soldyne

I have found that specialized cities works best for me. In my CJ, Newtopia Valley, I show a region which starts out as pure agricultural and then I slowly move industry in. I have a city which is just for ID (nearly a full medium city tile) and its workforce is fuled by a completely R$ city to the north. I also have a completely large city tile covered with low density suburbs. I have plans in the works for an IHT city fuled by surrounding suburbs and eventually I will grow an urban downtown. click on the link in my sig and see if it does not give you a few ideas. hope that helps.

aminom, that is a very unique city you have there. do you plan on making it into a CJ. It looks like it could have been some ancient abandond Myan city or something. do people get to the different elevations with subway access? Massacrator, yes it does take time when you first start out. experimentation and practice is the best way to become a terraform expert. I terraformed my region (newtopia valley in the CJ section) and it took a few months. But, then again I am a perfectionist and have a full time job. I did learn a lot from the experience though. post a few pics of what you have done and share your experiences with us. perhaps others are looking to do the same thing and can learn from your efforts.

I used to play FFXI and would play with a friend of mine for 12 hours straight every sunday. I eventually got frustrated with the slowness of the game and moved on to Baulders Gate and now only play for about 5 or 6 hours every week. we take more breaks now too. I have had marathoning sessions with some games like SC4 and roller coaster tycoon (I hear you Dirk ) but I have no idea how long I would have spent on them. I have had games that started in the afternoon on one day and went well into the next morning (the sun set and rose during the playing of a single game) but I don't do that much anymore. fun times...

That sounds like an interesting plan. I will have to spend some time this comming week reading it over and seeing what I come up with. good idea. I have another issue: I am having trouble viewing topics which have 1000+ postings. I have cable modem so it is not a download issue. I try to view the "last uread" page and it displays no posts. it is difficult (impossible really) to view old topics like old city journals or large "show us your..." threads. is this a known issue or is something wrong on my end?

ha, and here I thought those walls were for sound reduction. LOL makes sense i guess

this is one of those CJs that gives me mixed feelings: I am unbelievably impressed with the work and detail shown here, you are certainly a master at SC4 and CJs; but then I think how horrible this makes my CJ skills look and now I am jealous... good work

I really like the region views, it shows just how realistic your design is. The boardwalk area looks like fun for the summer time. The airport is small and unremarkable but realistic for a city of this size, good job on that. overall a CJ worth continuing.

