SimCity 2013

[Anakha56]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/03/m ... -for-2013/

Maxis announces new SimCity for 2013
Maxis will finally be creating a new entry in the popular SimCity franchise in …

"The rumors are true. SimCity is back." So said Maxis senior VP Lucy Bradshaw by way of announcing a new PC title in the seminal city-building series for a 2013 release.

During a Game Developers Conference presentation to gathered press, Bradshaw noted its been roughly ten years since Maxis last released a core SimCity title, and that the phones in many people's pockets now have the same power as the machines that ran SimCity 4 back then. The new SimCity will take advantage of advances in computer power to be the first truly 3D entry in the series. "This is like an entirely new playground for us, and we're going to take advantage of it," she said.

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Follow the link for further reading...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/s ... th-others/

The beauty of SimCity is in the details
Zooming from micro to macro and back again.

The first thing that an old-school SimCity fan is likely to notice about the series' upcoming revamp, due on PCs in February 2013, is the level of detail. This includes graphical detail for sure; cities are finally rendered in full 3D, and you can twist, pan, and zoom the view to your heart's content. The graphics system uses tilt-shift effects and saturated colors to make it seem like you're viewing a tiny, living model world, an impression that is only enhanced by the satisfying thunk and cloud of dust that comes from placing buildings and objects.

But it's the level of detail in the simulation that's really stunning. While the SimCity franchise has always done a good job of covering macro-level trends in the life of your city, the new SimCity lets you get incredibly specific about your citizens. When you set up a residential zone next to a curvy cul-de-sac, for instance, you can actually see the "for sale" signs on the individual houses, and watch the moving vans filling in the vacancies.

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Again further reading at the link...

Definitely on my to buy list. Cant wait for this to be released! Can see hamin trolling the cities around him...

[hamin_aus]

This is win.
Count me in for a copy!

[Tribble]

I saw it on E3 but still don't get the appeal. It does look very good though.

[rustypup]

"Images not representative of actual gameplay."

i bet...

[StarBound]

Pfff, my PC could render that. But can they program to make it look like that?

[Anakha56]

And it died on launch... :/

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/c ... -problems/

Clogged streets: SimCity launch plagued by server problems
Download problems, hanging loads, and queues to enter games greet new players.

by Kyle Orland - Mar 5 2013, 9:45pm -200

EA promised again and again that its servers were entirely prepared to handle the influx of players simultaneously logging on for today's North American launch of the always-online SimCity reboot. But we had our doubts that things would go as smoothly as expected, and it seems like our fears were well-founded.

Follow the link for further reading.

[StarBound]

I wanted so much to get the game until I heard it needs to be always online. Remember how you use to build a city only to get it up and running and then unleash a disaster.

[Anakha56]

Star do yourself a favour and read this link:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/s ... -for-this/

SimCity impressions: We waited ten years for this?
Two Ars editors play mayor for a weekend and find the experience wanting.

It's not every day you get a proper new title in the SimCity series. In fact, it's been a bit over ten years since SimCity 4 last showed us what it was like to control the fate of a vast metropolis (Socities and Sim City Social notwithstanding). So it's fair to say that our expectations were high as we sat down with final release code for the new game, which launches in the US tomorrow. Even without access to the full global servers, which EA hasn't turned on yet, we were excited to try promised new features like undulating curved roads, government buildings with snap-on expansions, and a regional commodity system that lets you buy and sell excess resources.

After spending around a dozen hours each playing the game this weekend, Microsoft Editor Peter Bright (who considers himself a bit of a SimCity die-hard) and I (Gaming Editor Kyle Orland) were pretty disappointed with what we found. What follows are edited excerpts from the various conversations we had over instant messaging this weekend, discussing how we were finding our initial time with the game. We'll have a more detailed review later when we've had a chance to try out the final release, complete with all the globally connected, Internet-enabled features EA has been playing up, but just going by first impressions, maybe EA shouldn't have messed with its successful city building formula quite so much.

Curved roads and crippling size limits

...

The one serious complaint that I agree about is the lack of being able to save your progress on your city. This game went to being a want to being meh maybe when it is on special at the end of year or maybe next year...

[StarBound]

Doubt it. You can expect EA to shut down servers between 1-2 years. Remember the C&C generals incident when they discontinued support for the game after only 6 months? The game sucked sure enough but 6 months?

