Simcity Interview & Walkthrough

The reporter obviously isn't too familiar about SimCity. So don't expect to know everything about an expansive game from an interview like that.

And yeah, we still have a long way to go until Feb 2013, it's better that they don't spoil us.

What are the minimum specs of a pc to play the game, and what are the recommend specs?

The good:

The Glassbox Engine

What I'm worried about:

Skyscrapers showing up too soon / Too many skyscrapers for a city that is too small to have them. I would like to see a greater level of realism regarding how large a city has to be before high-rise buildings appear. You should have to work to get tall buildings.

Zones, growing naturally, not plopping-

Plopping is so lame (besides municipal buildings and landmarks)- it takes away the fun that was SimCity in the beginning, which is creating an area which is desireable to make the land valuable and get skyscrapers/ nice buildings.

Instead of plopping- players should have to work to get the cool/tall buildings, by providing good education/parks/transportation, instead of simply plopping a building.

Waterfront property should have increased value.

Larger Train Stations and a better goods transportation system - Trains take goods from industry and bring them to depots in the city kind of like A-train. Airports are more efficient when connected to trains- same thing with seaports. Delivering goods actually serves a purpose, as buildings demand a certain amount of goods per day.

Buildings should not grow like plants! Buildings grow on a story-by story basis- SimCity 4 was embarrasing, with buildings growing out of the ground, and it looks like the next SimCity is doing almost the same thing- with the building stretching as it comes out of the ground- not good.

Building Repetition- Try and eliminate it- Allow players to upload their own buildings like the BAT here.

"City Center Effect" Where most commercial activity and high wealth commercial /residential tower activity tends to grow and supertalls are expected- could be multiple epicenters such are exhibited in New York's Midtown and Financial District areas- Items such as Large Train Stations/ Transit hubs/ Large Parks / Fountains and pre-existing high wealth residential/commercial would decide where the city center effect was greatest.

Cities XL's (and Sim Citys) main downfall is the "sea of skyscrapers" which is a very unrealistic look-outside of maybe China or Russia. Cities typically do not have a lot of similar height buildings (which are all very tall) they have a slowly building skyline that generally is tallest toward the center.

A real city has maybe 50 times more suburbs than it does high-rise financial district. Making the game as realistic as possible is what players are looking for, not some Sim City Societies junk.

If they are going with a tilt-shift look, check out this video of a real city shown from birds-eye view using tilt-shift:

That's what a real city looks like- notice how there are not towers / high rise buildings everywhere. Houses are close together, and blocks have many houses per block, not enormous buildings.

What has ruined most recent "city building" games is that they are too full of tall buildings. Cities XL, SimCity4, A-Train9..

Look at any City's skyline- Chicago, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Toronto, Calgary, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Harare etc.. They all have one thing in common- they have skyscrapers that are clustered in a rather small area for their city size, and the tallest ones are generally found near the center of the cluster.

Look at the screens we are shown of the next Sim City- First off- there are a ton of very tall skyscrapers that look pretty much the same, and top out around the same height.

It looks like skyscrapers are being plopped right next to the edge of the city, with a whole bunch of green grass and nothing right next to them (@ 5:08 in the video).. How fake does that look? The city isn't nearly large enough to support skyscrapers of that size, and they are developing in a manner that would never happen organically due to economics. Where have you ever seen a city develop like that? It doesn't happen.

This is a general rule that has always been broken by the people designing these simulations- I guess they think "hey, skyscrapers are fun, and people are dumb, so let's just make a lot of skyscrapers.. they'll love it".. Wrong, it's not realistic, people want a CBD to develop organically.

What im most concerned about so far is that all they have said is "sandbox". So far there has been no mention of taxation, finances or ordinances. I would be disappointed if it is a Simcity where you get unlimited money and only have to worry about demand. Although, I would like to see what would happen if a city in your region goes bankrupt. Perhaps then the other cities will have to bail it out!

Haha! I like this idea!! I reckon it's great to have the more relevent issues like climate change, financial crisis etc. themed within the game.

Wrong, it's not realistic, people want a CBD to develop organically.

Totally agree! I guess we had a bit of control over this in SC4 in terms of being able to decide on zoning density. However now that zoning density is supposedly controlled by road type and traffic density this could become problematic. Suppose you had a busy road connecting residential buildings to the outskirts of a cbd that was really busy but aesthetically, having the tallest building here wouldn't really make much sense!

Waterfront property should have increased value.

Yes definitely! Would be awesome to have this and hills, big parks, etc. having an impact on value.

"City Center Effect" Where most commercial activity and high wealth commercial /residential tower activity tends to grow and supertalls are expected- could be multiple epicenters such are exhibited in New York's Midtown and Financial District areas- Items such as Large Train Stations/ Transit hubs/ Large Parks / Fountains and pre-existing high wealth residential/commercial would decide where the city center effect was greatest.

I would also like to see this, multiple city centers with different level of effects, around landmarks/parks and transportation hubs would make it natural.

What are the minimum specs of a pc to play the game

Windows XP/Vista/7

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core (from 4.000) or better or

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz or better

2GB RAM

Radeon HD 2x00 or better*

nVidia 7800 or better*

Intel Series 4 (integrated) or better*

* Min 256 MB RAM (internal), supports Shader 3.0 or better

Broadband min. 256 kbit/s Download and 64 kbit/s Upload

Source: Origin

I suppose those are the minimum specs...

The good:

The Glassbox Engine

What I'm worried about:

Skyscrapers showing up too soon / Too many skyscrapers for a city that is too small to have them. I would like to see a greater level of realism regarding how large a city has to be before high-rise buildings appear. You should have to work to get tall buildings.

