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[DownWithTheShip]

Well that explains why my casinos failed. Apparently I didn't place them close enough to the entrance of my city. Also explains why residents were commuting on my smaller streets and causing massive traffic jams instead of using the Avenue that always seemed to be empty. I don't expect perfection, but some things like traffic need to be done right or the whole thing is falls apart.

I don't even want to play anymore.

 

[PoweredBySoy]

I was pretty excited for this game and had it pre-ordered, but then fate stepped in. The UPS tracking had said the package was delivered at my front door, but nothing was there. I waited an extra day and still nothing. After two days, at which point it was becoming apparent that these servers were clusterfucked and that I was never going to receive my package, I contacted Amazon and asked for a refund. Amazon being their usual awesome self did so no questions asked.

For an added bonus I still got the $20 credit for the pre-order too.

Bullet dodged.

God damn.

 

[Kazerei]

Brutal

ether

 

[Piggus]

Yeah. I officially regret buying this game now. Biggest disappointment in a long time. I wish I could get my money back.

There is no good of this mess ever getting patched right?

Same I remember Maxis saying something about increasing region size down the road but I really hope they're addressing these other issues as well. The game has huge potential to be great, but right now I'd rather play SimCity 2000.

 

[Philia]

Same I remember Maxis saying something about increasing region size down the road but I really hope they're addressing these other issues as well. The game has huge potential to be great, but right now I'd rather play SimCity 2000.

I got a question for you. After all the other DLC/Expansion shenanigans we've witnessed coming from EA on other games like The Sims or the like, did you honestly think you'd get those "increasing region upgrades" for free? On top of the 60 dollars you've have paid for this shallow tiny township of a simulation?

It just boggles my mind how can anyone not see that this is a major ripoff from the start.

 

[Retro]

Same I remember Maxis saying something about increasing region size down the road but I really hope they're addressing these other issues as well. The game has huge potential to be great, but right now I'd rather play SimCity 2000.

You say that like there's something wrong with Simcity 2k. That game still kicks ass.

I got a question for you. After all the other DLC/Expansion shenanigans we've witnessed coming from EA on other games like The Sims or the like, did you honestly think you'd get those for free? On top of the 60 dollars you've have paid for this shallow tiny township of a simulation?

It just boggles my mind how can anyone not see this is a major ripoff from the start.

Some of us did, and made it a point to warn our fellow GAFers, and received much animosity for the act. We're the people enjoying this disaster more than we probably should.

 

[Philia]

Some of us did, and made it a point to warn our fellow GAFers, and received much animosity for the act. We're the people enjoying this disaster more than we probably should.

True, I do have to keep in mind that a lot of people don't follow internet gaming news like they should. I've been a rabid fan of city building for years since 2k and I've been more than enough informed of this shit than I should have. But yeah, any casual can been duped real easy. :\ I think that's the most vile thing that EA is banking on.

 

[jambo]

Brutal

Fatality!

 

[Jindujun]

Same I remember Maxis saying something about increasing region size down the road but I really hope they're addressing these other issues as well. The game has huge potential to be great, but right now I'd rather play SimCity 2000.

I'm scared shitless just thinking about the traffic buildup alone on a larger map

 

[ASTROID2]

Brutal

At first I thought it said "Not enough skilled workers going out of business.". lol

 

[j_k_redtail]

I can't play this game anymore. I click on houses and I see "Cooper Residence", "Anderson Residence", "Raj Residence", but it's a lie! Wool over the eyes! I click on little Bobby Jackson walking to school and I feel nothing.

That's because SIMCITY is in the uncanny valley of gaming.

I suppose I'm rolling into the thread kind of late, but I've been thinking about this a great deal lately. I remember when the movie The Polar Express came out, it was supposed to be one of the most photo-realistic CGI movies of all time. But I'm sure I wasn't the only one who saw it and thought that the kids looked... well.. weird. Not quite human. Now I think that was the uncanny valley at work: as the CGI faces become more realistic, your mind inspects them more closely and they eventually fail a sort of "Turing Test" of human recognition. Even if the eyes/ears/nose are in the right places, and the skin reflects light just the way it should, there's a certain deadness behind the eyes that your brain finds repulsive at some subconcious level.

I think the same effect is at work here. SC2K had blue dots in place of cars. Nobody complained that the cars didn't seem to drive from point A to point B because we didn't expect them to. The fact that the cars would simply vanish into space once they passed from a "congested" to an "uncongested" segment of roadway didn't shatter the illusion because there was no illusion to be shattered. In contrast, when you see Bobby Jackson "on his way to school" or Linda Jackson on her way to work you expect that both will make it home to the "Jackson house" at night. After all, why wouldn't they? That's what the engine promised. You don't expect them to walk into the first house they come across in the evening.

