SimCity 5 - Five Must Have Features

First person U-drive!

now that i think of it, SC2KNE was not really a bad idea...

If EA decides to make a SC5, it will probably not live up to the community's expectations. When has EA ever done that recently.

As the article said, "Look at The Sims" (He probably forgot to put a 3 afterwards) when giving an example of a poorly made game. Again, the first 2 series were excellent, but the 3 series has been rushed and milked to death with skimpy and buggy expansions. (The Sims Studio is known to be working on multiple expansions at once, and have even reportedly started production of TS4, even though 3 still has 5 more expansions to go!)

I wish I could be wrong here. Unless Will Wright returns to EA to work on this and hires the NAM team and the best BAT designers out there, I'm afraid SC5 will be massive disappointment when it comes out.

Maybe the community should buy the rights for sc4 if they can then mod the exe.

Supreme ricin 3

39 minutes ago

Maybe the community should buy the rights for sc4 if they can then mod the exe.

hell yeah, i'd throw a $1000 donation to such an idea to come true.

I can remember there is a thread some where, where i suggested that the sim community buy the rights to SC4. I did some calculations i forgot what they were but we would have had a lot of money to buy SC4 and possibly even buy EA out.

I found the thread. It starts towards the bottom. http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/topic/40442-simcity-4-in-the-future-a-falcon-approach/page__st__30

I certainly wouldn't mind throwing in $200-$700 Canadian myself to buy the rights. I mean, it's not like EA will ever make use of them. They would make more money selling the rights than putting effort and dollars into a SC5 then trying to sell it.

SimCity 5 doesn't NEED to be everything when released. As long as they release a stable game with solid principles, everything will work out in the end. SimCity Societies and Cities XL will never really work out quite the way we want to...CXL was built on poor foundations, and unless CXL 2012 magically has all sorts of amazing modding tools and bug fixes, it will never be the city simulator we want it to be.

1. No to multi-player.. Who gets to be god? This game won't work with a group of Olympians.

2. No MySims/UDI. We don't play The Sims, so stop marketing it in this game.

3. Debugged and crash proof. This is just a matter of professional programming and putting the marketing guys in the closet and losing the key.

4. Open ended, and with a lot/building creation tool that doesn't need outside assistance.

5. Expand the regional capability. Regional airports, seaports, etc. Add intercity commerce, not just employment.

6. A more global aspect to development. Lose the Silicon Valley attitude. When creating a region, you should be able to specify where in the world it is, and flora and fauna should so adjust.

7. Multi-level water. Lakes, streams, water-tables. Off line weather could replenish.

8. Optional random disasters including earthquakes, tsunamis (on shore lines), volcanoes, lahars, mudslides, sinkholes, etc. Lose the science fiction.

9. Grid (and you'll need a grid) granularity should be smaller. A basic one by one lot should be no larger than 10 x 10 meters. Maybe even smaller. 16 meter frontage is a luxury lot.

10. Daytime activity for the "non-working" population. Mom takes the kids to school and goes shopping. Increases daytime traffic in business hours (0800-1800) Mom also picks the kids up. School busing would help alleviate this. Buses have a capacity of 41 people, and can run full, empty, or something in between.

11. More public buildings. Arenas, Curling rinks, etc. Better building selections and tile sets, especially if the climate can change.

jigsaw

Today, 12:42 AMQuote

Supreme ricin 3

39 minutes ago

Maybe the community should buy the rights for sc4 if they can then mod the exe.

hell yeah, i'd throw a $1000 donation to such an idea to come true.

Same here - but only if the game went 'open source' after the rights were received.

I thought it would be cool if the building style changed depending on education levels. cities with lower education levels have old colonial looks to them. Cities with higher education levels will have a more ultra modern, futuristic look to them.

I also think it would be cool if buildings would have to be invented instead of earned. For example, if the education levels in the city are high enough, you would have fusion power plants and stuff like that, regardless of year.

So you could have fussion power or a whole bunch of high tech industry in the year 1860 if the education levels are high enough to invent them.

Here are my thoughts

-Be able to zone CO and CS on separate zoning tools.( I hate wanting to make a shopping area and all i get are offices)

-Curved Roads is a must

-Underwater Tunnels.

-Custom Content with its own in game B.A.T program.

-Buss/ Metro/ Train lines.

-canal with water traffic.

-Being able to create/build your own Highway Interchanges/Exits & Entrances(like the RHW, but with more possibilities)

-Expand on the Transportation System, add new methods of transit i.e Trams, canals.

-Maybe adding a lane tool for roads and being able to control speeds on them? that may just be asking for too much =D.

Anyway there are ofcourse many more that you can add to the list but lets face it half the stuff wont make it to the end product.....that is if there is an end product =D

one thing i left out.I don't know if you guys played much of simcity creator (i know Fail) but one thing i liked about the game was the addition of hero buildings (don't have to call them that)which set the tileset of the surrounding buildings. For example one could be like a building that would set your "China town" and all the buildings around it would take form of old Chineese Architecture.

...that, that's not a bad idea, actually. Figures that a SimCity successor would take at least one aspect of SCS. Realistically, I can't imagine a SimCity 5. If such a thing were to be true, EA would probably outsource to yet another development company, and include lots of DLC.

maybe EA have already started out sourcing? think of all this chatter and the calls for more programmers. a lot of talk is going around at the moment. someone must know something!

Nostalgia is overrated.

Has anyone ever considered confronting EA with the matter of SC5? I mean, there are lots of BAT, lot and mod teams who would more than willingly participate in content creation. Besides, if us fans did it from the get-go, and let EA know that, we wouldn't have to download and create new plugins for the content we want. This way, if the fans themselves designed game content EA wouldn't have to do much in this area, and we would have exactly what we want in the game, because we made it.

this is a nice idea but I wonder if EA would let the community do the work for them. mmm. they wouldn't have to pay anyone to create it, just to finish it off. but there would be a lot of legal problems with this that i can see. ie. not going to happen i think.

I agree with Nonny Moose's suggestions, except one: the sci-fi disasters. Granted, although they won't be "natural", I would still love to see the city destroyed in a number of out of the ordinary ways: whether it's an orb incinerating buildings, a Godzilla knock-off, or even a giant worm (which was a "potential monster" for SC2K).

There are two ways to consider multiplayer, intercity and intracity.

Intercity, or multiple cities, is the easiest to implement with the current region system. Coding issues aside, that feature can be added to how sc4 is currently designed. Improve interaction between cities (pollution, land value spill overs, etc). Each player has their own city/cities that only they can edit, but others can visit. Different players/cities then cooperate and compete for resources and in their interactions. Interaction between players is the key for vibrant multiplayer.

My idea: Turn the region into a bunch of 32x32 (or 64x64) sized chunks. A city starts with only one chunk. The city can then annex neighboring chunks, up to a predefined point (processor/ram dependent). This increases realism, another sense of achievement, and some friendly competition between cities (who will get that prime riverfront first?!)

Intracity, or within one city, is a bit more difficult from a game design standpoint. SC2KNE tried to do this. SimCity has always used a "god mode" form of development. It great for instant feedback when developing, and a mess if something goes wrong. The two ways to make it work is separate players spatially (a player can only work in specific spots on the map) or by tool (one player zones, other transportation)

My idea: Switch work to asynchronous. Players design their changes in a "blueprint" mode and then the mayor can click "Go!" and execute those changes. Players can work on their blueprints or set it up to let others work on them too.