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Sim City

Started by hoverdonkey, February 17, 2013, 05:55:06 PM

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Rev

Well yeah, that they'll be releasing the upgrade as DLC rather than a patch is conjecture at this point, but larger city sizes having been successfully tried out is a known thing.  Maybe they'll upscale it for free after the initial kinks are worked out?

They won't - it's part of a release strategy.  EA are trailblazers here, but this is the way of the industry - it's not a sudden thing either, let's not forget how cuntish Valve were with Half Life 2.  The games industry, it turns out, is as dopey as the music industry.  You'd just expect them to be a bit more savvy.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Jamie Oliver is fat on March 09, 2013, 06:35:54 PM...I'm wondering if the city size restriction has a lot to do with their always online DRM model as they may want/need to keep everyone at the lowest common denominator size-wise so that everyone can play at acceptable performance levels, but at the same city size....

For at least a year, it's been touted very much as a design feature - lots of smaller cities interacting with each other and each having to specialise. Also, a lot of the stuff that I read stated that this latest version was designed, first and foremost, as a multiplayer game. Obviously, there are practical implications for everyone having to be online, as you say, but I'm leaning more towards to that the city size is as it is, more on purpose, than because of compromise.

Personally, this was something that had put me off, but I'm very interested in what the game offers (especially, with what you've said) so I guess I'll just have to live with it...

Something that I did want to ask, if this had been your first SimCity game, do you think you would have noticed the city size and/or minded about it? Also, do you think creating a private region and developing it all yourself would be fun?

Jamie Oliver is fat

I think I would be as disappointed yeah, I mean I hit a physical limit after just a few hours play yesterday.

But in such a way that the city is done really. No real way to change things to make space, the city is making money, everyone's happy.

I think I've done what you're suggesting, i.e. creating a private region, as I couldn't find a game to join so I created a new one.

To be honest, after closing SC yesterday I haven't gone back to it, there just isn't the scope for it to hold my attention. No linking different areas of the same map with highways and bridges across canyons, no elaborate rail networks, no real distinct areas that are separated by landscape.

Everything is broadly zoned off, but it's all one large mess.

I'll fire it up quick (IF I CAN LOG IN LOL) and take a screenshot of how it ended up.

Jamie Oliver is fat

One of the most impressive things for me, and I've no idea if there was anything like it in SC4, but when you zoom in to see the hundreds of people on the streets, is that they're all actual things going places. i.e. they leave homes and go to work or shops or school using the buses and infrastructure you've created.

So it's not being simulated behind the scenes, it's actually being modelled in real time.


Replies From View

Ground looks a tad soft.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I must be missing the amazing visuals...

It looks absolutely dreadful!


MojoJojo

Quote from: Jamie Oliver is fat on March 10, 2013, 07:43:32 PM
So it's not being simulated behind the scenes, it's actually being modelled in real time.

... or it's being simulated behind the scenes, until you look closely then it magics some people up.

Jim_MacLaine

Quote from: Jamie Oliver is fat on March 10, 2013, 07:43:32 PM
One of the most impressive things for me, and I've no idea if there was anything like it in SC4, but when you zoom in to see the hundreds of people on the streets, is that they're all actual things going places. i.e. they leave homes and go to work or shops or school using the buses and infrastructure you've created.

So it's not being simulated behind the scenes, it's actually being modelled in real time.



Is there much more to your city than this because it does look tiny?

Jamie Oliver is fat

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on March 11, 2013, 09:42:18 AM
I must be missing the amazing visuals...

It looks absolutely dreadful!

Yeah I said that it ended up looking shit

Go back a page

Quote from: Jim_MacLaine on March 11, 2013, 11:26:08 AM
Is there much more to your city than this because it does look tiny?

A little bit more, it sort of falls off a cliff, but only about 1/5th is not visible

Pedro_Bear




Apart from the perennial issue with roads going ugly over bumps in the landscape, that does look beautiful, in a very solid, fun plastic 3D kind of way. The buildings are gorgeous.

