Stewy13

Skipping the Airship DLC myself, but the Amusement Park DLC is right at $5. Now I'm trying to convince a friend to buy SimCity for $30 so I have someone to play with.

Yes, read the description.

Hello fellow community member, thank you for showing your interest in this topic. I highly encourage you to take part and let your own ideas be heard. Quite simply I'm posting this new topic to discuss Cities XL's current gameplay balance, economy and how it works right now in game as a single player experience, along with how it will be evolving with new custom content. Besides changing current in-game values of buildings (which I believe another member is doing - kiwispanker?) it'll be a question of how new custom content should work in terms of economy. Currently retail is only produced through the consumption of food, however what if you were to make your own car dealership? Shouldn't that logically consume another resource like High-Tech? Meanwhile we also should discuss what the definition of each resource is, fuel for example is only oil at this point in time but we all know you can use coal for your fuel along with electricity. My ideas are as follow; Fuel: Either fuel needs to be redefined to be a more broad resource such as Raw Resource, or have alternatives/subsidies for fuel. Redefining this resource would open up more room for custom content and allow for more room in the single player economy. My thoughts with a redefinition of the resource is that cities may be more diverse allowing forest industries, mineral extractions, new farming goods such as industrial-hemp and non-food purpose corn. I'm sure the creative community here at Simtropolis, along with other community members of other fan sites will have a lot more ideas than what I simply have. Electricity: Not sure if this exactly requires a definition, but the way I see electricity is just the capacity your city has to produce. Therefore, while your city's actual consumption may not be your capacity, narrowing those two numbers closer will have negative effects. Currently electricity is produced through the consumption of fuel, mainly along with money. Wind power consumes only money however produces a fraction of what other power stations produce when comparing the money:energy production ratio. While somewhat realistic of the limitations of green energy, further windmills or other green technology should increase the effectiveness of these buildings. In real world today we are looking at combining several technologies together to make a more efficient and effective power grids. Technologies such as electric cars and even hybrids are being looked for what's known as Vehicle to Grid or V2G, something that relieves peak load which working with Green Energy increases the effectiveness of those sources. Google it, it's quite interesting. My main point about the last paragraph is that a simple idea like that can be taken into Cities XL through custom content in the form of either single lots or an entire series of content which functions together. V2G could be as simple as just a parking lot with the technology and gives your Windmills a 5% increase in production. However I'm hoping that content for Cities XL will become more organized than previous custom content for other games and instead release content in almost GEM packs or expansions. That way balancing of content would not be an individual building basis but rather the content pack or perhaps an entire content creation team. Food: Who consumes food? Is food actually consumed by people in your city or is its only purpose to be converted into Retail Goods? Depending what occurs with retail goods as a resource and how it's produced; values for residential and business/retail buildings may need to change to reflect the new changes. Retail: Retail currently is only produced thought the consumption of food resources. However most of the retail stores in the game would not consume such resources such as the Auction House and all the malls (6 by my count). So it just remains a question at this point in time of what exact function is retail supposed to have, is it just a service to residents? Anyways, progress towards more diverse retail sector would be a wise step I think. Currently there's a mod out by Povis123 which has a few lots that are gas stations exchanging fuel for retail. These are only a few resources and while there is many more in the game, I've felt ever since the Beta of this game that these were the most in need of balancing. The ability to trade with others allowed this balance issue to go mostly unnoticed but now with our copies of Cities XL reduced to a single player experience the resources with the bigger problems are having even more problems. However I'm highly encouraging discussion about all the resources and how they interact in our game's economy. Also let your ideas be known for either current fixes or upcoming content and what they should incorporate or consider. Looking forward to everyone else's contribution to this discussion [Regular forum posts should be posted in the default text size, color and font - GlobexCo]

LAN mulitplayer/LAN regions would be awesome! Wonder if that could even be done with our current game?

Have you installed the latest patch for Cities XL? Far as I know, you'll need this before you can play Solo. If not, I'm sure another member will shortly answer for you, but that's my idea.

Smoking? Extremely interesting now with this news, but only if they are to annouce some major fixes, along with full community support as in tools, programs, tutorials, etc etc. Otherwise, I almost feel like I'm at the point of "Ahhh! Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice?" because either we'll be resold the exact same product with additional content like GEMS except relabeled/re-branded, or we could be seeing another attempt with Planet Offer. I'm leaning towards being resold it, but a lot of unknowns at this time. As for what's going on currently here, I certainly hope work continues for the sake of possibly unlocking a wider availability for the rest of us to be able to contribute to this game. But also I understand that this is no simple task without proper tools, but regardless of result, thank you for your work guys/gals!

