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K-os

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About K-os

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  1. Yeah, then you go back to work at McDonalds the next morning in your Maserati to flip burgers in a suit. Best burger flipper ever. Unless someone beat you to your job at McD's and you're off to line up and find the next one. LOL! You have to admit though, it'd be an interesting life.
  2. Wasn't the whole agents thing supposed to make them smarter in finding jobs and improved school, fire, police radius or reach?? If they're still taking the shortest route what is the point? I also just learned the game is only using 1 CPU core for the simulation. Dual core, i3, i5, i7, doesn't matter. Wow. Now we all know why everything is the way it is. Glassbox welcome to 2006.
  3. Wow now that's the kind of details I was looking for. Sooo many limitations in road and building. This is definitely not the SC I was looking for.

  4. Discussion about City Tile Size

    K-os replied to alex macnamara's topic in SimCity (2013) General Discussion

    I got beta access but I really couldn't be arsed to check it out because I know it's a simplified neighborhood builder. 75% of the fun for me was working to create an efficient transportation system AND do a realistic layout. But reading from impressions around the web the whole game is set up to be a leaderboard challenge fest. Zone it all up in 1 hour and demolish buildings to replace with others to max out that pop. You can try to be creative like our talented CJ's here but why bother with a tiny tile and super gaps between every building enough to host block parties on. Let's see what they got in 2020 when their engine is improved and expansion packs are all released.
  5. Excellent post OP, I've thought many of the same things.
  6. Well obviously bigger would be better. It's not like it'd be mandatory to fill up the entire space anyways, so he's just trying to sell us on the small city aspect despite the game engine limitations. I can see why the scale is so small now though. With 100,000 possible sims per city, and 1.6M possible sims in a region, with each essentially being clickable and trackable like citizens from Tropico, and assuming they're able to move around, work and live in any city in the region, the huge amount of processing power does seem necessary. I just don't think the end result is worth the sacrifices made. Though I can see it being a good framework for the future. If 10 yrs later or so the same game engine and cloud network is able to support much larger tiles, population and regions from the progress in CPU power then I guess it'd be all worth it
  7. That blog post sounds like a bunch of excuses for their design choices. "The game is processing so much stuff even we have to help out! Please be amazed by that.." It seems their staff is in damage control mode. Another similarily lol worthy set of quotes from Kip: "One thing about large cities in SC4," says senior producer Kip Katsarelis, "I often found myself repeating the layout of my city as it grew out. There's basically a formula for where you place buildings and zone to get the right balance." Not so with the new SimCity, apparently. Katsarelis states that thanks to GlassBox Maxis can include "more variety, more change at local levels" and ensure there's "no "right" way to plan your city." "It's always changing based on your actions, making that 2kx2k space feel big." http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1728095/simcity_maxis_explains_limited_city_sizes.html

  8. Discussion about City Tile Size

    K-os replied to alex macnamara's topic in SimCity (2013) General Discussion

    I'd prefer a patch over an ex pack but I hope the size does get addressed. That said, I still believe theyre limiting city sizes at the moment to be compatible with an eventual iOS port for cross platform desktop-mobile play.

  9. Discussion about City Tile Size

    K-os replied to alex macnamara's topic in SimCity (2013) General Discussion

    I wonder if by simply decreasing the number of agents per building would performance increase linearly to that? So instead of 10 people per detached home, reduce to 2, a factor of 5. Apply 5x reduction for every building = 5x less processor intensive = 5x larger maps...

  10. Discussion about City Tile Size

    K-os replied to alex macnamara's topic in SimCity (2013) General Discussion

    Wow did they shrink that tile from the strategy video? It looks even smaller. The more I think about it, it seems the Glassbox must be stupidly inefficient and not scalable to handle bigger regions at all. If cross-mobile city play on your iPhone/iPad/browser isn't the reason then there's no other good explanation.

  11. Discussion about City Tile Size

    K-os replied to alex macnamara's topic in SimCity (2013) General Discussion

    Again, all the talk of Glassbox being so complex they have to limit to 2x2 is completely without basis, now that we know the minimum PC requirements. Pretty sure the main idea is to keep everything relatively small so if one wants they could play their city on the go on their phone or ipad or something in the near future. That and city building has become a competition with leaderboards.... so everyone needs the same area to build in to be fair, and most people dont have time to fill up big regions, so...

  12. Discussion about City Tile Size

    K-os replied to alex macnamara's topic in SimCity (2013) General Discussion

    Computing power is most definitely not the reason for the limit, as I thought it was before they released the minimum spec PC requirements. Clearly they're targetting a 2005 era PC to be able to the run the game. And as far as the amazing Glassbox complexity goes, what is the point if it's limited to small tile sizes? So we get the Tropico level detail of each individual Sim, and how they'll take the best route to go to work. No big deal. Again, how hard can it be to plan out transportation for a 2x2 km square? That's IMO what's supposed to be the main draw of SC series.... build up an interesting looking city while efficiently managing traffic and citizen needs... and the bigger it gets the bigger the challenge.
  13. They want to turn SimCity into a Tropico or Anno type game. No need for huge maps, and it'll be less processor intensive and arguably easier to develop. Look at the huge gaps between the buildings with the building upgrade components. It's so you can easily see every sim going around and doing stuff, see the conveyor belts pop out cupcakes, and click on them and get their info. On the other hand, look at Cities In Motion 2. From preview videos it looks like it'll have 10km x 10km maps, with actual terrain that's not perfectly flat. Sure, maybe we'll need a beefier than 2005 PC to play it but that's what progress is about
  14. Just saw this CiM2 preview video: The curved roads are perfectly smooth! In comparison with new SC: You can still see the jagged polygon edge style in the curves. Hopefully that can be fixed up.

  15. SimCity Will Be On Steam...

    K-os replied to RyanMorgan95's topic in SimCity (2013) General Discussion

    No way this is on Steam when EA is trying to push Origin. A competing online digital distro service...
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