An exclusive Simcity video was posted on Amazon giving you a glimpse of various aspects of gameplay including regions, bridges, and crime.
Each city has a set boundary with some empty space separating it from other cities. Mountainous terrain may limit some of the space availability unless you can somehow create extra land by carving roads through cliffs. While in region view, you can visualize the hourly rate of power transferred to other cities.
The region is pre-generated with roads, highways, or rail to interconnect each city in the region. Sims can travel to different cities throughout the region by utilizing various forms of transportation. For example, robbers can drive from one city to the next unleashing crime wherever they go. As the video highlights, a robber from another city drove into the parking lot, came out of the car and entered a building. Shortly after, the alarm went off, he escaped, and a police chase ensued.
It is quite amazing to see this level of detail where Sims can physically enter and leave their homes even to panic over their neighbor’s house on fire.
This is the first time we got an actual glimpse of bridges. We’re happy to see that you can even create bridges underneath them.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Simcity game without the Golden Gate Bridge making an appearance.
Today we answer questions from Simcitizens readers, this was sent in by “Anonymous”!
Simcity Region with several places to build a city.
Q.When you say regions does that mean in a city? Like I’m confused, do you have a world that has regions that have cities? How many can you make?
A region is a chunk of land taken out of the world to build your cities. Within a region you can pick any available spot to build your city provided that it’s not a Great-Works site. Great-Works are projects that players in a region cooperate to build. According to the Developer Q.A Session, the number of cities available depends on the region.
From a MMO standpoint, you can look at regions as a “Party” where a group of players can meet up to create cities. You can become the mayor of multiple cities and specialize them in your own way. You don’t necessarily have to “cooperate” with other players in your region. Based on the way you play, you can send crime and pollution their way.
Q. What do you mean cities are 2k-2k, I don’t understand?
Currently the development team has decided to build cities 2km x 2km (2 kilometers by 2 kilometers). If there’s no more space left, you’ll just have to make do and build up the city even more. Of course you can just pick another available spot in the region to start another city if need be.
Dynamic music has been a hidden gem in video games, painting the audiovisual landscape with music based on your actions. Simcity (2013) will be the first in its series to add music that changes dynamically depending on the situation. In an interview with Polygon, producer Ocean Quigley and audio director Kent Jolly explained some of the concepts behind the music.
Article Summary
Dynamic Music
Zooming in adds music instruments to the soundtrack, while zooming out takes them away.
A simple score plays if you zoom out all the way.
When viewing data layers, more “intimate” themes play. For example, when you are in the building editor, a tinkering version of the song is heard.
Different clips of music come in and out based on the situation.
The music was influenced by minimalism inspired by composers like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley.
Chris Tilton who worked on Fringe, composed the music to tell the story of the city from its humble beginnings to a bustling metropolis.
Resources
Resources are finite, once they’re at low levels, the player must find different ways to acquire them.
They can either buy from the global market, trade with other cities, or switch to depending on another commodity.
EA has confirmed that Simcity will be available in North America on March 5th, 2013. Though it has only been delayed a month, there have not been any announcements as to why. Additionally. no specific date was announced for the Closed Beta so far. The only information given about it so far was that it would start “soon” and the test is scheduled for PC users only.
We’re in ship-mode, so everyone is cranking, fixing bugs and finishing the game. […] Earlier in the project things were much more freewheeling and improvisational — we’d try out new ideas and new approaches to see what worked, but we’re done with that stage, and now we have to bring it all to completion
We’ve compiled all of the current question and answers with Simcity development team into one post. Information was acquired from the Simcity Forums and Twitter.
RCI Demand and Zoning
You can build any combination of RCI lots throughout the city. Pure residential cities have a unique set of problems different from the pure commercial cities. You can split up zoning amongst cities and have residents commute to different cities. Residents usually want expensive services which you can place in different cities and share between them. (Subject to change in final game.)
When commercial buildings upgrade, you may see some shops on the street floor. The number of customers for a commercial zone is based on the entire building and not per business.
Zone sizes are based on the road type. Their widths are in 8 meter increments. Two lane streets have short lots and can only accommodate low density buildings. Four lane streets and roads support higher densities.
