croxis

The problem with too much diversity of a resource type is that it increases the instability of the economy and decreases the player's ability to understand the situation. The opposite is also problematic in that in makes a very uninteresting simulation. Resource games, be it Anno, Xseries, or Caesar, limited the resource types wasn't because of computational power but for gameplay reasons. Caesar III is probably the closest to SimCity2013's goals and it was still a fairly deep game for having about 20 resources

I don't think they even know yet. They have just finished the engine and have just started game content and simcity specific mechanics. Just wait and see, we have a year.

I posted this on another forum in response to a cartoony comment: Tilt shift != cartoon. This is a cartoon: The technical term in computer graphics is cell shading. Borderlands is a recentish game that made use of it. This is Tilt shift: The objective of this is a toy or model (depending how old you are) appearance. Realistic art direction is bad. The muted colors increase the difficulty for the player to differentiate different visual elements. Realistic art direction also causes the game to show its age much quicker than a stylized art direction. Part of the reason Sim City 4, World of Warcraft, and the CG from Babylon 5 held up for years is because of a non-realistic art direction. Here is SimCity 4: And a google map shot of Portland's downtown. While there is a lot of diversity in the shapes and colors of cities (and even how you take the picture), note how this real life shot has a lot of muted colors and lack of contrast in the buildings compared to SC4. At least in my option. I suppose I could do a histogram of the color distribution.

EA is going to try and support as many computers as possible. It is smart business sense, why spend millions developing a game for only a limited amount of machines when you can make a lot more sales without drastic compromise of gameplay. Lets face it, SimCity has always been a game first. My hunch is that *most* (not all, just most) people who want the larger city are less interested in the game of Sim City are more interested in a virtual painting canvas and have used SC4 with cheat mods and plop able everythings to make the game work that way. They want more space to paint on while the simmers want a deeper simulation even if it is at the cost of city size.

We know glassbox is asynchronous and the player does not send the save file, but just the data of what to add/change so you only need a single writer and queued message system, no different than a minecraft server where you have a bunch of people changing the same world data. We know that the engine supports cities interacting with each other, but they have not said (that I know of) that player's can visit other people's cities. We know from this slide that the multiplayer servers are mostly saved game holders and data relaters (hey city b! city a just sent you 20 pollution!) but it doesn't look like, at this time, it does much processing on its own. This is opposite of most online games where the client is "dumb" and the server does all the processing.

JanH link was the one I wanted All we know at this point is the engine can host the saves online and they are probably planning it, but it is unknown if they HAVE to be online. Wait and see and make sure the devs know offline saving is a feature that you want.

I don't think graphics are the primary issue here but the simulation. SimCity1-4 used a top down approach to give the illusion that there are individual sims running around buying things. This game will actually have individual sims running around buying things, going to work, staying home if they get sick, factories producing actual goods that get shipped to stores, etc and the behavior of the simulation emerges from that. It also gives the potential to make it stupid easy for modders to add new economic elements to the game instead of just generic demand values. This is a lot more processor intensive tha the old method but I like this new way a lot more. I am more than happy to have smaller city tiles with a better and more interactive simulation than a large city with a more shallow game. Remember regions are going to be much better than they were in SC4 as actual goods and people will be going to other cities.

I really don't think the engine works that way.

I highly doubt this. This isn't a single server persistent world mmo but small 16 player regions that communicate asynchronously. The key evidence is in the answers that the gamer can play offline from the reddit discussion and the entire slide 48 of the GDC talk. The only thing we know is that the games are saved on EA's servers.

Eh, I wouldn't put too much stock in it. The release gate postings always happen after a game is announced.

Multiplayer is probably going to be free. It is for games like TF2 or BF1/2/3. The real questionis will EA run all the servers or will there be a deticated server program.

You do realize that SC4 graphics are also styalized. That is why they STILL look good!

You are not forced to interact with other players. They have only mentioned that the "global economy" changes. What that exactly means is speculation at this point.

Do you know why? This is the GDC, the Game Developer Conference. This is where game devs share what they are working on and what they have worked on with other game developers. Game devs are not interested in highways or lane counts, that is for something like E3. This is about the engine, how it is structured, and how it works.

Actually, I am curious about this. What do you guys mean when you say "cartoony"?

We will see how this is actually implemented. My hunch is that instead of a nebulous and artifical suply/demand system to help city growth that the suppy/demand is rooted based on the SimVerse. I think they arnt even sure at this point what that will exactly shape up to be. I have a feeling that if people got what they said they wanted, "realistic," they would hate it. Look at the beloved SC4 art direction. It is not a realistic art pallet the colors are far too vivid. "Realistic" art direction shows its age very quicly too. Styalized art, including SC4 and even SC3000, ages quite well and lasts much longer. It is also much better for the player to identify different elements on the screen. That also makes me sad, but we will see how the region system works out. If the neighboring cities are visible even though the simulation isn't active for them would go a long way to having a bigger city. I personally would much rather have this improved simulation with smaller city limitations than a simplified simulation over a bigger city.

A Nonny, I think you are assuming it is the actual syntax, which I don't think it is. I think it was something understandable they put on their powerpoint slide. We will find out what the actual syntax is soon enough.

While we don't know the details you can get started learning the techniques for making low polygon buildings, uv mapping (which is jsut an assumption at this point), and normal maps

Most games disable their global linkup/achievements/stats tracking when using mods. I am sure this wont be much different, but that is just an assumption.

Wrong link. You want this one to view all of maxis' comments. Click context to see the question they are answering: http://www.reddit.com/user/maxis

Double post with more details! http://www.1up.com/news/radical-transparency-simcity The big news is that the simulation is time aware. The simulation knows when it is dawn and when sims should go to work. Because agents are real things we will get realisticly modeled tot and from work traffic. There are more minor details on how the economic simulation works, and even how houses catch on fire.

Current answers so far:

Rock paper shotgun has more details: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/08/back-from-simulation-city-inside-maxis-glass-box/

I wouldn't worry about it. Either PCGamer or RPG has an article where they said they are focusing on the single player experience. Edit: From the reddit thread [Ocean] Yeah, like SC4, you can build out a region by yourself, and make all of the cities serially. There are lots of players who just want to control their own world, and they don’t want anybody to interfere with it. But even those solo players are going to be participating in the flow of resources that constitute the core of the games economy – the economic landscape that they’re operating in will be shaped by the actions of other players, even if they are only playing solo. In addition, there will be regional challenges and opportunities that you’ll be competing against other regions for. So you can play by yourself. More social players can play with their friends and accomplish more, faster, but that’s their choice. As for custom content – think back to SC4 - first we just need to get the game out, and make everything work robustly.

You are being a bit harsh. This was at the game developer conference where game makers share the technology they developed. I think the Sim City announcement was an issue of timing. Maxis wanted to present their work at GDC, but EA probably wanted to wait for E3 in a few months. The result was the events that happened. Leak the news to a german magazine so people will watch the main announcement, so Maxis can show their work at GDC.