How about a mod (or a few different variations of a mod) that changes either the speed of which the sun goes through it's cycle? Variations being speed and I imagine someone being clever enough to be able to have it match your computers clock, be nice to know the real time when playing . Anyways, an idea that I thought was neat and I'd share.

Anything that's an alternative I like. Just to quickly post another thought I had, just so it's not just an energy & fuel discussion over here just quickly thinking of other things that might be a fair trade for another resource. Say for instance a travel agency; fuel and money tokens for vacation tokens. Fuel due to the travel invovled and money is simple....you're just that kind, cover the costs and don't pass it onto your citizens with taxes...right? Haha! Anyways, we should build a list of buildings/lots complete with details, ideas for bonuses, consumption and production, etc. PS- I don't exactly excel at writing my ideas down, I'm more of an oral speaker and these very letters (keys) I'm pressing right now give my fingers a stubling feeling. It's just how my brain works I suppose, but my point is to ask for forgiveness if something isn't clear in my writing or if it seems lacking somehow. So my idea with the EV Infrasture would go something like this for content and how it'd effect your city Name: -EV* Dealership (*Brand name more than likely, but at current time I'm unsure if you need permission from that company) Details*: Congratulations on becoming part of the EV revolution and bringing a new era towards a more efficient, quieter and Zero Emissions future. This EV Dealership is one of the first steps towards this new era and as infrastructure, vehicles, batteries and technology advance forward, so too will the effects of EVs. Your city was selected for a test rollout because...Yada yada..this isn't exactly important, just saying it should have the appropriate background to give it a better experience of what it's doing in your game. (*When built and clicked on, idea can be explained further Consumes: -Skilled and Execs for workers (maybe an elite) -Electricity (It's a business afterall, and real-life EV dealerships offer charging stations at the lot for customers) -Hightech tokens (If hightech is to be understood as devices such as iPods) Produces: -Retail (If retail statisfaction can be altered, elites happiest down to unskilled not really caring) -Park Effect 5%? -Increase park effect by # % (# tied to number of other buildings built in city related to EVs thus representing the 'growth' and thus the increase in park effect) -Decrease city fuel consumption by # % (obviously this number will need to be examined for gameplay reasons, but again the # amount is tied to your cities 'growth' of EV infrastructure) Other Details: -The building is a blueprint/landmark that's unlocked by another building or buildings yet to be determined at this time, but initial thoughts are that either a car manufacturer HQ would have be present in your city, other linked content such as factories related to EV production are present in your city or your city has a surplus in electricity but negative fuel. -Unlocks other buildings such as Charging lots, EV service stations, etc etc. -Only 1 allowed until pop limit allowed for more? That it just one example and I hope it shows what I'm thinking myself in terms of new custom content and how it should interact with our game's world, economy and complete what we came to know in Sim City 4 which was unique content. I hope to do a complete list like the above soon and make a thread for it when modding becomes more open to actually creating content ourselves and putting it in-game. BTW, anyone who's reading this now and has some know-how, PLEASE PM me because I want to learn. If you read all the above, I thank you and hope you understood and enjoyed what I wrote. Hoping for more e-mails telling me of replies here. Cheers everyone.

Well you take the postition that I want to replace all petrol with biofuel Yes I do...but I want EV's to be driven and not our accustomed ICE cars, along with other changes from petrol. I'd say Hemp could fill the gap if we didn't use obscene amounts of it. Don't use as much, don't need to produce as much. But it's hard to cut back or break an addiction I guess. As for feeding the world, as the next poster stated, there's enough food. Problem is we still focus on money and status, along with several other reasons too. Interestingly enough, the first content I want to try to create, if learn how to, will hopefully be Electric Car Infrastructure. Biofuel however would be an interesting add-on too As for the Nuclear Power Plants output, easy solution of changing values no? Anyways, great discussion guys. Kinda disappointed when I see the views to posts ratio, but that's to be expected I suppose. Hope some will change their mind and post, more than welcome and encouraged

I love the Sky-farm idea because I saw an article awhile ago about them and that would be great to see something like that in a large city. Toronto had something similar in the talks, but talk is nothing but hot air. As for Cities XL, it'd be a blueprint because of it's shear size and give ya a nice amount of food tokens, sounds win-win. Also I'm surprized there isn't small greenhouses yet, it'd almost be like the 'Windmills' of food, but it'd be interesting additional content to add to your city, community gardens anyone? As for the food to fuel, simply someone should make a Biofuel content pack, shouldn't take more than a few buildings for the process and btw, biofuel is practical but only if it's grown from Hemp. I was wondering if say a Home Depot would sell Heavy Industry or Manufactured goods, or perhaps both? Same with a Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart Superstore? Well right there that's food, manufactured goods and high-tech. Probably more could be thought of. One of the problems I see with allowing just random zoning however is it could cause an unbalance in the economy. However by the looks of how modding development has been progressing, we very well might just be able to make a new sub-menu allowing more control and organization to it all. I'm not sure what all is possible with this game, but I hope this is what we've all been waiting for and it's just a matter of time before things explode into development from the community. Anyways, glad to see the comments guys!