Building upgrades are based on how successful it is. For example, if a low density shop gets a lot of customers because it was placed near public transportation, it will then tell the simulation which will enable a medium density building to to be built over it. However, building density is based on the type of road it’s attached to. Two lane streets only support low density buildings, but avenues can support all density types.
For a residential building to upgrade, they factor in their ability to earn and spend, while industrial buildings check to see if they’re able to deliver freight. The traffic around these areas will factor into the successfulness of the lot.
You can control taxes for RCI based on three levels, “low, medium, and high.”
Infrastructure and Terrain
Buildings flatten and roads cut through the terrain.
Highest land elevation is dependent on region.
Roads auto-snap when you get to 45 and 90 degree angles.
They are still experimenting with the distance between cities.
If you bulldoze a road, the building that is attached to that piece of road gets demolished too. There’s also a confirmation screen if you bulldoze a road next to a civic building.
Rail lines will curve on a 90 degree angle.
They don’t have plans to do toll roads yet.
Taxis are available to transport tourists.
Multiple cities can share the same public transportation network as long as each city utilizes the same transportation type. For example, you can set up a bus terminal in one city, and bus stops in another city.
City Specialization
You can create cities with multiple specializations.
Universities can research advanced technology to upgrade the effectiveness of your power plants.
Landmarks
Landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben are fully functional. Tourists come to your city to check them out and stay at hotels around your city.
Sims can work at Landmarks.
Big Ben will tell the current game time.
Resources
Weather is simulated throughout the year. In Winter, there’s more rain, which makes the grass greener. In the summer months, the water table evaporates.
The game follows Simcity4’s model of having sea level elevation to form rivers and oceans.
There’s Wind, Solar, Oil, and Nuclear Power Plants. There’s also a garbage incinerator, but it doesn’t produce power.
There’s Coal, Ore, and Oil which can be refined into resources like steel and plastic.
Disasters and Emergency Response
Emergency response runs automatically, its effectiveness is based on the modules you add onto the service building.
When a Sim is sick, they can walk to the hospital. But when they are injured, an ambulance needs to pick them up before they die.
There will be protests at City Hall if Sims are unhappy.
Region, SimWorld and Multiplayer
City size 2k x 2k.
The marketplace is driven by SimWorld, you can gift resources and cash between cities.
You can trade resources to other cities as long as there are road access.
The region has prebuilt methods of transportation which you can connect your city to.
You can kick people out of your region. [The Development Team decided to remove this feature.]
The number of cities available varies by region.
You can watch your friends’ cities grow in spectator mode.
You can complete Great Works by yourself by controlling multiple cities.
You can take control of a city if it was abandoned.
Chat is stored on the region.
Interesting Questions
Q. Why are city sizes so small?
A. The cities are that size because we’d rather build a rich, intense, simulation than a statistical one. We also want the terrain to provide a push-back on the players, so we’re making interesting regions that will challenging.
Q. Is there a pause feature?
A. Yes the gameplay is asynchronous, every city runs at its own pace.
Q. Why no subways?
A. They’d like to work on subways at some point but they aren’t planned for now.
This week, Maxis has finally released the first gameplay footage of the new Simcity.
When you first start the game, you choose an area to build a new city. You want to choose a location to strategize with the type of city you’d like to build. If you want to do an industrial type city you could choose to build along the river for cargo ships.
An empty Region in Simcity has designated locations for Towns and Great Works areas.
If you’re building a casino city, building near the train tracks already laid out in the region would be a good choice to bring tourists.
Connect highways to the outside world.
Once you have chosen a location, you need to build a connection to the outside world. The region has highways already in place, all you need to do is make some connection to them.
As with previous Simcity games, there are three major zones, Residential, Commercial, and Industrial. After you place some zones, builders will arrive to construct houses and families will move into the city.
You can keep track of each individual Sim in your city. You can hover your mouse over a car and see that Sim’s name and follow them around to see where they are heading to.
In the user interface, you may note some of the icons pulsate when your sims are requesting a particular utility. The power icon pulsates red requesting you to add some Power plants.
When selecting the Wind Farm plant, you can click on it to get a focused view (everything else turns white) and you can add additional modules like wind turbines or dirt roads.
You can switch to the electricity data layerto see how power flows along your roads. Yellow lines indicate power has reached the area. Power “flows” out like water, so it takes a short amount of time to reach a distant location.
