That trailer makes me want to go buy a desktop pc. I'm thinking my 10 year old clunker in the basement and my netbook aren't going to cut it. I may have to start saving!
This just looks so bad. It's as if they didn't learn anything from Sim City Societies...
...and I was about to say Spore, but I guess Spore sold well?
I guess there's much more money in appealing to the masses who buy The Sims instead of the old fans of the series.
I'm basing my bashing of the game on the graphical style which is not at all realistic like previous games tried to be (with exceptions like the hyperstructures and monsters from Sim City 2000, etc), but rather very worryingly stylized in a way which makes the entire world feel like a cartoon. That makes is quite difficult for me to think that there will be any strategic depth and challenge to this game, but rather a shallow "build pretty things" game, which I think Cities XL already does better. And if it does have depth and micro management, the graphics feel out of place... but perhaps it will have a Theme Hospital like charm, so who knows?
Either way, it's EA and Origin and after Spore, I'm not inclined to buy anything else from them...
This is Maxis designing this game and they brought back/are working with people who started this franchise. Besides, they said it is a reboot. I don't think they will stray from the winning formula safe for the points where there are now more directions to grow in, which I always thought the game needed. There was either bad, hazardous stuff, low density, medium density, and uber successful high density. That was it. There was no, "I want to make a new world, 2.0." It was all the same buildings over and over.
SC4 fixed this some. You could make farms vs polluting industry vs high tech industry. That was it. Housing was the same with good better best and so was commercial.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Considering it's just concept art so far, I think you're getting ahead of yourself here.
So this was good news this morning. I spent many many hours with the Sim City franchise over the years. My introduction was actually the version on the SNES. That was a fun game. I remember leaving it on overnight a few times to suck up cash. Sometimes it would work, other times I'd wake up to a wasteland thanks to a fire. Got a PC version when the family bought our first PC. Great times were had. Really looking forward to this, even if it won't be until next year.
I too share in others' fears of day one DLC and expansion packs out the wazoo. Having a deluxe version already in mind seems to indicate those fears will be well founded. Still though, I love some Sim City.
Does anyone remember when the original was free to play in a web browser? Is that still a thing? Could be fun. I've done a bit of googling but have yet to find it.
If they're focusing on the urban design/simulation aspects of the franchise, I'll likely be satisfied with the end product. If they're going to make something more focused on pleasing aesthetics, then nope. I care more about experimenting and watching the interconnectedness of the city's elements than I do about curved roads.
Also, the region model from 4 was cool, but what I'd prefer at this time would just be a giant fuckoff map to play one city in. Give me neighborhoods, give me districts, give me downtown and suburbs, give me enough space to have a train line from the outskirts to the CBD. We're a decade past 4, now. The tech can make it happen.
So this was good news this morning. I spent many many hours with the Sim City franchise over the years. My introduction was actually the version on the SNES. That was a fun game. I remember leaving it on overnight a few times to suck up cash. Sometimes it would work, other times I'd wake up to a wasteland thanks to a fire. Got a PC version when the family bought our first PC. Great times were had. Really looking forward to this, even if it won't be until next year.
I too share in others' fears of day one DLC and expansion packs out the wazoo. Having a deluxe version already in mind seems to indicate those fears will be well founded. Still though, I love some Sim City.
Does anyone remember when the original was free to play in a web browser? Is that still a thing? Could be fun. I've done a bit of googling but have yet to find it.
It was but I couldn't find it either. EA most likely discontinued it since that seems to be their MO. They did release the source code in '08 and there's a free version available for Linux called Micropolis
Is that what you think you are? That explains so much.
Yeah the art presentation looks neat. Appropriately cartoony while being really detailed.
And no that's not what I think I am or how I aim to conduct myself. I was saying that if we started a region, I would be tempted to screw around. Only if people with the right sense of humor were about though, I don't want to be a dick. :P
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Also, the region model from 4 was cool, but what I'd prefer at this time would just be a giant fuckoff map to play one city in. Give me neighborhoods, give me districts, give me downtown and suburbs, give me enough space to have a train line from the outskirts to the CBD. We're a decade past 4, now. The tech can make it happen.
They'll probably allow for larger maps than ever, but I'm curious as to what you want districts and such to do from a functional standpoint. I've always just designed those things as a matter of circumstance within a city. It may not be a matter of tech limitation, it could be design theory.
I really don't want to have to reinstall SC4... But I might. This new Laptop would handle it like a beast. My only concern is that SC4 would sometimes crash to the desktop for no reason and I didn't save enough. That was always frustrating.