As for editing values to the buildings to make them more realistic along with values of other things in the game such as roads and such, I really don't think there will be much of a consensus on what will work because for the next few months I imagine they're be alot of changes going on. I'd say lets just try something different, test it out and go from there. Myself personally have a keen interest in these values if I actually start my project for Cities XL to make a custom content pack. I was thinking of what the content should do in terms of game play and whatnot, but quickly came to the conclusion that depending on how we handle the balance of pollution, traffic and resources, it'll probably require updates as we change the game.

Well I'd take neither of those cars as they run on gas but the Toyota for sure! Even though these are two different classes of cars which imo isn't fair. Might be unfixed right now, doesn't mean it'll stay that way forever. Remember, Sim City 4 at one time was "unfixed" but I'll admit that it seems like there might be a bit more work this time around.

Lock'n Load! We're in business Besides the work done by these fellow community members, we've hit yet another landmark. This is where the floodgates open and we the players fix and finish this game. Thank you Dirk for giving your thumbs up to this

I'd like to add that while there are "a lot" of these mods popping up from Jeremy, it's not like he's stealing anyone's thunder. If you haven't noticed there aren't that many mods for Cities XL anyways Also it's nice for once to actually see things happening in this forum besides just questions. So until things pick up even more I'm pretty sure the mods won't mind this for now.

That's the 2.0 version, lol. Yeah I'd raise my hand too, but I already got the LE content so I'm not much help there. But I defiantly am interested in what the future has to bring so basically any development I'd be happy to try to help you out.

I'm getting really excited now, looks like we have a new breakthrough almost everyday! Doing great guys, keep it up. Think I might have to start prepping a list of custom content I want to either see in the game or maybe Cities XL is the game to learn about modeling, texturing and all that fun. Do we have any word on adding custom buildings yet, or we still just looking into what we can find already in the game? @kikwispanker Let us know about your personal project and some of it's changes as I'm sure alot of us would like a more realistic simulator, even if it's just some value changes.

You aren't being challenged, it's simply a matter which isn't fully understood. It says they're contacting Dirk for further clarification and that's only if modding Cities XL jeopardizes Simtropolis or not. So even if Dirk throws down the banhammer on mods, that's only from this site and not your own on that google page. We can all clearly see the interest for unlocking the potential for this game and fixing/finishing what was left over. I'm really leaning on fixing at this moment as I've fired my game up recently to remember why I don't play it anymore, runs extremely slow even when set to low graphics yet I was in the Beta and that ran smoothly....until the Memory leak got too bad. Anyways, hoping we aren't doomed here now....

I'm going to have to hunt for my copy of Cities XL soon, things are progressing along quite well. Looking forward to more.

As guystupois says, just do it. If Cities XL is to live on, it'll be through modding and not through any company. Really, can they sue you for making what was a half finished game more complete? Pfft, they don't even have the money to think of suing never mind doing it. I'm hoping you or someone soon will open this game up for all of us. Quite simply, what's sitting in the box is not playable/enjoyable.

guystupois might not be willing to share but I've been able to narrow it down somewhat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lua-scripted_video_games Happy hunting!

I'm not sure what the legal stance is at this point. Someone will no doubt say you can't/shouldn't, but honestly I can't see no more legal action than a "please stop" which you just obey if it comes to that. It's a shame to see this game as far as it is, just needing to be opened up like Sim City 4 was for custom content and development, but no one's making a move on it....it's sad really, because knowing this community we very well could make this our new city builder with our talent here. I look forward to any news because it'd be nice to actually fire up my game again...

250GB may be a lot but this is still crap. I loved high-speed internet when I first got it since with dial-up you were only allowed to be connected for a certain length of time. It's just annoying to think that you have a limit on your internet when you're so used to it being unlimited. It only makes me worry more about net neutrality and whether we really do have something to worry about soon.

I love Toronto, simple as that. I'm from a small town of 1000 people and the largest city nearby is 100,000 people so when I arrived here for the first time it was quite the shock. I'm still in Toronto and although I miss home I certainly will miss Toronto when I leave at the end of this month.