Is that a multistory carpark top left-ish and in one by the orange tower? Also, I can't see the bustops? I spent most of the time in SC4 working out the world's most optimised one-way system for buses based around multiple carparks and an integrated subway system. It bankcrupted the city, but it was a thing of mass-transit beauty while the funds bled away.

I dunno, it doesn't look like we can do much more than build one, optimised city with this itteration. The mulitplayer elements seem lifted from Second Life, but without the ability to wander around our neighbour's Hellish creations quietly sneering. Free to play plus ~£10 worth of vanity purchases might have worked better, with obviously more spent by addicts. It would have excused the always online element, too.

Jamie Oliver is fat

Quote from: Pedro_Bear on March 11, 2013, 05:07:32 PM



Apart from the perennial issue with roads going ugly over bumps in the landscape, that does look beautiful, in a very solid, fun plastic 3D kind of way. The buildings are gorgeous.

Is that a multistory carpark top left-ish and in one by the orange tower? Also, I can't see the bustops? I spent most of the time in SC4 working out the world's most optimised one-way system for buses based around multiple carparks and an integrated subway system. It bankcrupted the city, but it was a thing of mass-transit beauty while the funds bled away.

I dunno, it doesn't look like we can do much more than build one, optimised city with this itteration. The mulitplayer elements seem lifted from Second Life, but without the ability to wander around our neighbour's Hellish creations quietly sneering. Free to play plus ~£10 worth of vanity purchases might have worked better, with obviously more spent by addicts. It would have excused the always online element, too.

It's not a car park no, the bus stops spring into view as you zoom in. Placing them was a bit of a breeze really, perhaps too easy for someone who likes the detail you allude to. Basically, when you select your bus garage and a bus stop, the map shows you in green all the areas serviced by bus stops, so you can idlely click away to saturate the place in green roads.

It's the same for school buses. A bit too easy I think.

The same method is applied throughout, to sewage and garbage for instance. Sewage is particularly graphic in how it shows you where it's flowing ok and where it's getting backed up.

I didn't do any trains or trams, where on earth would I fit them?

I love it, I just hate the city size, and it might end up killing it for me.

Quote from: MojoJojo on March 11, 2013, 11:12:35 AM
... or it's being simulated behind the scenes, until you look closely then it magics some people up.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case, Captain Negative



RickyGerbail

it's interesting how the metacritic score was up to 90 the day the game launched, it was based on 6 reviews that were all positive. now the score is down to 70. this phenomenon is very odd.

VegaLA

Quote from: Pedro_Bear on March 11, 2013, 05:07:32 PM

Apart from the perennial issue with roads going ugly over bumps in the landscape...

That image is a screencap from Apple Maps.

mobias

By the time this is released for OS X presumably all the bugs will have been fixed at it'll be worth getting. I presume my 2011 i5 iMac running 20GB of RAM will be able to handle it. 

Utter Shit

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on March 11, 2013, 09:42:18 AM
I must be missing the amazing visuals...

It looks absolutely dreadful!



This...compared to the graphics on basically any modern game, this is dreadful isn't it? Confused by the love the graphics are getting on here, it has that blocky, slightly blurred look of an N64 game.

mobias

Quote from: Utter Shit on March 11, 2013, 07:00:57 PM
This...compared to the graphics on basically any modern game, this is dreadful isn't it? Confused by the love the graphics are getting on here, it has that blocky, slightly blurred look of an N64 game.

Is this sort of game really about having amazing graphics though? I thought it was supposed to look a bit simplistic and like a model.

Pedro_Bear




It looks like a cartoon plastic dollhouse collection, like we could reach in and feel the buildings.

There is a beautiful, hyper-real ambience to the longshots, and the little neon signs are gorgeous.

Shame it's been DLC'd and DRM'd to the point of NFW, but come the weekend someone will have cracked the basic game.

SC4 had looping animations when we zoomed into areas, like Emperor Rise Of The Middle Kingdom. We could drive the various vehicles on missions for points and unlockables, the Private School in particular being a good early-game reward for essentially reenacting Dirty Harry trying to beat the clock with a schoolbus.

