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Maxis explores offline mode for SimCity; Bigger cities ruled out.
- Thread starter Saty
- Start date
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
SmoothRunningGun
Member
I'll consider it for $20 or less if they get offline working.
EatinOlives
Member
How the hell is this in any way a "simulation" when your "region" looks like a hundred skyscrapers crammed into 2 square miles and separated by miles of open field?
SimCity has never been picture-perfect but this isn't even trying. "Full" regions look absolutely nothing like a city at all.
SimCity has never been picture-perfect but this isn't even trying. "Full" regions look absolutely nothing like a city at all.
Ethical Hedonism
Banned
I have a huge problem at how the cities look on this game. Those perfect squares on a huge plot of empty land makes me cringe.
R.I.P. NeoTokyo
http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-gigapixel-roppongi-hills-mori-tower/
THANKS OBAMA.
(Obama is a city in Japan so it totally applies!)
Wow. I've always heard that space is a premium in Japan, but not really seen it until now. That's crazy.
Hockeymac18
Member
As someone who grew up playing Sim City 2000 over my childhood summer vacations (I was just barely too young to really get into the original Sim City), I have loved the franchise ever since. Also, to this day, I believe playing it as a kid transformed my interests, and is one of the main reasons I have such a fascination with cities, urban planning, public transportation, and all related topics.
I really liked Sim City 3 and 4, so it's been a bit devastating to see the direction the series has gone. I was hoping they'd come around and change things (for the better), but it looks like the changes they could implement won't get the series back to where it should be. Offline mode is nice, but they're really ignoring what made the previous games so great. It isn't about sim-level stuff (which is kind of interesting in certain ways). Rather, it's more about the macro-level things that make the Sim City franchise so cool and captivating. Oh well...
I've looked at alternatives, but am not sure what to think of them. Has anyone here played around with alternative Sim City-esque games? Cities XL? Any others?
I really liked Sim City 3 and 4, so it's been a bit devastating to see the direction the series has gone. I was hoping they'd come around and change things (for the better), but it looks like the changes they could implement won't get the series back to where it should be. Offline mode is nice, but they're really ignoring what made the previous games so great. It isn't about sim-level stuff (which is kind of interesting in certain ways). Rather, it's more about the macro-level things that make the Sim City franchise so cool and captivating. Oh well...
I've looked at alternatives, but am not sure what to think of them. Has anyone here played around with alternative Sim City-esque games? Cities XL? Any others?
TheGreyHulk
Member
the lack of larger cities ruins the entire experience.
it fucks up traffic since there's only one highway where people come in and out of the city from. the agent system sucks ass by having sims go to the nearest job, home, etc...this further complicates traffic.
they just really dropped the ball with this game. ruined one of my favorite franchises
it fucks up traffic since there's only one highway where people come in and out of the city from. the agent system sucks ass by having sims go to the nearest job, home, etc...this further complicates traffic.
they just really dropped the ball with this game. ruined one of my favorite franchises
Ricerocket
Member
I seriously don't believe them about technical limitations to allow bigger cities in their engine.
At the moment, they are small as fuck. They had previous games doing cities probably 100x the size of what's in this one. The way it is now, it's a whole lot of trying to cram everything you can into your city and replacing things constantly to see if it works or not.
At the moment, they are small as fuck. They had previous games doing cities probably 100x the size of what's in this one. The way it is now, it's a whole lot of trying to cram everything you can into your city and replacing things constantly to see if it works or not.
All the mods that has been released by people over the net prove that Maxis and EA BOTH are incompetent about fixing the mess that has happened known as Simcity 2013..
As well that I am not touching this version not even in any other way
, it is that bad, Maxis.
I also spent 5 bucks, a while ago on the piece of shit known as Simcity Societies, knowing that something was wrong when it was always online, Same thing happened (Expect that online mode was terrible) for Cities XL.
As well that I am not touching this version not even in any other way
(Legal and illegal)
I also spent 5 bucks, a while ago on the piece of shit known as Simcity Societies, knowing that something was wrong when it was always online, Same thing happened (Expect that online mode was terrible) for Cities XL.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
The previous games handled the simulation on a fundamentally different level. In previous SimCity games, your computer was essentially working a giant excel spreadsheet that had a graphical overlay of buildings on it instead of plain white cells. The cars on the road weren't actually there. They were just graphics routines overlayed on the road. The population and its interaction with the environment was just a result of the equations on the spreadsheet getting calculated with the variables provided by the city stats. Pathfinding was done only twice a day.
