Why are SimCitys cities so small? Because EA didn't make it for multicore CPU's

[Frag_Maniac]

The SIM series can't really be equated to games like BF3. You have distant views of a city that's being pieced together slowly little by little, you have AI that appear more cloned than separately scripted, you have no huge cinematic scenes taking place with lots of destruction, etc. Given the advanced tech in the FB2 engine, the size and content of the maps, and all the destruction that's happening, BF3 NEEDS to be threaded for quad.

That said, if SIMCity ever evolves to a version where you can build cities in terror ravaged corners of the world, I suppose it too would require quad threading. LOL

 

[SaltyFish]

The developers designed the thing to run on a freaking potato chip. They made the compromise of smaller, but more, cities per region. Given that the DEVELOPERS chose this, Sim City having small cities is their fault.

Additionally, look at what they say. We're eventually going to increase the city size......blah, blah..... but we're going to wait until we see how people play. Basically, they're saying we'll use play data from online to develop our DLC packages. Whenever we have enough DLC money coming in we'll optimize things and get the performance closer to where we should have been prior to release.

It's highly understandable to accommodate older systems. But the devs could have just allowed the option of larger city sizes at launch. Add a note about larger city sizes being more taxing on your system. It isn't much different from offering anti-aliasing as an option... if you want to go with it on your half decade old computer, don't be surprised the game will slow down to a crawl.

I wonder how a Pentium III computer would run the game...

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

I was quite surprised this game was already on store shelves earlier today. I am quite hesitant to buy it though.. I kept thinking EA would put an in app micro transaction to "speed things up".

 

[TRWOV]

I'd say that the size of the cities has more to do with the game being cloud based than for the available processing power.

 

[Disparia]

"Real cities don’t live in bubbles," Ocean Quigley, the game’s creative director, has said. "Real cities are connected to each other."

Real cities aren't limited in size either!

Thanks to all the beta testers that brought up this issue. New Maxis needed to learn what would have been obvious to Old Maxis -- or anyone who has played Civilization, Total Annihilation, Starcraft, etc

Was going to wait for it to drop in price, but maybe I'll pick it up when large cities are introduced - sale or not.

 

[Frick]

TBH I had not seen screenshots until a few days ago, and "tiny" is a good word. I'm with Jizzler, might pick it up when/if they increase their size.

 

[SaltyFish]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-ten-years-for-this/

Ars Technica took a look at the finalized game. Like many other reviews, they weren't impressed by the size of it (among many other things).

Well, there's always SimCity 3000, SimCity 4, Cities XL, Tropico, etc.

 

[Frick]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-impressions-we-waited-ten-years-for-this/

Ars Technica took a look at the finalized game. Like many other reviews, they weren't impressed by the size of it (among many other things).

Well, there's always SimCity 3000, SimCity 4, Cities XL, Tropico, etc.

Yeah that was what I read as well. I actually bought Simcity Societies years ago (I got two games I wanted to get and I had to pick a third game if I was to get the lot for €10 ^^) and have never even installed it. Is that anything like Simcity?

 

[SaltyFish]

Yeah that was what I read as well. I actually bought Simcity Societies years ago (I got two games I wanted to get and I had to pick a third game if I was to get the lot for €10 ^^) and have never even installed it. Is that anything like Simcity?

Well... it's like SimCity in that you build a city.

It's a much more simplified game. Will Wright and the rest of the devs felt that after SimCity 4, it had become too complicated and off-putting to newcomers. There's no power and water grid management. You build specific buildings rather than general zones. How your city grows depends on the buildings you build: industrial, authority, spirituality, creativity, knowledge, etc. They'll have certain effects on your residents. For example, many authority buildings have a propaganda/brainwashing effect that can be used to keep your citizens' happiness in neutral (preventing both low and high happiness). They'll also promote security cameras in your city. In a way, the recent SimCity is sort of a hybrid of Societies and the older SimCity games.

It's not that bad as a game, but the name didn't help it because people were expecting traditional SimCity. You might play it a few times, but it doesn't have the replayability of the other SimCity games. Be aware the game also has some memory leaks and/or optimization problems, which were never fixed. They become apparent after playing for a long session.

