tSlater

One thing I think would be highly beneficial is to declare or "zone" areas as parks, even if zoning does not result in anything growing in that area. Almost always as I built my city, I would leave some area.. perhaps a hillside, perhaps a shoreline, or perhaps a city block undeveloped and would keep the trees there as a natural area. But the residents would demand parkland, and there was no way to make that wooded area a "park" without demolishing the natural features of the area.

I remember watching 3d tv back in 1996 without glasses. It had problems which is why it wasn't released back then (even more expensive than now, a screen the size of an ipad, and heavy screen tearing effect, but definitely achieved.) But these days we've even got the Nintendo 3DS. Even if 3d may not be accessible to everyone right now, it certainly will be before the next iteration of Sim City. (LCDs were just beginning starting to replace CRTs back when Sim City 4 was released, and already before Sim City 5 LCDs are now starting to be phased out for newer technologies.)

I agree with all of the above and also, nessie gobbled up boats?! I once built an island city named "Nessie" with about 40 marinas trying to get Nessie to appear. Eventually showed up in a city with only one marina -- but only caught her for a second before she disappeared. Also, thank you for making each thread 20% cooler.

I'd rather not see Civ V's mod browser, or at least allow us to get mods the old fashioned way. A lot of times mods in Civ V's browser end up being terribad, and you can't really tell until after you get it. Or they may not even work at all. It's times like these when the existing infrastructure like Civ Fanatics for Civ or Simtrop for Sim City still end up being superior because of community voting, comment systems, and evolving interface to handle the evolution of mod building.

Oh yes, waterfalls. And to tie in to the above requests for weather/landscapes and add on to my above request for middle eastern architecture: deserts!

This makes me wonder if there will be a somewhat non-disaster drainage strategy in the future. Low-lying areas repeatedly getting minor flooding during rains and needing culverts and drainage basins. Ooooh. And whn you neglect to do so, exactly the above happens.. flooding occurs, people get sick, and land value plummets.

I've written java applets in the past and used to do a lot of web design back in the straight html days (before CSS became huge.) Today's programming environment has left me in the dust.

I'm not sure I'd go to the extreme of over 100 each for them to be worth it, but certainly not if they're only a handful of buildings. Provide enough to be able to alter the feel of the city as a whole, and I'm definitely down for it.

Oh my god that freeway. Definitely want to see what was in that asian picture above. My additions: Lower Wacker in Chicago, IL. I'd love for the ability to really play around with the vertical aspect of networks. Roads reaching over and under other roads with just as much control as surface thoroughfares. The ability for a tunnel to curve and be placed on otherwise flat terrain. And as a kicker, whole underground cities a la the exaggerated Chicago underground, or like Old New York in Futurama. A muslim architecture pack, like the London DLCs seen on the store. There is absolutely gorgeous architecture in the middle east, and this is a field where even the modding community has yet to really embark into. Pre-car eras. There is a small community within the SC4 community of people who try to recreate more historical settings, either in the 1800s between the era of railroads and cars, or even further back into the middle ages. This could easily be done by offering a way to build pedestrian streets that buildings and houses can be built to face, and perhaps a DLC with horse and pushcart automata.

Cheats of some sort have been in ever Sim City game as far as I know, it'd be a shame to see them disappear now. I remember typing cass over and over again in sc2k to get whole city blocks to burst into flames.. or a cussword to get a popup box to scold me.

I would love to see it in 3d, and I also disagree with the idea that it's a "gimmick." It's the next step in the evolution of content delivery.

I fondly remember the large manual from Sim City 2000. I read it front to back, and keep in mind I was a definite A.D.D. kid. There are not very many books at all in my lifetime I've been able to sit down and read front to back. If it weren't for that manual, there are lots of things about city design and planning I would have never learned from the game itself. Even beyond city planning, it taught me about the "falling building" effect in photography, and taught me about one of my now-favourite buildings, the Flatiron in NYC. So with that said, I'd love to see a book like that again for SC5, even if it's a separate purchase. But I'd rather it be physical than digital. Something I can read on the bus (lol no kindle) or whilst playing the game itself.

Which is why Blizzard waits so long to tell people the release dates. Having a publicly revealed release date also causes features to be half-done, dropped, or massive bugs to be shipped with the game simply to make the release date. I hope Maxis keeps their actual date a secret, like Blizzard does, until they know for sure it's ready.

And the elevated networks being some 3-4 storeys up in the air. Still wondering why NAM did a double-height for some elevated networks instead of a half-height. But anyway as for the map, after seeing it visually I worry about 2km being too small, too. I wonder if they could up it to 3km as a compromise? 3km at least would provide enough area to have a diverse arrangement throughout the tile of parks, dense business, industry, outlying residential, and make highways and rail feel a little more useful instead of just a short run through the area with 1-2 exits/stations

But the thing is, that animation you watched was likely rendered over several hours despite being only a few minutes of video, if even that. To provide photorealism in 3d in realtime with a massive environment like a citybuilder -- and have it look good -- would require us to jump into the future a decade or even more.

Again, I point to Civ V which has a bunch of DLCs adding up to more than $20 which give you new civs to play with, and the fact that it is moddable with some mods giving you.. new civs to play with! Both seem to flourish successfully.

Never believe a release date from anyone but EA/Maxis. Game retailers etc. make up release dates all the time because it increases the likelihood of somebody making that pre-order.

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. Not to mention with the number of polygons and textures required of a city simulation game, especially once modding opens up, our computers simply don't have the capability to handle a realistic art direction. A slight cartoony direction allows for less polygons and more shared textures (an example of this being World of Warcraft) where you can still create an environment that looks good and doesn't drop your framerate to three in the process. It's either a mildly cartoony approach, or waiting another 10 years. I'd rather a mildly cartoony approach.

Ah but any building contractor knows that the one commissioning the building (as the city would be on a civic building) always wants to make a change here and a change there until they like it. Also, since building codes and form-based master plans are way out of the scope for a sim city simulation yet, this seems like the best way to give a smidgen of that sort of control until custom content becomes so numerous you can pick and choose over picky details.

If it provides as much longevity as Sim City 4 did, it's certainly worth $60. Keep in mind also that top-shelf games these days are actually in the $60 range. This isn't the 90s anymore, and our economy is very subject to inflation. (Also keep in mind when games were $40 at the most, minimum wage was a lot lower, too.)

Seeing the 4-part demonstration on the Glassbox engine, I have to say I'm really impressed. They don't even need to add in time-based access for services as we saw in CXL, it happens naturally with the way the engine is. Simulation-wise, this is looking like it'll be a great game, and its implementation of finite resources means there will be more to the city than just road infrastructure. (Lets face it, especially once NAM got rolling, Sim City 4 was basically a transportation network game more than it was a City Simulation game.)

That doesn't say it locks you into a specific path. You're jumping to conclusions. =p

The mess of Cities XL that happened has also caused people to be a lot more sceptical than they used to be.

I would have minor issue with having to be online the whole time. Sometimes the internet goes out, and my usual go-to game when the internet goes out is Sim City.

We've seen superheroes since SC2k (Maxis-Man) and villains since at least Sim City 4 (Dr. Vu) I wouldn't worry about it too much.