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Sim City Societies: This Winter
Lucky Cynic
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Let's recap at where Sim City Stands right now. As it is, Sim City 1 is available on SimCity4.com for internet play. SC2, and 3 are off the shelves for the most part, and the current version of Sim City is SC4 which was released back in 2004. It showed some potential but really, it was no patches and didn't really get enough lovin' to make it what it could have potentially have been.
Sim City DS is coming out soon, likely in July and is basically SC3 modded to work with the capabilities of the DS. It even has Will himself as an adviser.
Fast forward to now. Will Wright hinted that he did want to "go back to his roots" for the next installment of Sim City. The game has been in development for a while now, but SC fans weren't really sure what to expect. I was figuring they would incorporate Online play mechanics into the game somehow, but it seems that is not the case. EA made a strange move however and hired an outside development company to make the game, instead of Maxis... I'm not sure how this will play along but Will is a genius having had SC, Sims, Sims 2, and soon to come Spore which have had a huge impact in the gaming industry. I am sure that he will not let SC Societies be a fuck up...
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160086
Here's the first screenshot. I warn you, it isn't exactly pretty, but you know what, it looks almost classier. Some of the town buildings and cars look like they are game pieces like on a monopoly board or something.
The sky is actually visible, meaning maybe a more fleshed out 3d Camera like in the Sims 2. There also seems to be dynamic shadowing added to the game too. This doesn't seem like much, but the Sim City games have always had relatively low system requirements. After all, the game in 2003 still used sprites for buildings. Not all, but most...
Anyways, thoughts?
EDIT: Here's the joystiq link.
EDIT2: It seems that 1up has posted several more screenshots of the game. I'm really liking the details to the buildings and the streets, albeit they do kind of look like crap when zoomed in all the way, from a medium distance, it looks great!
http://www.1up.com/do/gameOverview?cId=3160082
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This new game looks like a step backwards in the sense that that screenshot doesn't have some of the gritty realism that SC4 had. But finally being fully 3D might give us the return of SimCopter.
Edit: The screenshot might not be so bad. Perhaps the brightness is just a tad too high. I'll probably by the game unless it turned out to be a complete stinker.
That's probably where Maxis is concentrated right now. Will just comes up with concepts and oversees stuff, and EA gives him whatever he needs to get the job done, so long as it is as profitable, much like the Sims and all it's thousands of expansion packs...
I would love it if the game ended up looking like this... This was a concept for SC4 but back in 2003, they feared not everyone can run the game without dedicated graphics card. Now those are all the norm, so they can ramp up the graphics considerably, me thinks... But really, this concept here, it's just soo damn sexy.
WORK ON SPORE
He's probably giving as much input on this as he does on The Sims expansion packs. Probably a little more.
I'm pretty sure that's one of those things I'm not supposed to laugh at.
*snicker*
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I think it's from this bleuish coloring the buildings get. Blue and green from the grass, and pinks and purples from the carnival probably give it that toy-like/childish feel to it. But it is a screenshot. I'm sure it's not going to look like that in the end. Just like how that SC4 concept ended up not looking like that in the game...
Shall we start suspecting how the game will work with other sim products? Personally I think you will be able to design and furnish your own buildings. :P
EDIT: You know, I have been pondering this idea back and fourth... You guys remember that one website game, where it's like you are given only soo much paint, and theres this huge canvas on the internet, and you can paint on it, and people were working together to make graphiti and big ass flags of Korea and stuff... Well, what if there were several cities that were shared online, and you only had like 4 years game time in office and only could spend like $10,000... I think that would make for some interesting results....
I just want SimCopter 2. But not if it is going to take place in some bubbly SimCity. I want realistic SimCopter. Putting out fires and chasing cars down the freeway.
They might, but I want it where the City is open and out there for anyone, not just PMing them back and fourth on Simtropolis. Besides, that takes a lot of time and effort. I'd rather have it be like: Go Online, look for towns, get into town, work on pollution, traffic issues. Zone more residential and *oops* times up. Then later I can come back to the town and see that some asshole put up a million coal power plants everywhere and destroyed a main highway, this is just the kind of stuff I'd like to see...