The agent system of SimCity 5 changed all of that. Now, instead of approximating behavior, the game tries to actually do it by realizing each individual citizen in the city. What we get, essentially, is the same macro result by means of two very different calculation processes. While it sounds nice in principle, they way the Maxis devs implemented it has been problematic, to say the least.
mysteriousmage09
Member
What a disgrace this company has become.
CrunchyFrog
Member
Simulation computations? From the same engine that brought us impossibly stupid traffic AI and "persistent" citizen agents that actually weren't persistent in any meaningful way at all? From the same engine with sophisticated algorithms which simply couldn't be done on local computers (and yet was completely broken apart and optimized gameplay wise in less than a week) and yet is now somehow magically under consideration to do just that? Try harder, breh. This was a poorly coded cash grab. There may have been bright ambitions in regards to the simulation engine in its early dev cycle, but those ambitions were long since gashed to put a change-gobbling microtransaction machine out in a timely manner.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
And the executive responsible for it gets promoted to senior VP at EA.
yellow submarine
Member
All they really had to do was an HD version of Simcity 4. Actually, just add the fucking 3D models for the same buildings they head in 4, and that would work.
Haunted
Member
#dead
CPU: Intel/AMD 2,5 GHz or higher
RAM: 1 GB RAM (XP), 2 GB RAM (Vista/7),
VGA: ATI Radeon HD 3850/INTEL HD/NVIDIA Geforce 8800 or higher, 512 MB RAM
Sounds like their engine is shit. This whole thing really was a clusterfuck all around, I'd say I hope EA has learned their lesson, but their extensive marketing campaign has still helped make the game sell decently well despite all that.
The Power Of Snap
Member
Celebrating 10 years of Simcity 4
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
The city size in Simcity 5 is slighter larger than the small city size in Simcity 4, but much smaller than a medium size in Simcity 4. It doesn't sound so bad, until you actually play Simcity 5 and experience the horrible creative limit this applies, especially now that the game has so much freedom with roads. It also is quite shocking to see the comparison visually:
I don't care how much more "simulated" the new engine is, if the largest city it can ever simulate is THAT then the engine has failed at it's job. Plain and simple. I would have preferred if they had just kept the simulation engine from Simcity 4 and slapped the new graphical engine and interface into the old game, that would have been FANTASTIC.
The city size in Simcity 5 is slighter larger than the small city size in Simcity 4, but much smaller than a medium size in Simcity 4. It doesn't sound so bad, until you actually play Simcity 5 and experience the horrible creative limit this applies, especially now that the game has so much freedom with roads. It also is quite shocking to see the comparison visually:
I don't care how much more "simulated" the new engine is, if the largest city it can ever simulate is THAT then the engine has failed at it's job. Plain and simple. I would have preferred if they had just kept the simulation engine from Simcity 4 and slapped the new graphical engine and interface into the old game, that would have been FANTASTIC.
This.
Do you guys think we'll ever see a Sim City 6 with Large cities and maybe an offline mode?
Neuromancer
Member
Implementing an offline mode would be a nice gesture (although I'd say it's about 7 months too late.) But no bigger city size is awful, awful news. The fact is, for me, the game runs out of fun once you've filled the map which doesn't take long. Sure you can tweak it to try to cram in more buildings, or higher buildings, but I don't find that fun or very even realistic to how real cities work. Real cities sprawl until they hit a natural limit, not the confines of an invisible square.
The city size in Simcity 5 is slighter larger than the small city size in Simcity 4, but much smaller than a medium size in Simcity 4. It doesn't sound so bad, until you actually play Simcity 5 and experience the horrible creative limit this applies, especially now that the game has so much freedom with roads. It also is quite shocking to see the comparison visually:
I don't care how much more "simulated" the new engine is, if the largest city it can ever simulate is THAT then the engine has failed at it's job. Plain and simple. I would have preferred if they had just kept the simulation engine from Simcity 4 and slapped the new graphical engine and interface into the old game, that would have been FANTASTIC.
Holy crap, is that accurate? Ugh.