Overkast

Would the moderators here be willing to have one single thread that's pinned at all times, but only open to posting by certain moderators or top contributers, as an ongoing update of performance reviews for SC 2013 as new fixes are released and patch the game? Kind of like a "blog" of new news to some extent? There's tons of information in this forum, but key points about core game issues and patch fix results for those issues are scattered all over the forum like a gumbo, and it's hard to get to the heart of matters without having to sift through tons of other non-relevant post headlines. Basically this thread would be a summary of performance milestones as they occur with patches over time... Thoughts?

I'm excited! Thanks to all who are working on the NEXL modification for CXL... I'm loving the promise statement on the site: "We promise to change forever the way you see CitiesXL."

Fantastic work so far guys. Would be great to leverage that tram track development to create closer double rails on metro tracks. I hate how far apart the tracks are by default. The airplane paths is freakin' sweet!

I'm in 100% agreement here. With the (supposed) full modding capabilities, I am confident that anything this game lacks in it's 2012 release may eventually come to be... but none of that really matters if your game still performs like a bloated pig when you build a big city.

I agree with you soltangris on all points made, and I think Blizzard especially is an exception to the norm in software development. They're almost always awesome, and they're the model developer. I think it's also important to remember that this problem exists beyond just the gaming industry... all software companies release bugs in their software because it is virtually impossible to perfect an application for an industry where the client side is always a variable. Especially now that custom PC-building is so abundant compared to how things used to be, it becomes increasingly harder to satisfy an audience of computer gamers. This is why game developers are leaning more and more towards consoles, because one game plays the same for all. Also consider the price tag here. Developing software that sells at $40 a pop versus, say Adobe's Creative Suite of applications which amount to thousands of dollars. There's a higher standard to uphold your development to in applications than in games, and when considering all these variables and circumstances, the reality of the situation is that you can't possibly expect games from these small developers to be the holy grail of bug-free implementation. What's interesting to me is that Focus Home decided to pick up this title from Monte Cristo in the first place. They took a seemingly dead title and somewhat resurrected it, so we could possibly be looking at a true re-birth in the making here for this game. We shall see...

Originally posted by: abvex I am getting a real bad feeling about Focus and the CitiesXL Developer. I rather have EA buy them and do the next simcity with an optimised version of the citiesxl engine. I just don't think the current devs are competent enough to truly fix this game...if they haven't done it by now....what will another month do? They'll do some minimal optimization of the code that gives you a little more fps...thats all. No real memory leak fix nor the game actually using multiple cores. Which are the BIGGEST issues by far....then the broken trade and notification system....then we can start taking about road networks and lot sizes then mods.....quote> I think that's a natural feeling considering the jaded past of this game, but I'll bet you anything that Focus has some of the previous MC developers on their staff and working on this game for them. The beta testers seemed all in concensus that Focus did fix a large amount of issues from v09 to v11, and with news of an impending patch they at least sound committed to supporting the game for now. It's only been 1 week since it was released, so let's see what happens... Focus at least deserves a fair shot. I'm trying to stay confident that this game will eventually be opened up to the modders sometime down the road anyway... It's just a matter of time and patience. Though it would be in Focus' best interest to speak up more directly about that to the community, to help influence more sales even on the speculation of turning Cities XL into a legacy title like SimCity 4 became.

Yep, there's definitely a memory leak in this game. I only have 10,000 population in my cities but it makes no difference... seems like the longer you keep the game running the worse it gets. Plus couple this memory leak issue with the fantastic "Token Export to other city..." pop-up window glitch and it makes the matter even worse.

After upgrading my computer a year ago in anticipation of Cities XL, but then refusing to buy CXL 2009 due to obvious reasons, I am happy to say I've officially taken the plunge and purchased CXL 2011 off Steam and am downloading it now!!! I've seen enough comments from Beta testers on improvements and seen enough already-released mods from the Modders for version '09 to have a gut feeling about a bright future for this game, and I'm excited to finally put my PC hardware to the test this weekend!!! I will post my initial thoughts after the weekend when I've had some time to play...

Not another Youtube video with 009 Sound System music!!! AACK! For the love of everything holy....

Originally posted by: pressure ...I'm sure everybody remembers the Rush Hour pack and how it completely transformed SC4, both with in-the-box content and material that supported further modding (which is still active today).quote> This is precisely what I was thinking before I read your post... It sounds to me that CXL 2011 has the potential to be a real catalyst for this game... the same type of catalyst that Rush Hour was for SC4. Based on all the good things and positive vibe I'm hearing from the Beta testers, I am finally stating my commitment that I will go out and buy this game when it gets released in October. Focus Home can finally count on getting my dollars which Monte Cristo never did. To the Beta testers... how did the overall game performace seem to you? I'm concerned about graphic requirments and my machine's abiltiy to keep up. Do you feel the stated requirments are accurate or understated? Will FH release a demo for public download so we can try before we buy?