PSN: DignifiedPauper
3DSFF: 5026-4429-6577
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
My problem with SC4 was I had to do some PC voodoo to get Windowed mode running. And when I did that, it wouldn't show all the cars and stuff out on the streets. >:
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
Spent hundreds of hours on 3000 and 4, so this is definitely interesting. Dunno about the superhero stuff though. Give me satisfyingly complex infrastructure management instead please.
Also, the region model from 4 was cool, but what I'd prefer at this time would just be a giant fuckoff map to play one city in. Give me neighborhoods, give me districts, give me downtown and suburbs, give me enough space to have a train line from the outskirts to the CBD. We're a decade past 4, now. The tech can make it happen.
They'll probably allow for larger maps than ever, but I'm curious as to what you want districts and such to do from a functional standpoint. I've always just designed those things as a matter of circumstance within a city. It may not be a matter of tech limitation, it could be design theory.
The region system in 4 encourages the player to outsource what would be problem areas*. Want some filthy industry to employ low-EQ workers? No problem, slap it down in an adjacent cell and let them commute. The "industrial city" has few or possibly no residents, so it doesn't matter that it's got blacklung-grade air: that air doesn't cross borders. The end result is that there's some serious homogeneity across cities.
A larger map (and by this, I mean comparable in scale to at least the smaller region maps from 4) that contains the player's one and only city would toss that design technique out the window. Want to have heavy industry? Go for it, but you're going to have to take into account the fact that no one's going to want to live near it and this time there's no way to just sidestep the issue. The additional room granted by having a big map, however, lets you buffer it out a bit in a way that looks and feels more natural than it did in 2000 and 3000 (which was slap down a border of trees/parks to suck up the pollution, hooray, problem solved).
*i'm aware that i don't have to play the game this way but mixed-use cities in 4 wind up feeling really cramped due to the small cell size, and what i say in the rest of this post is, i think, a nice compromise
Yeah, I really liked the regions set up, but it was always a bitch to get everything just right. Further, lining up transportation and highways was something I am really bad at. I don't make a good city planner.
I am very VERY wary of the "online" and "coop" aspects because while CitiesXL was a good game, it failed miserably. But it looks like there's not going to be the central server of CitiesXL, but instead a player to player type thing. At least we can hope.
Color me excited. Also color me glad it's over a year away.
I've always concluded the only mod I -really- need to play Simcity 4 is the NAM. However if I get the itch to reinstall, I'd love to go find some good pre-laid out regions out there.
Spent hundreds of hours on 3000 and 4, so this is definitely interesting. Dunno about the superhero stuff though. Give me satisfyingly complex infrastructure management instead please.
I missed some of the silly, whimsical stuff from SC:2000. Not enough to want them to lose focus from what grabbed me with 4 though. Ideally I'd like a game that could be entertaining/accessible for a kid but also deep enough for adults to get as much as out as they put into it.
Oh my god, they removed the links to download the soundtracks for SC4 and SC3. What the fuck!? That shit used to be up there for free and now its all goooone!
God damn that is some attention to detail they have. Workers visibly drive to factories, then when there's enough workers within the factory it starts producing goods with an associated graphical change, and later begins producing pollution with another associated graphical change.
Edit: More grass where there's more water! Water pumps move water from areas of the map to other areas instead of creating water, awesome. Sick sims, made sick by polluted drinking water, have to return home early from work.
I'm just blown away that it's Simcity 5 and I'm not being trolled. Maybe the game itself is a troll.
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SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
RPS has a bit of information on Glass Box.
Sim City is going to be using the internet for a few clever features too. It’s “Fully online buzzword compliant”. It’s got support for cloud saves, you can access statistics about what’s going on in your game world from a browser, the multiplayer is based on the asynchronous server model: So you can interact with friends and enemies without needing to coordinate to be playing at the same time.
SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
edited March 2012
Oh my Gaaaaaaah. There is a water table, and it's finite, so if your city is large enough and you play long enough maybe you can deplete it and have to search for more water or maybe you can import that water from other players?? Also if water tables are persistent between cities in a region then I'd assume you can pollute it and get other cities mad at you!
Sarksus on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Oh my Gaaaaaaah. There is a water table, and it's finite, so if your city is large enough and you play long enough maybe you can deplete it and have to search for more water or maybe you can import that water from other players?? Also if water tables are persistent between cities in a region then I'd assume you can pollute it and get other cities mad at you!
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I bought SimCity 4 on Steam a little while back to get my SimCity fix...I am stoked about this! I hope they simplify some things from SC4 though...like the water grid stuff. Was just annoying and didn't add anything to the game.
Yeah, the water system is always something I eventually brushed off as "Lets make a big criss-cross of pipes, forget it exists".
In fact the electrical grid was almost that way as well. Except for the wires (or zones) that lead TO the city, it was always a drop and forget.
