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Simcity Free DLC: Nissan LEAF Charging Station

Nissan Leaf Charging Station

Today, SimCity added its first free download content that will enable Sims of all wealth values to drive around the city in the new energy efficient Nissan Leaf.  Placing the Nissan Leaf Charging Station around your city will improve the happiness of both your Sims and local businesses.  You can claim this free item by logging into your Origin account from the SimCity DLC page. This item will be available for download until October 2013.

 

Nissan Leaf Charging Station

Nissan LEAF Charging Station

  • Adds a one-time wave of happiness to nearby businesses
  • Makes Sims happy when they recharge their Nissan Leaf vehicles.
  • Produces no sewage or garbage.
  • You can place up to 5 charging stations per city.

The Nissan Leaf charging station can be found in the Power menu.

Recycle Center and Casino Bug fixes coming to Simcity Patch 2.0

While most of the connectivity issues may be gone, Maxis is having another hectic week as they prepare for changes coming up in the 2.0 patch. Players have uncovered a variety of bugs that hinder Simcity’s core gameplay. Some of these fixes are currently in the testing phase and will be released once they are thoroughly examined. Kip Katsarelis wrote today that they are currently addressing “key issues” with the game such as preventing city rollbacks and enabling cheetah speed. However, the 2.0 update  plans to address issue regarding the recycling center bug, emergency response vehicle clumping, street cars, and casinos.

RCI balancing is currently a hot topic among the Simcity fan communities. In its current state, its possible to create an all residential city without needing commercial nor industry. In previous games, RCI had an inseparable relationship where I and C depended on R for workers, If one of these values were left out of the equation, your city would begin to stagnate when unemployment kicked in. In the latest Simcity, a loophole was discovered where by placing parks down next to residential buildings would provide enough jobs for working citizens. The development team says they are talking about this issue with the team but nothing can be said as of yet. Hopefully we can expect a fix for this in an upcoming patch, but since this changes the core simulation, it may take longer to go through the testing phase than other bug fixes.

Simcity on Sale at Amazon for $39.99; Final Day to Register


Simcity is now on sale at Amazon for $39.99. This sale applies to both the physical and digital download versions. Don’t forget, you have until March 25th 11:59 PDT to register your copy of Simcity on Origin to receive your free EA Game. Use the countdown below to see how much time you have left to register.

Simcity Traffic Patch 1.7 (Congestion Avoidance System)

Finally the wait is over. The Simcity Traffic Patch is live, promising to improve path-finding and emergency vehicle issues that plagued the base game. Firstly traffic.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OVkw9mWonNA]

Firstly, cars will take the least congested route to a destination if available. Emergency vehicles will drive in empty lanes to avoid traffic at intersections. And finally, Emergency vehicles will be given priority when leaving garages. Now keep in mind; this is not saying, traffic will be diverted off to the side of the road. So you still have to avoid using single lanes if you want the trucks to move ahead.

Update 1.7

  • Traffic Improvements: Tuned traffic congestion and fixed some intersection traffic issues.
  • Traffic improvements: Emergency Vehicles will drive in empty lanes to get around traffic at intersections.
  • Traffic improvements: Emergency and Delivery vehicles get priority over regular traffic when leaving garage.
  • All units and buildings can now be demolished using the bulldoze tool.
  • Performance improvements for low spec systems.
  • New Server: Asia 2 will be released Tuesday afternoon (PDT)!

Simcity: Free EA Game Compensation List Revealed!

EA Free Game list

EA is offering a free game as compensation for the Simcity launch issues that prevented users from playing the game. Anyone that registers their copy of SimCity on Origin by March 25th, 2013, may choose from the following list of EA Games.

EA Game Selection

  • Battlefield 3 (Standard Edition)
  • Bejeweled 3
  • Dead Space 3 (Standard Edition)
  • Mass Effect 3 (Standard Edition)
  • Medal of Honor Warfighter (Standard Edition)
  • Need For Speed Most Wanted (Standard Edition
  • Plants vs. Zombies
  • SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition

The site where you can choose your free game will launch in each territory in the upcoming days. The portal should be available worldwide by March 22nd, 2013. You have until March 30th, 2013 @ 11:59 PDT to claim your free game.

