knighthawk75

That part interests me but really only if it can some how be implemented in such a way that each portion can both be persisted on the 'server' end ( I badly want to checking out and watch other peoples cities run), as well as locally (though some might not be concerned with the local part - me I'm still on a relatively crap connection due to lack of options and don't want the requirement of having to be connected to just play [the same city I spend a life time creating online]). I may repeat my self a bit here but what the hell right - So what I'm thinking is something like I run a planet server myself (or host it or .. pay hoster for such, or hell maybe you guys figure out a supportable\workable model to do it yourselves without losing your shirts). I then design, configure or otherwise sort of generate the planet terrain, or maybe it's random, but I'd say if possible leave that up for modding but maybe random generate by default. Within said planet, folks can then [i can suggest possible specifics if needed] register or otherwise signup\in\auth to play\ own a 'city' on my server\planet. When I get access to said city the initial terrain\city is downloaded\synced to my local system copy, I can then play my city either online or offline and changes are replicated to the planet on demand, as I logoff, or perhaps trickel synced every so often as I play or some combination there of, perhaps it even stores local some level of planet parameters about things near by that have effects on my city [effects of close by citiies, or connections to some sort of planet infrastructure, etc or not]. What I think is sort of cool about that is so long as you keep the primary processing local you may be able to get a pretty decent chunk of players per-planet or server, as your really just using no more then fps like bandwidth and some storage space allowing for some good sized, possibility self supporting communities of players to develop, who could then watch and interact (in limited ways) with other cities on the planet. I could go on a bit, but seems like an awful large challenge to pull off in a pretty reliable way (lots of places for things to go wrong and eat up dev\test time) with a small team at this stage, and I'm not sure everyone would agree on the value vs effort upfront. If there is a away to focus mostly on the city sim characteristics while laying some of the ground work for this sort of thing, or leaving open your options to implement some of that without having to rework a ton of code, radically changing the dynamics later, or internal formats later then I might suggest that as a more fruitful path in the mid to longer term. I'm not even sure I'm describing the vision correctly but it does mimic in some ways citiesxl's planet concept from what I understood, only with implementation changes, perhaps I'm not even making any sense but just some more random thoughts on the matter and appreciate your requests for feedback and thoughts.

Have to agree, I don't ever really want to share control of my city with anyone, now having to fight or negotiate with neighbors over connection or resource or traffic dumping issue could\might be interesting. I did always wish I could upload and sync my cities with some fantasy world online that would allow others to view\walk\drive through it and perhaps make 'connections' that way sort of like cxl plant thing (while also being able to play it offline), but that implementation never seemed quite right and seemed the costs to run something like that couldn't generate enough demand to cover it - at least the way they approached it.

Both a lack of demand and technical\implementation choices. Who am I going to play on a lan with @ home? Approach with caution.

Hahaha that had me going for about the first sentence. cute. Thanks for the monthly drop I'll be sure and play around some more with the new build this weekend.

All these suggestions, desires and passion should be directed to the couple of groups working on various city building games, directing them toward a literal sim city 5..6..whatever via EA\Maxis is a complete dead end. Maybe we'll eventually get an equivalent out metropolis, synekism or the various others.

Wow that was quick. thx! BTW reported new bug via support@ and googlegroups That said anyone closing in on 2.1billion in accumulated balance save a copy of your city before you hit that mark else you'll rollover to a negative balance.

This is why the next release will probably have no new features, just stability and BUG fixes. You are completely right. The Dezone Tool (and the Dozer, since it's the same kind of tool) has obviously not been tested properly with the new camera system and it's broken. I'm not sure yet if it I'll do a patch but it's likely. That said, we might allow you to "zone without zones" in the next release as it's an very very simple feature to implement although we're running out of hotkeys . As for the loading times, we only added some file access checks but didn't modify the load/save code at all this release so I'm not sure why you would experience slower loads. The thing about save/load is that we probably won't spend much time optimizing it, as I think gameplay performance is more important than load times for these types of games. Not saying we won't at all, it's just a lower priority. Sounds good, and I'd fully agree gameplay performance is far more important than load times.

initial thoughts after 30minutes with the new build. I like the new movement system as it's more intuitive\ flows better. However the new movement system has effectively broken the dezone tool, causing me to spend way to much time single clicking every darn lot to dezone now, instead of being able to select the tool and click and drag like before. Please find a way to fix that, perhaps a key to hold down to counter act the camera. Also as much as I like the lot tool improvements for fast layouts I also find it kind of pointless; as I could zone area already gridded out nearly as fast and more selectively using the F key. I'd rather have the ability with the road tool for it to layout the road grids unzoned like that of the updated lot tool. I tried just using the lot tool and then attempting to unzone what it created but the new camera system has made that next to impossible due to the single click issue\conflict. Oh fyi city load times appear to be noticeably longer then they used to be (45m city) in the last build, just pointing it out, overall it's still minimal. /2cents.

Sweet, thanks for another monthly snapshot, looking forward to trying out the changes.

Nice to see things back up, thanks for all the work. Guess I'll be the first to say I really don't like the colors\styling, seem much harder to read, less contrast; not loving the stex layout either but whatever though not my call so I'll deal and adapt to it.

Read only would certainly explain it. doh! btw saw this and thought I'd pass it along though can't say if it tests the card, but it supposedly does query the card. http://nsis.sourceforge.net/PixelShaderCheck Also related. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2008/06/05/8576818.aspx http://www.gamedev.net/topic/582616-checking-version-of-directx-supported-by-graphics-card/

Probably doesn't matter but x32 or x64? Sounds like the save routine is returning ok when in fact an error of some kind happened in the write or pre-write process. Does the file\modified timestamp change on the city1.syci file? You got me curious, I'll take a couple stabs at trying to reproduce it. Probably tried this but figured I'll ask anyway, have you tried removing 40\40a and then a clean re-install of 40a?

chptrk - I've not run across that problem having saved many times. What platform are you on? Does Ctrl-S work to save it without using the menu?

Yeah, right now I've mandated that only the blind and color blind may move into the city.

44 million and climbing ~ 1/4th the space used. http://img233.imageshack.us/i/synekismalphabuild2140a.jpg/ Looking forward to the next build.

Checked out the February build with a 1.5m city nice, performance is great on my gaming rig. posted in google groups with other comments. So far I really like where this is headed, insane amount of work still ahead for you guys but I like the progress, hopefully it can be sustained