Category: GlassBox

Early this morning, Producer Jason Haber stopped by to chat about the game in the Simcity Live Chat. We’ve also acquired several new screenshots that were released yesterday  that show off some of the new things revealed at Gamescom.

If you purchase the Digital Deluxe version you get access to 3 city sets that can visually transform your city with unique things. For example if you have the British City Set, you can have Double Decker buses driving around your city.

Simcity includes other forms of transportation too, in the center lane you can see a glimpse of the light rail system. Switching to a transportation focused data layer will strip back the graphics to allow you to see a visual representation of how far your Sims will have to travel to reach their destination.

You can even have streets, curvy roads, and avenues. In the interview the producer was asked if they were going to implement roundabouts but they were unsure whether they were going to add it or not.

Curvy roads are a new feature to Simcity, and since they know people will want to optimize space, they will have guidelines to help you with road placement. The development team had a bit of fun with this feature creating road patterns in the shape of robots, a guitar, and even creative director Ocean Quigley’s face.

Throughout the game players can participate in challenges not only against each other, but from region to region, and even the global world. One such challenge could be asking the entire world who will be first in creating the most jobs. Another challenge could pit region against region seeing who can create 1 million Sims.

Players can influence the global market and take advantage of price changes as they see fit. For example, when you select a region, certain locations can have  more of a type of resource than others. If your city needs coal, but doesn’t have any natural resources within its limits, you can either try to obtain it from your neighbors or purchase it from the global market.

Ploppable buildings include extra modules that expand the functionality of the building. These modules were inspired by Spore in that you can place them down and attach them to your main building in whatever way you like. For example, the modules for the Casino lets you build additional rooms. You can increase the number of students living in dorms just by plopping down additional dorm rooms. Some modules can have negative effects like increasing the rate of pollution.

One interesting question brought up in the Gamescom interview was whether the lights in the building reflected each Sim living there. The producer states that the lights represent the capacity the building currently has. So the more lights, the more people living in or making use of that building.

Dynamic music is one of my favorite little gem in videogames. The fact that the music can change seamlessly based on what’s going on screen keeps me amped-up! There’s mainly two major forms of dynamic music in videogames, adding layers to the track, or seamlessly changing from one track to the other. It seems Simcity will be using the former. Kent Jolly, audio director for Simcity shared some details on how the Glass Box engine will control the sounds you hear and the music that plays.

As you may already know, the Glass Box engine keeps track of every individual Sim in your city. This means that each Sim you see is actually going somewhere or actually doing something. The traffic simulation is advanced to the point where a traffic jam occurs in real time all because there’s a large amount of Sims heading into a particular direction.

The sound simulation works the same way, keeping track of every single car while playing sounds in real time.  When a car starts to accelerate from a complete stop, you’ll hear a sound effect of it moving off right at that moment. When you hear a car whiz pass the screen, you’ll hear it in real time. The sounds will even match up when you change the game’s speed, (similarly to what The Sims currently does.)

Something new to the Simcity franchise is dynamic music! This time the composer is Chris Tilton, who is best known for his works on Fringe and Alcatraz. He’ll be particularly useful in using those creepy strained violin sounds, but I digress… After listening to an audio sample, the music for Simcity sounds eerily similar to The Sims 3.

Simcity will still have a list of different songs to play, however, each piece of music will be dynamically attuned based on what’s currently on the screen. For example, when zoomed out of your city, you’ll hear the entire music score. As you zoom in, parts of the track will be stripped away.  When you enter edit mode or data view mode, you’ll hear an alteration of the track that reflects that mode.

The simulation picks from a list of tracks to play on the fly, and you will unlock more tracks as your city grows in population.

Here’s a recap of the Livestream chat, there’s some stuff we missed but we included most of the major details.

Ploppable buildings can also come with extra modules and “unlockables” to help further customize that building. You can add more police cars, or fire engines and other features.

Power options that are available include coal, wind, solar, nuclear energy, etc… GlassBox can also generate a real time wind map that controls the wind currents. This is something you should keep in mind when placing the wind turbines.

So far the only disasters revealed are tornadoes and a dinosaur attack.

Residential, Commercial, and Industrial zoning is back, but to make it simpler, only one type of zoning is available. Zone density will be based on the types of roads and traffic surrounding that area.

For multiplayer, each player will control their own city. In fact, you can control multiple cities in the same region. You can collaborate with other players to create “Great Works.” One such example was in the E3 Demo where 3 players would cooperate to create an international airport. Other “Great Works” include a space shuttle, arcologies, and a solar farm. More “great works” are to be revealed later.

You can keep track of your friends through a leaderboard-like function called the “City Log.” This sound’s like Simcity’s answer to Need For Speed’s Autolog.

Several types of roads are available, some of them include the standard roads, avenues, and avenues with light rail. However, the most interesting feature is the inclusion of curved roads, now Simcity is finally off the grid!

Traffic simulation can get very complex, but thankfully, the Glass Box engine covers it all. Each Sim you see will have somewhere to go and something to do. They will add to the traffic simulation by using various modes of transportation. Even at pedestrian crossings, the Sims will wait for the light signal to change before crossing the street. To add further to the detail on what Glass Box is capable of, break lights will light up as cars slow down at intersections. Simultaneously you may see school children walking home from school or Sims leaving their houses as they head off to work.

The level of detail in Simcity even goes down through the supply chain. Commercial businesses can go out of business if they no longer receive shipment from Industrial zones. Factories not only ship to commercial buildings, but can also deliver goods to ploppable buildings as well. However your city doesn’t have to include all three zones, you can rely on your friend’s cities to provide workers for factories in your city.

Expect to see various attractions around the city such as large parks and casinos. At the E3 demo, a specialized tourist city can have another type of attraction like a stadium. So far there are two types of stadiums available, a large “pro” stadium, and a small “convention center.” Landmarks are also returning, but this time they will provide jobs and can attract Sims to your city.

Taking a look back at data layers in the past Simcity series, they were generally colored tiles that indicated whether a tile was powered, watered, polluted, etc. These data layers were pretty boring to look at, but, the new Simcity plans to change all this by rethinking how the data layer is represented.

Taking some inspiration from infographics, Simcity aims to mix data visualization with modern design. The intent is to create animated data visualization so the player can see it flow in real time.

In this screenshot above, the water table is visible underneath all buildings. The more bluer areas contain more water. When the water tower is placed and pipes are laid down to different buildings, the player will see the water (agents) flow to different buildings.

Christian Stratton, User Experience Director for Simcity, gave an example of how you’ll see power travel down power lines. When you place a power plant down, the player will see power flow away from the plant to nearby buildings. If there’s any breaks among those lines, the player would immediately see and recognize it. If the power plant isn’t capable of providing power to a far location, you will see the power get “eaten-up” before it reaches there.

The data layers are also integrated into the game itself. As you place down a fire station, you’ll see a basic data layer that will give you a general idea of where you should place the fire station. There’s also the option to see a more in-depth data layer if the player requests it.