well, after a 4 hour download (on a cable connection btw; 400+ MB) I finally got a chance to test out this new SimCity competitor. I kept my opinions to a minimum until I was finished with the demo so i could give it a fair review. Over all I would say that City Life has quite a few innovations and diffierences over SC4 and is IMHO a whole new game altogether. the biggest difference I saw was that CL concentrates on the social aspects of city building more so than the mechanical. SC is more of a mechanical simulation concentrating on commute times, tax rates, congestion and other numbers, graphs and charts. I would go so far as to say that CL and SC are compliments of each other and not competitors as many of us have been thinking. GAME PLAY COMPARISON: Being less mechanically driven, CL builds its cities with a broader brush giving the player less emphasis on detailed location of buildings and roads. There was no grid that I could find and infact roads and buildings were not limited to the stoic 90 and 45 degree system that is ingained in the SC games. The terrain was all pre built with no terrain editor in site. The focus of game play is on scenerios but there is a free mode (not available in the demo). there are many different map options to choose from and the maps are very large and quite realistically detailed with a good mix of flat buildable land and eye candy terrain which cant be built on. Most of your residential lots are simple squares of all the same size (reminisent of the original SC game). You can click and drag an area of housing but it will simply build many residential foot prints instead of one large one. Standard two lane roads are automatically laid out with no option to turn it off. Commercial and Industrial are lumped together in one build option called business and industry. Each of the 6 social groups has a different kind of building (low wealth work in factories, blue collar work in shops, middle class work in office buildings etc). Infact, the business and industry options are not seperated by low, medium and high density but instead by social class; if you want to attract more blue collar workers then build more blue collar businesses. even though these buildings were ploped with a standard footprint they still grew on thier own just like in SC. The lots will either build thier own road connected to the nearest established road or it will auto align to any road you put it near including any road which might be at an odd angle. The foot prints are all square and rectangular so there are still no triangular or cicular lots to play with. Commercial Service buildings are actually treated like plops instead of grows. there were only two buildings available in the demo however, a small corner grocer and a supermaket. civic buldings and recreation were also less detailed in their mechanics. each of these buildings had a radius. so long as there were residence with the radius the people there were happy. The number of residence within the radius seemed irrelivent. there were also very limited choices for power and waste disposal and I saw no water services available to build. Road services were standard: two lane road, avenue, two lane highway, three lane highway. I did not see any options for mass transit but it was just a demo. It was when the sims started to move in when I noticed where all the detail in learning the game was. The key to CL is not in designing a city but in getting all of your citizens to get along with each other. In SC sims were just a matter of attracting the right mix of R$, R$$, and R$$$ to fill the jobs and make commutes, but, in CL, you need to be more aware of who is moving in and where they are moving in. some social classes dont mind others and can mix and mingle, but some social classes hate others and can cause social strife in the form of riots and elevated crime. The focus on building the city is not to just make it efficient but to keep the social structure from collapsing. This means providing certain areas with just the right mix of shopping, police, fire, health and education to attract just the right groups. In SC many players avoid building slums because there is no benefit to having them and many players tend to gravitate toward a certain style, like skyscrapper forest or bedroom community. in CL you need all areas to help maintain a balance and keep the sims from killing each other. GRAPHICS, CONTROL AND SOUND: This is where CL shines over SC. The graphics are true 3-D with the option to zoom into first person and literaly walk around your city with your sims. When a lot becomes abandoned it does not just turn black and look bad, it actually deteriorates and becomes inhabited by homeless bums and shady characters walking around doing goodness knows what. The trees and leaves actually sway in wind. Building, sim, and car detail rival that of standard SC4 although I would argue that many of the BATS created by SC4 fans have much higher levels of texture detail. However, I do remember reading that CL will have the abilty for fans to make plugins so that opens a whole new level of possibility. The zoom options are nice as well. In addition to a seemless first person zoom and the standard birds eye view you can also very easily zoom out to region level and see the big picture with no trouble at all. This is something that many SC players have been asking for. Unfortunately, since there is no terrain editor so you are limited in what kind of regions you can play. but as I said earlier, the terrain is very well done and there should be few complaints. the Music seemed standard but tolerable over a long period. I did not notice any major sound effects other those that we are used to in SC. SC music is actually much more diverse. However, remember that I only played a demo and so I was probably only privy to a single music file anyway. One interesting thing that stood out was the way system messages were delivered to the player. Instead of a bland news ticker and random alerts from your city council lackeys there was a small TV screen in the bottom right corner. Every now and then a TV news cast would come on and you could see what was happening in the city from a sort of first person perspective, like a small riot or some sims picketing something. I thought it was entertaining, although some might find it annoying. CLOSING REMARKS AND RECOMMENDATION: Granted I only played the game for 30 minuets, but, I felt that I learned enough about the game to say that City Life is not a SC clone. It is its own game with its own challenges and style. There are many genres of games out there and city building is one of them. It just so happened that SC was the only franchise worth mentioning until now. If you enjoy the mechanical and design aspects of building a city with all of its detail and goals focused on commute times, taxes, building placement, style and visual asthetics then SC4 is for you. However, if you have been looking for a more social city builder where social structure, politics, and the interpesonal relations of running a big city are more your taste then City Life is definately the game of choice. It may be quite possible to build a very eye pleasing city in CL but one must remembe that the focus of the game is on the people not the buildings. I myself tend more toward the SC side (numbers, design, layout, effciency) but I may grab a copy of CL in the future and see where it takes me.

same problem here. it seems to be a recent problem as I was just dling stuff about an hour ago. I am sure if lots of peolpe are having the same issue then it will get resolved shortly.

frndofyaweh - Thank you for your congratulatory comment. BTW, I don't know if you have seen my CJ, Newtopia Valley, but I make mention of you in my second update. Click on the link in my sig and read the captions in the update to see if you can find the reference. I also referenced some other ST members that have been friendly and influential to me in that update, see if you can find them as well. Voar Tok - You are also mentioned in my CJ, second update, take a look! Joesocwork - Thank you for posting and thank you for moving the topic. When I posted originally, I missed seeing the gamming forum so posted in the general. symanteco - back to the subject at hand, I agree with you completely. My comments on racism were directed at those people who would take one look at the game and make a judgement about it, seeing how color was being used to segregate the social classes. this prejudice is exactly what racism is based on. If people spent some time with the game (and people in general) and got to know it like you and I (and the others here) then it would become obvious that racial distinctions are not being made by the creators of CL. Thank you for your input it was well recieved. spa - you took the words right out of my mouth. Thank you for clarifying the topic on how color is used in CL. I enjoy talking about games on a higher level like this, it gives us gammers and sites like ST a higher level of distinction IMHO and gives the members here a chance to look past the game screen and think more deeply about the real world. Thanks everyone for participating and I would like to here more comments from everyone about CL and its impact and statements on social stratification and class.

hello SHS! I recently posted a large indepth review of the City Life demo game and have been getting a few responses. One of those replies was a suggestion to have the review added to the omnibus. Voar Tok instructed me to bring this issue before the SHS. If you guys think that my review would make a positve addition to the site then I would be honored to have it added. The link to the review is in my sig. I have also been thinking of doing some tutorials with pics about getting a first city started and making a profit since that seems to be the number one question with many new joiners. is the SHS the main portal for getting articles posted to the omnibus or are there other channels I should try first?

