Topic: Sim City (2013)

[IgorEliezer]

Off-topic:

Playing minecraft online makes me wonder why simutrans is so save file intensive.

Late reply: because MC doesn't need to save a colossal table of data of what is being transported, position of every vehicle of the whole map, not mentioning what the players edit on the map (buildings, ways etc) . MC only updates the data of the loaded chunks, such as terrain, mobs and inventory, it's really a very small amount of data to be sent over the Internet if compared with Simutrans.

Definitely I'd love to play MC with fellow members of this community.

[sdog]

I think with 'disputing' is the credit card transaction meant, and not the denial of a refund. Disputing a credit card statement would be a valid reason to block the account. Such disputes are for frauds etc and cause complications on all sides. The appropriate way would be to insist on the refund, i do not think the EA call centre guy meant this with disputing.

The attitude of EA is remarkable however: Yes you can request a refund, as we advertised, but our policy is not to give any refunds.

[Sarlock]

Finally was able to log in tonight.  Played through the tutorial and started a new city... and to be honest, it's pretty boring.  Graphics are nice but not overly impressive (SC4 has nicer looking graphics) and a lot of the new simulation features are just superfluous and not really necessary/important.  Tiny city size is really annoying.  I'd happily exchange a lot of the new simulation aspects/overhead for a much larger map.
Usually when I get a new game I stay up half the night playing it and can't wait to play it the next day.  I'm not feeling that after my first two hours playing Simcity 2013.

[Carl]

The customer support people now seem to have turned to blackmail (literally) by threatening to ban the account of people who "dispute" their refusal to grant a refund:

I wish I could say that this surprises me, but this seems completely in line with EA/Origin's typical behaviour. it's horrendous.

[jamespetts]

I think with 'disputing' is the credit card transaction meant, and not the denial of a refund. Disputing a credit card statement would be a valid reason to block the account. Such disputes are for frauds etc and cause complications on all sides. The appropriate way would be to insist on the refund, i do not think the EA call centre guy meant this with disputing.

I am not sure that that is correct - certainly in the UK, under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, a consumer can claim against a credit card provider in respect of anything that the user could claim against the original vendor. Goods must be of satisfactory quality and services must be provided with reasonable care and skill, and these duties cannot be excluded by contract. If a user who was denied a refund by EA or a shop through which he/she had purchased it instead sought a refund from her/his credit card provider, that would be entirely legitimate. This is common practice when defective goods or services are provided and the consumer cannot get a refund from the vendor/provider.

The attitude of EA is remarkable however: Yes you can request a refund, as we advertised, but our policy is not to give any refunds.

That is positively dishonest. I urge people to share this on as many channels as they are able to do so to maximise the number of people who know about this dishonesty and criminality.

[ӔO]

Off-topic:Late reply: because MC doesn't need to save a colossal table of data of what is being transported, position of every vehicle of the whole map, not mentioning what the players edit on the map (buildings, ways etc) . MC only updates the data of the loaded chunks, such as terrain, mobs and inventory, it's really a very small amount of data to be sent over the Internet if compared with Simutrans.

Definitely I'd love to play MC with fellow members of this community.

that's very interesting and informing, thanks.

definitely

[colonyan]

Finally was able to log in tonight.  Played through the tutorial and started a new city... and to be honest, it's pretty boring.  Graphics are nice but not overly impressive (SC4 has nicer looking graphics) and a lot of the new simulation features are just superfluous and not really necessary/important.  Tiny city size is really annoying.  I'd happily exchange a lot of the new simulation aspects/overhead for a much larger map.
Usually when I get a new game I stay up half the night playing it and can't wait to play it the next day.  I'm not feeling that after my first two hours playing Simcity 2013.

How long have you played Simcity 4? I've played like 8 years since its release. At certain point, loophole in commuting routing killed integrity of the game for me.
SC4 felt like city painting tool once you know how to deal with budget and installation placements.

As of map size, I also thought its too small at beginning, I think size of all ploppable infrastructures and buildings are balanced so that player have to coordinate between cities. Although it could use bigger map (Up to X2 in area) by rebalancing everything. Like smaller pop count per building. Give more room to express shape. Not just number.

Graphic have alot of different mood depending on filter and screen resolution. Higher ones seems to have crisper image.

[ӔO]

learning to use NAM was hellish in SC4

[An_dz]

How long have you played Simcity 4? I've played like 8 years since its release. At certain point, loophole in commuting routing killed integrity of the game for me.
SC4 felt like city painting tool once you know how to deal with budget and installation placements.

And it took 8 years of play to get bored. He played for 2 hours and got bored.

