC4: RH without mods. There was an option for a bus station, this eneded to get unlocked however and I was not able to test it. The menu suggested it works identical to the way Cities Xl stops are placed which I like. I didnt'notices trams and subways as I wanted to explore more. Alot of features where tagged with "under development" which is ofcourse logical. They noted on a podcast that they cannot talk abour harbors yet, I didnt encounter any of these options in the menu either. Judging on cinematics they have plans for this but the statement of the podcast is worrying! Map size & region: As I noted at the start, there was a need to connect to the region. This is where my 1st bad expectation came true. There is indeed 1 connecetion point, even tho you see the highway pass by the map, you cannot interact any other way with it. The way it looks now... we will NOT have own highways!!! I can say this with a sure thought as I come to the next part. As you can see, there is no visible line, but it starts at the simnation sign. You cant build beyond it. The maps we have seen in the trailers seem decent medium city sized. Too smal for most of us, but if you can live with it its fine. What you do not see in the video's however is the little barely visible restriction line to whhere you are able to build. The maps size looks medium. But in thuth the restrition makes it more comparable to a small map tile in SC4. This was a serious dealbreaker that almost made me walk out! But I figured its a playable demo, maybe the true game will have alot bigger size. Further regionplay and menu's like that where a too much of a puzzle to get into with the limited time. Most of the city interation goes throught the town hall. This is pretty much the size of the entire map Building Modules: Depending on the building you can add various modules as we all have seen. The placement of there is completely free for some of the buildings. It can be placed on one of the few green indicators. The same goes for placement which can only be done alongside roads and not standalone. Note the blue positions where placement is possible. Also when looking at the menu the following options are visible: Roads, zones, power, water, sewege, garbage, landmarks, firestation (not sure), healthcare, police, education (not the 2 differant levels) transit, recreation and businesses Town hall: You start with a smal hall which is upgradable. It can be expanded with various modules, each representing a department! I liked this feature as it gives a more logical sense that you need a department for education if you are going to expand in education, it is an unloack requirement for various education buildings for example. From my observation these also funtion as your interaction to information such as graphs concerning that specific branche. I feel this was one of the better features they put in. Utilities: My favorite part in any SC game, the backbone of modern society. They put in all the essentials as expected. From my experiance its possible to turn of these buildings when desired, greatly reducing there costs. There was a usage meter on the building, I'm not sure if the output is adjustable with this. The town started with a coal plant which wasnt running. It needed workers! They took this as inspiration from cities XL I'm sure. It downright anoyed me instantly as it needed educated workers, meaning I got stuck in a cycle right away. It ment I needed a school, residents ... which need power! This ads a new layer of economical complexity which is imo a good thing and makes it more challanging in puzzle sense. Powerplants I've tried out all current plants, some still tagged with under devlopment. Each has about 3 added smokestack/generators for now, al varying in price and pollution output. This enables the player to micro adjust instead of building a new plant. I'm expecting to see more modules as i've seen more in the clips. I've tried out Coal and Oil which basicly lived up to expectation, the windfarm whcih has one main building and X number of plop points for turbines. I could only plop 1 though, suggestingg the placement is location specific and lastly the solar plant, also allowing additional pannels. Water The 1st building I ploped in the demo instictively becuase I noticed a water need symbol symbol in the water menu right of the bat. I noticed the placement is location bound as has been explained that it is a resource. My selection cinsisted of a water tower and a rather large pumping facility which needed to be unlocked. We no longer ened to lay down pipes as in real life most piping runs under the streets. These are here used as paths Sewege This is rather new as old player since water was just sourcing, piping and treatment in one menu. This is basivly what it does though, treat sewege. There was an option for a sewege outlet or treatment Garbage This menu contained only 1 building which held various modules. Additional dump space, recycling centre and an incinerator. I'm not sure if there where any other ecological options but there where about 5 choices to pick from. City Services: Also following the clasic style of Simcity, all the know services are there! Firestation There is no fre dispatch! Atleas I couldnt find it. Its been explained that a fire makes a call to a fire station which sends truck over (just like simcity social..*gulp*). This happened but I panicked as 3 unrelated buildings cought fire (demo scripted) and previous games had you clean it up yourself. Luckely for me I had a fire station with modules. Policestation I've not really gotten into this part as it was pretty much covered in trailers. I had not noticed crimes either of seen a demand pop up for it. Education I noted earlier that you can unlock more with adding modules to your town hall. Education goes wel into this as it has atleast 2 layers of education, primary and high. Each menu containing various buildings on par with its level. Al unlocked unfortunately as the education module just wouldn't plop for some reason. Healthcare As with the police station I didnt play around with this much. I noted a clinic and hospital for sure, but am not sure if there where more buildings about it Parks Too compelled to making a profit at the start and solving the problems at hand I neglected the parks completely. Zoning: They wernt kidding! It really feels like Simcity gamestyle wise but somehow I felt impared freedom wise. As you see in trailers there are squares that can be filled with zones. These exist next to roads only so its no longer possible to just zone a place and draw roads on them. Not a loss imo, This makes the high desity and proper building placement possible. Zomes still have the familiar IRC need bars. The drawback from what I could see was that they are not weath specific. Each bar does contain 3 other bars for each wealth, they are however for the happiness of each wealth. Because of the region play the commercial zones no longer go between industry and residents when starting but directly next to the highway as the tutorial layout suggested. you can see the outlines of posible zone locations. its only possible to zone there Resources & markets: Oil and coal resource was something I wanted to test out, this was still under development unfortunately same goes for the trading that we have seen in the recent trailer. If we have to believe the trialer however, this will take place outside of the city and in a differant game menu Businesses & landmarks: I believe there was a menu for this. Its the specificsmelting plants and skyscrapers you see beeing ploped down in clips. This worries me as it follows the exact mechanics of simcity social where you zone residents, which grow to parks and surroundings accordingly and where have the option to unlock and build production and busines plants. There was a menu for landmarks but filled with under development. I feel this will kill the city aspect completely and make it more economy centered which will have most city features neglected. This looks like menu outside of the actualy gameplay feeding in data of your city. Notice how it is linked to the profile and a setting menu? also notice a conserning button upper right: STORE! Disasters I couldnt spot a menu for this. It seems they happen randomly making it more like the clasic simcity with no off switch and just having to deal with the problem. After the 20 minutes allowed gameplay shooting stars started to cros the screen, more and more meteor showers preceding a large meteorite destroying a block or 2. In conclusion For the 20 minutes allowed I tried to absorb as much of the gameplay feel aswell as the substatial part of the game. ALOT is still under development as I noted so sustatialy it wouldn't be ok to judge it. I can tell from the things in the demo however that the gameplay resebles simcity, though they have snuck in societies in there by adding the plopable businesses and the eventual game might resemble SC: social a little, ofcourse without the click to get resource stuff but more aimed to doing business, I hope atleast! If I had more time I probalby had enjoyed watching the simulation. The city does feel alive overall unlike cities XL! My biggest worry however remains the way we connect to regions, the lack of highways and the tediously small map size! In all honestly it felt like SimVille than city and I believe that if they stick with this small scale concept, it will lose most of the original fanbase. Judging from the croud at Gamescom and the ages of players they put in the trailer of Simcity World, they are aiming for a very young croud with potential busines intrests, which is substantialy larger than those into city planning. The game is more an economy simulator than a city simulator now which can be seen as both good or bad. All we can do is wait till the beta gets here but I dont see much changing to be honest.

