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Hi guys, It's been a long time since my last post I'm not involved anymore on Cities XL development but it's still great to see that we somehow managed to fill a gap somewhere in the city builder genre. With the upcoming release of SimCity2013, I really hope for the sake of the genre to see this game be as successful as we are all expecting it to be. I really do hope Maxis do find solutions for the issues we met gameplay wise and improve on it. My sole fear, as a player, is to see EA/Maxis releasing the game too soon. I've been following the community while working at Monte Cristo on a day to day basis answering questions when I could and bringing as much information as I had at the time... I can't bring any proof on this but you can trust me: we all at Monte Cristo wanted to bring to the city builder hardcore fans the greatest features and flexibility we could. I believe we somehow brought a bunch of features that were appreciated. I'm happy to see that Maxis is taking many of these ideas into the next SC and I really want them to make it right. We made as much as we could to fix the issues you all met while trying to keep business running. Cities XL was a really ambitious project for a studio that couldn't count on the support a publisher such as EA should be providing to Maxis. I personally already tried to get in touch with them to share with them my experience with Cities XL so they could potentially avoid some of the issues we met but without success. If they pass by, I'm keen to spend some time with them for that purpose. My goal here isn't to promote nor defend Cities XL as I believe in players' opinions as long as they give the game a chance (Cities XL isn't SimCity and thus needs you to open your mind to a different approach to build your cities). My goal was more to share with you my hopes on this next SC game... Until then, I'll get back to Cities XL ;-) By the way, I'm once again amazed by what the community did on the mod topic with Cities XL... Some of the things that were done are really impressive technically speaking and required a lot of time, skill and expertise. Congrats and thanks as I do use some myself

@ACEH yes, there will be ground level subway trains. They basically work like the roads network: you use SHIFT and mouse to set the height and it'll build tunnels and bridges accordingly to the terrain

Hey guys, About Cities XL 2011, what I can tell you is that before MC closed its doors, we have been working hard the whole team to deliver a candidate for Cities XL 2011 so that FHI can publish it as soon as they can. Publishing means putting everything in place so the Cities XL 2011 boxes get in the shelves near you. I cannot give you more information about that as it's on FHI hands now but knowing them, I can tell you they are really good guys and they'll make everything possible to get it ready asap. @mntoes: I'm still looking for a job right now and I don't think I'll find one until September. Right now, I'm not putting myself too much pressure as I want to take care of my 7 months old sun and spend some time on a new game concept to see if a publisher gets interested @GlobexCo: sure thing, I will definitlivelly buy Cities XL 2011 because it has a lot of stuff that we couldn't put on the initial release: you'll probably like the Subway, the new buildings and some new maps. The graphics engine team worked also a lot on the engine especially on particle effects (were you missing smoke on top of factories ...?). A lot of bugs have also been corrected and you shouldn't see them anymore if you met any @LivingInThePast: As I just told above, my next plan is to build up a prototype of a game concept I'm working on call Cosmos Conflict (temporary name) which I'd like to present to publishers and see if they get interested. I can't tell much right now about it but I'll do as soon as I get my first prototype ready. If you want to follow it you can go over my blog (http://blog.will2real.com) If I get any information from FHI about the game that I am allowed to reveal, I'll let you know Cheers Philippe

Hey guys, Just a quick hi to Cities XL players so they know even I'm not involved anymore on Cities XL 2011, I'm still around reading you and seeing some great stuff going on I took some weeks to rest from these last very busy 3 years but I'm now back ready for action and playing some Cities XL and SC4 Cheers, Philippe

Hi soltangris, Thanks for the information, I'll inform our customer support team so they can answer back players who would unfortunatelly live the same as you.

Hi guys, We wanted starting a city to be no brainer so that players concentrate first on the tools learning curve. As you said, the more you grow, the more questions are arised and the more difficult it is to balance your city needs. But the difficulty grows also depending on how you specialize your city. The more you specialize it, the more reward you get from your different achievements but the more difficult it turns Anarcho-X, it's definitivelly your choice to like or dislike the game in the current situation and share it with others. However, the current released version is for us just the start and we will move on the game based on our players base. As for custom content, we already started talking to a bunch of guys around but we are for now concentrating on the release. Once we'll get some time, we'll again try to help as much as we can creative players that want to participate to the adventure

Hey guys, First, thanks for pre-ordering the game and giving Cities XL this value. gnomonite, if you ordered the 7th on our North America Mail Order shop, you must have noticed that the shipping costs were free. Moreover, you should have seen that we are delivering through US Mail and the boxes have been sent 7 days before release to put as many chances as possible to deliver them before day 1. Now, US Mail can't guarantee the delivery but it usually takes between 3 to 7 days. Closing preorders 7 days before release wouldn't have made a difference as we are still selling the game in the US through Mail Order. I'm sorry that you have to wait a couple more days to get the game installed in your machine but that's just normal mail order process. As for you mr-tom, if you didn't received your box yet, it should also be a question of days as we sent all the pre order boxes that were made during September 7 days ago. And finally, don't be afraid as for the good spots in the planets, we will regularly open new ones for you to pick any map you want. Moreover, there aren't really "good spots" because if you want a good economy, you have to make sure that one's advantage compensantes the other's drawback and that the opposite is true too Some maps will simply be considered "harder" because you'll have to manage things differently but I cannot see any real difficulty for such skilled and challenged city builder fans as you

Hi guys, We should come back to you in the coming weeks with at least a document for you to start playing with building creation for Cities XL You should find in it all the technical details. As far as I know, we only have an exporter for 3dsmax right now but our developers made the export/import process so that it uses an XML based intermediary state. This means that if a developer may want to create an exporter for another 3d modeling software, he should be able to do so. We'll have to go deeper into this later. Cheers, Philippe

Great submissions guys and gals Go on and you'll get a really cool exclusive game Cheers, Philippe

Hi The main idea is that you actually use the t-shirt layout and simply draw/render/photoshop on the parts that aren't black It's up to you then to be the most creative and apply your talent to get an impressive Simtropolis t-shirt that you'll be able to use in the game once released Good luck

Hey guys, we'll show up soon regarding custom content and help custom content makers to move on

https://beta.citiesxl.com/download/ That's where you'll find the beta

And just to make it clear: You still can play your game Solo The MMO side is optional.

Congrats, very much disserved

Actually our website is in English, French and German Now, we would have loved to release the game worldwide in all possible languages. The point is that it is just not possible at the moment. When some of you share their thoughts, they seem not to realize how hard all of this is. I mean, I'm not looking for your pity because we just love working hard on the game but the whole team is really working like hell to deliver more than a descent game. Let me just remind you who we are: Monte Cristo is a rather small independent studio (around 80 persons) who decided that it was a good strategy to put all its efforts in developing a good City Builder game. We went out and decided to raise enough money to invest in the project. We made it all with our own hands, all the code was produced in house (except for trees which we are using SpeedTree technology), and we have been so far communicating mostly on our own about the game... Now that we are getting closer to the release date, we need to make some decisions and so far, we cannot give any release date for other languages than French and German. As soon as we can, we'll let you know... We definitivelly aren't totally stupid: we know that there are much more English speaking countries than French or German; but that's just how it is for now.