It was 10 years without a new SimCity. They could have put little more effort on it, polish it little more. I wouldn't care if it was released on december or even on 2014.

learning to use NAM was hellish in SC4

NAM, SAM, RAM, NWM, RHW, RTMT...

[Sarlock]

How long have you played Simcity 4? I've played like 8 years since its release. At certain point, loophole in commuting routing killed integrity of the game for me.
SC4 felt like city painting tool once you know how to deal with budget and installation placements.

As of map size, I also thought its too small at beginning, I think size of all ploppable infrastructures and buildings are balanced so that player have to coordinate between cities. Although it could use bigger map (Up to X2 in area) by rebalancing everything. Like smaller pop count per building. Give more room to express shape. Not just number.

Graphic have alot of different mood depending on filter and screen resolution. Higher ones seems to have crisper image.

I'm running it at 1920x1080 at high/ultra high for all graphics settings.  It's nice but I still like the SC4 graphics more.

I've played Simcity since the original (I played the original on a monocrome amber monitor), got SC4 when it was released 2003 and have played it intermittently since then.  NAM was a great upgrade as well as many other things that the community added but the original game still gave me many sleepness nights of playing.  I'm not going to give up on SC2013, I'll keep playing and see what becomes of it but initial impressions are that it's not captivating me like a new Simcity should.  It plays more like a Facebook Farmville or some other sort of game than a city simulation should.

Maybe I'm just getting too old 

[sdog]

EA has done to gaming what the big record labels did to music in the 80s. Indie games today are perhaps what underground bands were back then.

I'm rather sorry for those who had high expectations in simcity 5 and are very dissapointed now.

[jamespetts]

No matter - more people to play Simutrans!

[isidoro]

None of the SimCity editions have caught my attention for more than an hour or so...

Besides, I won't buy any game that forces me to be connected to play.  I don't even like those that force you to be online to activate them.  If everyone acted like this, companies wouldn't impose such arbitrary and draconian conditions...

[Lmallet]

I'm rather sorry for those who had high expectations in simcity 5 and are very dissapointed now.

I don't regret owning CitiesXL anymore. 

[Carl]

I've avoided CitiesXL after hearing that it's very poorly optimised and runs pretty badly even on powerful machines. Is this true, in your experience?

[Lmallet]

I've avoided CitiesXL after hearing that it's very poorly optimised and runs pretty badly even on powerful machines. Is this true, in your experience?

One tweak made a significant difference on CitiesXL 2012:
http://xlnation.net/content/cxl-20112012-memory-leaklag-problem-workaround#comment-4180

Before the tweak I was on the "performance sucks" bandwagon, but after the tweak I was able to play CitiesXL quite a bit, more than SimCity 4 I might add.  I usually get bored of the city I am building once I hit the 100,000 resident mark, but the game is still quite responsive at that point (Win 7 64-bit, quad-core AMD, 4GB RAM).   It needs a lot of work in some departments (ie. limited number of buildings), but otherwise it actually looks really good graphically, and you can get it for cheap during some Steam sales.

[Markohs]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-d0b41H-Lnk#!

[jamespetts]

SimFlashMob?

[Markohs]

hehe infiny loop, once you go in never can go anywere else!

[IgorEliezer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-d0b41H-Lnk#!

SimTrollingTruckDriver: Level 9000... Go Go Go! :>

[colonyan]

All up until now I was fine with all these issues. They were adding server and renewing. They are working on path finding. Even faking population count
is acceptable. Current level of faking is not. Numbers are grossed out.
But I can not defend them anymore. After finding out that RCI, the very core element, is broken.
2012, they showed youtube video of economic cycle. Now its obsolete.
Residential zone is independent of commercial and industrial. Only I is dependent on C. C does not require I's freight imput.
Each morning, magically, cargo spawns in commercial.

Highly depressed and sad.

[Sarlock]

With such a small map it should be easy to have a complex economy running.  I wonder how much computing they removed from the servers in order to make enough available for all of the players that want to play.

As people have been saying all along, leave it to the users' computers to do the processing and allow the game to be standalone.  Users can determine the maximum city size they can play with depending on their available computing power just like every other game like that.

I'd like to hope they have learned a lesson but somehow I doubt it.

[Junna]

All up until now I was fine with all these issues. They were adding server and renewing. They are working on path finding. Even faking population count
is acceptable. Current level of faking is not. Numbers are grossed out.
But I can not defend them anymore. After finding out that RCI, the very core element, is broken.
2012, they showed youtube video of economic cycle. Now its obsolete.
Residential zone is independent of commercial and industrial. Only I is dependent on C. C does not require I's freight imput.
Each morning, magically, cargo spawns in commercial.

Highly depressed and sad.

