jumbz55

Welcome to Springfield! After playing the game for a few weeks now, I feel comfortable enough to share my new City Journal with you! Springfield's goal is to create a sustainable low-polluting city that encourages citizens to use Public Transport, Recycle and invest in low-polluting industries such as Business, Agriculture and Forestry. Update 1: WELCOME TO SPRINGFIELD DAY 1! The city was founded with two towns and a small forestry/agricultural area. Public transport is of major importance. A 3-stop metro and expansive bus system is already in place and have led to low traffic and efficient connectivity. Current population: 7,000 Bus lines: 3 Metro lines: 2 Stay Tuned!

Hey all! So if you're interested, here is a previous journal of mine from CitiesXL: made that in 2010... but yes now onto SimCity...! City of Bensville This is the city of Bensville... The humble beginnings of a small suburb outside a much larger city that provides coal mining and nuclear power... Bensville will be a cultural, education and commercial centre for the region. As well as the regional time-keeper! (Big Ben hohoho ) The city has a number of wealthy residents. Their streets are lined with fountains and stone statues. Bensville is a very green city... for now... Part Two. As the city continues to grow - so do the job opportunities. Workers from neighboring cities catch the train or bus to get to the offices. 'Town Square' is a central open space in the city that divides East and West. It will soon house a university for the region's students. Mister Mayor lives in a giant mansion at the rich-end of town. Down his avenue is the city church. As traffic begins to increase, the single green avenue that leads from the city entrance to the commercial district is slowly clogging up... some new transport alternatives are in the works! Part 3 Whilst modern skyscrapers burst into the skyline, the city's Eastern end tries to maintain its heritage roots with low density. The university is constructed in 'Town Square'. Business and traffic picks up! The once slow-paced city of Bensville has turned into a bustling metropolis. The West End provides luxury apartments whilst the Eastern end supplies a number of high-wealth office jobs. An old-city in the middle maintains the historical buildings from earlier on.

So the big one we've all been waiting for has released. These last few years I've jumped back into SC4 and found a new passion for the game. It's quite frankly the fact that it never gets old. The creativity is near-endless. Whilst it could probably do with a patch to fix its stability (I am unaware of any of the latest patches from 3rd-party vendors) it more or less hit the nail on the head 90% of the time in being the 'perfect' SimCity title. So as I experienced Cities XL's numerous incarnations and the quite amusing SimCity Societies I always found myself back at SC4 - sometimes in an unhealthy binge! It's just bloody addictive! Fast-forward March last year. I found out the new Simcity was being released. I thought it was a joke. I had googled 'new simcity' probably every month ever since I got back into the 4th version. Then the glassbox engine. Wow! It looked cool right? All those colours and sprites tunnelling around under the roads. The whole multi-city concept sounded so far from what I was expecting. So Awesome. This was followed by videos, interviews, demos and a beta. Hell I pre-ordered in an instant. And then this... Okay. So all these messages I am seeing from Maxis do really seem quite genuine. I know it's their job. And anyone who has read Marketing 101 knows that this is obviously an outcry to consumers for their continued support. When a brand stuffs up. The company has an enormous task to reassure them that they will be compensated - in this case round the clock server updates and a free game. Otherwise Maxis is probably never going to recover - which would be a massive shame. I noticed that their logo has been re-introduced into the Sims 3 game as well. Looks like EA might be trying to tout some kind of 'we support the developer' thing. They are an awesome company. And I remember from when the Sims 1 & 2 and SC4 were released the enormous 'community' feel the games had from their online forums. Maxis is all about creating a community-feel in their games. That's why they really pushed the whole custom content thing. And now they've attempted to expand upon this. I'm not too sure on the general consensus of this community, but the wider public are very (and understandably) outraged. But we gotta hang in there. They're gonna fix it (I hope). Let's just hope that, for the wider gaming developers out there, they have learnt from this. That's just my 2-cents.

