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By going to "free" game, MC may have to spend more money on the bandwidth and server cost. But, in today's world, network bandwidth and computer server cost are cheap, dirty cheap. Human labor and development cost are expensive, very expensive. Development cost is not affected much, though. It is near fixed cost regardless of the number of online players. The development cost are nearly same for both free game scheme and subscription scheme. So providing free online game service does not add much cost to MC than case for current service scheme. And it is not too late. Many MMORPG games in Korea, which had charged monthly fee previously or at initial launch time, now turn to "free-for-play, pay-for-item" business model. It were so successful that practically most of online games in Korea (including most MMORPG's and FPS's) are serviced in such scheme, but make quite a money this way. Online gaming business in Korea is thriving and is one of the fastest-growing business. I think that the "free" game scheme is major factor of recent success of Korean online gaming business.

MC announed subscription plan for CXL online gaming: $9-6 monthly subscription fee for online play and addtional charge for premium items (GEM's). Some items like mass-transport system (except basic bus system) are availabe only to the online playing. Many people in Simtropolis and other citybuiding game communities seems to be disappointed with the announcement and saying that they will not play online at all. City builder/Tycoon type game players are not so willing to play on line and pay monthly fee. Most city-building gamer hates monthly fee. It is unheared of in this genre of game. CXL is not MMORPG game like WOW. I think that this subscription plan wil not work and MC will not make much money from it. My suggestion is that MC should abolish monthly fee and make online play free but sell premium item as pay item. MC can not make any money from online feature if players don't subscribe and don't play online at all. I guess that there are not so many commited fans who are will pay monthly fee and play online. Only ardent fans of city building game are willing to pay monthly fee. MC can not make much money in such situation. Instead, by abolishing monthly fee, free online gaming will allure many casual gamers to try online playing feature of CXL (it's free, anyway) and make them to be hooked in the online playing. Then, they will desire for more fun from the game, willing to spend money for it and will buy premium items. This is how many online games in Korea draw mass of casual people to their game site and make money, lots of money. Many of them are simple casual game like puzzle or board/card game. Even online Tetris game makes money in this way. I will say that MC will be able to make more money from "free" game than montly subscription fee scheme.

It depends. If the game package price comes with some free subscription trial time for on-line play, I will give it a try for a while and decide thereafter. ( like WOW game package comes with 15-day free subscription trial time code) If I have to pay extra money to try on-line play, I wound not bother to try it.

I'd like to know what kind of provisioning are available for city "planning" aspect in this game. I mean tools that will help player to plan city development ahead of time; like land surveying tools and area planning tools. Surveying tool can measure area, distance, or height of given area or path to aid planing and zoning. Area planning tools is plan map/overlay on which player can draw some future plan for land usage or road before the zone or roads are developed or built actually. We need such planning tool because this game will not have function to "Undo" the committed construction. Player will be able to imagine/draw "Big Picture" of the city in the plan on early stage of the game playing and develop city accordingly as time goes by. Just simple position marker on map will help player planning ahead city development greatly. Such marker is free to build/place on map but looks distinctively with various color/flashing on undeveloped land and will disappear or demolished automatically on actual city development/construction on the area. Marker with X,Y,Z coordinate measurement and custom memo/name display will be very helpful for such purpose.

I already invented such a super-currency. The new currency is backed by all kinds of real assets and commodities. For example, gold, silver, copper, iron, crude oil, natural gas, coal, wheat, corn, rice, beef and many tradable commodities. It also includes real estate like land and buildings, houses. It also includes hard-currency like dollar, Euro, Yen etc. and other investment mean like national bond of some countries, securities of S&P companies. In a word, all kinds of economic valuable things. I call it "Mac". One Mac is equivalent to price of McDonald Big Mac ham berger. This Mac currency is very stable and will not influenced by inflation because the value of it is based on real assert, not paper money. This makes the Mac best investment to preserve value in times of inflation except solid gold. It is also unaffected by up /downs of foreign-exchange rate because it is diversified in all the major resources and currency of the world. What do you think about my idea?

I prefer free-rolling style. Monte Cristo will focus on providing tools/documentations and possibly provide web site to upload custom contents. User community will focus on creating custom contents and upload them to Monte Cristo's web site to show off and distribute their creation. General user will be able to download the custom contents from Monte Cristo's web site via web browser or in-game community interaction tools. EA/Maxis model of handling custom contents of Spore/Sims2 game while playing the game is good example, I think. Monte Cristo is not big name in game industry. They don't have enough resources to handle much of users request. So custom contents from Monte Cristo will be rather limited quantity, albeit of highest quality. They must harness talent and passion of user community. And about contents of custom contents: Don't limit custom contents to game DATA like custom building or objects. User-contributed custom contents can be ueser interface code, new event script or even game core source code. Look at example by hugely successful Civilization IV game series and numerous custom mod's contributed to www.civfanatics.com site. Firaxis (developer of Civilization IV game) included C++ source code of the core game DLL module of the game right in the game DVD media itself. Many Python script code and XML data file provided by Firaxis made it trivially easy to add or modify custom event or game strategy, game rule, user interface, custom scenarios and units, tech's and numerous enhancements to original game. You can add or change fundamental game core mechanism by modifying the C++ source code of game core DLL. Such a rich and varied custom contents greatly helped popularity and longevity of the Civ 4 game series. Don't underestimate ingenuity of user community as it is well illustrated by sites like Simtropolis or CivFanatics. Game industry in general should learn from this win-win example of harnessing user community of Civilization IV and SimCity 4.

