croxis

The point of games saves is that you don't have to start over from the beginning when you exit the game, or have to type in a key code to get the right level loaded. Reloading is a metagaming "cheat"

It could also be what we've seen is the progress they have made so far. With the rapid rate of progress I would expect to see a lot more coming out soon.

I think you mean normal mapping?

How much data would one building take? Lets assume a building with 5 buckets: money, people, food, education, and health 160 bit Let's assume we're using TCP so the header is 160 bits. 16 bit We will use an unsigned 16 bit int to represent building type (so over 64,000 possible building types) 32 bit float for the x position 32 bit float for the y position 32 bit float for rotation (could be shrunk) 5 x 8 bit unsigned for bucket type (40 bits, 256 types of resources possible) 5 x 16 unisgned bucket contents (80 bits, buckets can be up to 65,000) = 392 bits for a building packet, 232 bits of game data that is 49 bytes, let us round up to 50 for good measure If your city has 10,000 buildings that is 500,000 bytes or.... 500 KB 0.5 MB Now this is very poor as we can add more buildings into one packet. We can fit 50 buildings just fine in one packet. 1470 bytes for 50 buildings. 10,000 buildings in 200 packets is 294,000 bytes or 294 KB or 0.3 MB

Bright color pallet != cartoonish Cartoonish is cell shading (see: boarderlands) There are three very important reasons why a bright color pallet is not just a good thing, but required for games: 1) Visual identity: As a player I want to be able to quickly identify the objects I am looking at. "Realistic" visuals would have drab color variation and saturation (mostly colorized grays and browns) and make it more difficult for the player to resolve information. 2) Engine aging: Realistic graphics age quickly. Games with realistic graphics will look older sooner than those with more artful direction. The computer graphics of WoW or Babylon 5 looked good for a very long time because they were using vivid art direction. 3) Uncanny valley. Already discussed on the first page, but the closer we push for realistic graphics the more unrealistic they become. This is especially true when the game also is set up to run on mid or low end hardware and the older shader models do not support all the realism details. It is also very important to differentiate screenshots vs the moving game. Something that might look really good in a screenshot may end up not looking good when in motion.

Bright color pallet != cartoon. If you want cartoon, please refer to cell shading.

You might want to check a graphics card comparison site like a TomsHardware.com

Realistic graphics are not a very good idea for games. Dull color pallet. It makes it much more difficult and unpleasant to identify important visual information when everything is shades of grey and brown. Gameplay must trump graphics and muted graphics hurt gameplay. Realistic graphics age faster. It will reduce the shelf life of the game because realistic graphics show their ages faster when compared to newer engines. Why does vanilla SC 4 still look good? Vivid color pallet. Uncanny valley. A toy like robot looks cute. However as robots approach looking human they become creepy. Same thing with graphics. The more real we try to make them the more unreal they start to look.

I love the graphics in those screenshots. They are realistic and toylike. The color pallet is vivid making the different buildings easy to identify in potentially busy visuals. These graphics will also age very well.

I guess this means no single player either. This indeed will be the deal-breaker for a lot of people. Very disappointing. Incorrect. There is still single player. The online connection is still required for the economy engine and to save games to the EA servers.

You realize sim city 3k and 4 were also done by EA

You still can, but just through the road interface. I don't think we know yet what other factors impact the garden. It may be that just because the zone ends up as high density it can still have low or medium density buildings due to other factors.

Personally I have no interest in UDI. I think it would work best as a stand alone game that can be seamlessly accessed in vanilla SC so the entire budget can be spent on making a great city simulator and a great driving/flying game, instead of a good city simulator and a decent driving/flying game all rolled into one.

It wouldn't be that the person remembers traffic was bad, but the house would. As long as the end result is similar to tracking each sim it shouldn't be a problem

I am sure the videos we see are not balanced, they are extream to show how the mechanic works.

This is an excellent way to prove EA's statement that "always online" is not a piracy measure. If they allow us to host our own game on our own server with our own "global economy", then we know that EA is telling the truth. However, if they do not allow this, then we know that the "global economy" is an excuse. Erm.... no. This would DESTROY the global economy. Data can be spoofed. If they allowed private hosting almost anyone can alter the network data. Only making 500 coal? Spoof the data packed to 50,000! The solution would be to make the global economy read only for private servers. Even then it destroys the basic idea that we are all on this planet together. We don't get to put our states and countries on private planets.

I agree. I am sure they sped up the process as who would want to wait 30 seconds of video for the fire to spread to one more house. Kinda silly for a demo.

From what I have heard so far it sounds like the multiplayer system wont be much worse than hosting a large website. I doubt it will be such a great expense that they have to resort to subscription.

Sounds great to me!

Oh I loved bts. I think it was the best expansion in the entire franchise other than Test of time.

That is the point I am trying to make. Some people are very vocal about their upset over the global economy, but we have NO clue on what the impact is.

http://uk.pc.ign.com.../1221790p1.html There are other similar references as to how the world economy (supply and demand) is currently expected to work. No media/public early hands-on demo has been made available yet, as far as I know. Ofcourse, nothing is final until the release. That still doean't answer my question. How do you know? Have you played the game? Have you seen a review or preview or a dev interview which describes how the global economy impacts the city and to what degree? I must of missed it. Do you have a link? All i know so far is there is a global economy, but how that impacts player cities is something I haven't seen yet.

Poppycock. What "should of brought with the original game" is just opinion, nothing more. Lets looks at Civ Expansions. What did Civ II expansions add? Scripting language to make scenarios! Should that of been included in the original game? Well I think so! What did Civ III expansions add? Multiplayer! Should that of been part of the original game instead of a DLC? Well I think so? What did CivIV expansions add? BETTER AI. Should that of been a patch of the original game? Expansions and DLC are both the same thing -- extensions for games created during or after an existing game's development. They have their own budgets. Your artists and programmers wont have much to do during the last bits of development. They can be sent off to other projects, or work on day 0 dlc. You don't understand, do you? Expansions, usually, add a lot of stuff. Have you, actually, played Civ4 BtS? I am sure you have not. It added many new civilizations and a lot more, worth of the cost. I own every civ expansion. The only civ game I don't own is the first one. But you actually bring up an interesting point. For me the extra civs are worthless. I give a poo if the game has 16 civs or 100. To me the value comes from gameplay changes and improvements. Same with the Sims. I could care less about the stuff packs. All I want is more gameplay choices. Same with buildings. I could care less how many building sets come with the game or are in an expansion. I'm interested in gameplay changes and additions. So your issue isn't DLC. Your issue is the price point. Your value for your dollar. See that is something very different than not liking DLCs. The same can be true of an expansion. A company can plop out a $30 expansion disk that has nothing you of value to you. A budget is a budget. It exists in every kind of job. I deal with it all the time in education.

But would you eat a steak that didn't look good?

And that's exactly why it's still multiplayer and why we need a true single player. Having your trade and resource prices be affected by every other player is just silly and certainly unwelcoming to the many of us who would prefer not to have such a challenge. I get that the developers are trying to make this game as realistic as possible, but this is just a step too far for realism. In the end, it's still just a game. We're not all mayors or professional city managers, we're just players that are playing a game. The game is great but the global game economy just ruins the fun for me. I'm a city builder that wants to create the city of my dreams without any money worries. I'd rather not have that challenge of getting money and making deals with other players. How do you know? Have you played the game? Have you seen a review or preview or a dev interview which describes how the global economy impacts the city and to what degree? I must of missed it. Do you have a link? All i know so far is there is a global economy, but how that impacts player cities is something I haven't seen yet.