SIMCITY looks so much better than SC2K, and promises so much more, in the same way the models in Ace Combat 6 look better than the models in Final Fantasy VII. But on closer inspection it falls short of what we expect. The lie is both too real and not real enough at the same time.

 

[Philia]

snip

Now you got me curious about Polar Express the movie now.

 

[Surfheart]

Apparently the Sims don't need job, educations or any way to purchase goods to be perfectly happy and content.

http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a7iqq/apparently_commercial_and_industrial_zones_are/

Man, well that's it I guess. I can understand fudging pop numbers and the dumb agents, but the entire "sim" seems to be completely contrived.

 

[Gotchaye]

That's because SIMCITY is in the uncanny valley of gaming.

I suppose I'm rolling into the thread kind of late, but I've been thinking about this a great deal lately. I remember when the movie The Polar Express came out, it was supposed to be one of the most photo-realistic CGI movies of all time. But I'm sure I wasn't the only one who saw it and thought that the kids looked... well.. weird. Not quite human. Now I think that was the uncanny valley at work: as the CGI faces become more realistic, your mind inspects them more closely and they eventually fail a sort of "Turing Test" of human recognition. Even if the eyes/ears/nose are in the right places, and the skin reflects light just the way it should, there's a certain deadness behind the eyes that your brain finds repulsive at some subconcious level.

I think the same effect is at work here. SC2K had blue dots in place of cars. Nobody complained that the cars didn't seem to drive from point A to point B because we didn't expect them to. The fact that the cars would simply vanish into space once they passed from a "congested" to an "uncongested" segment of roadway didn't shatter the illusion because there was no illusion to be shattered.

SIMCITY looks so much better than SC2K, and promises so much more, in the same way the models in Ace Combat 6 look better than the models in Final Fantasy VII. But on closer inspection it falls short of what we expect. The lie is both too real and not real enough at the same time.

Is it really about the graphics? I think the "uncanny valley" framing here is useful, but the independent variable is low-level simulation rather than graphical realism. People's problem with the game isn't that cities shouldn't look like they do in SimCity; it's that cities shouldn't be like they are in SimCity. It's not about an illusion being shattered; it's that the top-level game is a terrible simulation, and it's terrible because it does lots more low-level simulation than previous games.

 

[j_k_redtail]

Is it really about the graphics? I think the "uncanny valley" framing here is useful, but the independent variable is low-level simulation rather than graphical realism. People's problem with the game isn't that cities shouldn't look like they do in SimCity; it's that cities shouldn't be like they are in SimCity. It's not about an illusion being shattered; it's that the top-level game is a terrible simulation, and it's terrible because it does lots more low-level simulation than previous games.

Right - I should clarify that even though you'd expect a more impressive-looking sequel to be more impressive under the hood, graphics aren't the ultimate issue.

But I do think quite a bit of the success of SimCity in the past has been in the fact that it looks and feels like a working "city", as long as you don't look too closely. (See my example re: the cars above). This version invites players to look closer than they probably should, and I think that's part of the reason why people have so many issues with it.

 

[TimeEffect]

Brutal

They deserve everything coming to them. By far the most entertaining aspect of this whole mess. Sad as it is to see it.

What a perspective. But surely, that is a joke-- is that really the max size of the city?

Does anyone think they know EA's plans with the support of this game? I wonder if they will increase city size out of "good will" I remember a particular argument that the older game's city size was wasted space and that EA was doing a favor by trimming the fat.

 

[Retro]

Does anyone think they know EA's plans with the support of this game? I wonder if they will increase city size out of "good will"

Expansion packs, "Stuff" Packs and in-game store items, as far as the eye can see.

 

[JackDT]

Is it really about the graphics? I think the "uncanny valley" framing here is useful, but the independent variable is low-level simulation rather than graphical realism. People's problem with the game isn't that cities shouldn't look like they do in SimCity; it's that cities shouldn't be like they are in SimCity. It's not about an illusion being shattered; it's that the top-level game is a terrible simulation, and it's terrible because it does lots more low-level simulation than previous games.

They are one and the same in many cases.

You can't find the same traffic weirdness in SC2000 because there is nothing to even look at. Nobody is actually trying to get anywhere. No pathfinding to criticize because there are no paths. Cars don't exist. 'Traffic' is merely a graphic swap that toggles on when the density of nearby buildings hit certain sizes.

