VIPStephan

Originally posted by: Merlin of Flyote That's a crazy speed (would be even on a Motorway), I doubt they were even able to read the road far enough ahead at those speeds.quote> That’s the usual speed on the German Autobahn (motorway/highway) – if you own BMW, Mercedes Benz, or Audi.

I don't know if it has been posted yet but when I first enter the site using Firefox I can't click on the first two news items because - according to Firebug - two canvas elements (corner canvas) are overlapping these items (in terms of z-index).

Great news. And I don't understand the commotion about the languages. Why must it always be English first? There are actually more languages in the world and all are equally important (at least for a game). All the times non-English speaking people have to wait, this time it's French and German that come first. The other ones will get over it.

Originally posted by: Fraghawk444 (I smell open source) quote> Yeah, go ahead and create an open source clone of Cities XL.

I have no issue on the latest Mac mini with OS 10.5.6

OK, now you guys be prepared to get enlightened by someone who knows it: What City2TheMax said is really superficial and really, he is a little too young to understand. First, there have been two different Germanies for 40 years and while they had a similar development in the first couple of years the different political and economical concepts resulted in different everyday life and different ways to (re)build the cities. I think nobody is denying that. Now, as far as the east goes, the socialist ideology had equality as main principle, i. e. officially nobody was supposed to be better than the other, and therefore in most East German towns huge quarters of Plattenbau were built which were very modern at that time with warm water, central heating, and modern bathrooms in each apartment, etc. while many old buildings (which were often worn down and half destroyed due to the war) used to have one old toilet for more apartments in the staircase and oven heating. The ideology changed from time to time and so did the city planning. Magdeburg, Dresden, or Chemnitz (named „Karl-Marx-Stadt“ from 1953–1990), for example, are towns where most of the old city center was destroyed and the GDR didn’t care to rebuild or even keep the old street system, they just tore everything down and rebuilt it completely new with Plattenbaus, not adhering to most of the old street structure or entire town structure. In the western part of Germany at that time, they often tried to rebuild most of the cities according to how they looked before, or at least, keeping the old feel and integrating new buildings within the town structure. On the other hand, there commercial interests were more important than political, and they often also removed some buildings in favor for new streets etc. but to me it feels like city planning was much more organic there. (OK, this can still just be a very superficial overview but it clarifies some things). Now, one main difference between those two Germanies was that the west adopted much of the American lifestyle with everybody owning a car and stuff, and therefore West German cities were built to accomodate the increasing traffic, i. e. streets were widened, bypass roads were constructed, people moved to outside the town into single family homes (kinda like the suburbs in the U.S.) while in the east people had to wait approximately 12 years (!) for a new car because the planned economy wasn’t as flexible and living standard was a little more modest, and therefore there wasn’t so much traffic, people couldn’t just build a home wherever they wanted, they were glad to live in those modern prefabricated concrete slab apartments, and therefore the old streets from before the war could handle all the traffic and where old city structure was kept nothing was done to prepare streets for possible future mass traffic (because nobody expected it). The old buildings that weren’t destroyed in the war and torn down afterwards in Eastern Germany were just left on their own resources, i. e. they were not modernized but left empty while in the west where commercial interests were stronger than government such buildings were either modernized but more often torn down and replaced with modern buildings (but integrated into the city structure). Halle (Saale) or Görlitz are such examples of an East German cities where much of the old core was still intact but heavily degenerated. Now we come to the present: After the reunion western lifestyle found its way into the eastern part of Germany, everybody could afford/buy a car immediately, new low density residental zones (suburbs) emerged all over the place outside of cities, resulting in a lot of traffic in and out without the streets/towns being prepared to it (for which the west had 40 years while traffic was growing slowly). The old buildings that survived the socialist system were modernized and gleamed in new splendor. And that’s why people that didn’t move out of the town rather moved to these beautiful buildings, causing a degeneration of the huge Plattenbau quarters where only the not so wealthy people stayed (and new, poorer foreign immigrants moved in). That’s why those neighborhoods aren’t as attractive anymore (referred to as „ghetto“ by City2TheMax). The difference between eastern and western German cities nowadays is mostly that eastern cities tend to have kept much more of their original beauty (now after the old beautiful buildings were modernized where they survived those 40 years) due to neglection during the socialism. Leipzig, Halle, Görlitz, Quedlinburg and others have so many beautiful neighborhoods (Dresden, too, a little outside of the center) that can barely be found in larger West German cities. Cities like Cologne, Dortmund, or Bielefeld don’t have much of their original beauty (in fact, they aren’t really beautiful at all anymore) because economical development was quicker than preservation of (not so important) historical buildings. On the other hand, western cities don’t suffer from sudden suburbanization as eastern cities do, and therefore the outer edges of these cities are much more developed than those of the eastern cities with their Plattenbau buildings that are just left alone now. And just tearing them down isn’t as simple as one might think due to infrastructure issues etc. (too much maintenance costs for buildings that stay here and there). Well, things are much more detailed than I could explain here but I felt like I have to clarify things a bit.

Great stuff there. However, the CTA stations are crashing my game. Are there any known bug or issues with this, or any special treatment necessary such as special build order? I'm using SC 4 for Mac with Update and latest NAM (January '08) and have a couple of other plugins installed.