City Planner

Dang, came down with a cold a few hours ago, at the rate it's progressing, it looks like I'll be full blown germ city come Tuesday. Knowing myself the way that I do, I doubt I'll want to set my tray and sit in an upright position to play a game even if I've been waiting for that game for 8 years. My wife's got some 'splaining to do when she gets home tonight on how she managed to catch a cold so close to release day and then not bother to tell me 'bout it until she'd already passed it on to me. She's gonna pay dearly for this... I'm talking doing dishes for weeks, cleaning the yard of dog poo for months and maybe even so far as foot massages for life. Damn my luck.

Yes, how dare they try to create a game which is 'entertaining' and 'engaging' and 'fun'. Yes, how dare they take the city out of a City Building genre game! We'll have to wait to see how entertaining, engaging or fun the game is which I think we might be able to measure by it's life span. Demo made it impossible for me to tell how entertaining or engaging it was but I didn't find it fun, but I believe that's because of the forced tutorial event.

Mainstream computers or "Dad's PC" is always going to be behind the curve and it would be years and years before what he's suggesting will come to pass. But hey, at least by then EA will have squeezed every drop of blood from everybody's stones, and taken every last nickle and dine through micro transactions. By the time that Dad's PC could handle a 4x4 region, my computer will be able (and I'd want to) run 8x8 tiles. It's rather like my dog chasing his tail. They just need to make larger regions(EDIT: I meant, City Tiles, not regions) available to those that CAN run them now, if they need to make that DLC for pay, fine, so be it. I understand why they would not want to release it in the vanilla game as then the requiresments would go up, but to release it as DLC (even if , God forbid, Free) they could put a system requirement on the enlarged DLC new 4x4 tiles to a higher spec, those that have the power great, those of us that don't would miss out or go mow lawns to make enough money to do an upgrade if it was that important to the player. If you forget all the algebra, and history, and how to even wipe your nose, remember one thing and live by it.... "Buy what you see today, Not what you hope to see tomorrow" If you live by that you will not get burned on a game purchase hoping that the developers/publishers add something you'd like to see in your game Personally, I think that EA/Maxis has more to worry about this than I do... If I get bored of building only small Towns in SimCity13, I'm going to leave the game and once I leave the game it's going to be hard to get me to come back. But if they make me a happy gamer and give me the ability to build not only small towns when I want to, but also large cities when I want too, then I'm going to be more agreeable towards spending more money with the franchise. I know I'm not the only one that works like this, so really it behooves them to make us happy to keep us spending money with them. The small maps are not going to keep players happy for too long. Small towns will not keep me happy for too long unfortunately (for them). Sure, I'll make some "pretty" curvy cities which will be even smaller due to the pretty curved roads taking up a lot of space, and I'll make some grid cities to ensure that I get the most into the amount of space we are given to play on, but that will wear off fairly quickly for me.

I think it more likely that EA / Maxis will put out some basic modding tools, but they'll be modding tools along the lines of an easy way for people to reskin buildings and do other basic visual modding. I seriously doubt that Maxis will be putting out any modding tools that allow for some serious / heavy modding to the game. Maybe some plugins, exporters and or importers to work with a 3D modeling software and stuff like that. They'll hold out long enough so that the modders get fed up with waiting (like in that other EA game we all know) for tools and just create their own, then they (EA/Maxis) won't have to bother with it. I had that real sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when EA / Maxis said that no modding tools would be released with the game, I think that basically said, "we're not really going to put out modding tools, if you want to create your own, go ahead" and as time goes by their will be even less of a chance that they put out anything. Honestly, I would not be surprised at all if in 6 months we find some strange building in our city that none of us have ever seen before, and when we click on it, it turns out to be the SimCity 2013 "DLC Store" where just like in the Sims 3, people can buy all sorts of stuff for their game for absolutely absurd prices. EA / Maxis see the cash cow with SC13 DLC and their own store. Why bother giving the players the tools to create the same mods that Maxis can create and charge for. No business reason at all unless you firmly believe that it will keep SC13 selling for the next 10 years as has SC4. When all they need to do is put out DLC every so often to keep things new and fresh that will keep the game and or extras selling for years to come, no need to get modders involved (UNFORTUNATELY).

While watching that "lets all be the mayor" livestream the other day, I'm pretty sure that somebody said that all city tiles are the same exact size, none smaller than the others, none bigger than the others. If that's incorrect than great, we need something larger than what was in the beta IMHO. But I won't hold my breath hoping.

