paeng

SimCity Love Affair

At my age, living in a bustling metropolis, still needing to work for a living - as a developer in this furiously paced internet at that - I'm glad for anything a little more slow-paced. For me SC4 has (fortunately) developed into much more than a 'city building' simulation - thanks to all those creative minds that have for years now developed alternative content. Instead of having just multitudes of mostly rectangular building blocks we now have all sorts of, well - 'organic' material that is so important to our senses and general well-being.



My approach is not to 'build' cities, but rather to 'paint' sceneries. Opening a fresh tile is like stretching up a new canvass, opening my plugin folder is like unpacking my paintbox. Before I even think of sims or buildings, I raise hills and mountains, run rivers through them, establish some neighborhood connections with road stubs... and sometime later I'll see a spot where i feel "This is where people would want to live".



So a small town springs up and starts to grow - though with me constantly zoomed in on the surrounding details. And those details often dictate my 'progress' - I'm prone to cancel a building (or search for another spot) because I'm loathe to fell this tree or asphalt over that patch of greenery.



Mind you - my towns are all 'functional' in a game sense - balanced budget, good health and education facilities, well moving traffic, long life and prosperity and all that. Though what drives me is not pure functionality but my sense of aesthetics - careless lots with pretty buildings drive me nuts, wrong base textures and pink sidewalks can keep me busy for endless hours - until I have a picture where things blend as perfect as I can get them to with the (still limited) tools and materials.



One might say that those limitations (and how to overcome them) are more of a challenge to me than balancing the budget or fixing traffic problems.

I think that is the secret charme of what most of us now lovingly call SC5 - you can geek out on roads, highways, railways and airports, futuristic industrial zones, ultra high density urban centers, sprawling agricultural zones or dreamy little mountain towns... heck, you can even colonize Mars!



I always enjoy what others do, I gawk, I Ahh! and Ohh!, some I like more, some less - as long as I sense a love for and attention to detail, I'm easy to capture.




If you can relate to this rambling, you're ready to start a
Journey Through Paengia

or grab some of my
Uploads on the STEX

or visit my
Production Board



Member of the Night Owl Productions Team