 

[Easy Rhino]

wow...just wow...

i havn't heard one single GOOD thing about this game yet.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/ea-not-altering-return-policy-for-furious-simcity-buyers/

 

[THE_EGG]

wow...just wow...

i havn't heard one single GOOD thing about this game yet.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/ea-not-altering-return-policy-for-furious-simcity-buyers/

Yeh, I was silly enough to pre-order the game from EB games (Australian branch of Gamestop) and I was warned if I wanted to cancel it and get my money back when I went to pick it up. But I thought, it can't be that bad, can it? Well once I'm connected to a server it ain't too bad but loading times seem pretty slow and connection to the servers seems very VERY unstable. The need to be always online kinda sucks, especially for me as I run off 4G network.

EB games did offer a 7 day return policy and for this particular game you could get your money back (instead of instore credit) AND they said they would still accept a return even if the serial key had been used.

I guess we play the waiting game for when EA decide to give us more servers.

 

[Bo$$]

Looks like there is a glitch with the community college's collision.

 

[KingPing]

Check this out:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-develop-and-manage-the-city-of-your-d

 

[THE_EGG]

OK well it seems EA have put up some more servers and the game no longer disconnects me from the servers!!!!! Very fun game although the small city limits kinda sucks when you are playing with friends as you don't really have room to expand to make a new city in that region (if it is a small region that is). A private region fixes that though.

If I'm honest it is heaps easier than SC4 which is good and bad as I think a fair number of SC enthusiasts moved onto different games after Societies was released to find something more challenging. So I guess the smaller learning curve of importance to attract new comers to the series.

The smaller maps size doesn't seem to impede on gameplay though as the overall speed turtle, llama and cheetah seem to have slowed down since the last installments. Which means you won't be reaching the city limits/boundaries until after an hour or two. That for me was about how long a middle/regular sized city block lasted for in SC4.

 

[erocker]

$60 bucks for this game is a total joke.

I'm looking forward to EA getting bought out, the sooner the better.

 

[shk021051]

is it possible ea give us a non-drm patch?

 

[THE_EGG]

is it possible ea give us a non-drm patch?

That's what I'm hoping for. I remember when C&C4 came out. That was a joke as well.

 

[remixedcat]

$60 bucks for this game is a total joke.

I'm looking forward to EA getting bought out, the sooner the better.

Let's make a Kickstarter.

 

[Easy Rhino]

i really wanted this game to be epic but it sucks. im not one who needs massive areas to build but they could at the very least double the current size!!

 

[Depth]

Let's make a Kickstarter.

Yep. We need a billion before the release of the next Splinter Cell

Anyone who donates $10,000,000 or more gets their name and deeds carved into an obelisk for all eternity (20 max)

Anyone who donates $100 or more gets a t-shirt (US residents only)

 

[Delta6326]

I'm a big fan of the Simcity games they are watch actually got me into PC's way back in the day same with rollercoaster tycoon. I think im going to wait and see how that kickstarter game turns out.

But this is just crazy I didn't even know this many people hated it ...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007FTE2VW/?tag=tec06d-20

 

[THE_EGG]

i'm a big fan of the simcity games they are watch actually got me into pc's way back in the day same with rollercoaster tycoon. I think im going to wait and see how that kickstarter game turns out.

But this is just crazy i didn't even know this many people hated it ...
http://www.amazon.com/simcity-limited-edition-pc/dp/b007fte2vw&tag=tec06d-20
http://img.techpowerup.org/130310/capture1157.jpg

loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

 

[Delta6326]

So if anyone did buy this from Amazon they will refund you your money and remove it from your library.
The thing is though they can only remove it from your Amazon library, so unless they tell EA(doubt they will) your Key will still work...

Funny loading screen from EA...

 

[slyfox2151]

$60 bucks for this game is a total joke.

I'm looking forward to EA getting bought out, the sooner the better.

$60?

New games like this Simcity and BF3 are $100 here lol, and our dollar is worth more then the USD by a couple cents.





I bought the game and it was horrible to try and play until last saturday/sunday... constant server overloads/crashes. but most of that seems to be resolved now.
They have currently removed cheetah speed from the game and made it the same speed as llama.

 

[erocker]

$60?

New games like this Simcity and BF3 are $100 here lol, and our dollar is worth more then the USD by a couple cents.





I bought the game and it was horrible to try and play until last saturday/sunday... constant server overloads/crashes. but most of that seems to be resolved now.
They have currently removed cheetah speed from the game and made it the same speed as llama.

Your minimum wage is double that of ours. Not so sure your dollar is worth more in real terms. What I really should of said is I wouldn't pay any kind of money for this game.