One thing I missed from SC3K was Objectives and Scenarios. This was very straight forward but fun approach to the game. I really think that they should make a comeback but be more a part of the game itself. What's the goal of SC4? Well, anything, there really isn't a set goal, just a set of possibilities, but for those of us who want a set goal, why not have them instead of make them up ourselves. I can see many possible Objectives and Scenarios added into SC5. These of course could be options that you can add to your city or region. Let's say I want every city in my region to have the "Global Warming" and "Rising Water" objectives. That would be, for example keeping pollution down in every city as well as planting more trees but also ensuring that those who live on the oceanside will not have to abandon their homes due to the rising waters from the ice caps melting. Probably a scary example, but there are countless others. Let's say you have a city, and then want to attempt to sponsor the Sim Olympics! Then you have 10 years to compete against 3 foreign cities and you have to A: Keep pollution down, B: Increase funds!, C: Prepare for the traffic overload,
One one hand, I really enjoy Simcity 4 and I'm not sure I want to see the series go backwards in complexity. The screenshot makes me think 'SimTown 2'.
On the other hand, they're tapping Tilted Mill as developer, which is composed of people who made the Caesar, Zeus, and Pharaoh series. If anyone besides Maxis could do this well, it would be them. I guess I'm ambivalent for now.
Edit: Simcopter 2 would be so awesome.
Except Caesar sucked... didn't it?
Functional landmarks: If I plop down the Sears Tower, I don't want it to be a life sized statue of the Sears Tower. I want it to FUNCTION like the Sears Tower.
Precise City Planning: Desire meters are all well and good, but I want to be able to specifically choose to place specific types of buildings in an area, and not just zone things. Look at Freedom Tower. The city government CHOSE to place a new skyscraper there. I want to choose to place things whether my Sims want them or not! I hate having to adjust tax meters to encourage or discourage certain types of buildings. If I want to build a 6 building low rent housing project, I should be able to. NYC has the Housing Authority and they run and have built plenty of buildings. I want to do the same.
Make and easy building designer: The game being full 3D, I should be much more easily able to design skyscrapers and office complexes.
Realistic Public Transportation: I want to look at traffic maps and place bus route accordingly. I want to have complete control of bus routes, bus frequency and whether or not there will be "express" buses. Likewise, I want to design train routes as well. Adding stops along a tube isn't enough. In NYC, several trains can use the same tubes before they diverge. I should be able to place stops, and then, using a seperate tool, add/remove train lines, while adding/removing stops for each line. I honestly don't think any of this is more complicated that the financial game in SC4. In fact, I'd say this is WAY easier and much more straight forward. Not many riders getting on at 5th and Main? Have less trains stop there. Close it after certain hours. It is common sense dammit.
Park Designing Tools: Actually, to be honest, I think simply being allowed to ZONE parks would be enough of a step forward to me. Just give me slightly more precise terrain tools, some interesting doodads to place on the land, and possible a walkway placer, and then bam, zone for park. Of course, prebuilt park sections would still be a must.
Adjust Desire to be more sensible: If I have a town of 5,000 sims, they really shouldn't be picky about what kind of work is available. I hate having a town that only wants me to build crappy industry. Where you going to buy your food from you jackasses? There are always people looking to make a buck! You can't blame it on a lack of education either. Who is running the mills and factories that these Sims so desperately want? The same type of people who can open businesses! SC4 seems to require way too much work to get some good commercial development, and to me that just doesn't seem very realistic. Commercial desire is way too damned picky! If there is a town of 25k, I can damn sure bet there are plenty of people who would build businesses anywhere they can put them if they were the only business of their type in town.
I can't think of anything else right now besides SimCopter 2, or at least the ability to explore the city on foot or in a car.
edit: more marginally related stuff.
Actually, they didn't. I never played SimCity 4, but I read an interview with a developer in which he said that the game was actually 3D with an extremely constrained camera. The reason being, if you looked at the cities with a free-roaming camera, they looked like crap.
He mentioned that they were estimating that you'd need a video card 10 times as powerful as a gforce 4, several gigs of disk space, and a lot of ram (requirements that seemed ludicrous to me then), to do a free-roaming camera and have the game look as good as with the constrained cam.
It was actually a pretty interesting article. I digs it up for you.
They've also got some folks from Stainless Steel (Empire Earth, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World); I've known one of them since we were kids staying up all night playing games on the C=64, so I have a lot of faith in their ability to pull this off.
Well apparently you can build amusement parks.