NAM 29 seems to work fine so far for me from a gameplay functionality standpoint, but I'm having on-screen rendering issues when I move across the map, it artifacts and some parts of the map stay in view despite moving away from that area. Any ideas? I've tried both hardware and software video modes to no avail. Sadly, I notice NAM 29 also doesn't support Paeng's parks as they don't render properly (or at all) when placed

NAM 29 seems to work fine so far for me from a gameplay functionality standpoint, but I'm having on-screen rendering issues when I move across the map, it artifacts and some parts of the map stay in view despite moving away from that area. Any ideas? I've tried both hardware and software video modes to no avail. Sadly, I notice NAM 29 also doesn't support Paeng's parks as they don't render properly (or at all) when placed

Originally posted by: nick13 at this point i don't care if there is going to be a sc5 because with all the mods and bats that are released daily i think its better than sc5 could ever be quote> There's no denying what modding has done for SC4 from a longevity standpoint, but I can't deny that I'm a graphics guy and I love the 3D details of a game like CitiesXL. I want both in one package (hence my signature). I would buy SC5 in a heartbeat if it came out w/ the same robustness in functionality of the native SC4 game (even pre-Rush Hour) and the jazz of a modern graphics engine.

I just posted a little jab at EA on their own forums – my hopeless attempt that someone at EA might actually read it, have it sink in and make sense, and spark a reaction which may ultimately lead to development of an SC5. I know, I'm a dreamer... but in the meantime it makes for a good read if I may say so myself... thought you guys might appreciate it: "I work for a software company who develops software for the AEC industry, and we sponsor an annual event where young students use SimCity 4 to design cities of the future. We look at these children as the next generation of professionals for the AEC industry, and infrastructure planning is HUGE business. This is not just children designing cities on a game, it's a testing of knowledge to challenge kids to find solutions for urban development problems – it promotes advancement through stimulation and we recognize the impact such stimulation can have in motivating young kids to pursue careers where they can literally improve the World's future. That said, if "money making" is truly the reason why EA HASN'T yet taken the SimCity 4 model and built upon on it for a better game in "SimCity 5", then I think they need to step back and take another hard look at the total picture. They need to look at what's going on around the entire world and not just confine their visions to the narrow-sightedness of gaming industry trends, because next-generation infrastructure planning is only trending to become more popular as world population grows and cities run out of space to put people. IMO, EA is already losing some serious ground by letting this already-developed and successful game model sit on their shelves and rot. It's only a matter of time before someone snatches up the Cities XL rendering engine and applies it to a game with intricacies and nuances like SimCity 4. EA better start moving on this or they're doomed to lose out on market-share from someone else's big idea."

Thanks for the review Palpatine. In reading your review, I started to wonder if incorporating an option for different levels of difficulty could help make the game more enjoyable for a wider audience. Seems like some people could get used to being forced into a certain style of gameplay difficulty whereas others might want something "lighter" to manage like a sandbox style of play if they don't care for stressful gameplay. Thoughts?

Originally posted by: Kevin Ar18 But it doesn't just have a picture of a city or building... instead it's a near copy of previous game(s) box art concept/design. quote> Yep, that's my point. Same colors, same perspective, same illustrative style. Heck... even the website has the same bubbly blue feeling as SC4's website.

Originally posted by: smg77 MC wanted us all to believe that this game was going to be the spiritual successor to SC4. quote> PRECISELY RIGHT. Just take a good hard look at the Cities XL retail box and then look at your SimCity 4 retail box. Identical designs. MC's Marketing team knew exactly who to target for this game, so receiving anything less than the core functionalities eveyone has enjoyed in the SimCity franchise for years is simply unacceptable.

I think people should stop complaing about minute details on how things look so quickly after release. The way this game rollout has been positioned you're lucky you even have an interchange to work with or a light post at all. I'd worry about the bigger concerns, like getting your single-player mode unchained from the evil Matrix which it so rightfully deserves.