A month doesn't go by that I don't think "Wonder where my SC4 discs are..." before remembering all the add-ons and mods it requires.
So excited for a new one.
So. Excited.
I know that's what keeps me from playing SimCity 3000. It's tempting to wade into the pool again, and then I remember all the shit I need in my city simulation......hmm.
Well, hopefully this will be a sequel on the order of The Sims 2--taking a unlikely but excellent concept and making it better in every regard.
This just looks so bad. It's as if they didn't learn anything from Sim City Societies...
...and I was about to say Spore, but I guess Spore sold well?
I guess there's much more money in appealing to the masses who buy The Sims instead of the old fans of the series.
I'm basing my bashing of the game on the graphical style which is not at all realistic like previous games tried to be (with exceptions like the hyperstructures and monsters from Sim City 2000, etc), but rather very worryingly stylized in a way which makes the entire world feel like a cartoon. That makes is quite difficult for me to think that there will be any strategic depth and challenge to this game, but rather a shallow "build pretty things" game, which I think Cities XL already does better. And if it does have depth and micro management, the graphics feel out of place... but perhaps it will have a Theme Hospital like charm, so who knows?
Either way, it's EA and Origin and after Spore, I'm not inclined to buy anything else from them...
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but eobet is totally right: with the exception of the giant robospiders and the arcologies, Sim City has always been realistic, and all the better for it, I'd say.
It certainly seems to have a tradition of trying to put a humorous varnish or the most realistic mechanics they could practically implement. Hell, I remember the tagline from the back of the SC2000 box--"If it were any more realistic, it'd be illegal to turn it off."
The Sims series is more deliberately comical in approach (then again, the strict alternative would be pretty awful, and you can avoid the more fantastical aspects of the game if you so choose). And then you've got spinoff games like SimTown. But architecturally, it looks a lot like SimCity 4--that is, if you do a middling job, your city will probably resemble a more bleak, austere, modest community in style, but if you learn the mechanics and "break" the game, so to speak, you can get some phenomenal, post-modern skylines.
Frankly, the series really needs a wider range of arcitectural styles, I'd say, not left up to modders. It's a tall order, but really what would make this game from "excellent" to "flat-out amazing".
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SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
His concerns come off as very hyperbolic, especially in light of the details of Glass Box.
Sim City's graphics were mainly a product of their time. Buildings in 2000 and 3000 looked like they were from the time periods they released the game in. Sim City 5's buildings look cleaner and more beautiful.
The new SimCity, due for 2013 on PC and Mac, is powered by a new proprietary engine called GlassBox. It is described as "a new data-driven simulation engine" that is Maxis' "bet for the future." At a panel during Game Developers Conference, the studio detailed how GlassBox will power the upcoming SimCity "reboot" and promised that the modding community will be able to get their hands on their powerful new tools.
"We're huge fans of our modding community," creative director Ocean Quigley told the audience. "We've designed all this stuff to be moddable."
"We know modding is hugely important to our community," Quigley noted. "We know the reason why people are still playing SimCity 4 ten years later is because the modding community has kept it alive. GlassBox is built to be moddable, but beyond that we haven't announced anything"
While coming short of announcing full mod support for SimCity, Maxis did add that "we're using the same package format The Sims and SimCity 4 used," showing Maxis' desire to make it easy for Sim fans to transition to GlassBox tools.
Oh yeah, this is good. I was expecting mods to fall by the wayside with how modern gaming is going, so it's wonderful to see them bucking the trend here.
Posts
Also on a side note:
Is that what you think you are? That explains so much.
So excited for a new one.
So. Excited.
This is Maxis designing this game and they brought back/are working with people who started this franchise. Besides, they said it is a reboot. I don't think they will stray from the winning formula safe for the points where there are now more directions to grow in, which I always thought the game needed. There was either bad, hazardous stuff, low density, medium density, and uber successful high density. That was it. There was no, "I want to make a new world, 2.0." It was all the same buildings over and over.
SC4 fixed this some. You could make farms vs polluting industry vs high tech industry. That was it. Housing was the same with good better best and so was commercial.
I too share in others' fears of day one DLC and expansion packs out the wazoo. Having a deluxe version already in mind seems to indicate those fears will be well founded. Still though, I love some Sim City.
Does anyone remember when the original was free to play in a web browser? Is that still a thing? Could be fun. I've done a bit of googling but have yet to find it.
