Boston done in Sim City 4!

LordStanleyCup2011 said:
Im debating whether getting Sim City 5 or Cities XL 2012..
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After reading online about Sim City 5, despite the awesome graphic and despite my inner self saying, buy it, it won't be as bad as they say, I've decided to not purchase Sim City 5 until they find someways to fix notable flaws in the game.

For example:
1) Regardless of whether or not you play multi-player or single-player, you must be online. Normally that isn't a problem but if your internet suddenly goes down and you haven't saved in a while, bye bye progress.

2) You're not able to save your city on your harddrive. All saves must be done online.

3) Already said before, the largest city tile is the size of the medium tile in Simcity 4.

4) There is no terraforming.

5) City tiles are not placed next to each other. Each city tile is separated by a gap of forest that is not editable. This is mainly an aesthetic problem when viewing from the over world but it doesn't look realistic if a large city is separated from the metropolis by forests.

6) I also read somewhere that connections to other cities are predetermined, i.e. the highways are already placed before you start.

7) Every map you create can be affected by changes made by other users online on their cities.

I'll wait until Simcity 6 or some expansion that can fix it. Otherwise, this looks like a dud and detracts from the original designs that many of us have come to love. Personally, I feel that Simcity 5 is going to kill the franchise as I predict the developers will believe that the cause of low sales is due to the lack of interest, not because of the flaws they created.
 
I'm probably going to get it, but I'm going to wait a little bit. I think there's enough interest out there to make initial sales pretty solid. Enough to warrant an expansion pack a year or so down the road. With all of the talk of custom content and modability (let's face it, those two factors were what made SC4 such a smashing success) being a focal point for SC5, I'm hopeful that there will be enough wiggle room to fix some of the shortcomings (offline single player, larger cities, customized terrain, real, functional subways, etc). I also think that user created content could potentially take a mediocre game and make it a good one even if EA doesn't modify any of the shortcomings.

The biggest disappointment for me is the lack of a Sandbox mode. I liked to make my cities look good and function like real cities/regions (dense urban core tapering into suburbs and rural outer areas). In order to do that in SC4, I cheated (mostly by plopping a "Billion Dollar Casino" right at the onset of gameplay and letting it run a few months) and used tons of plugin buildings. My cities ran at deficits but it didn't matter because they looked and functioned like real cities (well, as real as they could).
 
So one thing led to another after my recent spate of Sim City publicity and now I'm contracted to make my hometown (complete coincidence!) of Albany, NY in the game. Here's how it's looking so far:

albanynov14901358740773.jpg


Versus the real deal:

screenshot20130121at530.jpg


Who ever knew this shit would be a money maker??
 
Except that's an interstate highway that has proven to be way overbuilt for the load it handles. There's chatter going on about how to convert it to something less overbearing but change happens sloooooowwwly in Albany, and I'd bet on it disintegrating before any real plan gets funding.
 
Ok, a steroid-using cousin. It's a highway on a river, same diff.
 
Err I didn't mean to sound like I was correcting you...just adding context to what you were seeing!
 
Meh, my response wasn't really a cheeky response to yours. The internet is weird for communication like that. I appreciated the info.

I have a question for you about your process because I find this concept of digital creation very interesting. How do you translate these real maps into buildable SimCity cities? Do you super-impose a grid on the actual geography and then orthagonize as much as possible or do you just wing it? The results are incredible, both for Albany and Boston.
 
Interesting stab at Empire State Plaza. Did you have to play the game straight and only use the occasional landmark? Otherwise I would've plopped more modernist landmarks in there.
 
Yeah I don't have the Rush Hour expansion pack which means I don't have access to any of the user-created buildings or transit systems...I'm stuck with regular old Sim City 4**. So what you see for buildings are my best approximations using some of the 30 or so in-game landmarks and then crossing my fingers that the market, guided by heavy spot zoning, will fill in the other 95% of the picture.

Also, in regards to the Empire State Plaza, the office towers there are spec and I'm hoping they'll keep growing so that they take on at least the proper scale, if not the proper style. But if after a while I don't naturally get a Corning Tower then I'll have to find a landmark that can work, because without that the people of Albany (or at least snarky commenters) would jump all over it. And I have no idea how I'm going to get four matching Agency towers.


**the Rush Hour expansion pack costs another $60ish for Mac versus being essentially free for PC due to its being bundled with the standard program. And seeing how I can't get it to run on my new computer, I'm stuck playing it on my rickety 9 year old Powerbook which hates running the game as it is. But now, I may have to get it!
 
datadyne007 said:
Meh, my response wasn't really a cheeky response to yours. The internet is weird for communication like that. I appreciated the info.