I am pessimistic regarding 'Maxis', seeing as 1. what they've released about the game recently and 2. the fact that they aren't the same company that made 2000, they have evolved to become a very different company since that time, no matter how much we might like to read about Ocean being a SC veteran and this that and the other, the fact is this company has barely any connection with the company that gave us 2000 or with Mr Wright. Putting aside whether Maxis is really the same 'Maxis' we know and love that gave us the various Sim games, they are now a tool of EA corporation, and while I tend to avoid using over emphasised generalisations like 'the Evil Empire' and so forth, Maxis is certainly a Lord Vader at best, and EA is probably to a large extent to blame. However this is purely speculation. The fact remains however that whoever is in charge, or has the power to influence the course of the game, is either not in control of their own actions entirely, or is ignoring the fans for commercial reasons. I could understand releasing a limited versiuon of the game for starters to appeal to the quick-amuse crowd of Facebook gamers, and they have done that with SCSocial. In future the game could be modded to include further additions and more realism, or a separate version could be released simultaneously for the core crowd, which is what I assumed they were going to do. The recent news appears to show that not only was my hypothesis incorrect, and SCSocial is not the limit of simplified casual gamer targeted play, but that the main game is, in addition to sounding highly simplified and restricted compared with 4, also restricted unecessarily. I do not see any reason why the recent information can be defended on the basis of making the game multiplayer. A SC4 style gridded region could be made multiplayer, by two people using the same region file. Multiplayer compatibility isn't rocket science, Maxis. There is simply no excuse for these 'bubble' cities. Real regions are nothing like that except if each city was an arcology and this was 3000 ad. Also the 2 by 2 km limit means that these bubble cities are not only unexpandable, but very restricted with their space for development. And we can't terraform beyond simple civic terraforming within our bubbles. Great, Maxis. Really well thought out. We're listening to the fans now, sure. Even casual gamers should wonder at these decisions. They can't be performance based. You could have a SC4 style grid array and still have 2 by 2 km limitations on individual lots for development. There is no excuse from a technological perspective. And another wham attack point, Maxis, is this; they speak of higher realism, 'you see what we sim' etc with GlassBox. What is the point of added simulation realism if our regions are composed of bubbles exactly 2 by 2 km connected by pre defined transportation infrastructure? Where is the added realism in that? Strategy games with dragons and princess rescuing gameplay that have more realistic urban development. And to top it all off, they have included 'Heroes and Villains', a completely unecessary addition to the game. A unrealistic and silly scenario pack, and two or three highly stereotypical and predictable tilesets. Great, that was worth the extra dollars, not. So they are definitely not at present listening to their fans, indeed it seems they are listening to Metallica at full volume with earphones and facing their backs to us and humming. They have half a year to rectify this trend, and I, despite really wishing I could trust 'good old Maxis that gave me 2000 etc', have very little hope they will change their course if it means lost time or money, although imho they could have created what we wanted and still reaped in the cash.