Hahaha! Such a good call

I'm taking the position that it is far too early to judge this game. It has really only been announced since March (3 & 1/2 months ago) and still has about twice that time to go before it is released - keeping in mind if they haven't ironed out all problems by then they may choose to delay it (from memory this happened to SC4 or some other Sim Maxis title - correct me if I'm wrong). I think if you look on the Simcity website - all those videos about glassbox are quite technical. They are definitely aimed at ST & the core fanbase. Curvey roads, multiplay etc, great works etc. They would be aimed at a more general audience - ala E3! They're not going to go into all the details about data, architecture and such at a conference that only allows them to give soundbites. Lucy Bradshaw literally talked for 5 minutes in EA's 1-hour segment. 2 of those minutes was on SimCity Social! They basically have to market the game like crazy right now in order to generate interest and pre-orders. Maxis don't really have the same name that they did back in the days of previous Sim City titles and The Sims (1 & 2) so really I'd say their success as a company is really riding on this game. They don't have Will Wright's name backing on this title (a first). Spore is nowhere near the juggernaut that The Sims was so they have to really get this one right! I think if they looked at history they would listen to their core fanbase. I never really got involved in the SC fanbase until recently when I picked the game up again but I was more a Sims person (mainly in the Machinima community). I remember these communities of The Sims 2 died out - If anyone has heard of Sims99 - its closing was a seriously sad day! But that game basically got into a cycle of creating the same expansions for every version. but never listened to what the core machinima fan wanted. Although it wasn't Maxis, they are fully aware that SCS was a flop. The Sims 3 - although not a total flop - had the same negative opinions from core fans thus it was not as popular as Sims 1 or 2. I think this game has some seriouspotential! I am really excited to see this iteration of the game last a very long time - and I mean with updates, expansions, active community. I think the multiplay option even opens this up to a bigger audience and I am loving the realworld take on pollution and cities working together. If that stuff isn't realistic (climate change being a very hot topic!) I don't know what is! I hope it introduces a number of new players to the game so they can learn like we all did back in the day that if you have a radioactive meltdown, you're gonna get a bloody giant lizard!

Totally agree! I guess we had a bit of control over this in SC4 in terms of being able to decide on zoning density. However now that zoning density is supposedly controlled by road type and traffic density this could become problematic. Suppose you had a busy road connecting residential buildings to the outskirts of a cbd that was really busy but aesthetically, having the tallest building here wouldn't really make much sense!

Haha! I like this idea!! I reckon it's great to have the more relevent issues like climate change, financial crisis etc. themed within the game.

I hope you are right! And yes that is true I guess we can just connect em up. Hopefully it gives the same appearance as a big city though!

I voted 3 but from what I can see (and considering it's half a year away) this is going to be an awesome version of SimCity! Super excited! I guess the only thing I am a little annoyed about is the removal of being able to control zoning density and the fact that map sizes will be significantly smaller - it doesn't look like cities are going to be able to be very big in this version in comparison to previous versions. But they might change that! Anyway can't wait!

I'm pretty sure I've seen SC5 clips of powerlines being laid down so pipes will probably still be there but it will probably work in the same way as power was in SC4. You only use them if there's a great distance between buildings. So yeah much better IMO - having to put pipes down for all the buildings is tedious

I for one believe competition - in that the existence of both CXL and SC2013 (5 or whatever u wanna call it) - is a great thing! If you guys have been paying attention to EA and Maxis, they have been running with the line that they are the King of city builders and that many have tried to imitate without much success (referring to SCS, CL and I'm sure CXL as well). It would seem that the hiatus of SC between number 4 and the new one could be linked with the fact that there was NO competition! They didn't need a new game! The death of CXL could result in the slowing of development on SC5. I for one would love to see both games improve. The main point is that city builders/simulators have there important place in the gaming sphere. I'm especially loving how CXL introduced resources and SC5 is continuing this feature but now making them finite. They are kind of one-upping each other so yeah that's great IMO! And it teaches the youngins who are perhaps picking up these games about all the urban/social/environmental issues that come with real life society. I am super excited for the future of this genre! It is especially relevant to our modern societies.

LOL! this is hilarious

It's the E3 Announcement, Maxis did a 5 minute presentation headed by Lucy Bradshaw (search for it on youtube, there's a heap of versions). The part about shared regions with friends I saw somewhere either a video/article but I forget where... it was legit though (or seemed it anyway).

looks similar to The Sims 3 graphics. I'm sure it will be further polished but at the moment I am liking it! Thumbs up and can't wait

Have to agree! The regions and this style of gameplay do seem to be revolutionary in terms of city building. A much better concept compared to what Cities XL had. If you guys heard Lucy Bradshaw talk (and it's also on their website), she said that we will be able to make our own private regions, shared regions with friends and then something similar to a massive multiplayer online experience. I love the choice! I reckon that in terms of regions/nations there will be already laid out rail/highways/city connectors (similar to what we had in the Sims 1) and then you need to plop your city on one of the lots and connect it to the highway. This will probably be for the multiplayer online. Hopefully the private region will be similar to SC4, I also would like to customise my intercity transport design. Loving the idea of building airports and fusion reactors with other citybuilders. Go Maxis!