Know what game had better path-finding and city dynamics?

SimCity Societies.

It's that ridiculous.

With such a small map it should be easy to have a complex economy running.  I wonder how much computing they removed from the servers in order to make enough available for all of the players that want to play.

As people have been saying all along, leave it to the users' computers to do the processing and allow the game to be standalone.  Users can determine the maximum city size they can play with depending on their available computing power just like every other game like that.

No actual computing is done on the server side. The client game sends updates to the server which the server process and store; no actual computing is done on the server. The problems with Cheetah-speed was that the number of updates required to be sent to the server became too great, and they could not process them all. By removing cheetah-speed, the number of updates transmitted to the server decrease greatly and relieve them of stress.

[sdog]

Perhaps thats where misery comes from. In their load estimates they might have thought players would use cheetah speed much less. That and of course the typical fact blindness of it management.


Besides the obvious game breaking faults, is the game by itself good? (Say fully offline with 16 times the map area?)

[ӔO]

apparently, someone has managed to get it working offline by enabling dev mode.

[jamespetts]

What is very interesting about this is that it (probably) shows that the pure agent based ground up approach is completely impractical. I was very interested when the project was first announced as to how they would manage to do this, as complexity increases exponentially with size with an agent based system (which is probably part of the reason that the cities are so small). What this appears to show is that the very basic premise of the Glass Box engine is a fundamental design mistake, and that the conventional way of programming simulation games (as used by Simutrans, amongst others, of having a mix of high level statistical modelling and partly detailed ground-up simulation in key areas, such as, in Simutrans, goods and passengers) is superior, at least for present day hardware.

Incidentally, can anyone link to the video from 2012 to which Colonyan is referring?

[sdog]

What is very interesting about this is that it (probably) shows that the pure agent based ground up approach is completely impractical. I was very interested when the project was first announced as to how they would manage to do this, as complexity increases exponentially with size with an agent based system (which is probably part of the reason that the cities are so small). What this appears to show is that the very basic premise of the Glass Box engine is a fundamental design mistake, and that the conventional way of programming simulation games (as used by Simutrans, amongst others, of having a mix of high level statistical modelling and partly detailed ground-up simulation in key areas, such as, in Simutrans, goods and passengers) is superior, at least for present day hardware.

That's why we have the statistical models in the first place: They describe our agent based world very well. Even while we often don't know what the agents are actually doing.

[Sarlock]

That's why we have the statistical models in the first place: They describe our agent based world very well. Even while we often don't know what the agents are actually doing.

If it's modelled correctly, it's a very effective way of simplifying complex interactions.  In a simulation/game, it's all that is necessary.  If the end result mirrors what would be done from an agent approach then why consume all of the processor resources than it can be devoted to other things like map size, efficient pathfinding, etc.

I haven't played Simcity again in over a week... I just didn't find it very interesting (other issues aside).  I'll try it again in a few weeks or months and see how I feel about it.

[sdog]

I meant it on a more fundamental level. We always have random or random seeming dynamics on a finer scale. For the description of the large scale the rules found are typically consistent with statistical models. You don't even have to go to quantum mechanics. You find it in mundane phenomena like diffusion, or thermodynamics. Principle of emergence. (Would be interesting to read what philosophy of science has to say about it's seeming universality. Anyone got a good source?)

[colonyan]

What is very interesting about this is that it (probably) shows that the pure agent based ground up approach is completely impractical. I was very interested when the project was first announced as to how they would manage to do this, as complexity increases exponentially with size with an agent based system (which is probably part of the reason that the cities are so small). What this appears to show is that the very basic premise of the Glass Box engine is a fundamental design mistake, and that the conventional way of programming simulation games (as used by Simutrans, amongst others, of having a mix of high level statistical modelling and partly detailed ground-up simulation in key areas, such as, in Simutrans, goods and passengers) is superior, at least for present day hardware.

Incidentally, can anyone link to the video from 2012 to which Colonyan is referring?

Its one of their early official video. All it was showing was factory getting worker>producing goods> goods delivered by truck to commercial > shopper buying.
They made park ultimate happiness generator and happiness (sales, and profit for Comm, and Ind). It takes happiness for sim built strucutres to develop in density.

[sdog]

The more I read the more it sounds like they wanted to make Spore out of it.



edit, fixed typo

[jamespetts]

Spire?

[sdog]

Should have read Spore (corrected) i haven't noticed android's spelling correction changed it.

[ӔO]

now that you mention it, yes, it does seem like spore. Massively single player and annoying DRM.

[IgorEliezer]

"Why pay for beta testers when day one buyers will do the same job for free?" (link)

Best YouTube comment of the year. :3