PSN : Bolthorn
Also, the region model from 4 was cool, but what I'd prefer at this time would just be a giant fuckoff map to play one city in. Give me neighborhoods, give me districts, give me downtown and suburbs, give me enough space to have a train line from the outskirts to the CBD. We're a decade past 4, now. The tech can make it happen.
steam | xbox live: IGNORANT HARLOT | psn: MadRoll | nintendo network: spinach
3ds: 1504-5717-8252
It was but I couldn't find it either. EA most likely discontinued it since that seems to be their MO. They did release the source code in '08 and there's a free version available for Linux called Micropolis
At least it's not things that really matter. Then again certain country city types sounds a bit like Societies.
Yeah the art presentation looks neat. Appropriately cartoony while being really detailed.
And no that's not what I think I am or how I aim to conduct myself. I was saying that if we started a region, I would be tempted to screw around. Only if people with the right sense of humor were about though, I don't want to be a dick. :P
They'll probably allow for larger maps than ever, but I'm curious as to what you want districts and such to do from a functional standpoint. I've always just designed those things as a matter of circumstance within a city. It may not be a matter of tech limitation, it could be design theory.
3DSFF: 5026-4429-6577
A larger map (and by this, I mean comparable in scale to at least the smaller region maps from 4) that contains the player's one and only city would toss that design technique out the window. Want to have heavy industry? Go for it, but you're going to have to take into account the fact that no one's going to want to live near it and this time there's no way to just sidestep the issue. The additional room granted by having a big map, however, lets you buffer it out a bit in a way that looks and feels more natural than it did in 2000 and 3000 (which was slap down a border of trees/parks to suck up the pollution, hooray, problem solved).
*i'm aware that i don't have to play the game this way but mixed-use cities in 4 wind up feeling really cramped due to the small cell size, and what i say in the rest of this post is, i think, a nice compromise
steam | xbox live: IGNORANT HARLOT | psn: MadRoll | nintendo network: spinach
3ds: 1504-5717-8252
3DSFF: 5026-4429-6577
I am very VERY wary of the "online" and "coop" aspects because while CitiesXL was a good game, it failed miserably. But it looks like there's not going to be the central server of CitiesXL, but instead a player to player type thing. At least we can hope.
Color me excited. Also color me glad it's over a year away.
I've always concluded the only mod I -really- need to play Simcity 4 is the NAM. However if I get the itch to reinstall, I'd love to go find some good pre-laid out regions out there.
I missed some of the silly, whimsical stuff from SC:2000. Not enough to want them to lose focus from what grabbed me with 4 though. Ideally I'd like a game that could be entertaining/accessible for a kid but also deep enough for adults to get as much as out as they put into it.
http://www.hardwareclips.com/video/7183/Sim-City-5-Inside-the-GlassBoxEngine-gfx-not-final-1of4
http://www.hardwareclips.com/video/7186/Sim-City-5-Inside-the-GlassBoxEngine-gfx-not-final-2of4
http://www.hardwareclips.com/video/7187/Sim-City-Inside-the-GlassBoxEngine-gfx-not-final-3of4
http://www.hardwareclips.com/video/7188/Sim-City-Inside-the-GlassBoxEngine-gfx-not-final-4of4
Edit: More grass where there's more water! Water pumps move water from areas of the map to other areas instead of creating water, awesome. Sick sims, made sick by polluted drinking water, have to return home early from work.
Edit 2: WHY IS THIS A YEAR AWAY
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/08/back-from-simulation-city-inside-maxis-glass-box/
GAME.
OVERRRRRRRRRRRRR.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qmi0w/iama_maxis_development_team_on_simcity_amaa/
In fact the electrical grid was almost that way as well. Except for the wires (or zones) that lead TO the city, it was always a drop and forget.
This is a first-person shooter, isn't it?
I know that's what keeps me from playing SimCity 3000. It's tempting to wade into the pool again, and then I remember all the shit I need in my city simulation......hmm.
Well, hopefully this will be a sequel on the order of The Sims 2--taking a unlikely but excellent concept and making it better in every regard.
The Sims series is more deliberately comical in approach (then again, the strict alternative would be pretty awful, and you can avoid the more fantastical aspects of the game if you so choose). And then you've got spinoff games like SimTown. But architecturally, it looks a lot like SimCity 4--that is, if you do a middling job, your city will probably resemble a more bleak, austere, modest community in style, but if you learn the mechanics and "break" the game, so to speak, you can get some phenomenal, post-modern skylines.
Frankly, the series really needs a wider range of arcitectural styles, I'd say, not left up to modders. It's a tall order, but really what would make this game from "excellent" to "flat-out amazing".
Sim City's graphics were mainly a product of their time. Buildings in 2000 and 3000 looked like they were from the time periods they released the game in. Sim City 5's buildings look cleaner and more beautiful.
Oh yeah, this is good. I was expecting mods to fall by the wayside with how modern gaming is going, so it's wonderful to see them bucking the trend here.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.