logan86

Hi art128, I love your city! I love how you managed to keep every single thing in keeping with your theme. Nothing is out of place at all, which is quite an achievement. I've been trying to create a city worthy of doing a journal myself, and I wanted to ask you how you did that amazing looking street lighting in the night time picture. The green lighting on the roads and blue lighting on the streets is just the coolest looking thing I've ever seen in this game! Sorry if it's bad etiquette to ask about mods in a city journal comments section, but I just had to ask because that lighting is so cool. Anyway I love your city and I would love to see more of it.

Hi guys I purchased cities xl preorder through steam when it came out. needless to say i was hugely dissapointed but i thought that maybe there would be new content after a little while. anyway i got bored of waiting and moved on to other games i already owned and a few new ones too. i never even tried planet offer because for me a city building game is a single player experience. obviously i was shocked to see a total lack of mass transit etc. So anyway i was thinking about the game again the other day and i thought i would drop by here to ask how its doing. whats the current situation. are features still divided between single player and planet offer. can i expect mass transit for single player and everything else? has any other real new content come out for the game? has anything changed at all such as the lot size issue and all the other issues? what has kept you guys still playing, if you are still playing at all? logan

hey guys i was wondering has anyone else tried the simoleon RH mod by raphaelninja. when i downloaded it a rather strange thing happened. the mod itself worked perfectly and sure enough i started a city on medium difficulty with a cool 25 million in my account. that was nice, but there was a rather unexpected side effect. all the higher points of the terrain, hills and mountains, were covered with snow. this snow slowly melted away in spring and then came back in winter. it doesnt work very well though as it covered all of the roads in an asthetically unpleasing way. but who cares how it looked. what the hell was it doing there in the first place. i have a fair few mods and plugins but i promise everyone on my life that i do not even possess one which contains snow or any snow textures. the only thing that changed was installing this mod which is also rather tiny i should mention. i just dragged and dropped the .dat file into the plugins folder and that was it. so how is this possible? im very suspicious to say the least. has anything like this ever happened to anyone else? Logan

oh my god. i feel so silly now. i literally spend ages trying to find the solution. then i just gave up and uninstalled the whole game and reinstalled. then i had to reinstall the whole 1gb + of mods and content that i had. i cant believe how stupid i am. but thankyou by the way for letting me know because i've still been a bit suspicious since then and trying to figure out what happened.

Hello all Im a long time player of sc4, ever since it came out in fact, but i've never really delved into custom content like i should have. I was wondering if anyone could reccomend me a list of some good custom content that encompasses many different aspects of sim city 4. i have already started to build up a little collection, but i've noticed that all i've done is ended up with lots of high wealth commercial buildings and some ploppables. these are all very nice, but they havent really given me the variety in all stages of a city like i was hoping. so i was wondering if everyone could tell me one or two things that you think are essential to adding variety in all stages of a city, in any density or wealth. maybe even just tell me whats in your plugins folder that you like. also, i was paticularly hoping to find some good growable buildings to really start adding some variety and detail. the only area that im not too fussed about right now is agricultral, but maybe thats because its so bland at the moment that i dont really know what im missing. Thankyou so much for any advice anyone can give me on really sprucing up my game a little bit. I should probably mention that i already have NAM 2009. thanks guys for your help :-)

arrrgh! wading through so many packs of dependencies can drive you mad quite quickly as im now learning. i think im on top of it all though with only one or 2 brown boxes appearing so far. but its all so cool now with all kinds of lovely new buildings and functional lots all over the place. anyways, my quest continues

wow, thankyou so so much guys. that has given me so much to look through. Im really grateful for all you guys repyling with so many good cc ideas to look up. put together its already a lifetimes worth of stuff. Im going to start downloading right now. Also can i just say this is like the best community ever. and also sim city rules forever :-)

If i understand you correctly everclear then i would guess that is to prevent the system being exploited. if it didnt get less profitable the more you sold (the opposite of real life) then people could just do a huge retail zone and sell all the excess for massive amounts of money. or alternatively they could buy in all the resources they would ever need without really having to sweat for it. so this system also seems to be part of the push towards planet offer as it kind of hinders specialisation/ single player city growth. but it also prevents blatant exploits.

it is funny though that they didnt even check about the whole 'connection' thing. the old city life was funny like that too with some quirky spelling and grammar.

