Simcity Beta Announcement
Tomorrow morning (Friday, January 18th, 2013), Maxis will announce details about the Simcity Closed Beta. The beta was first announced back in August, and since then, players inquiring about it have been left in the dark with Maxis claiming that it would be released “soon”. We’ll be sure to post details tomorrow as it’s released! Good luck and hopefully we’ll see you there!
If you pre-order the Simcity Digital Deluxe Edition, you will receive the exclusive “Plumbob Park” mystery item. With your pre-order, you will also receive up to $50 in Origin savings.
Simcity today released a Nuclear Power plant screenshot which is a slight upgrade from what was previously shown in the last Gameplay Strategy video. This shot is supposed to highlight the “instagram” like filters they use on the pictures of ploppable buildings in the menu. The previous nuclear power plant image was a bit foreboding as it appeared to focus on an impending nuclear disaster. This new and improved image gives it a much-needed industrial tone.
A few days ago Guillaume posted a screenshot of a curved off-ramp over some railway. Someone questioned how steep the ramp appears to be which Guillaume replied that it’s a bug they are looking into fixing.
This weekend, Maxis developers answered a large swath of questions from angry long-time Simcity fans. The main issues focused around the game requiring a constant Internet connection, as well as requiring Origin to play. On this post we will mainly focus on the features planned for this game’s release, but we will discuss the “DRM” and “Online” aspects in another post.
Weather and Seasons:
Regions and Multiplayer
Infrastructure and Transportation
Buildings and Landmarks
Emergency Services
Data Layers and Graphs
Interesting Questions:
Q. Why do cities have large spaces between them?
A. Partially it was graphical limitation – we can’t render the adjacent cities in full resolution. Also simulation fidelity. We can’t afford to fully simulate the adjacent cities. Seemed like pushing them a little further away was the best tradeoff.
Yesterday, Guillaume Pierre showed two new screenshots which revealed seasons are indeed confirmed for Simcity! The leaves will change colors over the year but in the winter when it’s cloudy and rainy, the leaves will simply fall off.
Today we’ll take a look at the different types of modules you can place around the city. These modules are covered briefly in today’s newest strategy video. There have been several changes to the UI since the last video with a cleaned up interface and a more organized layout.
The video highlighted another type of gambling facility called the “Sci-Fi Casino.” This casino tends to attract medium and high-wealth residents. For a nice added touch, when you scroll by, you can hear funky music playing inside. If you click on the casino you can check out the leaderboards to see how your casino’s net profits compares to other players.
You can expand the functionality of your Casino by placing modules near by.
The Casino’s modules include:
You can place these modules around the Casino and even stack them on top of each other.
Casinos tend to attract lots of crime, so adequate police coverage is necessary. The Crime Data Layer lets you easily visualize areas with high crime rates. You may even see some police activity and graffiti on buildings nearby. If crime gets out of control, criminals from your city may even spread out to affect other cities. Fortunately, with region play, police coverage can spread to multiple cities.
Police Precincts (high-tier) features several modules, including:
When disaster strikes, based on the situation, firefighters and police are automatically dispatched to that location. Firefighters from another player controlled city will include their avatar above their heads.
Coal Power Plants are heavy polluters, it may be wise to place that power plant in another city away from your main one. Power agents will travel along the roads and highways transmitting power to multiple cities. Unlike Simcity 4, your city does not exist in a bubble, pollution can eventually drift and affect other cities nearby.
Coal Power plants have various modules but only one was covered in the video.
Take note that Power Plants need to be staffed in order to be fully operational. Sims from your city will travel along the highway to other cities to work at them. Nuclear Power plants are a special case in that they require staffing of highly educated Sims. Nuclear power plants with unskilled workers will lead to variable amounts of nuclear radiation leaking out of that facility.
Roads are the central component that ties your city together. Not only will roads determine zone density, but it will also be used to deliver water, power, and sewage.
There are two types of roads:
When you upgrade each road type, you get access to the next density tier. Low tier roads will usually have stop signs while high tier roads will get access to stoplights.
Basically it goes like this:
Small Roads Types
Large Road Types
As you lay down roads, there will be parallel guides showing you the best distance apart to build the next adjacent road. If you are creating grid-like cities, these guides will show you how far apart roads should be to make best use of that space. The distances it suggests between roads will be based on road type. (High density roads support high density buildings, which means larger distances between parallel roads.)
The road tool can create different types of roads which include:
You can make bridges over bodies of water and canyons, or cut through mountains to build a tunnel. The game handles this on a civil engineering scale automatically deciding what is the best cheapest path through various terrain.
As your population rises, you’ll have to balance the traffic flow by strategically upgrading existing road types so that it can accommodate more cars. However, upgrading these roads allow for higher density buildings, which leads to even more traffic. Placing public transportation around these areas can alleviate gridlock.
[via polygon, simcity blog]
Aside from the Simcity blog, you can gather a wealth of information from the developer postings in the Simcity forums. Today we dive through Guillaume Pierre posts at Simcity.com to find out even more information about the game. Though the game is in development, some portions may be subject to change.
You’ll need to select a place to build your city when you first start. The areas that you can select have a predefined boundary that can not be expanded upon. In some cases, rivers and mountains may limit the available space you have to build a city. Once you start a city, you’ll need to connect your city to the outside world. Once that’s done, lay down some roads, place some residential zones and wait until everyone arrives. Sims can even move in without basic utilities. Of course soon enough, they’ll start complaining about the lack of power and water and if you’re a good mayor, you’ll surely provide them of their basic needs.
Utilities don’t just run on their own, as Guillaume explains, they need to be staffed in order to be operational. Which leads us to jobs, Sims will go to the closest job available. If for some reason they can’t make it to work due to traffic and whatnot, they’ll keep trying (subject to change.)
As for each Sim’s family, Guillaume pointed out that each household comes with a set of working adults, shopping adults, and children. If the children don’t make it to school, they may resort to crime. We also learned of the existence of homeless Sims, these Sims live in parks, abandoned buildings, and store doorways.
We received some insight regarding how public transportation works among cities. If there’s no public transportation in your city, your Sims will drive. However, you can create a situation where one city has a bus terminal while the other city has bus stops. These bus stops need to be adequately placed in appropriate areas around the city, as Guillaume mentions, Sims will only walk up to 400 meters (1/4 of a mile) to use public transportation.
Not only can you share, power, water, and garbage services with other cities, but also emergency, education, and even transit systems.
Instead of using a slider to expand the capacity of public services, it is now as simple as placing extra modules around the building. Want to expand your school to accommodate more children? Just place extra classrooms!
Guillaume also mentioned how education can affect other cities as well. A university can influence the growth and development of hi-tech industries in cities nearby. He also mentioned how community colleges can influence the development of manufacturing plants.
One thing the developers sought to fix was the city skyline. In previous Simcity games, a skyscraper could be randomly placed next to one story buildings, creating a visually erratic skyline. They plan to solve this problem by having buildings of different densities up to 2x the height of another. In essence, the skyline will build up in appropriate areas for realism.
Some features won’t be available for release. So far, subways are confirmed not to appear. Though, rainstorms and heatwave weather types shall be included, snow is currently not planned for release.
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.
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.
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Dynamic Music
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