naufragus

Originally posted by: Gridlock Hmmm that confirms another fear , the mountain range in the SCS screens shots are visual and cannot be built on .quote> I believe there is a downloadable demo version of C4 available. I suggest anyone who is curious give it a try. I know not all the buildings are available in it and it may have a pop cap. It will give you an idea of what they mean by ploppable and how their mechnics work.

TM site is full of C4 screenshots ,the same graphic engine thats going in SCS .quote> That was my thought and actually what I am afraid of. As I described above and in another thread, C4 could have some stunning graphics. But programming boo-boos negated that. The higher your population got the worse the performace was. Once the pop was around 20K it became unplayable unless I turned down the graphics low.low.low. I have a high end machine. I cant imagine what people who dont experienced. How it would handle the big maps we have is beyond me unless they are shrunk down. C4 gives the impression that the maps are huge because of the backgrounds they use bit the actual buildable/playable area isnt that large. I agree C4 was a decent game for what it was but most of it doesnt translate to something this scale.

Originally posted by: edd17 Its kind of hard not to blame them, they say that they will be listening to us but they have reached a point in development where they probably cannot change much of what they have already done. If they had tried to find out what people wanted for the new game before this stage then we would have little to complain about. If they had looked at any SimCity fansite, they could have found any number of discussions about what people did and did not want. I can understand that they may have been under instructions from EA about how the game had to be simpler; but all this talk about working closely with fans and at the same time announcing that power and water grids, individual building funding and zoning (zoning and road building could be considered to be the basis of SimCity itself, they are the first things you think about when you start a city) will no longer be a part of the game, makes it seem like they have made what they wanted and that's how the new game is going to be.quote> I diverge a little. I played A LOT and I mean A LOT of games last year and rediscovered SC4. I never knew all this custom content was out there. SInce then Its become a hobby. And I can say most other games are a pale comparison I did want to see a cultural/societal aspect added. I thought it was the one thing that was missing. The only thing I liked about CIty Life was trying to attract certain types to move in. You know in SC4 the SIms really didnt care if there where theatres or bars or restaraunts or evena beauty shop. All they wanted were parks and low taxes. I liked how in City Life I could effect what an area of town was like and became by adding bowling alleys or trendy clubs. Now thats about the only thing I like about CL. I wanted to be able to create a working class suburb or gated country club community by doing more than just changing taxes. So to me there was a diminsion lacking in the Sim series. I didnt want what TM is building though. What I had expected was professional developers with access to the source code to fill in the gaps we couldnt. Add more regional dynamics inter-city interaction. And maybe break down the RCI Categories a little more Spore sounds like it will have some of the other things I was expecting.

I keep saying this but the screenies look just like Caesar 4. Especially the farm pix. Everyone should check out C4 if you didnt play it last year. On the plus side of C4 it did have very nice atmospheric graphics. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Realistic rain and snow in winter that covered the buildings. The water was some of the best I have seen. Your city could be quite breathtaking when you moved through it. The downside is, as I said in another thread, they had some programming boo-boos. Once your city reached a certain size the performance starting getting more and more sluggish to the point you couldnt move. The only way to fix that was to turn the graphics way down. Turn off the pretty weather etc. A rain storm would blow in and I would literally have to wait 10 minutes before I could do anything. My thought is that TM is just going to use the same engine they have already created

Originally posted by: Sc4jeeks Sorry, but people keep saying the graphics will improve, but it ain't happening. I'm no game developer, but I know the process. Once screenshots are released, the team is basically done with everything visual, and have moved on to touch-ups and fixing programming. Now, don't get me wrong. You may see some minor changes, but the way some people here have posted, they expect the graphics to change massively between now and release. Trust me, you don't want to get your hopes up, it won't happen. Just a little heads-up...quote> I have usually found that intial screen shots are BETTER than what you actually get since the devs usually just have one small portion of a game loaded and can bump up graphics

The other thing that concerns me -- based on screenshots and C4 -- about the plopping is size. In C4 you where very limited on size. All low end houses were the extact same size lets just say 2x3. All medium houses were the same say 4X6. This meant that you had to build in certain constraints to get things to fit. More often than not in C4 you were left with akward blank spaces if something didnt fit in the grid exactly right. The only way to fill them was with standard sized decoration tiles of trees and bushes and statues. These often didnt fit right if the size wasnt precise. The problem with that entire set up was that the sizes didnt match the contraints TM put on the layout. Some pieces were slightly longer or wider by a square which created the dead space. With Zoning, the buildings size themselves to fit the blank spaces. They could grow to 2x3 or 4X5. If there is any blank space, you could always use a 1x1 piece to fill it without the gaps you would get in C4. Now the actual plopping in C4 wasnt that bad or tedious but it didnt leave you with much freedom. There was a certain cookie cutter monotounous aspect to the layout. Plop down 6 houses build street, rinse, repeat. At this point, I can only assume that SC5 will repeat these same mechanics.