I just have to say, sc4 is still the most amazingly deep and challenging and fun city building game ever. after all these years i still enjoy it so much. in fact my disc has been ruined so i've ordered another one online. which just goes to show, its so good that its still making money even now. i also have to confess that im feeling paticularly fanatical about sc4 after being so so let down by cxl. and i was thinking, i hope this game never dies. i hope that the community will always support what may always be the greatest city builder ever. also i was thinking, how amazing would it be if there could ever be a real sim city 5 one day. not neccessarily anything to do with ea or anything like that. but just something with just as much depth and and creativity and fun, and obviously completely upadated graphics. that would be cool. i know this post seems very random but i just had to express my appreciation for what is still the greatest game i've ever played and certainly still king of the city building genre.

Hello everyone. firstly i'd just like to say that im new to simtropolis so hello all. i have been a long time player of simcity 4 and im still loving it. obviously, like many people, i was hugely excited when i learned of cities xl. at first like everyone else i thought this was the game i had been waiting for. 6 years on from sc4 something was finaly going to be just as in depth, just as strategic, just as amazing, but with awesome modern graphics. However, clearly that was not to be. but i bought cities xl anyway because im not completely closed off to the idea of another type of city builder all together. and i have to say so far it doesnt seem like such a bad effort. but there are obviously a lot of crushing dissapointments (Mass transit, no city sounds, no management of anything of any kind whatsoever) which i dont need to aire in this thread because they have already been discussed. But there is one thing was i have really been noticing. and that is that i cant figure out what the challenge of the game is meant to be. what are the objectives. what does one, do? with there being no region play, there is nothing really to work towards. i guess you could just keep on restarting identical cities over and over again but why. if i've made one city thats amazing, why make another. they cant interact in any way so who really cares about what they do. you can just leave them dying on your map if you cant be bothered and move on. and here's the other thing, when you are doing your city. how does every body here go about starting? from what i can see after placing your city hall all you have to do is grind population to unlock new things. so somebody enlighten me, what does one do in this game, apart from grind population to unlock buildings that have no function whatsoever. why do i even care about unlocking a police station, when theres no crime?

Originally posted by: 0wn3d Originally posted by: logan86 yes but you have to be able to define things in some way. otherwise i could just say, the internet is an mmo. we are thousands of people interacting with each other now. so this forum is an mmo forum. this is the problem with genres these days, yes we want variation, but there is no point in desperatly trying to mix genres that have no relevance to each other. if everything that knightrider said was in the game, then it would be an mmo. thats the kind of level i would set to be a minimum for an mmo. a chat window is not mmo style interaction any more than this is. it doesnt have to involve beating each other up but still...quote> Your clearly forgetting that MMO really means MMOG which means Massively Multiplayer online GAME. Unless you consider the internet a game, its not an MMOG. Your also forgetting that MMO is not a genre... MMORPG would be a genre, and so would MMOCB. Completely different genres. Originally posted by: niloluiz Looking exclusively from this angle you are correct. However the term genuine MMO invokes a broader definition in what CXL doesn't fit, at least compared with the average gameplay standard of the MMOs available today. The "interaction" is the same of a hipotetical public chat room that have animated/3d avatars on a virtual 3d room representation of the traditional chat list. It has thousands of people "interacting" on the same server, the chat rooms can be permanent, but that doesn't make this sophisticated chat room into a MMO. So far, with the exception of the trade mechanism (which includes the blueprint/megastructures system) and the visit mode that transform the city on a 3D chat room, there's no other MMO gameplay aspect. And those aspects represents a slim portion of the gameplay. 90%+ of all the on-line gameplay is pure solo-play that require no interaction whatsoever. When and if this changes, then we can call CXL a authentic MMO, on the broader definition of the term.quote> A public chat room that has animated or 3d avatars in a virtual 3d room IS an MMO. How do you fail to understand that? Go check out Second Life. The game really is a giant sophisticated chat room, and yes its considered an MMO. You also clearly havn't made a city of over like 50,000 people, because once you get there, and especially above 100,000, unless you can be completely self sufficient the game relies heavily on the trading system. The only way to make a ton of money is through exports, and the only way to get certain things is through imports if your not on a balanced map. Obviously in the beginning there is no trade, there isn't supposed to be trade. The beginning is supposed to be easy, but when you make a big city its very possible to have over 100 trade contracts. quote> all of this is completely contradictory. firstly you told me to remember that mmo means a GAME, and then you go and say a public chat room that has 3d avatars is an mmo. but also though, in any other mmo of any description, you are with other players interacting with them in many other ways than just talking and trading. for a start you are doing things together, not seperately. in cxl you are by yourself, looking at a chat window with people spamming trade ads at you. really though i think the real issue here is this. no one would care whether it could be classed as an mmo or not if there wasnt one unique thing about mmo's compared to all other games. only an mmo requires a montly fee. so its so contraversial, because they are trying to claim its a genre which by its very nature requires things like monthly fees. but they are doing this without providing any features of that genre. its so true that the feautres would have barely counted as multi player a few years ago.