Zones, growing naturally, not plopping-

Plopping is so lame (besides municipal buildings and landmarks)- it takes away the fun that was SimCity in the beginning, which is creating an area which is desireable to make the land valuable and get skyscrapers/ nice buildings.

Instead of plopping- players should have to work to get the cool/tall buildings, by providing good education/parks/transportation, instead of simply plopping a building.

Waterfront property should have increased value.

Larger Train Stations and a better goods transportation system - Trains take goods from industry and bring them to depots in the city kind of like A-train. Airports are more efficient when connected to trains- same thing with seaports. Delivering goods actually serves a purpose, as buildings demand a certain amount of goods per day.

Buildings should not grow like plants! Buildings grow on a story-by story basis- SimCity 4 was embarrasing, with buildings growing out of the ground, and it looks like the next SimCity is doing almost the same thing- with the building stretching as it comes out of the ground- not good.

Building Repetition- Try and eliminate it- Allow players to upload their own buildings like the BAT here.

"City Center Effect" Where most commercial activity and high wealth commercial /residential tower activity tends to grow and supertalls are expected- could be multiple epicenters such are exhibited in New York's Midtown and Financial District areas- Items such as Large Train Stations/ Transit hubs/ Large Parks / Fountains and pre-existing high wealth residential/commercial would decide where the city center effect was greatest.

Cities XL's (and Sim Citys) main downfall is the "sea of skyscrapers" which is a very unrealistic look-outside of maybe China or Russia. Cities typically do not have a lot of similar height buildings (which are all very tall) they have a slowly building skyline that generally is tallest toward the center.

A real city has maybe 50 times more suburbs than it does high-rise financial district. Making the game as realistic as possible is what players are looking for, not some Sim City Societies junk.

Great comment... probably the best I've read so far.. explained alot in plain english what most of us are concerned with in this new game... but for me personally... I like lots of skyscrapers.. not crowding the skyline but enough to give a city a cosmopolitan look. My own concern is the transportation issue...In one video we've seen what looked to me as an expressway (with the gantry sign pointed in the wrong direction)streetlight crossing with another expressway or avenue (i forget which) at an entrance to an metropolitan airport.. no freeway connection anywhere to be seen ... what major city has that unfortunate situation..

What? Simcity 5 cannot allow you to destroy a city and go to a previous save? Too bad Maxis, you've just lost a buyer

What? Simcity 5 cannot allow you to destroy a city and go to a previous save? Too bad Maxis, you've just lost a buyer

I'm fine with it. It makes disasters more believable.

Though since it's asynchronus play, others could probably delete their city's cache and still have the same effect. That's just an assumption.

Badfish301, on , said:

Totally agree! I guess we had a bit of control over this in SC4 in terms of being able to decide on zoning density. However now that zoning density is supposedly controlled by road type and traffic density this could become problematic. Suppose you had a busy road connecting residential buildings to the outskirts of a cbd that was really busy but aesthetically, having the tallest building here wouldn't really make much sense!

Yes! Also, allow wall to wall buildings! I want to be able to recreate real-life cities like I have in the past. If this is not a possibility, I will not be buying this game.

No question about it. This is a totally different game from SimCity 4. The relationship is only slight, something like as between S2K and SC4. There may well be merit in playing both, but it is far too expensive for me. I'd have to think about a hardware upgrade as well.

I don't think it is a replacement for the existing game. It will however, attract a new audience, so it is probably well worth a separate section on Simtropolis once people have it in their hands.

I look forward to players' comments from both old and new users.

As for the game as seen at E3: I very much like the tilt-shift graphics. The free camera is a great idea, and there is clearly 10 years of technical improvement. All the graphics items that most people want are there. I couldn't tell if the game is playable as a city simulation because there wasn't enough to see. With the voices over, it was just more hype.

The extreme detail in all the buildings and scenarios is interesting. I have an HD 24" monitor (1080p) and I am sure this would look very nice. I would be tempted to blow a bundle, however on a bigger monitor and perhaps, depending on how the game runs, more and faster cores. The inner technical details have yet to be seen, and really won't be until you have the game in your hands.

Note: One of the things that was definitely in the interview is that the initial target is PC (Windows). There is definitely an implication of a native version for at least MAC.

I'm reserving judgement until the game is complete. I think there is good potential, but for me if its DLC only and requires a permanent internet connection even to do single player (which is all I want) then I'm not going to bother getting it.

SC4 vanillia isn't all that good but with the modding community it is such a better overall game to play because of it, had it not been for modding the game would never have even survived a reinstall on my computer. For me modding is the reason why its the only 10 year old game I have that I still must have on my Pc to play from time to time.

OMG mental mental mental!!! absolutely cannot wait for SimCity 5!

Bring it on!!!

People forget that EA was still around with Sim City in SimCity 4...and look how that turned out. Don't just give up on it because it's EA. I hate 'em too, but I'm willing to give the game a shot. Also, they are building a sample city, a small thing that is easily managable and can display all of the features in the game. Us citybuilders can take a game and make one heck of an accurate city. Thirdly, it is a year away. Some graphics and buildings aren't completly updated yet! I wouldn't worry about that yet. Finally, I'm sure Maxis has included all of the financial stuff (they've already released data and data layers earlier), but won't mention it now because they want to have people who are new to the franchise join in. It might scare them off. I'm excited for this. If it IS a flop (Maxis is to video games as Pixar is to movies), then there's still always Cities XL and SC4 I can deal with. Peace out,

citiesxlfan42