Originally posted by: defcon pilot Interesting article: Quite informative.Well, on the point of the game being slanted toward whites and against blacks (at least in the way you depict), you are wrong in saying that it is not the responsibility of the creators of the game to enforce a set of good morals and/or ethics. It is. The commercial mainstream is where it all starts. People listen to what they hear in ads, take in what they see in entertainment, and absorb the influences of popular culture. And of course, as we know, videogames are a HUGE phenomenon in it. Almost everyone has a computer these days. Maybe a game console as well. And they have an incredible amount of influence on people. They ought to at least slip something in telling children and teenagers that, in reality, such things as segreggation are bad and do nothing but create hate. Just thought I'd give my opinion. -DPquote> I can see your side of the argument Defcon and would like to say that there are two sides to consider here: the way things are and the way they could be. you are right in saying that the way the world works is that morals and ethics are highly influenced by the commercial mainstream. My side of the argument was more toward how the world could (and IMHO, should) work. People underestimate the power a parent has over the intellectual and moral development of thier children. unfortunately, many modern parents are either too busy or too wrapped up in the commercial mainstream to take charge of their childs development. So, I guess, what you and I could agree on here is that if the company wished to make a difference in the world they should recognize their influence on the moral development of their audience and make products to help support a good moral infrastructure. but I feel that this is only a bandage for the bigger problem that modern society is becomming more and more dependant on the "commercial mainstream" to help tell us how we should grow and develop. The only thing I can do is to take charge of my own childrens development and hope that my influence will continue into future generations. sometimes change happens quickly and sometimes it takes a while.

you said you have neighbor connections, but do your neighbor cities have any development in them? the purpose of having neighbors is to share demand. when you start building up the neighbor cities and having them specialize (industry city, dump city, Central Business District, suburb, etc) then all the connected cities will begin to feed off of each other and begin to grow. It takes a lot of extra work but it is worth it, and to a degree, necessary.

I started with the Comodore 64 (yes I am old...) JumpMan was the game for me. as well as Gorf and a few others. Then I got my first NES and played mario brothers/duck hunt and zelda all day long. I moved into FF1 and was hooked on Fantasy RPGs ever since. When I got my first SNES one of the first games i got with it was Sim City. thats when I became a SC and simulation geek. today I play a lot of PC simulation and RPG games. Right now my obessessions are with Dungeon Keeper, Arcanum, SC4, and a few others off to the side.

Masticate (to chew)

"Time to clean the Pool"

A: Because MadMax410 robbed the bank where you were keeping it. Q: What does green sound like?

Theocracy

I am not sure I understand your post Rean2. are saying there is no racism in City Life or in real life? I think you are refering to the game though, and so I agree with your post. I agree that there is no racism in CL I was simply stating that others may view it this way if they looked at it from a single perspecitve. It is true that the color of the CL social classes is representative of how the sims live and not about their skin color. Actually I dont think there is any mention of race or ethniciy in the game at all. Which if you think about it is quite a feat for a social simulation game to achieve. It was probably one of their biggest hurdles durning the design phase and could probably be the cause of the games success or failure. Even SC4 has wealth levels but CL takes the social level concept many steps further and adds a lot more detail to it.

A: 3. One to replace the new light bulb, one to pronounce the old one as "dead" and one to make sure that no malpractice suit is filed by the dead bulbs family. Q: why can't we kill all the lawyers, kill em tonight?

Thanks Constantina. I never thought of this being in the omnibus. I am not sure how to submit it though. maybe I should wait for more replies before asking. anyway, I have been reading through all the other topics and replys on city life and one reply in one topic really got my attention (sorry I forgot who or where the relpy was from). The idea that CL encourages social segregation. true the game is not about race but look really closely at the color choices they made for the Elites (white) and the have nots (black). I think they could have made better choices there. although in thier defence the color scheme is a reflection of what the roads, sidewalk, and buildings look like over all and in no way are meant to represent the color of the people living there. have nots are dirty, poor, unkempt, and the elites are white, sanitary and clean. Other than the slight racism reference the game does encourage the player to succeed at building a city by building neighborhoods of segregated people. yes some types of people can mingle with no trouble but the goal is to label people as they move in based on thier income level and force them to live in seperate areas of the city to keep them from mixing. It is even advertised that a city can be successful by favoring one culture over the others (favor the rich whites over the poor blacks perhaps?). yes this is representative of real life but it is not very representative of decent moral or ethical standards. On that note I just want to say that it is really not the responsibility of the game or the creators of the game to enforce good morals or ethics on their audience, that is the job of the parents and the society in which we live. I would indeed allow my children to play this game but I would want to be involved in their gamming expericence making sure they understand what social segregation really means, how the game relates to reality and why such things (like racism, social segregation and the like) are morally and ethically wrong (at least as far as I am concerned). Does CL promote racism and elitism? perhaps. but I am actually leaning toward playing CL more as a tool for learning and understanding social structure (since it is a social simulation) more so than as a tool for building and designing a mechanically efficient city.

I did a review of the demo but I mistakenly put the post into the general off topic forum instead of here in the other game forum. check it out and let me know what you think: link is in sig

I just finished the demo and wrote a large review of the City Life game. I posted it in the off topic section. here is the link for anyone who is interested: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=25&threadid=76181&enterthread=y