ThePeoplesPerson

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/citiesxl/review.html Gamespot review, 6.0 The Good: Slick if conventional city-building gameplay, Good for beginners, Intuitive interface, Online options have potential. The Bad: Basic mechanics are on the bland side, Single-player mode seems like an afterthought, MMO-style online option is limited and overpriced, Problems with trading interface and market. The Ugly: 6.3 from 90 users

Negativity on a hyped game like this is expected. For the amount of hype Monte Crisco developed for this game, it is understable for people to be upset. There are so many issues with this game, and while they may be consider small, it the sum of the parts that make it excruciating to hear about. Don't even get me started on the rediculous pricing on this game (seriously, $10+ a month for trading and content that should be included in the game in the first place?). Secondly, COD4 is in the shooter market, and has an absolute ton of competition. The reason everything isn't compared to it is that all those games have some breathing room for doing things differently. City building is a pretty narrow genre. They know what we want, and if they want to make a successful game, they'll deliver on those fronts. Finally, I don't mean to sound like I'm flaming here, but the comment on Cities XL being the best game in the genre for the past few years is a joke. I can't even count the number of city building games on one hand that have come out in the past 5 years, let alone games that are directly competing with Sim City 4 (Cties Life, SCS, and thats about it) Again, I haven't actually played the game, and I'm sure a lot of this negativity is being expressed soley out of the fact that it was hyped up way too much (Fable and Fable II anyone?), but when a game comes out 5 years after a another title, by that time you'd think they'd have a few more innovative features besides curved roads and a 3d view. Nothing else in the title pushes the boundaries of the genre. Unfortunately, theres no competition in the genre, and if there were more, we'd get much better games because the poor ones would just fail.

Review is up on IGN http://pc.ign.com/articles/103/1035096p1.html Did pretty good here, but unfortunately one good review from a critic doesn't justify all the complaints for the game. Pretty sure I'm sticking away from this one too.

Here's one of my small islands.

Thanks for the support guys. I may be starting another CJ again, just planning on what I want it to be. I've begun getting my bats filled back up again. Next CJ may be a county riddled with small towns and possibly a small city. I'm looking at maps currently and am leaning towards one of Dedgrens quandrant maps, but i am also thinking of making my own. Nethertheless, as much as I love doing stories such as Sin City's, I won't be making another story based one. They take too much time, and I just don't have the time to balance between cities, story writing, comic making and photoshopping. Anyways, I'll keep you all informed on the state of events .

Disaster strikes... I never thought it would happen to me, but after all this time my computer finally took a completely unexpected dump. It crashed and I lost everything, regions, cities and worst of all, my 2.5gb+ plugin folder. So that's it I guess... its definitely the end of Haalu and my other journal Sin City, and my Sim City building future doesn't look bright either. With the loss of all my plugins I've collected over the last few years, getting all those back and then starting another region would just take way too much time in my busy schedule as is. I know I should have made backups and I always told myself I'd get around to it but I didn't in time. So, I urge everyone to make backups of their stuff, especially plugins. I'd just like to thank everyone for the support that they provided in making Haalu what it is today, its a shame it didn't get finished... the last little while I had been working on a massive vegetation on the island, complete with a desert area, marsh and more of a decidous area. Even had the 2nd city, that was to rival Montacello in size underway. Anyways I'll probably still be lurking around the forums, I always do. Still liek to see what everyones coming up with.

Preview I don't have a lot of time for working on my cities any more, but I do plug away at them from time to time again. I've been spending a lot of the time working with Basin City, and have quite a few spots to show. I hope to get a region shot up soon. For now here's a shot of near downtown Kent, a cmall city near Basin City. Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Haalu Takes Home an Award From the Trixies! Wow! It is a great honour to get an award from the trixies, especially the custom added graphics one! Getting an award for something I love to do is great, and I'd like to thank all those who nominated me. Seeing The Tropics of Haalu nominated in The Best CJ category as well was quite a surreal suprise, with so many other great CJs out there (congrats on the most prestigous CJ award Darmok! It was well deserved). As I have said I've been trying to get updates out for this CJ, but I'm right in the middle of an exam schedule right now, so its doubtful for any large updates or any for the next 2 weeks. However, I'll be off for two weeks after, and we can definitely expect some catch up there. I'm in the midst of planning an overhaul for the other half of the island. Hopefully it will be a pleasent suprise for everyone. Also thanks to all that have gave me ideas with the problem. I'll look into it and hopefully find the culprit, in the mean time though the terraforming on the rest of the island should provide something else to do. Take care all!