So yes, to some extent this game is running into an "uncanny valley" of simulations. Our standards go way up when we see little details.

 

[beat]

Now you got me curious about Polar Express the movie now.

I think that team did better mocap/motion cleanup/animation/character design work later on though. I still think it's a somewhat silly enterprise to start with, sillier than the Sky Captain / Sin City / 300 / Sucker Punch method of greenscreening everything and filming real actors. At least in Tron Legacy, there was a point to making young CGI Jeff Bridges, or in the Matrix Reloaded there was a point to the CGI Burly Brawl.

But check out http://wardomatic.blogspot.com/2004/12/polar-express-virtual-train-wreck_18.html for a really detailed critique into the Polar Express character design, and to a lesser extent, the animation rigging.

 

[whatsinaname]

[IG]http://i.imgur.com/COJZq8V.gif[/IMG]
[IG]http://i.imgur.com/bF7Mzum.jpg[/IMG]
[IG]http://i.imgur.com/6PgsDhs.jpg[/IMG]
[IG]http://i.imgur.com/eWmW1XK.jpg[/IMG]

This is like the jump from AoE III to AoE Online.

 

[YouEnjoyMySelf]

I don't see how people can defend the fact the "sims" aren't actually being "simulated" and just taking the shortest path among other shoddy programming oversights. I don't own the game but loved SimCity in the past. So easy to tell how utterly broken the core game is just from videos.

 

[PedroPanache]

"You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
You may find yourself in another part of the world
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife
You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
You may ask yourself, how do I work this?
You may ask yourself, where is that large automobile?
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife"

Soundtrack to every sim in Sim City 5.

 

[TheContact]

How did GT gives this an 8.8? Lol

 

[Philia]

I think that team did better mocap/motion cleanup/animation/character design work later on though. I still think it's a somewhat silly enterprise to start with, sillier than the Sky Captain / Sin City / 300 / Sucker Punch method of greenscreening everything and filming real actors. At least in Tron Legacy, there was a point to making young CGI Jeff Bridges, or in the Matrix Reloaded there was a point to the CGI Burly Brawl.

But check out http://wardomatic.blogspot.com/2004/12/polar-express-virtual-train-wreck_18.html for a really detailed critique into the Polar Express character design, and to a lesser extent, the animation rigging.

Wow! Thanks for the follow up on this!

 

[les papillons sexuels]

it's absolutely true that traffic is broken. There is no evidence that shows adding more lanes will ease congestion, infact it often creates more congestion, and public transit can earn a profit for a city.

 

[jambo]

Not sure if this has been posted here yet or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdu1ho2Ic4

Guy built a city with 100% residential with no other cities in the region. Parks and low taxes gave high happiness even though they had no jobs and hardly any money.

Reddit confirmed that it worked in both sandbox and normal modes

 

[Dead Man]

So, am I alone in not really wanting individuals in my simcity even if it worked well? I just don't see what it brings to the game itself.

Not sure if this has been posted here yet or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdu1ho2Ic4

Guy built a city with 100% residential with no other cities in the region. Parks and low taxes gave high happiness even though they had no jobs and hardly any money.

Reddit confirmed that it worked in both sandbox and normal modes

Think it was a few pages back, bears repeating though.

 

[TimeEffect]

Not sure if this has been posted here yet or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdu1ho2Ic4

Guy built a city with 100% residential with no other cities in the region. Parks and low taxes gave high happiness even though they had no jobs and hardly any money.

Reddit confirmed that it worked in both sandbox and normal modes

Clear, bold-faced lies through and through by EA. I wonder what exactly happened in development to end up like this.

Youtube comments always kill me.

 

[Septimius]

Looks like Guillaume Pierre ‏is very engaged with people on Twitter, even shared some tech under the hood , like this one about path finding algorithm:

Guillaume Pierre ‏@MaxisGuillaume
@Le_Belge_a_dit it's using D*, not A*, but yeah, looking into some changes to the planning AI.

As I said before, it's not unknown terrain, so D* makes no sense.

 

[jambo]

Clear, bold-faced lies through and through by EA. I wonder what exactly happened in development to end up like this.

Youtube comments always kill me.

It looks like when sims enter a park they spend 1 money and get happiness, but when they leave they get the 1 money back. So they're basically getting free happiness forever.

 

[Mandoric]

They are one and the same in many cases.