Originally posted by: Kevin Ar18 Simple answer? Trust the review sites regarding how you'll feel about the game for the first week or first few months. Review site are also useful to look at games in genres you don't care much about (you are new to). Trust people here about how you will feel about this game in the long run and how you will feel about the game depth. If major game review sites give the game a good rating, and the players say the game is aweful due to lack of depth (which describes CitiesXL) then there is still a chance that you will enjoy the game if the lack of depth does not get in your way. After, all there is still some fun aspects to CitiesXL and the major reviews do reflect that. The major review site do not put much effort into reviews, nor do they care about gameplay depth. Many spend a certain number of hours playing the basics of the game and write a review, takes some screenshots, etc.... Very, very, very few reviews on ANY major review site takes the time to analyze the depth of the game -- thus you can never trust a major review site to tell you if the game has major replay value or any depth to it.quote> Not to mention, you always have to wonder what kind of secretive kick-backs the Review Sites are getting from game developers to say good things about their game. You won't have that political BS going on in Simtropolis.

To be fair, I'm sure (based on Mathew's replies in this forum) that Monte Cristo is hard at work right now trying to fix a bunch of bugs and issues being observed in these forums and elsewhere to try and make this the really great game which we all know it can be. So I can only hope they would also recognize the outcry to seriously reconsider some of the long-term limitations they're placing on single-player mode. The mentioned plans to restrict content to only PO subscribers blatantly translates into nothing more than a penalty for those not spending continuous cash for their game, and it's pure segregation. Imagine you ordered a computer from a computer store and they shipped it to you in pieces, but over a long span of time. On top of that, they said to keep those computer parts you need to keep sending them money every month or you lose them. Would you be angry? I'm sure you would... because when you pay for goods you want to own them permanently. Well, this is precisely what's happening with the current proposed business model around this game right now. Ship an unfinished product, patch it up over time, release new content to subscribers but take it back if they stop the continuous cash flow, and make sure the single players are ignored. It's not a healthy strategy to sustain a long-term loyal customer base. And so if short-term thinking is an acceptable margin for Monte Cristo, then what happens if they abandon ship on this game down the road? The server-reliant connectivity for running the game even in single-player will no longer work and no one will ever be able to even revisit the game off their shelves in the future. In order to sustain a long-term customer base, I would advise MC to unlock the single-player game from it's server dependency, and also re-structure their Planet Offer business model as a rent-to-own service on content releases. This means if people subscribe to PO long enough then they earn (through payment accruals over time) the worth of released content, and thus they have theoretically "purchased" and get to keep the released content permanently and use it in single-player mode going forward, and forever. This way, if the PO is even abandoned down the road then people will still have their UNLOCKED single-player mode and the released content they earned and paid for when they want to revisit the game off the shelf (which I've done at least 5 times with SC4 since it was released). This is more of a win-win model for everyone, because it at least: Makes single-player mode guaranteed to run forever without server dependency Promises permanent ownership of additional content to PO subscribers for their single-player modes which again would then run forever Becomes a huge incentive for proclaimed-only single-players to now reconsider in subscribing to PO to earn additional content to own permanently Promises to bring in that "continuous cash" to Monte Cristo which they so obviously desire I would absolutely buy this game and subscribe to PO if MC promised those 4 bullets to us at reasonable prices for earning ownership on new content releases. HOWEVER, if they want my monthly cash then they absolutely would need to make it a guaranteed promise that I'm not pissing my money away with nothing to show for it in the long-term.

Yeah, I understand why they ended the demo with the server-based play model and buyers taking priority. My question pertains more to that of why only distribute a trial version along with a retail purchase? Why not make the trial a free download and expand your reach? Do they really think the "for a friend" DVD is going to give them that much reach over the internet? Or are they just trying to build exclusivity at the price of a purchase? I just don't get it. They allowed a free demo period to EVERYONE without restrictions so why make the trial version such a coveted, hard-to-get entity??? **EDIT** Thanks Nilo – that answers my question, though I still don't understand the point of distributing the trial on DVD now and waiting a month later for the download. Must be the exclusivity factor.

Does MC have any plans to make an "unlocked" stand-alone free trial for this game? If they can't handle the large influx of people on the servers due to trials, then they should unlock it for trial use.

Originally posted by: cheuk18me94 The Price of mass transport gem should be less than 10USD. Then it is reasonable.quote> How much was the Rush Hour expansion? $15? I'd pay the same for a Cities XL mass transit expansion.

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle They closed the demo because they needed the server space for the paid for Planet Offer. It makes perfect sense to do so.quote> Sure, it makes sense. But my point was more about snubbing me altogether when clearly they have a trial version available. Why not just let people download the trial after closing the demo to see how the game runs? Why snub me after I expressed to them my intent on buying the game upon it's release? They pretty much single-handedly changed my mind for me and cost themselves a sale just like that.