I have a question for you about your process because I find this concept of digital creation very interesting. How do you translate these real maps into buildable SimCity cities? Do you super-impose a grid on the actual geography and then orthagonize as much as possible or do you just wing it? The results are incredible, both for Albany and Boston.
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Ah ok, no worries :) As far as applying the grid goes, I guess you could say I'm winging it. First thing I do is lay down the main roads and make sure I get their proportions right, and once those are set I then fill in the various grids from there, all the while constantly eyeballing Google Maps to make sure I'm not straying.
 
What I find truly frustrating about SC4 - and I've played it far too much for my own good, sadly - is that 90% of your thought and effort goes towards trying to work around the game's severe terraforming, building, and transportation limitations (even with the transportation expansion) and 10% thinking about urban form, planning, etc.

Why can I zone airports, but a university or convention center needs to be a specific sized square? Because. What if I want buildings to actually face a diagonal or curved street? You can't - because. What if I want a building to contain a MIX of residential and commercial uses? Out of the question.

You can waste eons of nonproductive time trying to goad the simulation to recognize your city as a city instead of a rural exurb. And yes, you can cheat and plop, but if you're going to cheat then why even play Simcity? Why not just build fantasy maps in Illustrator or Sketchup?

And then, after all the hassle and wait, there's no real upside: after finishing a city it's going to look 95% like any other city you've ever made! What the hell is the point?
 
kz1000ps said:
**the Rush Hour expansion pack costs another $60ish for Mac versus being essentially free for PC due to its being bundled with the standard program. And seeing how I can't get it to run on my new computer, I'm stuck playing it on my rickety 9 year old Powerbook which hates running the game as it is. But now, I may have to get it!
Click to expand...

Have you tried bittorrents and Pirate Bay? I know they have the Deluxe Edition for Mac over there. Of course, it's illegal and the mere suggestion of it could get me booted from a bunch of other forums. However, there's tie information, do with it what you please. I only suggest it because the Rush Hour portion of the game really brings so much to the table. I couldn't play SC4 without the custom buildings and mods. They

Shepard said:
What I find truly frustrating about SC4 - and I've played it far too much for my own good, sadly - is that 90% of your thought and effort goes towards trying to work around the game's severe terraforming, building, and transportation limitations (even with the transportation expansion) and 10% thinking about urban form, planning, etc.

Why can I zone airports, but a university or convention center needs to be a specific sized square? Because. What if I want buildings to actually face a diagonal or curved street? You can't - because. What if I want a building to contain a MIX of residential and commercial uses? Out of the question.

You can waste eons of nonproductive time trying to goad the simulation to recognize your city as a city instead of a rural exurb. And yes, you can cheat and plop, but if you're going to cheat then why even play Simcity? Why not just build fantasy maps in Illustrator or Sketchup?

And then, after all the hassle and wait, there's no real upside: after finishing a city it's going to look 95% like any other city you've ever made! What the hell is the point?
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's pretty much why I stopped playing. Of course, I also have no time. I used to waste so much time in college playing that and that was 6-7 years after the game's release.

It was infuriating. I actually gave up on the game play aspect of it and just used cheats (one, really... the billion dollar casino for 2 months and then deleted it so I had about $999,999,999,999,999.99 to spend) trying to build the coolest looking cities and regions I could build. I liked to have mountains, valleys and a great port. I'd develop a major city on the port, have it taper into suburbs and build smaller satellite cities on the outskirts of the region. I just wanted nice looking downtown areas (wall to wall with some nice skyscrapers), good rail network (custom content was great for intermodal central train stations and bus/train platforms), and realistic looking suburbs.

I usually got about 1/2 way done with the suburbs before I realized it looked like every other city I had built. And as you said, I spent about 90% of the time trying to work around the game's limitations rather than focusing on actual urban planning.
 
Meh, I don't consider the limitations of the game to be overwhelming. Yeah it's really limited in some ways, but I guess I've just accepted it for what it is. I still manage to have fun.

Lrfox said:
Have you tried bittorrents and Pirate Bay? I know they have the Deluxe Edition for Mac over there. Of course, it's illegal and the mere suggestion of it could get me booted from a bunch of other forums. However, there's tie information, do with it what you please. I only suggest it because the Rush Hour portion of the game really brings so much to the table. I couldn't play SC4 without the custom buildings and mods.
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I haven't, but considering I'm not above using Pirate Bay I guess I should look into it!
 
But Rush Hour is still wicked expensive! (at least for Mac)
 
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