Got an hour play through in now. I enjoyed it, I didn't do the first beta so I don't have comparison. There were many things "unavailable" again, and of course just having an hour is frustrating. I'll have fun with this game, I'm convinced of that. Especially once we can play for longer and with all options open. I didn't think to up the graphics until about half way through which was a bummer, since it looks pretty nice maxed out at 2560x1600.
You can play again, just in 1-hour chunks.
Well, I knew that. :P One hour time limits on a game type that can easily suck up 48 hours before I realize it just isn't a very deep demo, ya know? I'm okay with this though, since it is just a demo/beta and I've been a pre-order-er for quite a while already anyhow.
Watching that Ryan Davis play through it in such a methodical, efficient manner is driving me crazy. Draw curvy roads, fool!
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited February 2013
Yeah, so it seems most stuff is now available, you just wont have time to make the pre-reqs. Things like High Schools and such (I was actually close to opening up High School in my little burg).
Had a total blast playing the hour, and really wanted to keep going. I have a lot of questions about land value and raising it though. It seems to me that the effective area of a lot of the land value raising structures (police, fire, schools, etc) is really small, and addons to the buildings didn't seem to make it go up. This seems to me then that to have affluent neighborhoods in your city, you're going to have to stack a bunch of land value givers. There may just be something I'm missing with the limited time in the beta, not being able to get some of the bigger stuff like high schools and police HQ.
Yeah, so it seems most stuff is now available, you just wont have time to make the pre-reqs. Things like High Schools and such (I was actually close to opening up High School in my little burg).
Had a total blast playing the hour, and really wanted to keep going. I have a lot of questions about land value and raising it though. It seems to me that the effective area of a lot of the land value raising structures (police, fire, schools, etc) is really small, and addons to the buildings didn't seem to make it go up. This seems to me then that to have affluent neighborhoods in your city, you're going to have to stack a bunch of land value givers. There may just be something I'm missing with the limited time in the beta, not being able to get some of the bigger stuff like high schools and police HQ.
Are you sure? I built some parks, and it seemed to give happiness, but didn't seem to do diddly for my land value. I'll try again here in a minute.
I thought the beta was like "one hour and you're done, forever!" but I'm glad I get to just create a new city and play for another hour!
It usually takes overlapping 2 parks on a lot to get it to bump up to the next tier. The $$$ parks are more effective than the $$ parks, which are better than $ parks. I had a lot of luck with $$ parks, especially the larger ones that have a bigger area effect.
The one time it doesn't bounce me out on "Unable to create city" it traps me in spectator mode and when I click to exit it sends me right back to the main menu and "Unable to create city".
Yeah, launch is going to go great.
Xbox Live, Steam, PSN: Eclibull
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Oh yeah, medium value parks did it. Holy crap, look at the land value sore.
Yeah, Buttesville is going to be a way more efficient city than New Big Bo was.
OF course as soon as I posted my last message I got it working, I really enjoyed it, I agree with the issues around the city size but I like the community aspect to it and the specialisms.
If you are having issues with it being unable to load a city try running the tutorial again. That fixed it for me. You can accesd it from the getting started button in the main menu.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
So what's the magic sauce to take a screenshot, anyone know?
So what's the magic sauce to take a screenshot, anyone know?
Try the "c" button. That seemed to work for me anyway (the things playing the Sims is good for).
I've had one go at the beta now, tried a branching tree layout, didn't work out so well (massive congestion). I wonder how best to get both an effective and attractive layout. It's looking really nice though and seemed to play quite smoothly.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Doobie Shores, right before my hour ran out on this town:
Dusdais ashamed of this postSLC, UTRegistered Userregular
I wonder how difficult it would be to make a small, concentrated city. Like either of the ones in the tutorial. Every time I make one in this, my city ends up looking like Phoenix .
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
When I designed the city above, my goal was to keep it pretty tightly packed. You could get smaller, but once you started going medium density, you'd be getting one building per block. I have to go clean my house up, my daughter is coming over soon, but at some point this evening I plan to keep playing with different city layouts.
I am pretty hooked on this game just from the beta.
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited February 2013
One issue I have is that I can't quite figure out what the trigger conditions are to get medium density buildings to start going up. There were several times when building that city where I didn't want to lay out more residential, I wanted the residential I had (with upgraded medium density roads) to start building apartment buildings. I tried bulldozing houses to uhh 'stimulate growth', but that didn't work. They just rebuilt single family dwellings.
If I could figure out how to get increased density housing to build roughly when I want it to, that would help keep the required space down by building up.
One issue I have is that I can't quite figure out what the trigger conditions are to get medium density buildings to start going up. There were several times when building that city where I didn't want to lay out more residential, I wanted the residential I had (with upgraded medium density roads) to start building apartment buildings. I tried bulldozing houses to uhh 'stimulate growth', but that didn't work. They just rebuilt single family dwellings.
If I could figure out how to get increased density housing to build roughly when I want it to, that would help keep the required space down by building up.
Finally managed to get past the servers, and the game is tons of fun. I'd really like to skip work tonight and play 9 more times. It really does feel sort of "SimTown"ish, but it's a really fun game for what it is. I still have 4 whenever I need to build gigantic regions, this has been a really cool change of focus. It's a shame the betademo is time limited because this game begs to be played on turtle setting to just be able to enjoy watching all of the agents moving around your town.
Fiatil on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
One issue I have is that I can't quite figure out what the trigger conditions are to get medium density buildings to start going up. There were several times when building that city where I didn't want to lay out more residential, I wanted the residential I had (with upgraded medium density roads) to start building apartment buildings. I tried bulldozing houses to uhh 'stimulate growth', but that didn't work. They just rebuilt single family dwellings.