Important Dates

  • March 25th, 2013 [Final day to register your copy of Simcity]
  • March 30th, 2013 [Final day to download your free game]

Portal Launch Dates

  • March 20th, 2013 at 5PM PST in North America
  • March 21st, 2013 at 5PM PST in Europe
  • March 22nd, 2013 at 5PM PST in Asia / South America

SimCity Mod Shows Abandoned/Unclaimed Cities in Region Selection Menu

Simcity Abandoned Mod

SimcityModder has released a mod that allows you to view abandoned and unclaimed cities right from the region selection window.

Empty/Abandoned Slot Mod

Since the mod will have to catch up with each SimCity update, it’s best to click the “Track User Topics” link to find the latest version.

Simcity Patch 1.6.1 Restores Achievements; Plays Tutorial Once!

Simcity Neighborhood Screenshots

A new Simcity patch was released earlier today, which unfortunately has nothing to do with the highly anticipated traffic patch everyone is waiting for. One major complaint was how the tutorial would start up the first time you played on each server. In Patch 1.6.1, players will be able to start the game right away after viewing the tutorial once, even when they switch servers. But if you are faced with this situation, you can actually skip this tutorial by exiting to the main menu mid-way.  The patch also fixes a bug with airports where the game would report the adjacent runway was too steep to build. You can view the other list of changes below.

General:

  • Turned regional Achievements back on!
  • We are now prioritizing games with available slots in the “Join Game” menu in the front end
  • Update so players will go through the Getting Started Scenario only once. They will see the Play menus when they switch servers
  • Fix for a gameplay crash
  • UI improvement: Increased time showing system alerts for readability
  • Graphics: shader change to improve look of walls and parking lots
  • It’s now easier to place airport runways
  • Budget transaction optimization to increase performance
  • Update of Buffers on buildings to save memory
  • Performance improvement for lower end machines

Servers:

  • Database performance upgrades to increase response times

Simcity Traffic Simulation to Get a Patch

I must admit it’s very overwhelming to keep track of every bit of news come out of from Simcity and its detractors. But we can’t ignore the situation that has transpired from launch until now. Yes they — the detractors — have every right to be upset, and their discoveries have led the Simcity community to a deeper understanding of how the game works in its current state. Now there’s a race between both the development team and mod community to see who can restore Simcity back to its rightful state. To section the modders off seems down right unfair, and I believe that articles on Simcitizens should focus on both sides of the story.

 

Traffic Woes

In previous Simcity games, traffic was merely simulated through a combination of road types, intersections, and building density. To deal with traffic issues, we placed bus stops and public transportation options to alleviate the problem. As we head 10 years into the future, Simcity’s GlassBox engine is tasked with simulating traffic in real time. Whereas cars would disappear in Simcity 4, the GlassBox engine has to keep track and simulate every car from origin to destination. This changed a fundamental gameplay mechanic, since, the way we placed our zones, and the way we placed our public transportation options impacts the simulation in real time.

We initially discovered the GlassBox engine had routing issues since it prefers the shortest path to a destination. As this video demonstrates, cars would take the cramped dirt road instead of the expansive empty 6 lane avenue just because the dirt path was shorter.

In response to this, Guillaume Pierre (Lead Gameplay Scripter) is working on a patch that plans to make the traffic routing smarter. Cars will finally take the least congested route, even if it takes a longer time to reach there.

This is based off of a system where each road is graded at 25%, 50%, and 75% capacity. As the road reaches full capacity, it will become the less desirable road to travel.

Another important issue is the way emergency response vehicles handle traffic. Since they are currently unable to re-route traffic, they are often times blocked from entering the road. To fix this problem, Lead Designer Stone Librande mentions that emergency vehicles , “will move into empty lanes to get around traffic jams.” In addition, instead of two trucks, we’ll have one fire truck responding to an emergency prevent each truck from clogging the road.

Simcity Bus Conga Line

Now some have asked if any of the Dev beta participants actually noticed any of these problems. We certainly did. I personally requested that emergency service vehicles should be able to divert traffic and make immediate U-Turns if another vehicle is responding to an emergency. I even recall reporting how municipal buses from all over the region will swarm a single bus stop like flies. I suggested that the amount of municipal buses that spawn should be based on city population. I guesstimated 1 bus per 200 people — I felt that was the right amount at the time.

[picture by Lyleshnub]

Simcity v1.4 Patch Displays Which Servers Your Cities Are On

Simcity Server selection

Maxis has added extra servers to accommodate more players to connect to Simcity. This time they have added the Antarctica server bringing a total of 21 servers players can choose from. Each server is region-free, so players may choose to connect outside of their intended region. However, the cities you create in a particular server will stay locked to that server. If you intend to play with friends, you must both choose the same server in order to play together.