The simplifications don't read like they've harmed the gameplay. Once we'd worked out a winning power-water-pollution strategy it was just a case of adapting from one population centre to the next. I wasn't into the whole mono-zone thing; the little maps were for creating specific communities, not spamming with industry to act as a cheaty, pollution-free job-sink for residential-heavy areas.

Utter Shit

Quote from: mobias on March 11, 2013, 07:06:51 PM
Is this sort of game really about having amazing graphics though? I thought it was supposed to look a bit simplistic and like a model.

See I'm happy enough for something not to look realistic if it's not a realistic setting - for example I always preferred the cartoonish 2D beauty of the SNES versions of Mario and Bomberman to the blocky early 3D versions on N64 and PS1 respectively...but Sim City IMO is intended to be a 'realistic' game, so I would expect graphics that are as good as possible.

Maybe a better example is with Rollercoaster Tycoon, which had a colourful, cartoonish simplicity to its graphics in the first couple of instalments, before trying to make it look more realistic in the third instalment but not quite managing it - it went from having basic but nice graphics to more ambitious that had more flaws.

MojoJojo

Quote from: Jamie Oliver is fat on March 11, 2013, 05:59:09 PM
I'm pretty sure that's not the case, Captain Negative

I suppose I was being a bit negative... but it's not really a criticism, modelling down to individual people levels would probably be shit - it's very, very hard to get systems like that working well with any sort of complexity. And it's very hard to justify it for a computer game, especially when you can just fake it better for less effort.

I haven't played it, but you could do a lot just by keeping the faces and timetables at a particular address consistent.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Utter Shit on March 11, 2013, 07:00:57 PM
This...compared to the graphics on basically any modern game, this is dreadful isn't it? Confused by the love the graphics are getting on here, it has that blocky, slightly blurred look of an N64 game.

Yeah it reminds me of GTAIII a little as well. I don't find it impressive at all.

As you pointed out above, the old isometric SVGA stuff looks better because it's neater and consistent in its arrangement, and the products look neat and consistent.

QuoteThere is a beautiful, hyper-real ambience to the longshots, and the little neon signs are gorgeous.

You must love GTAIII then.

REVEEN!

It appears to be missing the two pre-requisites of civilisation, fences and sheds.
Presumably they'll be on the long list of DLC to come.

KLG-7C

It looks like shit and moves like shit.

Zetetic

Some rather disturbing demonstrations of fairly dire problems with pathing in the game:
Hmm
And hmm.

VegaLA

Quote from: Zetetic on March 13, 2013, 07:42:21 PM
Some rather disturbing demonstrations of fairly dire problems with pathing in the game:
Hmm
And hmm.

Some of the comments are terrific, but yes, EA blantantly taking the piss out of their dedicated customers there.

Blumf

Quote from: Zetetic on March 13, 2013, 07:42:21 PM
Some rather disturbing demonstrations of fairly dire problems with pathing in the game:
Hmm

(Think you bummed up the links there)

Assuming all those people are supposed to be individually modelled, surely they all have specific destinations to head for. So how could they get looped like that?

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on March 12, 2013, 08:53:02 AM
Yeah it reminds me of GTAIII a little as well. I don't find it impressive at all.

As you pointed out above, the old isometric SVGA stuff looks better because it's neater and consistent in its arrangement, and the products look neat and consistent.

You must love GTAIII then.

GTAIII was great! The graphics on Vice City weren't that much better, really

KLG-7C

Quote from: Blumf on March 13, 2013, 08:17:59 PM
(Think you bummed up the links there)

Assuming all those people are supposed to be individually modelled, surely they all have specific destinations to head for. So how could they get looped like that?
Because they are trying to get to their destinations, it's just that the game's pathfinding is bunked up so that's the only route they can take.

spanky

It turns out that they don't actually have specific destinations to go to, other than <nearest job> and then <nearest house>.

The Duck Man

Why is everything so green in those screenshots? I've never seen so much grass in an urban area!

Replies From View

Quote from: The Duck Man on March 14, 2013, 12:07:04 PM
Why is everything so green in those screenshots?

It's the Matrix!!!!!