pickled_pig

Looks pretty epic. Like those sprawling suburbs and huge exurban office parks. Tons of detail in these past few updates -- they are loaded with a true sense of "place".

Vanilla as in base game, no rush hour, unmodded? Playing plain vanilla can truly be a challenge, and it's cool to see people up for it. With so many mods out there these days, it's easy to forget precisely how powerful and open-ended even the base game was! This looks pretty nice. Keep it up!

There's some nice features to this game, and the simulation itself is pretty nice, but where SC4 was "a way of life" this new SimCity seems like at the end it will be a "diversion". Last week's beta got rid of a lot of concerns I had about the game but added some new ones. I had loads of fun -- probably the most "fun" I have had in a SimCity game since SC2000 -- but I don't think we're going to get the dedicated community and level of realism we eventually got out of SC4. We could argue, hey, it took the modders many many years to unleash the power of SC4. I stopped playing SC4 reguarly in 2008, when I went to college, and the modding work I've seen from post-2008 blows anything I had to play with out of the water. But the question still remains on how custom content will be implemented. Modern games are awash in a sea of DLC and always-on DRM and any EA game will clearly be no exception. Whether this can live in symbiosis with a living fan-made community is still an exercise to the reader.

Looks like a good start. My understanding is the main simulation is single-threaded, though the game does take advantage of multiple cores. The i3 should be a sufficient processor. 8GB of RAM is good, and 1600 MHZ is the standard nowadays. I'd upgrade the graphics though. The two betas have indicated the game is really GPU-intensive and can use quite a bit of graphics power. I'd up to a 7850/7870, but that might also mean you have to up your PSU wattage. A 7950 would be ideal but if you're not gaming regularly it might be overkill. I have a 6870 and it ran the beta on high, though with some hiccups. Edit: I realize you're trying to stay under $600. Your main goal, then, should be to look for savings on the other parts to spend more on the GPU. 7850s go on sale for $150, so if you're able to cut $40 off your build you can throw one of those in easily. To hunt the sales, have you ever used www.pcpartpicker.com? I used this when building and it was super useful. The only challenge is the sales on the main sites, like newegg, can change on a day-by-day basis.

Negative. I live in the suburbs. The next person knows how to play a (musical) instrument.

I'd make sure the prison's far away from the tourist area in the mountains. Wouldn't want tourists on their nerves all the time due to escaped convicts. The prison should have tons of extra security features. Guardhouses, maybe a couple electric fences, stuff like that. It would be unsightly, I think, but far away enough it might work. We do have to watch out, though: with all the pubs and brothels this could become the Wild West really fast!

I think I'd rather drive the Toyota. Acoustic guitar or electric?

I was guessing the cartoon graphics were there more to reduce the load on the video card. If you're not going photo-realistic, you can have less detailed textures, lower poly counts, etc... If so, I imagine all of that can be fixed when we start modding the game. I remember when they announced the release of the game and the Origin site had some (tentative?) system requirements. I think it said minimum sys reqs with respect to the graphics was a Radeon X1800 or the like. Compared to a game like Battlefield 3 (they recommend a Radeon 6970) or Max Payne 3 (recommend a Radeon 7970) this is pretty mild and will mean that even if you last built a gaming PC several years ago you'll still be able to enjoy this game. Hence I won't complain about the graphics yet. The thing that worried me about the E3 video was that there didn't seem to be much in terms of scenery surrounding the buildings. Part of the allure of the modern, fully modded SC4 is stuff like mayor mode ploppables that give full control over the scenery.

"Change Your Mind" by the Killers. I'm having a mindless pop music day so far.

I suppose I'll take a cupcake. Sure. Yum! The next person lives in Europe.

Mods are difficult to get into. I'd start out with the NAM -- and if you're interested in a more diverse array of roads, the Rural Highway mod and the Network Widening Mod. When it comes time to start downloading BATs, the dependencies give a tight learning curve -- I'd say start out with something you'd like to put in your city and follow the dependencies back. You might find some people whose BATs you adore that way. I'm trying to get back into SC4 after years of not playing due to computer issues. So I've been spending a bit of time with mods & dependencies myself. Ages ago there were some good tutorials on managing your plugins folder. If you can find one that's good reading as well -- it's critical that all the mods are properly organized. Looks like a great 'vanilla' SC4 city, though. Just goes to show that even without the mods there's a ton of potential in SC4!

Really nice eye candy. There's something meditative about a CJ focused just on bridges. It also shows how much fantastic custom content we've amassed over the years. I'll be keeping a watch on this one.

Looks nice. I've not looked at Nyhaven yet, so I can't comment on the similarities and differences.

I'm still playing SC4, despite college... A real update, along with replies to comments and all that jazz, is on its way.

This is looking amazing. The street patterns look realistic, especially in the bit you showed us on the region map where you went in and filled in the streets. I also like the inner loop interstate on the region map. I hope you keep this CJ going and we see some good roadgeekery.