Yelmond

We are actually planning on adding multiplayer this year (like Fall). It will start off very simple, peer-to-peer, 2-player only, co-op type gameplay on a single city. All stats, money and control will be shared by both players. From there we'll go to regional play where adjacent city areas can be loaded (by clicking outside your city's border instead of going to menu) and multiplayer will get the ability for 2 players (or more?) to play different cities with their own stats but at the same time. We want to always have that sync between two actively played cities (while you're building your own city). This is also when we might have to program a server and have clients connect to it. The server would than store the cities and players could then just log in now and then and add more to their own cities. Now, the dots. I'm not an expert on graphics or simulation, we are all just learning the ropes still, but I suspect that simulating those dots in the detail you described is actually a huge task, much larger than making them look like cars, people, ships and so on. I recently interviewed with a company that does pedestrian traffic simulation for public transit facilities (like subway stations) and they maintained an entire software suite just for this purpose. In addition, none of the simulation work was done live as it required many calculations. So, what I'm getting at is that we'll start small, as we will with every major feature, and simulate car traffic only. Planes, trains and ships will follow after we have terrain and regional gameplay. Finally, we'll work on pedestrian traffic sim. In the mean time, as there will be plenty, our graphics will have time to catch up. About the screenshots, I'm really not familiar too much with png, jpg or any other formats so I can't tell if one could embed too much data into them while keeping the images intact. I do know some small amount of data is possible but we would need quite a bit more for entire cities. As for simply analyzing the images and loading based on image recognition algorithms I can say that its close to impossible unless maybe we have strict requirements on screenshot angle, pitch and zoom. Especially as we add plugin support, people will have crazy visuals in their cities that may not be loadable for others. We might just create zip files that will contain the screenshot as well as a data file with whatever was on the screen when the shot was taken, be it a single house or an entire city.

Well, your natives idea is definitely interesting and does somewhat relate to something we where thinking for later on. One thing to note here is that the current city borders are temporary. We will eventually remove them completely and have you be able to build a city anywhere on the entire planet. I also mentioned we are going for a futuristic feel, especially if we introduce multiple planets, so footpaths, huts and natives don't quite fit in the picture (at least for now). Regarding our related idea, once the game grows beyond one city and onto regions we were looking at different ways to keep non-active cities up to date. One such method would essentially be to auto-develop (huge topic so just a thought for now). I'm assuming the "a good next step" line implies better graphics and I fully agree there. Now, the UI is something very fragile in that it's really hard to find the balance between minimalism and functionalism. I think the best way to go about this is to simply let the user decide so expect the ability to hide different portions of the UI soon. You can hide the entire UI in the current building by pressing F5. As for the flower, its certainly an option. I'm not sure yet if I want to have lockable items yet. I personally prefer logic limitations over hard-coded limitations in any game so we're still thinking how to do lockables (or emulate their concept). So, as of January, we do have save functionality. See our site, the Info page, for details. And i'm not sure but did you mean load parts of a city from a picture? Like, if I take a screen of a house I can then load just that house as a functional, simulated city in-game? If so, i'm not sure if that's possible since we need lots of simulator related date to save as well. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Wow, lot a good ideas (I almost feel bad taking them from you). Seriously, the road type based on zone type idea is really interesting. We'll definitely put that on our whiteboard. And yes, that was the idea with the government zones (at least once they actually work). We were also thinking that gov buildings would upgrade automatically based on city growth which is easier with zones. The idea behind the initial road is that people have to come from somewhere to your city. We are aiming for realism and something just donsn't quite make sense to have a city grow with absolutely no connections. Maybe if the game was set in earlier times but we are actually aiming for a futuristic feel. Nevertheless, once we have an options menu we'll add the initial road as an option. Now, the heavier topic. So, I personally love the complexity of SimCity and would have welcomed even more complexity because it meant (hopefully) more realism. I also believe complexity is not a problem in general, rather, its the way it is presented to the user. The full depth of the game should not be simply presented to the user all at once. Instead, the game should feel simplistic and all complexities should be optional (things to explore, one at a time). So things like public services should be fully automatic unless the user decides to explore them. This way, a broader range of users can enjoy the same game. So, what im getting at is that Synekism's complexity will grow without limit but many features will be optional. By optional I mean that one could still make a descent working city without using these features. Of course, exploring these complexities will have its rewards like being able to attain larger populations or reducing spending (optimizing). This is our approach anyway, it will take a long time for it to mature. Also, Synekism's complexity will not be managed through difficulty settings. Instead, each tool will have the option to open up more uses and each piece of information (like population) will have the option for more detail. This way, everyone can choose exactly what they want to explore and what they want to keep on auto.