yes but you have to be able to define things in some way. otherwise i could just say, the internet is an mmo. we are thousands of people interacting with each other now. so this forum is an mmo forum. this is the problem with genres these days, yes we want variation, but there is no point in desperatly trying to mix genres that have no relevance to each other. if everything that knightrider said was in the game, then it would be an mmo. thats the kind of level i would set to be a minimum for an mmo. a chat window is not mmo style interaction any more than this is. it doesnt have to involve beating each other up but still...

hello. i wrote a massive reply before but the internet went down so i lost it. i cant handle re writing it again so in brief... there is still no crime. just because they are worried about crime. there never is any. its just to make them happy. there are no stats on what crimes or where or even a view of crime or anything because there is none. in many ways its even more woefully basic than sim city societies ever was. and the same with fire. just because they worry about fire who cares, no fire can actually ever happen. this is the same for everything you can think of. including education. in fact there is simply nothing in the game. thats why i was saying, its far too easy. you do have to balance citizens happiness. you should note here i didnt say their needs. you balance their happiness. thats all there is. the only other element of balance is one that you have to pay to get and thats via trading. there is no intercity trading for single player making specialisation completely pointless. your resources can never leave the city. every city just has to be a clone if playing single player. the whole thing is just stupid. in fact you know what, im going to say, cxl is pratically a casual game. it requires almost no intelligence to play what so ever.

Originally posted by: Aurelis I think that chat box qualifies as a.. chat box. You can chat for free all over the internet you don't have to pay 10 or 6 or w/e amount of money to do that in game each month. As far as trading goes - you could trade energy/garbage/water in simcity 3000, trading with a person rather than AI would hardly qualify as multiplayer in 1999, let alone 2009.quote> i couldn't agree more.

hmmm, indeed. i do have one thought, if they had any intention of giving us even a little bit of what we wanted, they would have already done it. they have made their intentions clear. if they do turn the train round it will be against their will, and only when they have already come to the brink of failiure. then maybe they might start listening to people. also i do find it funny that cxl has no trains so that just kind of sums it all up really. wow, i've had a really angry 24 hours or so with mc and this game

they do only want our money. there is no intercity trading in single player, which means all cities must be identical. there is no specialisation, and dont let anyone try and fool you to think otherwise. things like specialisation and other things that should be in any game, you will have to pay a monthly fee for.

the whole situation has now moved firmly into depressing now. i just cant believe, and i mean really, i cant believe that anyone would do this to us. i feel so betrayed and so cheated. and it is true, with the way that they're on simtropolis, they just thought, lets try and identify what those people want, trick them for ages, and then put a wall around them and charge for it. they have no right to do this to us. i certainly wont be paying for planet offer, which is essentially nothing anyway. honestly people, just think, dont pay for nothing. certainly not if you've earned your money your self. but i guess if it was a case of them being the evil drug dealer and i am so desperate for my fix then what choice do i have, i have to admit that i would pay for single player expansion packs if they came out. even for like

but it doesnt have to be called sim city, and it certainly doesnt have to be published by EA. in fact i hope we are saved from the horror that would be upon us if that were the case. it could be a brand new game, with a brand new name, from a completely new publisher/developer. as long as its good it doesnt really matter where its from. so even if sim city is gone it doesnt mean that there cant still be a city builder thats actually good. just because sim city is gone, that doesnt mean we all have to give up hope completely. how awful would it have been if after half life no one ever made a good first person shooter ever again.