For me it depends on the content. If it's a full fledged expansion pack and buying it in the store is the only way, AND it's a good deal and quality, then yeah I'll buy from the store. If they manage to give us a really large city tiles in a relatively inexpensive DLC then Yeah, I'll probably buy from the store. If they sell buildings and cars and sim clothes etc, then I'll NOT likely buy from the store on those items. I'm in absolutely not hurry to feed any more money to the EA/Maxis machine after paying full AAA title retail price on SC13.

Hopefully they'll fix it before Tuesday's release. I was watching a video of one fellow playing SC13 and every time that he would zoom out, parts of his roads here and there would submerge underground, or maybe the ground was coming up over the roads, Looked absolutely horrible and make the game look unpolished. Hopefully this stuff is fixed or will be before release else they'll get the same flack that every other developer gets for an unpolished game, maybe even more so due to the full $60.00 - $80.00 price tag as well as carrying the Maxis name on it.

Yeah but they really should re-route when stuck in traffic at least a small percentage of the time to make it look like it's happening anyway. I read on this forum by a post from somebody else that they do reroute if you disrupt the road but I haven't been back to that topic to get the details on it. I guess we'll find out in a few more day.

Already bought it even though I swore up and down that I would not. Some of my friends on my CB forum started talking about playing on a region together and well.. One thing lead to another and it all sounded like it would be fun to get back into playing CB games with friends again so... EA/Maxis is $60.00 richer. I know that I'm going to be a bit bummed out with building only Towns instead of Cities, but playing with friends is a hard thing to pass up the older that I get.

I don't believe so. I think the only name you can actually edit is the city name. Well that would be a shame since that's always been something I've enjoyed doing in SC4. Back when my parents used to own car dealers in California, I'd rename the car dealers in SC4 to their company name, and an assortment of other businesses that I'd visited in my life.

Yes I understand that, I was simply stating that of the games that I've played in the past that made the leap to 3D, all of them increased the size of the objects making the maps look substantially smaller since fewer things could be placed on them.

I attempted to explain this to people a few months back. That 2x2 city tile might have been acceptable for SC4 but when you make the leap to full 3D, it's going to feel even smaller since the objects will be bigger. Many games that I've played that made the jump to 3D end up with maps that are usually smaller, and objects in 3D that are larger so you can't fit as many objects in the same amount of space as you might on a 2D game. So, the map ends up feeling even smaller.

??? What is? None of my links are affiliated with anyone. Who is "JoblessGamers"? When I visit the site listed in the OP, the "partner" code of JoblessGamers gets put into the URL. I don't really care if somebody would be getting a piece of the pie if I were to order something from that gamefanshop site but I'd like to know who they are. Joblessgamers is also the name of the youtube channel of the fellow who posted the thread, it seems. Aha, I see. Would probably have been good form to at least mention it in the OP that it's an affiliate link. Oh well, I've already bought the game from Origin so the Jobless Ones will have to fend for themselves a bit longer.

??? What is? None of my links are affiliated with anyone. Who is "JoblessGamers"? When I visit the site listed in the OP, the "partner" code of JoblessGamers gets put into the URL. I don't really care if somebody would be getting a piece of the pie if I were to order something from that gamefanshop site but I'd like to know who they are.

It's a dream that many people that have built/bought a really nice computer for their gaming addiction have often desired. Build the game so that those that have a powerhouse computer can take advantage of more options, in SC13's case, bigger city tiles. Those that have the computing power would be able to use larger city tiles and those that have enough computing power to only run the medium city tiles could still run the medium city tiles. The way that I envision it is one of two things... 1. Maxis really did test with larger city tiles and found that even on their own power house computer systems they did not have enough computing power to do city tiles any larger than what we will receive next Tuesday... OR... 2. Maxis/EA understand that larger city tiles is a huge selling point for the game and being that many people are SimCity starved for a new version they really don't have any reason to add larger city tiles at this time since people are buying SC13 with the medium / small city tiles that we will have next Tuesday, so better to hold back larger city tiles for a future expansion or DLC and use it as the major selling point that it is/will be. It's just kind of sad to me that I've dreamed all these years of a shiny new full 3D SimCity game to be able to build not only small towns when I want, but also large metropolises and after all these years of waiting and hoping we'd eventually see a Simcity 5, we are told that computing power is still not powerful enough to do large city tiles. I'm pretty sure from my memory that the reason we'd not seen a Simcity 5 prior to now was something along the lines that they said that computing power in the past just wasn't sufficient enough and still here comes SimCity 2013 minus decent sized city tiles with computing power still reportedly not enough for us to play on decent sized city tiles. Sadly, what that feels like is that the prices of roads were re balanced just SO that people would not be able to fill up the map in an hours time which would in essence show that city tiles are far too small. Well, at least I shouldn't have any problem building the city that I grew up in with only 3500 population when I lived there and about 20k population when I left there. I suppose that's a good thing, but just kind of sad that I can't build any of the larger cities that I've lived in over the pas 48+ years too.