Hello everyone, Matt (emmotic): The camera controls will be updated this or the next release to a click-and-drag type of movement. In the mean time, if you zoom out you can move around much faster and zooming is relatively quick. Now, regarding suburbs, the last update separated the lots from the buildings so now we just need to implement smaller buildings. Expect more zone types (based on different densities) soon (err. in two to three months). Regarding pre-modeled buildings, that will take a bit longer. Finkle: For you we might just introduce money cheats in the next release. DefStar: Probably not this year but public transit along with traffic simulation (when the roads become more than eye candy) are definitely part of our plan. Traffic sim might just make it this year. Tysons4: We are definitely taking a zone-dominant approach but will always keep plopping as an option, like, we'll definitely not make a "space shuttle launch platform" zone type. Also, for things like airports, they will still be zones but we also want the user to have some control over where runways and terminals go. And as said above, expect more zone types soon. We're still thinking about how and if we'll have lockable items.

Hello, No, we don't have any utilities yet. We are focusing now on certain crucial features (like saving) right now and wont get to utilities for some time. When we do, we'll see how the community can contribute. Thanks for the offer though. Now, regarding your installation issue, did it give you the "Does not support DirectX 10" error? Remember that simply going into NVidia's Control Panel or DXDiag to check DirectX support does not tell you the truth (I really don't know why). If you run a program called GPU-Z (which we use during our installation) it will tell you which DX your computer actually supports. In any case, just wait 2 weeks for our Jan release when this stupid restriction will be lifted and you should be able to play the game.

All major games go through this stage in development. The only difference is that they don't usually release the game like this to the public. We decided to alter the template and release early and this may very well blow up in our faces. Nevertheless, we hope keeping the public as up to date on our (slow) progress as possible will result in a better overall final version. Think of this as a train going from New York City to the Moon (and not necessarily stopping there). Every km is another bug fixed or another new feature added. Everyone is welcome to hop on the train (and hop off) at any point as well as influence its journey.

Yes, we are aware of the balance-colour issues. If you could send us a screenshot of when this happens to our support email it would greatly assist us in fixing this. I know its simple fix but we have hard time reproducing it. Also, we will increase the initial balance (probably 2x) in the next release.

Hello again, Back to Tropod's question: I may have misinterpreted your question. Were you were asking in regard to community modding capabilities? If so, we are fully aware of the importance of such abilities and we plan to make it as easy to do such modding as possible. If that means releasing parts of the code then so be it. We will also work on our own tools to help with modding, especially for the buildings. I know we don't have much now but you can already change parts of the game including the road textures and all the UI graphics. They are all PNGs stored in the Resource folder in the game's install directory. Sorry about the file names; we will fix them soon.

Hello, Commandoj241: Sorry about that but unfortunately DirectX 9 (Windows XP) has a much steeper learning curve than DirectX 10 (Vista+) and so with the time we had we could not incorporate DirectX 9. More significant is the fact that we currently generate the boxes, I mean buildings, on the graphics card every frame as this was the only we could manage to keep the frame rate acceptable. This automatically requires DirectX 10. Anyway, that's the long story of it but XP support will come. Tropod: The problem here is that we are making entertainment software which means banking on earning income from support fees would not be wise. There are other ways to make money from open-source software but I'm not aware of any that apply to city simulation video games. So, if we had to answer now, the game will never be open-sourced and will, eventually, be developed into a commercial version to be sold. We are, however, looking at a minimum of 5 years until we will have something deep enough for sale (until when everything we make will be completely free). All we want is to be able to work on this full-time at some point so if we find a way to do that and keep the game free and even open-sourced you can be sure we will pursue; and we have plenty of time to think of such a way. Regards.

To expand on what Aktof said, lot density currently has no per-individual-lot cap but we will soon add lot types which will restrict density as well as other aspects. For now, density is determined by the surrounding density and is capped by your city's population. The caps are: 5000, 25000, and 100000 people after which there is no more cap and buildings will get quite high. Also, to be more specific regarding the roads, Shift will have it angle lock at 45 degree intervals and holding Ctrl when finishing placing a road segment will start a new one for you.

City size and regional view were some of the core features we wanted to build on, however, time did not permit much work on this subject. We did however try to give the player a god-like feel, as you described it, by having the terrain extend to the horizon past the city limits marked in white. In the future, we want the player to be able to zoom out, smoothly with no loading time, from the streets of a city all the way up to planetary view. There will not be any city limits of any kind. The location of your city will only be determined by how much you want to spend building it. It will be more expensive to build on a mountain side or far from a trade route like a river than in the middle of a plane or by the ocean. The road to this goal will of course be a bit rough. I also agree with you that having an accurate simulation of the people is fundamental to an accurate simulation of a city. In order to do this properly and efficiently, however, we have to find a way to approximate groups of individuals, their behavior and its effect. This is still something we are studying. I'm not sure I fully understand the last part. Are you simply talking about having more build options as the education level of the population rises, or something more complex? Thanks for the input.

Yes, kingdiz, the buildings are currently being worked on. The problem is that we are trying to combine dynamic generation with community modding capabilities so until we have a solid foundation for this (that doesn't kill frame-rate) the buildings will continue to look like colored boxes. Thanks for the comments everyone.