If I could figure out how to get increased density housing to build roughly when I want it to, that would help keep the required space down by building up.
Got water, sewer, trash services all set up?
Yep, plenty of each. I'll try playing with that when I start my next city though, going gangbusters on the services and see if that kicks them in to high gear.
Anyone know if the beta graphics are maxed out? It seems to me like they're not, especially given that it took me about 15 minutes to download the "9 gig" beta.
Edit: It looks like the beta folder is only 2 gigs, so I'm assuming they're not representative of the final product. Tentative hooray! Because the game looked much prettier in the dev videos.
I noticed that you can take control of other towns in the region in this beta. Not enough time to screw with two, but the option is availble. THe one I played with had coal under it so you could get a mining specialization set up.
Anyone know if the beta graphics are maxed out? It seems to me like they're not, especially given that it took me about 15 minutes to download the "9 gig" beta.
Edit: It looks like the beta folder is only 2 gigs, so I'm assuming they're not representative of the final product. Tentative hooray! Because the game looked much prettier in the dev videos.
Anyone know if the beta graphics are maxed out? It seems to me like they're not, especially given that it took me about 15 minutes to download the "9 gig" beta.
Edit: It looks like the beta folder is only 2 gigs, so I'm assuming they're not representative of the final product. Tentative hooray! Because the game looked much prettier in the dev videos.
My beta download says it is 12 gigs...
Did you play beta 1 as well? If not then well.....origiiiiiin!
Anyone know if the beta graphics are maxed out? It seems to me like they're not, especially given that it took me about 15 minutes to download the "9 gig" beta.
Edit: It looks like the beta folder is only 2 gigs, so I'm assuming they're not representative of the final product. Tentative hooray! Because the game looked much prettier in the dev videos.
Yeah, mine is only 1.94 gig as well. That doesn't even fill up half a dvd so there must be textures missing. Must be!
I've seen people on other forums also claiming they don't have any locked buildings; that they just have to fulfill the requirements and they can build high schools and such. My game definitely has those buildings hard locked, so it seems like the pre-order people and/or beta 1 participants are getting a different beta than those of us that just got the key for beta 2. No big deal though! I'm even more excited for the game to come out now.
yeah so I was loving this game up until someone accidentally knocked my ethernet cable, causing me to lose net connection for around 10 seconds.
Apparently that was enough for Origin to go into "offline mode", which resulted in Simcity immediately closing down. Ok, fine, I will just load my 45 minute city back up... and that's when I found out Simcity doesn't autosave (or even more obvious, autosave on quit).
Thanks EA, that interest you created with years of game development is completely smashed by ten seconds of DRM stupidity. WELL DONE.
Posts
Well, I knew that. :P One hour time limits on a game type that can easily suck up 48 hours before I realize it just isn't a very deep demo, ya know? I'm okay with this though, since it is just a demo/beta and I've been a pre-order-er for quite a while already anyhow.
Watching that Ryan Davis play through it in such a methodical, efficient manner is driving me crazy. Draw curvy roads, fool!
Had a total blast playing the hour, and really wanted to keep going. I have a lot of questions about land value and raising it though. It seems to me that the effective area of a lot of the land value raising structures (police, fire, schools, etc) is really small, and addons to the buildings didn't seem to make it go up. This seems to me then that to have affluent neighborhoods in your city, you're going to have to stack a bunch of land value givers. There may just be something I'm missing with the limited time in the beta, not being able to get some of the bigger stuff like high schools and police HQ.
Parks. Parks go gangbusters on your land value.
I thought the beta was like "one hour and you're done, forever!" but I'm glad I get to just create a new city and play for another hour!
It usually takes overlapping 2 parks on a lot to get it to bump up to the next tier. The $$$ parks are more effective than the $$ parks, which are better than $ parks. I had a lot of luck with $$ parks, especially the larger ones that have a bigger area effect.
Yeah, launch is going to go great.
Yeah, Buttesville is going to be a way more efficient city than New Big Bo was.
Try the "c" button. That seemed to work for me anyway (the things playing the Sims is good for).
I've had one go at the beta now, tried a branching tree layout, didn't work out so well (massive congestion). I wonder how best to get both an effective and attractive layout. It's looking really nice though and seemed to play quite smoothly.
I am pretty hooked on this game just from the beta.
If I could figure out how to get increased density housing to build roughly when I want it to, that would help keep the required space down by building up.
Got water, sewer, trash services all set up?
Yep, plenty of each. I'll try playing with that when I start my next city though, going gangbusters on the services and see if that kicks them in to high gear.
This hour limit makes me rush things, I really want to plan out a nicely laid out city.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
Not a single curved road :B
Edit: It looks like the beta folder is only 2 gigs, so I'm assuming they're not representative of the final product. Tentative hooray! Because the game looked much prettier in the dev videos.
My beta download says it is 12 gigs...
Did you play beta 1 as well? If not then well.....origiiiiiin!
Yeah, mine is only 1.94 gig as well. That doesn't even fill up half a dvd so there must be textures missing. Must be!
Apparently that was enough for Origin to go into "offline mode", which resulted in Simcity immediately closing down. Ok, fine, I will just load my 45 minute city back up... and that's when I found out Simcity doesn't autosave (or even more obvious, autosave on quit).
Thanks EA, that interest you created with years of game development is completely smashed by ten seconds of DRM stupidity. WELL DONE.