Originally posted by: Skyfire2275 Welcome to our community! I am glad that Tilted Mill is taking an interest in communicating with us! There is one major point that seems to have been missed in your 4 points. e) Transportation Networks: we want variety. And I'm not talking about the surface of the roads (brick dirt, cracked pavement, cement) So far from the screen shots the roads only seem to follow a grid... not even diagonals... This is definitely NOT a good thing. No real cities in the world are built entirely like that. The one thing we have been craving for since Simcity was first out is the ability to draw roads freely. Obviously, I understand this is not easy to do and I will definitely accept the next best thing. But given what SimCity 4 can do, I would atleast like to see an improvement. I didn't even see and two lane or one way roads... or divided avenues, or wide roads with two-way turn lanes down the middle. Also absent are highways (so far anyways, I have only seen a handful of screenshots)... Which is the other big complaint about SC4... the lack of options to make highway interchanges as they are done in real cities. Check out some of the pictures on Wikipedia under "freeway". I want to be able to make some of those in SimCity. Like 18 lane highways, twisted interchanges, etc. Obviously again, this is not all possible, but I also see that there could be improvement over SC4. Another point is dual networks like highways over roads or elevated rail and/or monorail over roads. Real cities are like that, and there is not point making these in a crowded downtown areas if they go over empty terrain. This brings me to my next point... mass transit? Do we get busses, trains, subways, light rail, elevated rail, monorails, trams, etc... Lots of things that are absent from SC4, but could be included. The Tram system is the one I think many of us want. It adds a lot of class to a city.quote> The screenshots are very remiscent of Ceasar IV.... Basically you build on a grid. No curves. No turms. You could mananage to get a diag road bit this often caused other problems since the buildings wouldnt fit right. For the most part you were stuck with a grid and the axis was aligned with the map. You couldnt decide the orientation of the axis it was built into the map. You had to align your city to axis they decided. The drawbacks were most apparent with the aquaducts. Many of my C4 cities were ruined because I could not get the aquaducts where I wanted them. They also had no Z axis so it was impossible to build them on any sort of incline. Because of the ways the roads worked you often had a choice of building smart or building pretty. If the same mechanics are brought to SC5 I imagine we will end up with cities that are basically a bunch of 6X6 squares like in one of the screenies The screen shots made me groan because I immediatly thought of Ceasar IV. All of my qualms are based off of my C4 experience. I am familar with their games and thats why I think the franchise has takena step backward and not forward.

Originally posted by: wftrekkie I think we're jumping the gun guys. Has anybody really checked out Tilted Mills previous games. When I heard Maxis was no longer holding the reigns I was floored. I still to this day continue to play Sim City 4 over and over and over. I just figured out how to make an entire community with just old people... Yay go me. When I heard about Simcity Societies I was a bit.... Aprehensive.... But guys check out Tilted Mill. Children of the NIle for those who are familiar was brilliant. The game was quite in depth and you learned quite a bit. Now that i think about it I am really quite excited that Tilted Mill is taking the reigns. Maybe, they will make Sim City into something great. Besides they needed a new project. With Maxis focusing and Spore which they cannot finish they really don't have the time to work on SCS. I for one am thrilled about this ..!!!... However, I will always say Sim City 4 once the learning curve was learned because easy as pie.... But, Long Live Maxis. For I hope they will realize they shouldn't stick with EA... .... quote> This is what actually has me concerned because I was palying Ceasar IV last year. Technical Issues --- There was some bad programming in Ceasar IV. The way the CPU handled the automata caused problems. If you had the speed set to high there was no way any computer could do the calculations and your city could burn to the ground for instance. Fire would break out and spread and there was nothing that could stop it. You could also have a disaster cascade where on small thing would happen and start a chain reaction. If you didnt have a save before that point your city was FUBAR. My computer is built specifically for gaming. I can run intense real-time, graphic intense games like WOW, SWG, COH/COV on MAX settings with no issues waht so ever. On Ceasar IV, I had to turn everything down. Not just to prevent my city form burning to the ground but the game would get slower and slower and slower to the point where it was unplayable. It was a choice between things looking nice or being able to move. When called on this obvious programming error and memory leak TM tried to shift the blame to our puny CPU's and graphics cards. GAMEPLAY --- After a couple days of playing Ceasar IV you will figure out "how to build". All you had to do is repeat the same module over and over again on any map to meet the goals. The only "challenge" was the terrain and waiting for the cash to build. The happiness of your people was based soley on their distance from services. Building was also a pain because you were confined by their simplistic axis. IMO, ceasar IV had no replay value. I finsished all the maps in a couple of weeks and then tried to do city building for fun. I lost interest pretty quickly. To me the game had little depth. SImCity4 is IMO leaps and bounds above what Tilted Mill put out in C4 and its nearly 5 years older To me its like you took people who are used to designing KIA's and have them working on Porsches. I do believe that SC needed another diminsion of culture and citizens, I'm just not sure Tilted Mill was the shop to do it

Looking for a building I swear I downloaded this week and cant find now. I want to say it was featured on the front page. It was a German hi-rise residential block. It was like 5-10 buildings and based on real housing project.