[GreyWolf]

Doubt it. You can expect EA to shut down servers between 1-2 years. Remember the C&C generals incident when they discontinued support for the game after only 6 months? The game sucked sure enough but 6 months?

Am about to derail this mother...

So the whole "always on internet" thing is mainly to fight piracy right?

I would like to see a cost analysis of the money spent on building and maintaining these servers compared to the money that would be lost due to piracy, keeping in mind that the game will probably be hacked and pirated anyway...

[StarBound]

Microtransactions...

You can buy different colour paints for houses at $1 per colour.

Kidding with that one but you can upgrade your hospitals and police stations using real money.

[StarBound]

[Anakha56]

So this game launched and well fell flat on its face. From what I have read so far this game is crud and I am surprised to find myself really glad I did not buy the game.

RPS have a inside scoop that Simcity can run in offline mode:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03 ... necessary/

Maxis Insider Tells RPS: SimCity Servers Not Necessary

By John Walker on March 12th, 2013 at 9:00 pm.
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In all the fuss and mess of the disastrous SimCity launch, one refrain has been repeated again and again. While legions may be begging for an offline mode, EA representatives have been abundantly clear that this simply isn’t possible. Maxis’ studio head, Lucy Bradshaw, has told both Polygon and Kotaku that they “offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers”, and that it would take “a significant amount of engineering work from our team to rewrite the game” for single player.

A SimCity developer has got in touch with RPS to tell us that at least the first of these statements is not true. He claimed that the server is not handling calculations for non-social aspects of running the game, and that engineering a single-player mode would require minimal effort.


Our source, who we have verified worked directly on the project but obviously wishes to remain anonymous, has first-hand knowledge of how the game works. He has made it absolutely clear to us that this repeated claim of server-side calculations is at odds with the reality of the project he worked on. Our source explains:

“The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything. I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise. It’s possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I’m clueless.”

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Follow the link for further reading.

BGR have a article going about the "excellent" pathing system in Simcity that destroys the game...

http://bgr.com/2013/03/13/simcity-pr-ni ... +Report%29

SimCity PR nightmare escalates

11:00 AM

Over the past couple of days, “SimCity” has eclipsed “Pope” in global search volume. Electronic Arts has finally created something that has captivated the world with an intoxicating melange of drama, tragedy and sick humor. Too bad all of these elements emerge from EA’s project management, not the game itself. The first stage of the SimCity fiasco stemmed from how EA’s servers spectacularly failed to cope with the entirely predictable launch week traffic. But the next stage is potentially even more damaging. On EA’s Answer HQ website, one of the most heated discussion threads is now about whether the entire pathfinding and traffic management systems of the game are badly broken.

Several players have noted that the characters in the game don’t actually have any permanent jobs or homes. They simply walk to the nearest available open job or a suitable home at certain times, a simplification that creates major headaches in city planning. Sims that start walking don’t switch to mass transit if they don’t find a job nearby; kids don’t get to schools easily; all cops go to a single crime scene even if police stations are carefully spread in different parts of the city. School buses, fire trucks and tourist hordes all seem to have trouble finding obvious routes to their goals. As a result, designing a functional city may mean planning a street grid and placement of different facilities in a deeply counterintuitive way. Players have to design their cities to suit bad algorithms, not realistic goals.

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Follow the link for further reading.

[StarBound]

I've heard that apart from the online connection needed the game is actually good. However no more terrain options and your square is very limited. That is why you play a region of up to 5 squares to allow you to separate commerce, residential ect.

However until an proper offline mode is available I won't touch the game. And odds are that I might skip it entirely because of time restraints.

[hamin_aus]

City population limit is like 200K or something silly...

[Anakha56]

With the majority of that population being ghosts...

On with the news!

Apparently the game can be modded to be played offline and sync fine with EA servers. Remember how they said it would be a "massive undertaking" to get offline mode working? Yeah they lied...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/h ... r-simcity/

Hackers open up offline play, modding tools for SimCity
A little simple file manipulation allows for intra-city highways and more.

by Kyle Orland - Mar 14 2013, 7:30pm -200

EA and Maxis' claim that it would take "significant engineering work" to make a workable offline version of SimCity took another hit today. Hackers have released modding tools that disable the game's periodic server checks without breaking the simulation. The tools also unlock other features not in the final game.

reddit is abuzz with news and guides for installing the SimCityPak, a downloadable package of files that lets players edit many elements of the UI and underlying game logic. The tools aren't incredibly user-friendly for the time being, but those with some Javascript experience and patience to learn can do things like disable the online connectivity requirement, fix the "fudged" population display, and even affect how the basic simulation works in some ways.

