Ombedor

Do you have enough industry to keep your shops supplied with goods to sell?

Listen carefully to the narrator in Buildings are simulation units which contain resources, like "coal and workers". When a sim is at home or work they are a resource in that building. Simulation units run rules. One rule might require that the building contain a minimum number of workers in order to be active. Another rule might multiply the number of sims present by a consumption factor to control how much water the building needs. Later in that video the narrator says, "Agents are simulation entities that carry resources from one unit to another." A vehicle is an agent that carries sims from one building to another. A walking sim is also an agent, but when they arrive at their destination they revert to being just a resource. Agents are special because they move. Agents need to do path-finding. Path-finding is more CPU intensive than running rules. Glassbox can probably handle a lot more resources than agents. Resources just consume memory and wait for rules to run, agents need constant attention to move them and update the path-finding as the roads change and especially as other agents get in their way or get out of their way. Saying that Glassbox can support X number of agents is saying that it can have that many things moving around the road network (and other networks) at the same time. Things that aren't moving are not agents and put a much lower strain on the CPU.

I don't have any special knowledge about the inner workings of the new game, but I do have some experience with developing software that uses some of the same ideas. I suspect that keeping the cities farther apart and limiting the number of direct transit connection between them helps keep minimize the amount of simulation state that needs to cross city boundaries and therefore dramatically reduces problems caused by the asynchronous nature of multi-player online play. Maybe we can hope for future region layouts that are designed specifically for play by a single person or a smaller number of players where each one gets a small cluster of contiguous tiles.

They could create a "mod store" and let modders sell their mods with Maxis taking a cut in the same way that app stores, or even the Diablo III auction house works. Although I don't get the feeling that they are headed this way.

Yes, it id a difficult question, but I'm not sure the challenge is solely getting access to save files. I think he is implying that mods in a multi-player game face additional challenges of fairness, scope, compatibility, and distribution that are simply not a consideration when modding a single player game. - A mod shouldn't give a specific player advantages or disadvantages when it comes to interacting with other players in the region or on the global market. - Should mods be installed in individual cities, regions, or globally? In other words, what is the correct scope for a mod, and who controls which mods get installed at each scope? - Installing different mods on cities in the same region could be the source of compatibility nightmares for the simulator acting on agents from neighboring cities. - Will I have the right mods installed to view one of my neighbor's cities? If not, how does the system distribute those mods to my computer? How do mods get disabled when I go back to my city? How can this be done a seamlessly as possible? Should we require all cities in a region have the same mods to reduce load delays?

Are you sure that all shops are treated the same? I thought the original glassbox slides implied that complex resource chains were supported. So even if you only have one type of commercial zone, that doesn't mean that all the businesses that grow on them have to be the same type. Perhaps businesses grow based on trying to fulfill supply and demand within the overall economy of the region.

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/Community-Interviews-Maxis-Part-1

Course, if your playing private mode you'd wonder why they would need you to be always online. They have not just dodged but outright ignored this question. I believe that private mode simply means that nobody other than the region creator can create or play cities in the region. So you play it just like a multi-player game in which the same person is playing all of the cities. Why is this mode still online? Because they have designed it so that the server is managing all of the other cities that you are not currently playing and feeding in the information about resource pricing from the online market. Obviously they could have designed it differently, but there is a design elegance to having the private mode work exactly like multi-player mode. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you could have two of your private cities running simultaneously if you had access to multiple computers. I am not advocating for the design decisions that they have made, but I think I understand why they made them.

GlassBox is the new feature of this game. Whenever I read the griping on this site about the game not looking realistic or not being a city builder or not having some obscure "must have" feature it always seems to me that people are forgetting that the name of the game is SimCity. This game is not called CityArchitect or CityPainter, but SimCity. I have played most of the games in the series going back to the original on the Amiga. I helped investigate the path finding behavior here when RH first came out. Clearly SC4 w/ RH and the NAM is the best SimCIty to date, but let's face it, the simulation engine left much to be desired. If you filled up a large map the engine had problems with slow routing updates that transformed the city into a game of abandonment whack-a-mole. Such problems always broke the illusion for me. I am excited about GlassBox and the simulation fidelity that the new SimCity promises. If that means we are limited to smaller maps (for now?), so be it. I would much rather play with a detailed and transparent simulation than have those disappointing Wizard of Oz moments from earlier editions of the game.

I play the SimCity games primarily for the simulation and emergent behavior aspects. I am very excited about the simulation depth that the GlassBox engine will provide, but I have a feeling that the smaller size of the city tiles may disappoint. I am also concerned that I may really like the game only to be very disappointed when the servers are taken down before I'm done with the game.

IT DOESN'T... Period. I would rather have a cartoonish representation of a rich simulation that a rich representation of a cartoonish simulation. Almost saying the same thing again, but ok...? Yeah, I should have explicitly stated that I agree with your post. Sorry for the confusion.

IT DOESN'T... Period. I would rather have a cartoonish representation of a rich simulation that a rich representation of a cartoonish simulation.

You do realize that this isn't Youtube's comment section, don't you? He's Kip Katsarelis, the Lead Producer for the game, and a veteran of Maxis. Ahhh... My apologies, I thought this was YouTube..... Apart from that comment in stating the obvious, the awards were well deserved. I'm surprised it's getting the attention of the White House and Mayor of LA. I don't think it is surprising. Keep in mind that a lot of people that work at the White House are in the age range that grew up with the original SimCity. I don't expect the POTUS to be spending his time checking out SimCity (he's obviously got more important stuff to do), but lower level White House staffers are a perfect demographic, especially when you consider the topic of the game.

In the top intersection, the first tile off of the main road is also a road tile, the rest are streets. In the bottom intersection, the first tile off of the main road is a street, as are all the others. You can tell by hovering the query tool (either one) over the road/street tiles in question. Since road tiles have higher capacity and faster travel speeds, it will have a slight effect on commute times and congestion. The best reason for using the top style is that capacities are lower in and near intersections. As traffic volume increases at an all street intersection you will notice that congestion first becomes a problem at the intersection and the first two tiles away from it. Rather than upgrade all of the streets to roads to solve this problem, some mayors may only upgrade the intersection and a couple tiles in either direction. Later, if the rest of the street tiles get over crowded, it may become necessary to upgrade them as well, however.

I would say that yes, it is a bug. In my opinion it violates the principle of least surprise. Most SC4 players seem to be caught off guard by this unexpected behavior. Everywhere else an avenue has a U-turn at the end, except at neighbor connections. This one exceptional case surprises most people.