Congratulations on the trixie award! This has definitely been one of my most favourite journals on the forum, I always look forward to a new update. Keep up the great work!

Update : Whats going on with Tropics of Haalu As some of you know, I have recently come back as I've found *some* time between the new university life and attempting to do stuff with SC4. Anyways, I've made a couple updates in my other journal, Sin City Chronicles, and will also be updating this one as well. I actually planned on updating around now, but I've encountered a very irritating bug that is keeping me from working on my most anticipated city yet, Bastia, the Nice recreation. You see, the problem here is that all the buildings I need to use are in the European building set, and unfortunately I've run into the dreaded crash to desktop everytime I try to select any particular building set to build into. I'm completely puzzled as to what is causing it and have no idea where to even begin in my plugins folder trying to find the culprit behind this bug. If I can't figure this out, we may not see bastia for a long time, so I'm asking anyone that has come across this bug if they know of any mods that may cause the crash. On a more brighter note, I suppose I'll begin working north west on the island which is going to lead to some suprises in building variety. The only hint I can give for now is I've attempted what I'm going to do with this island in my very first Journal, Calivada. Anyways, I look forward to throwing up a quick update most likely today as I plan on going out for the weekend, We'll see how it goes. Until then, take care folks.

Basin City Update This update continues to look at some of the surrounding area around Basin City. This particular suburb is called Brighton, and is mostly middle class workers who commute to some of the factories down at the docks. 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully I'll have a story update here for next update. I'll be making a stop at Haalu first though and bringing some new updates there as well.

COMMENTS ilikehotdogsalot - Thanks, its good to be back! jacqulina - Thanks 6underground - Thanks 6U JaneJacobs - Thank you szarkoz - Thanks, I really haven't used pegs water extensively until now. owenluby - Thanks emilin - lol thanks! Revol -Thanks, its absolutely huge too. Lots of land to work with. Mulefisk -Thanks natuurzoon -Thanks, its nice to have some time for Sim City once again. seemurray2 -Thanks Pixelrage -Thanks, I really like the water used in this region and how its so transparent at low depths. Looks really cool. GMT -Yes, I'm finally back again, thanks GMT I've got an update planned for tonight btw. Thanks for the warm welcome back everyone. I've got some stuff to show in Haalu as well which I plan on showing in a couple days.

Here's the map I made for my CJ The Tropics of Haalu. This is from quite a while ago, just before I stopped playing actually, now I'm kinda back. It's also done in google map style. Click the map for the full 1800x1800 map.

I'm back from a hiatus from Sim City once again, mind you it has been and will continue to be because I am now much more busier then I used to be. I'm now in University, and the workload coupled with all the social life at University means I haven't even touched a computer for anything other than work and chatting for the last few months. Anyways, I've found a bit of time here and there to do a little work on some of this region, and decided to do an update today. Hope you enjoy some of these country side shots. Basin City Update 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 I can't promise how frequent updates will be or when they'll come, but rest assured I will be updating as I very slowly work on the region.

COMMENTS crazychickensc12 - Thanks for the comment sorchin - Thanks Sorchin bat - Thanks dedgren - Thanks David GMT - Thanks for the comment GMT eggie99 - Thank you very much for the compliment luigiguy - Thanks Leech10 - Thanks Well, after a lot of work, my first custom map ever is finally finished! The map of Haalu is done in a googleMap style. All the colours and font styles are just like googlemap, specifically Canada and the U.S. The map covers a total of 49 large tiles, and shows pretty much everywhere I've worked on in the region so far. Future plans include building on Emerald Island, and continuing west across the mainland. As for the map itself, I'm thinking about numbering the major roads or not. It could get a little crowded in places like montacello though , so I'm still experimenting with that idea. I hope you enjoy this map as much as I enjoyed making it! As always, click the map for the full 1800x1800 picture. It's a little over 1mb. Thanks for the comments everyone! They're very appreciated.