Thanks for that Xenocity As far as traffic is concerned, do we know yet how the traffic sim works? I mean do they actually take into account traffic on the roads and try to route around that traffic if they can find a route that is either shorter in distance or shorter in time to get to their destinations?

Wait, what? While I agree that many small towns do not have many tall buildings, people most certainly DO live in apartments in small towns. I grew up in a town of only 3500 people, (when I left it was about 10k or 15k and there were plenty of people that lived in apartments. Of course the town wasn't littered with apartment buildings all over the place but there were quite a few, just not as many as what we're going to see in SC13.

Maybe somebody could just do me a favor. Go out back to my barn and pick out the sturdiest 2x4 you can find in there. Then give me a good solid whack over the head and knock me out. Any time that I start to wake up, give my old noggin' another whack or two. In that way, the next 5 days will just zoom on by and it will be Tuesday before I know it. Just make sure to stop on Tuesday, I don't want to miss anything. And on a serious note, What I'm looking forward to is the friends on my own city building forum getting together to play on a region together like we've been talking about recently, when friends get together to have fun it make a load of difference over playing a game all by your lonesome. Well yeah... Once the game is out, there will actually be stuff to talk about for the game.

In my experience with this sort of thing, the date is where the company is located, not where the users are located. For example when Steam does a release set for 10AM, it's 10AM PST (N. America), not 10AM time of a user in Africa, or UK etc. Anyway, tomorrow (the 1st of March in the U.S.) is not far away to finally find out for certain. I would think that if EA / Maxis has planned this right, they will be opening up the downloads to avoid a massive bottleneck on the 5th where users might get sub par download speeds when everybody that ordered is trying to get the game at the same time. Seems that SC5 is a substantial sized game and presumably has sold pre-orders reasonably well if not better so... Whether they'll open up the pre download on the 1st or the 4th or somewhere in between we'll have to wait and see for certain.

Very interesting. Not sure then what happened to my beta copy as I had it all set to the highest settings that were possible but my beta game looked absolutely nothing like the screen shot you are showing. Very strange. Hell, I've been watching a ton of beta videos this morning and none of them look like that screen shot either, at least none that I've watched thus far, maybe eventually I'll find some that do and in fairness I don't know what settings the videographers were using on their beta games, no way to tell, but even the style looks different in that screenshot than what I remember in my beta experience as well with what I'm seeing in these beta videos on youtube too. And yes as others have said... The city tile size is FAR too small, I was watching one of the dev videos and it was just pathetic how small the city tiles are. As others have said, this is no simCITY, it is SimTOWN at best right now. Perhaps that will change in the future through an expansion or DLC, But as I've now learned, "buy what you see is in the game now, NOT what you hope it will have in the future".

Could you elaborate on why you think that the glassbox engine is a good simulator? *Not saying it is not a good simulator but I'd like to hear why you believe that it is.

And well they should be. They're charging a premium price for the product and I'm sure they don't want the whole Blizzard error 13 fiasco on their heads. People will remember the launch problems with Diablo 3 well after anything else has happened to their game. I'm sure that Maxis would probably like to avoid a similar bad launch situation if at all possible.

Sadly, I believe that as well. I would honestly not be surprised if EA yanked the servers within 24 months. Unfortunately this game is typical of a 3D style game, the map gets smaller and the buildings get bigger so you can fit less in the same amount of area so that 2kmx2km area now feels about one quarter of the size. They will never be able to do anything about that unless they can somehow make the maps super huge and still perform well, which from what I've been reading is not possible right now.

"The limitation is ram"... I've got 16GB of RAM in my laptop, and 24GB in my desktop computer and I've yet to see any game that I own (and I've got over 200 on steam, and another 150 boxed games in my home office) ever utilize more than 3GB. Even those games that I manually set with a program to make them 4GB aware so they can use it if needed still never come even remotely close to even using 1/4 of the RAM that is available in my computer. We need to remember that some publishers and developers still think that the audience is not intelligent enough to see through their spiel and so continue to spout it. Ultimately I do not believe that the limitation is RAM, I believe the glass box engine they're working on is the true limiting factor here that they will not overcome. This game will never feel as fufilling as SC4 (with mods) has felt for the past many years. IMHO