Simcity v1.4 Patch

  • Update to the “select a server” dialog in the game launcher. This will now indicate which servers you have active cities on
  • Fix issue where selection shard did not display when previously selected server is down
  • We’ve fixed a problem where some players were getting stuck when switching shards in the server select menu
  • Opened 1 new server, Antarctica

Maxis also intends to temporarily shut down Europe West 2 and Europe West 3 in order to further improve server stability and performance.

Maxis Takes Full Responsibility over Simcity’s Always-Online Requirement. (Lucy Bradshaw Twitter Recap)

Lucy Bradshaw took over the @Simcity twitter account to answer some burning questions on just what went wrong with Simcity’s launch.

One of the misconceptions behind the game was how EA forced Maxis into integrating the always-online requirement. As Lucy Bradshaw revealed:

Lucy Bradshaw Twitter Recap

‏@Slider6294: How is this debacle something you didn’t forecast? Can you explain the business rationale or justification for how this happened?

Lucy Bradshaw: Metrics/beta was fairly conservative and live ops stressed our game server DB’s in ways that we did not experience in Beta or Load Test

 

@ZachGoodman2: When do you expect between city transactions in multi-player will function correctly, such as sharing city hall upgrades?

Lucy Bradshaw: This is frustrating as it is core to the connected experience. This weekend we hope to crush this issue with more servers and optimizations

 

@JordanCharters: If I purchase PC version now, will Mac version be included when it’s released?

Lucy Bradshaw: We’re focused on the PC version right now, but we’ll have more info on Mac in early April, so stay tuned.

 

@skankingfool How could you not anticipate server load on launch when you all your ads said “50 most anticipated games lists of 2013

Lucy Bradshaw: Load experience in beta and load test is different than live. We’ve adapted and put out servers with changes, already seeing improvements.

 

@Oniichanaino: When SimCity servers are taken down in a few years, will an offline mode patch be distributed? Perhaps before then?

Lucy Bradshaw: We have no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon but we’ll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts.

 

@benmadsen: At some point will there be the ability to migrate games and regions between servers?

Lucy Bradshaw: We’re definitely looking into this as we know it would improve your experience.

 

@simify: Hi Lucy! 😀 I was just curious as to when players will have Cheetah Speed again?

Lucy Bradshaw: We’re really working on responsive of our servers. and once we have that nailed, and stable, cheetah is coming back!

 

@dchappell16: When is eu west 4 going to be back up? That’s a start.

Lucy Bradshaw: EU West 4 is actually up right now. Just tried it myself.

 

@jeremey86: Hey lucy! Will you be offering larger city maps in the future??

Lucy Bradshaw: Once we get stable, this is another one we’re absolutely looking at. Our intention is to continue to support SimCity and surprise you.

 

@booshtv: Any news/ updates about real content patches? Many issues with Tourism

Lucy Bradshaw: We put up a patch this morning that included some traffic fixes and other improvements. And we’ll be making more. We’ll check on Tourism.

 

@martianskygrid:  Can you be specific about which game is that that you are giving away? Can we choose?

Lucy Bradshaw: You’ll be getting more information on the March 18th. And you will have choices.

 

@azbiker72: So when are you going to give a real answer regarding offline modes?

Lucy Bradshaw: The game was designed for MP, we sim the entire region on the server so this is just not possible

 

@milesJ92: Would it not have been smarter to have been over prepared, and have too many servers, rather than what y’all did?

Lucy Bradshaw: Youre right. The combination of many players and server adjustments put us behind. New servers yesterday and more today

 

@17packersfan:  the game is wonderful, its just that its hard to get into it sometimes.

Lucy Bradshaw: Thanks and yep. We added 120% capacity yesterday, more today. Better game experience a priority. Hope you have better time

 

@Jdude666: Will regional play be fixed soon?

Lucy Bradshaw: yes, we optimized and region trading improved, still making enhancements and will keep it up

 

@videogameget:  Will the removed features like achievements, return?

Lucy Bradshaw: yes, features like achieves etc, will come back as we get to stability, soon.

 

@curtisparadis:  also it would be great if the game could keep track of what servers I do have cities on, and present that info to users.

Lucy Bradshaw: We are working on that right this minute. Hope to have a patch for it today, tonight latest