Originally posted by: 0wn3d In single player you can trade, but only with omnicorp, and the prices aren't very good (They buy at ok prices, but sell at insanely high prices). quote> but that isnt really intercity trading. that would just involve deliberatly over producing a resource to sell it. if i understand correctly this wouldnt actually benefit any of your other cities, because they cant buy it, only omnicorp can. so trading is just pointless apart from to raise money and to prevent needed resources completely stopping the player from moving on with a city. there is still no benefit between cities. as far as i can see thats just a work around to the real game system, which once again, involves paying for planet offer. its like a trading bot so you can bypass the trading gameplay which is what the game relies on. this really points towards the games over reliance on planet offer. so it just makes for a stale single player workaround.

i love this idea. i would love any idea that would ultimatly lead to an improved, updated, modern day sc4 with even more features and all the bells and whistles so to speak. that would be awesome.

i totally agree with mr_maison. that is exactly what i meant about depth and region play, and depth, and useless police stations. also just because the people leave if they dont have a police station it doesnt mean that theres any crime. also i totally agree that its not all about the budget, its just so hard to sum it all up when you think about all the aspects that make really solid gameplay and region play so important. its totally about the creativity and projects and challenges. thats what i meant about the game feeling too easy, because it holds your hand. the other thing is Androv i know you say you're making an office/ resort city and stuff but once again that is all only relevant to planet offer, there is no inter city trading or links in single player. so that just kind of proves the point, you cant have specialised cities in single player, because they cant interact making the specialities pointless and useless. Also own3d, thankyou for telling me because i genuinly didnt actually know what the difference was. to be honest thats why i always didnt understand why mmo's were charged apart from the content dev side. but yes, now that im more informed, i think that mc are just crazy. who would want to pay to host massive serviers by themselves like that. they are totally relying on people to pay or they'll lose so much money, thats crazy. especially because of the state of the game that they're asking us to pay for. why didnt they just let people do online multiplayer on servers that the players host. they could still be fully persistant cities. i mean, why not? and they could have just made a really good server browser and community tools and make it all only optional and then be done with it. i'd rather that than some planet offer propoganda every time i log on. also how mad does that sound, im talking about a single player game, and using the phrase 'log on,' instead of just 'launch.' i think that kind of sums up a lot of the negative feeling really.

yes but why are they worrying about gameplay extensions when they dont even have the gameplay bit done yet? im feeling annoyed tonight after a whole day of playing and its just a bit, meh.

Originally posted by: gnomonite I seriously dont think MC will be working with the community. The company who launches a game on friday and then shuts down its studio for saturday and sunday is definitely not serious either about the game or the gamers.quote> wow, did they really. i have to say that does seem like quite an indifferent attitude towards the game and to their customers

but the question is, does specialising a city have any rewards in single player mode though. i should also mention that i dont have planet offer because i feel those types of features are offered by almost every other game for free. imagine trying to charge people to play call of duty online. no one would do it. especially if when you went online there was just a chat window. i really really do feel that the service of planet offer is not really worth paying for with anyones hard earned money. only people who get an allowance from their parents are likely to go for this. when you work for your money, you dont like to just give it away for something like intercity transport. An expansion pack though, and one with some real real meat on it, i would pay for. if it included loads of mass transit and some form of region play or intercity trade in single player. but then there would be no point in planet offer, as these are the only real things that it offers. so i doubt that will happen. im so sorry though, because im really ranting on now. but back to the point, does specialising a city make any difference whatsoever when you cant trade excess resources with other cities to further your goals. if you specialise in fuel and food production, that fuel and food cant leave the city, so that city would just be stupid and have way way too much fuel and food. im really quite liking the idea of cities xl so far but it clearly needs much much more work and another thing i've noticed today; it needs more buildings, there is a lot of repetition of the exact same buildings and if you make a little retail area this becomes increasingly noticible, everything is kind of pasted like a pattern. i think though that having completely fixed lot sizes and squared zones does compound this problem some what. and i would use the free zoning option, but it doesnt really work for reasons obvious to anyone who has played. also, if you ever even dare to think about curved roads then you just get massive gaps every where and with the fixed lots it looks very unrealistic. as far as i can see the only way to efficiently make a city is using straight roads and squared zones of identical 3x2 size surrounded by the smallest most inappropriate roads for any city. and because there is no grid, it makes it impossible to just lay your own roads and count the squares to get around the problem. "end rant" but still though i think this game has a lot of potential, and i've had a very long day so im sounding completely irrational. but as crazy as i am right now, its also worth noting that i am also quite correct.