In the water table data layer, you can see which areas of your city contains the most water, but every building you build in this version of Simcity needs to be placed alongside a road for Sims to reach to. After building a road, you can place a water pump in the deepest blue area. Water flows out from the source along the roads. You can visually see this as blue dots running across your city.
When your Sims use water, it converts into sewage. This can be viewed in the Sewage Data Layer. If it gets out of hand, sewage converts to ground pollution which creates sickness and lowers the land value. You can fix this problem by placing a sewage plant along the road.
Sims will also produce garbage, place garbage dumps at the outskirts of the city. These trucks will travel along the roads to collect garbage. You can track the garbage truck en-route throughout the city, a bar will indicate when it’s full and has to return to the dump. When garbage reaches capacity you can either burn the garbage, or build more dumps.
When placing police stations, a green line will fade out indicating the distance the police will patrol through the area. When placing casino’s there’s a button on the bar indicating “big business” that allows you to choose from a variety of different gambling halls.
Simcity has a variety of gambling facilities, one more expensive than the other.
Each gambling hall caters to different types of people, the cheaper one of course attracts lower income tourists. But in order to gain these tourists you’ll need to make more connections to the outside world, you can do this by placing a train station and connecting the rail next to the train tracks placed along the region.
When a Sim needs to travel to work, the AI chooses from a list of destinations to go based on priority. At each intersection it decides what’s the best path to go based on distance and worker demand. If it can’t arrive at the destination, the Sim will return home. Once the destination is available, the Sim may decide to head there again.
You’ll want to carefully plan your road layout in order to avoid traffic congestion. Since cars will drive realistically on the road, several factors will contribute to traffic jams:
Cars heading towards a destination may use the same lanes to turn.
Cars at avenues will wait less time at the traffic light than those at a four-way intersection.
Emergency vehicles may change traffic light signals to cause further traffic problems.
One way to mitigate traffic congestion is by placing some forms of public transportation. To start, you can place a bus depot and bus stops along the way for Sims to get on and off. You can also try placing a bus terminal for larger municipal buses and park and rides for Sims to commute.
This installment of Simcity will also add street cars and trams that ride along the center of the avenue. Trains will also travel through your city, they’ll not only bring in tourists, but also bring Sims from neighboring cities. Sims will only walk a certain distance to use public transportation. You can view this information in the data layer, but if they have to travel too far, they will use cars instead.
Great Works are special facilities where players cooperatively build to add further dimension to their region. Great Works require a lot of resources to build. As with the case of the international airport, you have to acquire metal, alloy, and wood. You will either need to mine these materials or trade with other cities that have access to the Global Market. Building the international airport requires lots and lots of workers who will use the collected materials to build the foundation, terminals, and control towers.
International Airports provide your city with two benefits:
Tourists
Shipping Services
Tourists will arrive through Jumbo Jets, and will naturally bring more people to your city provided you have enough attractions like parks and landmarks. Cargo airplanes will ship industrial freight, and makes a big impact in keeping the Industrial sector happy.
Wooh! It’s been a while since we’ve had new information! Today we’re going to talk about wind power!
Windmill Power Stage 1
As with previous Simcity games, wind power is clean and cheap and available from the get go. You can’t place these wind turbines just anywhere. You have to now account for the wind currents generated by the game. The turbine’s efficiency is based on terrain elevation and wind flow. Over time the wind flow can change reducing the amount of power that’s produced. Players should carefully choose where they place the turbines in order to have the best outcome.
One of the cool things about these wind turbines is how they will show you where the wind is blowing. This is beneficial to you since now you can see where the air pollution is heading to. You can use this information to prevent air pollution from entering into your residential and commercial areas.
Windmill Power Stage 2
Each wind turbine is its own module that needs to be connected to a service road. You can either add additional wind turbines or upgrade them with the latest technology. However, before that can happen, you’ll need to research this technology through your city’s university. Wind turbine upgrades are available through researching “battery technology.” This technology helps balance the flow of power so when the wind stops blowing, you won’t immediately have power outages throughout your city.
Windmill Power Stage 3Windmill Power Stage 4
Through further research you can upgrade your turbines with more advanced designs.