City simulator and on-line competition in real time does not mix well. RTS without war? No way... Complex, delicate, deep and slow paceing single play style of city simulator and break-neck speed click-fest of real time multi-player game doesn't go hand-in-hand unless it is turn-based. If I wanted on-line real timecompetition, I would rather buy Ceasar IV or something like that. Please focus on making superb single play city simulator. Don't waste dev's effort to make yet another half-hearted RTS.

I'd like to suggest that CXL will have two distinct mode: Play mode and Photo mode. In Play mode, relatively low-res texture and less detailed models are used to ease system requirement and to enhance frame rate . More CPU cycles are dedicated to simulation than graphics. Building will be abandoned and rotten. Game should run smoothly well even on modest PC in this mode. In Photo mode, highest possible quality texture and complex models are used for taking picture of the city. Frame rate can be awful even on top-notch PC. This mode is not meant to play simulation. But you can take picture of your beautiful city in utmost quality. No rotten/abandoned building in this mode. No user interface except buttons to navigate city and take picture. Switching between two modes can take time to load different set of texture/model data.

I think we need a map printing function. Every real world city planner uses map (vertical view) printed on paper to draw their plan on it. It was very handy to print your city map on paper and lay out your future plan with pencil on the paper map. You can print whole or part of your city in multiple papers. Even SimCity 1 (Mac version) had such map printing function on laser printer. At least, there should be some "planning overlay layer" to mark some areas, lines, points for planning area usage, allotment etc before actual "building" or commitment. I guess that Cities XL and gamer can be benefit from some "city-planning CAD"-like feature (e.g. multiple-layers by building function)

From information posted above and other postings of Simtropolis and Tilted Mills forum site, I guess that SimCity : Societies is NOT THE sequal of SimCIty 4. SimCity : Societies is just new spin-off game of popular SimCity series. The SCS game described above shares virtualy no resemblance or commonality with SimCity series as we know it except that it bears SimCity in its name, belongs same city simulation genre (but with complete different focus), and published by same publisher (E.A.). EA may hope to milk some extra money from their prestigious SimCity name brand. I can not find any indication that SCS is the sequal of SimCity 4 in the words from EA or TM regarding SCS. They deliberately avoid using word SimCity5 or sequal, and call it specifically "SimCity Society". So, we have absolutely no reason to feel sorry about SCS, TM or EA, We should better to welcome and embrace SCS as new cousin of our loving SimCity family. With some luck, the game may turn out to be as well-made and enjoyable as SimCity series. I also hope and guess that EA/Maxis will announce real successor of SimCity 4 within a couple of years. Please, be patient until the day come.

Date: 8/21/2005 8:06:08 AM Author: simrolle Could you please tell me the prog's version number? You can find it under 'help/about'. THX quote> It says Version 0.4.0.

This program works great! Thanks for your work... I report few problems.. I am Asian user (Korean). On Asian Windows XP, localized name string does not displayed correctly. Especilly, User Visible Name Key and Item Descriptor Key are mostly localized string (Unicode string) They are show as broken gabage string... And When I click Language Editor, it displays and show Error Diaglogbox below repeatedly. The Error text mean Unhandled Exception: Dispose() can not be call while CreateHandle().. **************

Hmmm. I see. This plugin just manipulates internal tables used for key stroke to specific function associations in Simcity programe itself. So, to implement such featues that I suggested, I need separate programing with genuine Direct-X key remapping/macro capabilities (DirectInput to be specific).

Looks Good! This is what i've longed for... BTW, This works just as key stroke re-mapping plugins But I wish it can understand last key.. For example, Simcity uses "R" is for road, "Alt-R" for street, "Control-R" for Avernue, etc ... I like to build all kind of roads with just "R" key. Typing "R" will show "road" cursor. anoher "R" will change it "Street" cursor. Another "R" will change it "Avernue" cursor. Yet another "R", then cursor will change it back to "road" ( ie each time I type "R" cursor will cyle thru "road" -> "street"-> "avernue" -> "raod" -- back again.) I built "street" with two successive "R" key, Then I use oher keys. ( build residential zone with "Q" key.), Then I type "R". then it should recall last road type I used and set cursor to "street"(last built load-type), instead of "road". By remembering last used building/key type, we can build low-density residential("Q"), mid-density residential ("W"), high-density residential ("E") zone with just one key ("Q"). Each time I type "Q", cursor will cycle thru "low/mid/high" density residential zone cursor. Another example: In God mode, Shift 0-9 selects terraforming cursor radius, but whenever I change tool selection, cursor radius resets to default size. So each time I change tool, I should set cursor size again. I wish that each time I change tool selection, cursor should remember size used last time. I wish this program have very specialized features for Simcity playing, not just working like general key re-remapping / macro programes. Another suggestion: Mapping key stroke to not to another key but to mouse movement and click. If I use the fincial stat screen very freqently ( which has no Hotkey, it can be displayed only with couple of mous click), assign such mouse click to a key (let say "F" key). When I type "F", then the plugin simulate mouse clicking then I can see financial stats with just one key stroke.