croxis

The game engine is Unity. I can't remember if they are using Unity version 4, 4.5 or 5. However steam does come bundled with its own libraries (which is why 22% of games on steam now on linux, up from 1% 3 years ago). Post 4 in this thread covers a possible fix https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=183659 The game's minimum requirements is a dedicated card from at least GTX260/ATI 5670 era. Your integrated graphics chip is probably not enough to run this game.

I am unable to find that graphics card to look up its stats. Verify that it has at least 512 MB of video memory as well as shader model 4.0/opengl 3.3 support. A lack of either of these things can result in the symptoms you describe. output_log.txt can have additional info as well.

Hardly. Civilization 2, released in 1996, had over 11 patches in its first year, some of which were almost weekly releases (I swore there were more than that before the first expansion, but I was young and the patch notes are incomplete).

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9416786.page Well, if your artists are sitting on their thumbs while the coders and scripters are fixing the game, you may as well give them something to do.

I follow several maxis devs on twitter, this was probably how.

One of the paradoxes in game design is that to increase the number of choices for the player to make you have to decrease the number of options. A good example of this is World of Warcraft's old talent tree system. Players had a lot of options for assigning points in their tree, but the end result was that there were only a couple of ways you should assign points, the other combos wernt worth the player's time. Currently the skill point tree has been replaced with six exclusive options. Extra credits also has a really good 7 minute video on depth vs complexity.

Keep in mind that the development team is made up of specialized individuals. You don't want your 3d art programmer working on server database optimizations to get cheetah speed back, nor do you want your server network programmer working on agent pathfinding. The other thing to remember is that some fixes are quicker to test and can be patched sooner. The alternative would be to hold off releasing these fixes. Personally I would much rather have fixes being patched when they are waiting instead of waiting until a bigger fix is ready.

I thought the servers only passing along the region calculation was announced by the devs last year?

That makes sense. I did have a massive garbage/traffic problem for a while. My recycling center isn't processing fast enough which probably also contributes to ground pollution (I think this is a confirmed bug). Oi, such headaches!

My hunch is that it was thoroughly tested as it was "suppose" to be played. It is very difficult to try all the possible edge cases is a sandbox (I recall sc4 needed patching and an expansion too). I have a feeling this might of been caught in beta, but the NDA and youtube takedown probably prevented this.

My turn. My 10 year old city has a lot of ground pollution under the residential zones. My industrial island is cleaner! Do buildings naturally add ground pollution over time?

The origin drm and the serverside saving are actually two separate systems. In theory local saving can be added without removing origin. You would still need to be online for origin to work and run the program (untill they add something like steam's offline mode). I think this will be more palatable to the community.

I would say rushed release and not properly calibrated beta. IIRC this is end of the financial year for EA so they wanted the game out to improve their end of year earnings (don't quote me on this). In heinsight they should of done an open beta sooner without the hour time limit* *The one hour time limit does serve a useful purpose, it gave them a lot of data to balance the first couple hours of gameplay which is important. The downside is they got very little data on the extended data. The following two betas could of done this but instead they limited to a day to test serverside bottlenecks instead.

There are two mostly-separate DRM systems here. One is Origin (where you must be connected to run the game period, like steam), the other is the serverside save which isn't connected to origin (other than maybe validating that you are using origin). So there are two possible ways to crack the game: You can remove the client-side origin check, but the save server will probably kick you for not using origin. The other is modding/hacking in local saving. The game will still need origin to run, but the saving is done locally.

EDIT: SimCity now seems to have better uptime than this site How about an unpopular opinion with my bias written all over it? I think part of this is the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. I've been following the maxis devs since the glassbox presentation at GDC last year. To me it was always clear that sims were not peristant and that the servers only handled region level stuff. The marketing/pr department said something very different. I generally like to give people the benifit of the doubt so I assume it was marketing/pr misunderstood how the server system worked as opposed to flat out lying. Still a problem for sure. Most people also think that the online only was a requirement mandated by higher up, despite the manager and the leads saying this wasn't the case. Any pc gamer would say "of course it is a mandate, why would anyone make a non mmo online only?" As an armchair game designer (which is about as bad as an armchair political pundant ) I can see the possibility that the devs really did want to make it online only from a game design perspective. Heck, I find the idea of making a city sim where all cities must rely on each other to be an exciting idea. What I've noticed following the maxis devs on twitter is that they really do want this game to succeed and to be loved. They have an interesting idea and something new to say and want to share it. They seem just as frusterated with what is going on as everyone else. While it is easy to bash EA as a faceless entity at least keep in mind that many of the devs really do care and, maybe are not on our side, but share many of the same goals and values you do. If I spent two years working on this game (1 year on glassbox, then 1 on sim city) and I read these forums I think my soul would be crushed. Justified or not, it still would hurt.

On the issues of sims not remembering where they work: thats because sims don't actually persist at all. Each building has a basket of resources with a number, from money to food to people. So a house doesn't have "Billy Bob" and "Sue Sim" stored inside - just the number 2 in the people basket. When a house sends someone to work it creates an agent (car or a walker), subtracts 1 from the house people basket, adds one to the agent's people's basket. The agent moving system then moves the agent to the nearest building which is broadcasting "I need people", despawns the agent, and adds 1 to the office's population basket. Same with water, power, sewage, and firefighters. The ultimate hope is that the end result would be the same traffic flows as if every sim was always persisted. This isn't in and of itself a bad way to do things. Oh correction: pathfinding uses a D* based system, not A*.

The role of governement in consumer protection is a very fine line, and where that line is drawn will depend on a person's political values. As a bleeding heart liberal pinko commie I feel like this is over the line.

My impression is that all agents are using the same pathfinding code. Remember that an agent is anything from a person walking, to a car, truck, power, water, and sewage.If this is the case then the best bet would be split vehicular pathfinding as a separate function with a slightly more advanced algorithm. Here is the link to EA's GDC presentation on glassbox on agent and pathfinding

IIRC fromt he GDC glasbox videos the agents use a modified A* pathfinding that searches the shortest route to the closest possible "need" for that agent.

I heard that the next generation of surfaces will be using the new Haswell chips. A friend of mine who works at intel told me they are awesome and the integrated graphics is surprisingly decent. If the rumor is true you might want to hold off getting a surface.

Some servers went down for patching. I suggest keeping an eye on this age as well: https://twitter.com/simcity

This is nothing new. Civilization 2 v 1.0 was unplayable for many people. Microprose had weekly patches for it for quite some time before it became stable. It still isn't right, but having broken games at launch is nothing new.

I have found that, despite the small tile, I am spending a lot of time iterating over my small two city test region. The only issue I personally have is getting serious traffic jams from the single highway entry point and some LOD issues with ground covering up roads. And not being able to take over cities of people who had the full delux edition.

Use boats, region bus, airport, and rails if you have them. Try and avoid intersections near the highway and use avenues so your intersections have traffic lights. I too am fighting this issue.

Despite the small size I have spent all day iterating on one city, and it is no where near "done"