You can't find the same traffic weirdness in SC2000 because there is nothing to even look at. Nobody is actually trying to get anywhere. No pathfinding to criticize because there are no paths. Cars don't exist. 'Traffic' is merely a graphic swap that toggles on when the density of nearby buildings hit certain sizes.

So yes, to some extent this game is running into an "uncanny valley" of simulations. Our standards go way up when we see little details.

Wrong, Simcity 2000 did simulate attempted trips to commercial/industrial. It was fairly crude, I don't think it looked for much more than a valid path to an empty zone within a certain distance or checked more than every couple game months, but tile development was definitely a function of traffic rather than vice-versa.

Ironically, this is the exactly what the new SimCity does, except rather than finding the nearest industrial tile, filling it (say with 200), marking it off-limits, then finding the new nearest (for another say 300); it finds the nearest industrial tile with a job 500 times, then finds the nearest industrial tile to that 300 times.

edit: Just to lay out why the Simcity 2013 model is so terrible:

(     I      )-------------(    R   )--------------------------(   I   )
(  200/200   )  (<-200->)  ( 500/500)         (<-300->)        (300/400)

                (<-500)
(     I      )-------------(    R   )--------------------------(   I   )
(  200/200   )  (300->)    ( 500/500)          (300->)         (300/400)

 

[Lathentar]

As I said before, it's not unknown terrain, so D* makes no sense.

From doing some reading up on D*, it's more efficient to add new information to the nodes and reevaluate your route than A*. Which would be beneficial if you need to replan routes for thousands of agents each frame when the roads change.

While it's not unknown terrain at any given time, that's not to say it doesn't change during traversal.

Clear, bold-faced lies through and through by EA. I wonder what exactly happened in development to end up like this.

I'm not quite sure how this was a lie? Seems like more of an exploit of the glass box engine, which seems more and more like it is almost too simple in how things are simulated.

 

[Alchemy]

So glad I have a "Not on day one" policy with EA games so I can see the train wrecks before deciding. Not sure how anyone can support this.

 

[Septimius]

From doing some reading up on D*, it's more efficient to add new information to the nodes and reevaluate your route than A*. Which would be beneficial if you need to replan routes for thousands of agents each frame when the roads change.

While it's not unknown terrain at any given time, that's not to say it doesn't change during traversal.

Yes, while having every single agent do a path-finding, D* makes sense, the point is that there aren't that many roads in SimCity. If you split your road-map into being a graph where the nodes are intersections, then you can have a precomputed table that all agents can use where they look up how to get from intersection 2 to intersection 40 (as an example). From there, there are only roads, so the agent can easily pick the road that leads to its destination. Now you don't need to compute anything for all the agents, and you only need to update the table when an intersection changes.

Optimizing the way that table updates when you change an intersection is very doable, too.

 

[JackDT]

You can often clear up traffic jams by creating a piece of road anywhere on the map. The triggers the pathfinding on the agents again, essentially updating them to the current state including things like: that house they are going to is full, and there is now traffic on a particular road.

I created a scenario like the one youtube going around where all the cars are stuck waiting to take a left to go to a house that is already filled up, because they left work before it did. Make any road edit and then suddenly speed away along new routes.

Ideally you don't want them all to take the same path -- the ones in front take it, cause traffic, so the ones behind them should start seeking alternate routes.

 

[Septimius]

You can often clear up traffic jams by creating a piece of road anywhere on the map. The triggers the pathfinding on the agents again, essentially updating them to the current state including things like: that house they are going to is full, and there is now traffic on a particular road.

That's good to know, but it has to be said that if you have a city that's prone to locking up like that, commute times are too high. Even if you just sit and plop down roads ever second, it's going to be inefficient. This is why you can't have use "no through" roads, where the road doesn't connect back to a bigger road, and just stops before it, to stop people using it because it's the shortest route. The problem then is that if 200 people are in a convoy going down that road, because everyone figured out that the first house empty was on that street, and that street has 40 houses, 160 cars still have to take a u-turn and go all the way to the next vacant house.

 

[ndawgdrake]

Someone figured out a way to get into a debug mode and build outside of city boundaries! FREEWAYS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmce9oIxJag

Honestly with the amount of issues this game has, this almost looks like a prototype DLC that was held back.

 

[CharlesSurge]

^From the same video's description: "Other things I have modded out with a quick change: Unlimited time to remain disconnected (won't get booted at 20 minutes, can now be disconnected "forever"). Population count now shows REAL figure, not the "artificially inflated" figure. My large cities have a population of about 15k now, not 100k "

I don't know about these two claims though, they're probably not evident in the video, I guess?

