Category: Simcity

Simcity Developer Q.A. Session: No Subways; Asynchronous Gameplay, Weather System

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.

First Gameplay Footage of the New Simcity

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.

 

Connect your Train Station to the outside region.

 

Simcity: Wind Power Details

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 3
Windmill Power Stage 4

Through further research you can upgrade your turbines with more advanced designs.

Simcity Gamescom 2012 players Impressions and Video

We took some notes from Simtropolis and Reddit gamer impressions of their playthrough with Simcity. Unfortunately EA forbade filming the gameplay so we have to rely on word of mouth. The impressions outlined below are from Simtropolis user ferryv and Reddit user dudelsac.

Zones

  • Zone layout is dependent on the placement of the roads. You can still choose where you want to zone but this method allows you to zone in a way that avoids empty spaces.
  • So far only government buildings are ploppable.
  • Sprawling residential neighborhoods have more grass. The more densely populated areas have more concrete.

Ploppables with Modules

  • Each of the ploppable buildings have unique add-ons.
  • If you build a school you can add dorms around it.
  • You can place additions like a bell tower, extra garage, and a flag pole  on a Fire Station.
  • A garbage dump you can lay out more dumps and place a dirt road to them.
  • You can stack cell blocks on top of each other for the Police Station.

Services (Police, Fire, Power, etc..)

  • When you build a water tower, you see the water table map. The darker blue areas have more water. Once you build it the water flows down into the city. (No pipes?)
  • Power flows through the city automatically, no need to lay power lines.
  • A service’s radius of effect is now influenced by how long it takes for a service vehicle to reach a destination. So the more intersections you have the longer it takes a service vehicle to reach a part of the city.
  • Water Treatment Plants
  • Basketball and Soccer field parks.
  • Coil, Oil, Wind, and Solar power plant options so far in the demo.

Traffic

  • When you click on a car, all information about who’s driving it, where they live, and where they are going to is presented on the screen.
  • The traffic agents may select some cars to avoid traffic jams by heading through other routes.

Data Layer

  • When you query a commercial building you can see information on Energy, Oil, and Water it consumes, As well as income, garbage, and number of jobs.

Disasters

  • Meteor shower destroys everything.

 Roads

  • Highways are already layed out across the region. You can connect your city to a highway.

Simcity: 7 New Screenshots and Gamescom Information

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.

The Germany City Set has high speed rail.

The France City Set includes custom French cars.

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.

 

Dr. Vu comes included in the Limited Edition package.

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.

 

Simcity Closed Beta and Mac Announcements

Today at GamesCom Maxis announced Simcity will also be heading to the MAC as a digital download through Origin. The development will be led by Maxis and will feature the same gameplay as the PC version. The MAC version will release in February 2013.

You can now sign up for the Simcity Closed Beta. No start date has been announced yet. This closed beta appears to have a Non-Disclosure Agreement that allows you to discuss only the following:

  • The fact that there is an official Beta Program for the Game
  • The fact that you are a member of the official Beta Program for the Game.

And you are not allowed to discuss the following:

  • Post or distribute any screen captures, pictures, videos, podcasts, screenshots or any other representations, known or unknown, of any content in the Game or other Beta Materials.
  • Any comments regarding the game based on your participation as a Beta Tester.

These are just a small sample of the many confidential rules you must follow.

Unfortunately this may limit some information unless otherwise released to the public through news sources.

 

Simcity Will Not Include Terraforming; Fans Disappointed

We’re back from vacation! Over the past few weeks, it looks like Simcity stirred up quite a ruckus in the gaming community. We’re not sure how EA is going to cope with such negative feedback. Some tidbits from the past two interviews opened up a new can of worms.

It was revealed that Simcity will not include a terraforming “God Mode”. Instead, the region itself is generated by the simulation. Your actions will influence the shape of the land only when you place roads, develop zones, or plop buildings. As you can imagine, this news upset players the most to the point they feel the developers are killing the franchise.

Another interesting thing we learned is that the city map is comparable in size to Simcity 4’s medium sized cities. Some players responded that the developers should reconsider this as they feel this map size is too small.

Your cities are now stored online in the cloud, so you can pick up where you last left off from anywhere in the world. This cloud also allows each city to communicate across the region and connect them to the global economy.

Other Tidbits Include

  • The game’s textures are still a work in progress.
  • Ploppable buildings have modules you can add to expand its functions. You can customize the buildings to include flags, fountains, and signs among other things.
  • The parking simulator only shows some of the cars parked at the building, the rest are invisible. (They hand waved it by saying the cars were parked “underground.”) Some facilities like the stadium will allow you to have more control over parking by letting you plop parking lots nearby.
  • Though you can place any road you like within your city’s limits, you won’t be able to place roads within the region. This means that everything connecting your city to another will be per-determined by the simulator. Cities that are closer to the center of the region have access to more modes of transportation when connecting to other cities in the region.
  • Parks can be used to attract tourists into your city.
  • Players will be able to gather resources for their city like metals, alloys, and fuel.

Simcity’s Dynamic Music and Audio

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.

A debug screenshot showing how sounds appear on each object.

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.

Simcity E3 2012 Recap Information

Enjoyed the E3 Festivities? Well after scouring several news and videos we decided to make a quick E3 recap of some of the information presented in interviews and videos. From this point on we’ll focus on new information as it’s released next week.

Always Online

  • Simcity will require constant internet connection whether or not you play solo.
  • This constant internet connection is required for “asynchronous multiplayer experience.”
  • You will be allowed to play offline briefly for an unspecified amount of time.

Regions:

  • You can play in open or closed regions.
  • These regions contain multiple cities you can control by yourself or with other players.
  • You can invite friends into your region or join a region with random players.

Simulation:

  • Managed by the GlassBox Engine.
  • Everything you see in Simcity is what’s actually going on in the simulation.
  • Every sim and every car is going somewhere.
  • You can follow a Sim driving a car from home to work.
  • Traffic occurs in real time. For example, when a new road is connected to a vacant city, unemployed Sims will flock to it searching for jobs. This surge of Sims will cause a traffic jam.
  • You can see your coal piles dwindle as trucks deliver them to coal power plants.

Buildings and Zoning

  • Zoning for Residential, Commercial, and Industrial is back.
  • There’s only one type of zoning for RCI, so density will be based on road type and traffic.
  • You can upgrade ploppable buildings through snap-on pieces that you can place along the building.
  • These pieces will upgrade the services available for that building.
  • These snappable pieces were inspired by the Spore Editor.

Data Layers

  • Data layers allow you to see the underlying components that drive your city in real time.
  • The power layer will show power traveling to different buildings.
  • The water layer lets you see the water table being sucked up by water towers and pumped to various buildings.
  • In depth data layers are known as “Heavy Data Layers”

Disasters and Crimes

  • Fires, Dinosaurs, and Crimes can appear in your city.
  • Protestors can show up outside of factors because there isn’t any power.
  • When there’s a bank robbery, police may fail to catch the criminal.
  • An arsonist may go around burning buildings.

Multiplayer and Networking

  • In multiplayer, other players’ cities can affect your city.
  • Players in a region can work together to build Great Works!
  • Great Works include an international airport, space shuttles, solar farms, arcologies, and more.
  • For example: an industrial city could provide metallic alloys needed to build the airport, while another city could provide workers to construct the terminals.
  • Criminals from other cities can travel to your city and cause havoc.
  • Pollution from other cities can affect your city.

 [IGN, ars technica, gamespy, g4tv, tekgoblin]

Simcity Livestream Recap: Great Works, Attractions, and Traffic Simulation

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.