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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.

I won't reply on the English point simply because we told several times we will release the game in English but we just still don't know when and instead of giving you some fictionous date took from the head of one's marketer, we prefer to be honest and tell you that for now, we don't have a release date yet for the English version. Oh... I did answer the question?! Damned... I did it again Now on the Paying for upgrades and online service. Yes, we will be asking players willing to share an online persistent experience with thousands of other players for a small fee. We decided expressly that we didn't want this fee to be like other MMOs and we are aiming on a pricing policy that states that 3 months of Cities XL Planet Offer will cost players the equivalent of 1 month of a Premium MMORPG. Yes, players subscribing to the Planet Offer will get as part of their service additional content created by our studios. So for the price of the service access, players won't have to pay for a Content box on retail like the Sims and other games have used as their distribution politic. And just to make sure that I do not create confusion: the additional content that will be part of the Planet Offer subscription service is content made by US. Custom content is a totally external discussion that we will enter as soon as we get the first version of the game released.

Originally posted by: Deep Thought I will not play for one reason, it costs money. In fact, I might not have interest in getting CXL at all, since it's seems to be more about managing and economic strategies rather than creating (Which is the reason I like the City planning genre. So in my opinion, CITIES XL IS NOT SIMCITY 5!!!quote> And you are definitivelly right Deep Thought by saying Cities XL is not SimCity 5. I already told you all about this for a long time. It is a city builder game for sure and is a pretty descent one (at least by listening to what everyone is telling us after playing the game at its current status ) Now, it is another game on his own and what we believe should be a modern city builder game in 2009 And I don't see why you say it's not about creating?! It is actually one of the core principles in a city builder game. That's the Builder part of the gameplay...

Sorry to interrupt but I have to mention that we don't want to BLOCK custom content in PO. We do want to support Custom Content even on PO.

Originally posted by: parrotti pay three times to play a game never, its all about the money again againquote> {Buzz noise} Wrong! You will only pay if you are interested by the additional gameplay and you must see them as new games inside one game. It's not like if you would get an expansion to the core city builder features but a total new game like if you would get on your favorite shop and buy a tycoon game

Both of those two points are still in the discussions. We just can't answer right now because we still haven't find the right way to bring that in.

We will obviously try to get Cities XL in as many retail and digital downloads shops as possible but you have to understand how things works in the retail industry: getting a product listed on any shop catalog requires us or our distribution partner to sell them the fact this game will work out pretty well so they are interested enough in getting this box in their shelves. So, the more the game will be awaited by players and the more players will get to their retail shop asking if the shop owner knows when Cities XL is coming to their place, the more chances you will get to see them willing to sell Cities XL It's just the way it works and we already are working on it

Hi John, As mentionned in the FAQ, we will first release the game on Windows XP and Vista. However, it doesn't mean we will never port it to Mac. Actually we would love to You know, we are a small studio and we must focus our efforts into one single platform to make sure the game runs smoothly and with as many features as we can on release to bring a many players as possible. If we are successful enough with it, then we will consider seriously porting the game to Mac. Cheers,

Hi guys, I think you got it just right That's the core idea on how we are looking Cities XL to expand to a game "

Hi guys, You must stop comparing custom content in Cities XL as you used to see it in SC4. We will have a real different approach here. First, we want to support custom content on our side by providing tools, tutorials, access to the dev team to raise questions and get some help. Secondly, we do have an online experience and, personally, I wouldn't want to alienate neither the solo nor the Planet offer player in regards of custom content access. Rather, we would like to bring custom content to both player types and use our online bandwidth to distribute the additional content free of charge of course The only question we are still asking ourselves internally is when we will start bringing this support to custom content creators. As you may know, we are a small studio and we have our full focus on releasing the game. Once this is done, we'll move on this custom content topic seriously Cheers,

Hi guys, We are currently pricing one month of Cities XL Planet Offer subscribtion fee to be one third of the price you would pay for one month of a premium MMORPG so something around 5 or 6