Part 3, Scenario 2. - In this video, we talk about how the water system works, from the pumping of the precious liquid to its distribution to your thirsty Sims. This system uses almost all the tools that our simulation engine, GlassBox, has to offer: units, maps, agents, paths and resources. By Guillaume Pierre, SimCity Scripting Lead Read More: http://www.simcity.c...ater-everywhere Note: Tech demo video originally presented at the 2012 GDC.

Will we be able to zone multiple zone types in one zone? A zone with both commercial and residential for example.

I enjoyed the Trixies, as always, and Element's award triggered something in my brain... Who else indeed! Enjoy. If you spot any errors, please let me know and I will correct them.

The closed beta for SimCity 2013 is now accepting sign ups. You will have to be picked to get the beta, but anyone can sign up. The signup is now live and can be found by clicking this news item. You will need a Origin Account.

Cities in Motion is making a huge overhaul of its game for its next release. Check out what development has to say... you may be surprised at how they are steering a course towards simcity.

A new article released today on the SimCity website gives us information on the traffic simulation, UI, and music of the new SimCity. The game's traffic system will feature sounds based on the movement and speed of the cars. Pictures of the UI have been released, revealing more information about the simulation and its elements. There is also an example of what the new SimCity's music will sound like. Check out the article for all the info!

Well, I haven't followed the development of SimCity 2013 so closely, so I'll skip the entire part about what will be in the game and what won't. I'd like to raise a different point to throw into the discussion: What if we aren't the core audience? On a global scale, we are nothing but a small bunch of diehard enthusiasts, many of us with a deep interest of architecture, city planning and realism... willing to spend 20 minutes on a highway interchange, and hours terraforming the map, plopping flora, drawing footpaths and placing every single water lily leaf individually if we can... we are extremely picky and difficult to please, we can be extremely vocal (enough so to cause some serious bad vibes - you could also say, a s***storm), and we are spoiled by 9 years of custom content and the possibilities associated with it. On the other hand, you have a world full of people that may remember the name SimCity from many years ago and might be willing to dabble into a new game, but not if it's overly complex - not to mention the more casual gamers as a whole. Maybe that's actually the audience EA is ultimately going for, and all the statements about the game being "not some dopey casual game" and "catering for the core base" are to keep as many of the diehards as possible interested, although these are in fact no longer the core base, but just one customer group they'd like to attract if they can. Just a thought...

Replies Frex_Ceafus : Thanks timoman : I'm happy you like it, would you live there Simul8ter : Yeah, some is really net, I love more Jazzy Techno stuff like House Rulez SimCoug : Thnanks a lot, the park is from sim City China TekindusT : Thanks Elavery : That's good IL. : Thanks 111222333444 : Okaiken D: me too dabadon5 : you can get them on Sim City Force, a Japanese Site MilitantRadical : Thank you Trains in Jongwoon-Son, 12000 Renagawa Please +1 if you liked the entry

This video shows some gameplay of the game and includes information about the new Simcity game.