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Follow the link for further reading also mentioned is a debug mode.

[StarBound]

I think whats going to happen is Simcity will be one of the most hacked/cracked or pirated game this year if that is true.

I'll buy the game if EA releases offline functionality but other long time fans might feel its time to screw over the company that tried to screw them. This is the 2nd bad press for EA this year and the 2nd largest bad one since last years Mass Effect. I won't be surprised if something happens next year with Dragon Age 3 being announced as an MMO and killing them off.

but ...

[StarBound]

I think this toms hardware article is the same as yours anakha.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/SimCit ... 21528.html

Almost makes me want to go out and get the game but now, do I support the mod or do I support EA?

[DarkStar]

I think this toms hardware article is the same as yours anakha.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/SimCit ... 21528.html

Almost makes me want to go out and get the game but now, do I support the mod or do I support EA?

By buying the game, you ultimately support EA. If you want to play without supporting EA, then, well, consider it a bannable offence to discuss it on this forum xD

[StarBound]

Now you've just added a problem without adding another solution

Unless ...EA goes bankrupt somehow. Then it won't be supporting them.

[Anakha56]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03 ... Shotgun%29

SimCity Modder Tells Us Offline Regional Play Easily Done

By John Walker on March 16th, 2013 at 8:10 pm

A key moment in the week’s SimCity shenanigans was unquestionably the appearance of a video from a modder, Azzer, announcing he’d found a way to remove the game’s offline timer. The final nail in the ridiculous-claims coffin, this mod demonstrated that everything but the asynchronous multiplayer was running on your home machine. We got in touch with the man behind the mod, one Azzer, and he had a lot more to say. In his opinion, the information coming from the servers is so rudimentary that despite Maxis’s claims, there shouldn’t be any problem at all in simulating the regional play offline.

So many of Maxis’s claims about how SimCity runs have come down to the importance of the information from the servers, driving the experience of players whether they’re seeking social conglomeration, or going it alone. And even in Bradshaw’s revisionist version of these claims, we’re still being told that the way it works is “innovative”. Not so, alleges Azzer.

“I’ve analyzed all of the data calls to and from EA servers – all of the APIs, every request for data, and all of the data that comes back,” explains the modder. And in doing so, he’s found some surprising results. “The SimCity servers are not doing any calculations that could not be done on your PC, even for an entire region single player offline mode, let alone just the city you are in.”

It’s his belief (clearly we don’t have a clue – we’re not experts here at all) that the servers aren’t chugging nearly as hard as Maxis say. “All the server sends to your client, is some very basic data about each city – how much power they have available, how much spare fire trucks, you know – that sort of stuff. It’s minor, and it’s sent as raw numbers. Your client then just goes ‘oh there’s XXX power spare from city Z.’ It’s that simple.”

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Follow the link for further reading.

http://kotaku.com/5990997/coders-discov ... in-simcity

Coder Discovers Mandatory 20-Minute Offline Timeout in SimCity
Owen Good

Last week, two of our writers played SimCity and deliberately turned off their Internet connections, both finding their games continued normally and then abruptly ended after 20 minutes. Someone now has posted what appears to be code for the game that orders a shutdown after a disconnection exactly that long. That allegation further punctures the talking point that SimCity is necessarily an online game, or would take a great deal of work to make it so.

The code is here. "Simply commenting out Line #22 defeats the force disconnect," says the person who posted it. The removal allows offline play indefinitely.

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Again further reading if the link is followed.

[hamin_aus]

Code: Select all

this.StartForceQuitCountDown();

Fark you EA...

I am NOT buying this game and I wish nothing but bad things for the people in charge of making the "always-on" decision, and those responsible for lying to protect it

[GreyWolf]

Fark you EA...

I am NOT buying this game and I wish nothing but bad things for the people in charge of making the "always-on" decision, and those responsible for lying to protect it

This.

[geraldhum]

Has anyone bought sim city 3?

[Anakha56]

I see the new, free DLC is a ad for the Nissan Leaf charging stations... Given how the AI behaves in the game I bet only one station will be used and a whole lot of broken down cars...