On the one hand, I like more complexity. I thought that Sim City 4 got it right in most respects, other than its horrible transportation issues (I've read that the new transportation options in the expansion pack helped a lot, but I don't have the pack to test for myself) and some of the waste management things. I liked the idea of regions, especially as it made it possible to build an interconnected state or large city with separate, distinct areas.
On the other, I miss the fun of Sim City 2000. Once I figured out what to do, the game was very forgiving. After a while, city planning was pointless as sims would flock to my cities no matter what.
I think, though, that I'd rather have the series build upon what 4 got right. I liked being able to zone for different densities, especially for agriculture. I liked that the Sims within my cities were needy, whiney little pricks who felt entitled to education and healthcare. I liked that I could build neighboring cities whose success, in part, relied on those neighbors. Hell, I like that I just learned what causes water polution in the game, and can now plan around it.
Oh well...if this next iteration of the series isn't what I want to buy, I'll just stick with 4 and its expansion pack.
They did end up changing 3000 drastically before release (going from 3d to sprites) so who knows.
And they must include the dorky pilot sunglasses too!
I'm also sure that this screenshot is just a tech demo. For one thing, it looks almost too clean, like these are very stock/basic models. I mean, there's not even pedestrians in the street! I'm sure they are going to have more intricate buildings/realistic buildings. They were probably showing at this angle and how close they are to the buildings. "Look, they aren't sprites anymore, they are fully 3D and look at how close you can get to your buildings, no pixilation or anything!"
An early 3000 screen before it went back to 2d:
Edit: What I'd want for the next simcity is basically an improved landscaping mode and being able to make the city look like I want. Lose the grid. That's where I had the most fun in 4.
SimCity has no need to be 3D. If you want SimCopter, beg EA for a SimCopter game. If you want to walk in a city, go outside.
Umm, what? What the hell is wrong with my computer, or my copy of SC4 then?
I tried running it with my A64 3200, an x800xl gpu and a gig of RAM, and any time my city hit more than 15-20k people or so, the game became choppy to the point of unplayability. Loading up a large city was an exercise in futility. So I've added it to my stack of games along with Oblivion and a few others that I will try someday, once I get a better computer and can actually enjoy them.
I'm in the camp with a few others that I'd prefer future SimCity games to be a bit less complex and technical. I like depth in the games, but sometimes it felt like SC4 just went a bit too far. Not to mention their lack of support after releasing Rush Hour stymied the game pretty quickly.
Fuck yeah they should just reissue Sim City 1 and be done with it right guys?
If I were designing this game I would have it zoom out to larger scale in the same manner that Spore does, as your city grows you get more map and more options, for regions (which I loved in SC4) perhaps people ought to be able set up a region as a group, and each person starts their own communities within the larger region, cities would develop, but in order to really be successful they need to create as much commerce and iteration as possible to reach the next level. Also regions (representing groups of players) would be able to gently compete with each other wherein say one region has developed an incredible educational system, producing lots of highly educated sims, another covets those yuppies but does not want to spend the simolians to create a that kind of education network, so they set up a lot of high tech industrial and commercial job zoning and creating entertaining and affordable places to live alongside it and start poaching graduates from the first region, sort of like a Boston-NYC thing.
That probably wont happen though.
The things I loved about 4 was the total region control. I hope that still exists, it really gave the feeling of what big cities really are and that they need the surrounding metro area.
I hated the cartoonish advisors and the shitty public transportation options. Other than that, I loved 4. I played it for hours upon hours, then I made another city.
I hated the region stuff in 4. If they want to do something like that, give us a big map or make it more streamlined or something. It was annoying having to exit out of each area, save, go back to the map, load your other "city", which actually just made the whole thing a little confusing. Your other city is in limbo while you work on this one. So to build them up in tandem you had to keep exiting.
My only other major complaint with 4 was the absolute brain dead AI they used for the citizens. What's that, roads are packed? Alright, I'll build a freeway! Oh wait, no one is going to use it and just use the same roads they did before despite the fact that the freeway would be faster?
I didn't mind any of the other management in that game except the damn traffic.
In a perfect SimCity, there would be toggles you could set in the difficulty options screen. Turning off the need to micromanage water, waste, public transportation, etc, all separately. Kind of like the toggle switches in IL-2 Sturmovik (a ww2 flight sim) that let you toggle the realism.