 

[EmCeeGramr]

^From the same video's description: "Other things I have modded out with a quick change: Unlimited time to remain disconnected (won't get booted at 20 minutes, can now be disconnected "forever"). Population count now shows REAL figure, not the "artificially inflated" figure. My large cities have a population of about 15k now, not 100k "

BUT THE GAME COULD NOT POSSIBLY WORK OFFLINE AND YOU'RE IGNORANT IF YOU SAY OTHERWISE!!!!

 

[pilonv1]

Someone figured out a way to get into a debug mode and build outside of city boundaries! FREEWAYS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmce9oIxJag

Honestly with the amount of issues this game has, this almost looks like a prototype DLC that was held back.

Would certainly be interesting if you could build between regions, that's one of my main issues.

 

[troushers]

BUT THE GAME COULD NOT POSSIBLY WORK OFFLINE AND YOU'RE IGNORANT IF YOU SAY OTHERWISE!!!!

Who are you going to trust - some random Youtube poster, or Arthur Gies of Polygon.com fame, who put his life, career and tattoo ON THE LINE to join a revolutionary iconoclastic videogame journalism website?

 

[Danthrax]

Someone figured out a way to get into a debug mode and build outside of city boundaries! FREEWAYS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmce9oIxJag

Honestly with the amount of issues this game has, this almost looks like a prototype DLC that was held back.

The hope for mods to this game increases. Until EA starts banning Origin accounts, that is.

 

[funo]

Someone figured out a way to get into a debug mode and build outside of city boundaries! FREEWAYS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmce9oIxJag

Honestly with the amount of issues this game has, this almost looks like a prototype DLC that was held back.

To me, the most important part of this video is that tiny paragraph in the description where he says that he even patched the game so that it will let him play offline forever (past that 20min mark) AND that he changed the population display

Other things I have modded out with a quick change: Unlimited time to remain disconnected (won't get booted at 20 minutes, can now be disconnected "forever"). Population count now shows REAL figure, not the "artificially inflated" figure. My large cities have a population of about 15k now, not 100k

edit: beaten by 2 hours - sorry ;/

 

[Perkel]

To me, the most important part of this video is that tiny paragraph in the description where he says that he even patched the game so that it will let him play offline forever (past that 20min mark) AND that he changed the population display

It is great to hear it.

 

[jambo]

Someone figured out a way to get into a debug mode and build outside of city boundaries! FREEWAYS!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmce9oIxJag

Honestly with the amount of issues this game has, this almost looks like a prototype DLC that was held back.

New thread for new news? This is pretty huge!


EDIT: Already done!

 

[Boss Doggie]

I wish it was possible to get a real Simcity game again. Tropico is nice but you're not exactly building cities in it in my experience. More like shoddy looking towns.

Tropico isn't really a metropolis simulator. It's actually more of a banana republic emulator, with you being the corrupt presidente.

 

[elfinke]

Yeah, but at least gaming sites could use secret Maxis source and create 3-4 news about SimCity lately, so thats a plus, right? God dammit this industry ;\

But yes, this pdf answers all lately questions and shows examples ...

• Asynchronous server model
• No reliance on dedicated live server running to support your play session
• Graceful degradation if we have server issues

What's that about (also lol at 'graceful')? That's a really interesting PDF, mind you, full of interesting design ideas and thoughts.

 

[Septimius]

I just did some testing to try and find out the optimal way to lay out my city. Then I found this gem. This is the shortest route:

 

[Septimius]

More testing. If you have several, equally long roads to one destination. Which one is picked, seems to be completely at random. The best part is that all subsequent cars use the same road to get there, always.

Imagine a square, with corners A, B, C, D - and you're gonna get from A to C, and they're diagonally opposed. If a car drives ABC or ADC is completely random, but for the same reason, all subsequent cars travel the exact same road. I'm gonna see if I can figure out what sets which one is used (because it's something. If it was random, half the cars would go one way, and the other the other)

 

[rakhir]

More testing. If you have several, equally long roads to one destination. Which one is picked, seems to be completely at random. The best part is that all subsequent cars use the same road to get there, always.

Imagine a square, with corners A, B, C, D - and you're gonna get from A to C, and they're diagonally opposed. If a car drives ABC or ADC is completely random, but for the same reason, all subsequent cars travel the exact same road. I'm gonna see if I can figure out what sets which one is used (because it's something. If it was random, half the cars would go one way, and the other the other)

Would they use use ABC road one day and ADC the next day? or is it just set after the first random roll?