BigJKO

SimCity: The City Simulator

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If you get SimCity 4 (Delux) get the NAM mod for it. It adds a lot of road tools in a very clunky manner, but you don't need to use all that shit; it allows you to build more varied road designs just by regular drag and dropping (mostly when crossing route types like avenues over/under highways), but more importantly it improves the AI for traffic routing. So you can skip all the clunky crap added in.

 

But yeah SimCity 4 is amazing.

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Interesting that Sim City measures traffic at intersections rather than in spans. That seems really backwards to me. If you knew the traffic of all the spans leading out of an intersection, you could calculate the traffic in an intersection, but its not quite so easy the other way around.

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http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/28/gdc-2013-ea-miniboss-says-drm-is-a-failed-dead-end-strategy/

“DRM was never even brought up once,” says Gibeau. “You don’t build an MMO because you’re thinking of DRM – you’re building a massively multiplayer experience, that’s what you’re building. [...] For the folks who have conspiracy theories about evil suits at EA forcing DRM down the throats of Maxis, that’s not the case at all.”

 

This seems like a weird, and untrue, thing to say.

 

There's nothing about Sim City that really feels like an MMO aside from the always online component, which would presumably be the easiest thing to remove/fix if you were going to ship it as single-player.

 

Also that doesn't even address all the AI crazyness...

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A failure to implement features in a way that pleases you does not imply devious intent! It implies failure to implement features in a way that pleases you!

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I think of it more as a mix between Hanlon's razor and the old saying, "Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining."

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Man, having tried to play this like a multiplayer game with my brother, it'd look better if they admitted to the DRM instead of claiming that it's just a really shitty MMO.

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I'm sorry to bring up more boring traffic algorithm talk.
I was curious to see if the second congestion avoidance algorithm described in my previous post was actually viable, so I tried it out.

 

 

My original goal was to compute distance field once and use congestion data only for choosing intersections (to make it scale nicely with massive number of roads + cars), but that only works when each choice presented to the car leads to overall lower cost - which is the case sometimes, but most of the times, you want the car to take the detour even if it means choosing a road that leads to higher cost than where the car is right now. I tried a few cheap workarounds, but they only target certain road arrangements and fail in more complex layout.

 

So my final solution was simply:

The distance field is recomputed periodically with congestion levels, AND cars choose which road to take at intersections based on cost difference scaled by congestion level. (it may seem like it's doing unnecessary work because it's using the congestion data twice, but it's actually necessary to avoid problems outlined in Maxis's blog post where you need to introduce a phantom road segment to "encourage" cars to take the detour).

You can try out my test app here:
http://www.artificiallyflavoured.com/RoadTest.html

It's hastly implemented in Javascript and it's not well optimized (probably buggy too), but as proof of concept it does its job. Tested with Chrome and Firefox. I don't think it works in IE.

 

(no instructions - sorry. hopefully you can figure out how to use it  :wacko: )

(oh but a helpful tip: drawing a road across another road doesn't create an intersection. they won't affect each other (almost like a bridge). you can still split existing roads by start drawing(or end drawing) from the middle of the road segment)

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I don't really see how it's bad. It's free, and avoidable, and probably took very little effort on their part (thus, not detracting from more important things), while getting them some money from Nissan.

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It just a immersion breaker for me, I like that SimCity is a abstraction of the real world, that the Sims speak Simlish not English, and this seems like a horribly horribly slippery slope to start down. 

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It just a immersion breaker for me, I like that SimCity is a abstraction of the real world, that the Sims speak Simlish not English, and this seems like a horribly horribly slippery slope to start down. 

 

I'd be all for a Nissan Leaf charging station with the signs written all in Simlish. As it stands, are there any other buildings with writing on them?

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Some buildings do have made up names in English. Idk it's just something that just sets all sorts of warning light's off for me, and which i just don't feel comfortable with at all.

I suppose I really don't consume much advertising, because until now the games I play have been relatively free of it, I've been lucky to have the totally advertising free BBC radio and TV stations, and a decent public Library system for when I do want other media.

 

For me perhaps more than anything else its a instinctual recoil against the concept and it's future implications. I can't wholly rationalise it and I know I'm overreacting but it just feels wrong.

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While I'm not that bothered by this kind of thing, this does seem to fall into the 'shameless' category. That big, red 'NISSAN' text is so outrageously obvious that they're clearly anticipating it showing up in numerous SimCity screenshots as it probably shows up at all zoom levels. In the real world it's like saying you can have a free module that makes your car go significantly faster and feel more comfortable — so long as you don't mind a big-ass hologram projecting above your car with massive, red text advertising something to the world no matter which direction they look at your car from.

 

It's easy to make the 'you don't have to take it' argument, but it's still a very sleazy and cynical approach.

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It also has pretty poor timing, being the first piece of (free) DLC after a harrowing launch. Maybe something that isn't a weird corporate-branded cheat code should have led the way?

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While I'm not that bothered by this kind of thing, this does seem to fall into the 'shameless' category. That big, red 'NISSAN' text is so outrageously obvious that they're clearly anticipating it showing up in numerous SimCity screenshots as it probably shows up at all zoom levels. In the real world it's like saying you can have a free module that makes your car go significantly faster and feel more comfortable — so long as you don't mind a big-ass hologram projecting above your car with massive, red text advertising something to the world no matter which direction they look at your car from.

 

It's easy to make the 'you don't have to take it' argument, but it's still a very sleazy and cynical approach.

 

 

It also has pretty poor timing, being the first piece of (free) DLC after a harrowing launch. Maybe something that wasn't a weird corporate-branded cheat code should have led the way?

 

I think you both hit on some of the stuff that bothers me about it.

 

Prob no1 (as I think Thrik implies) is: Its just better. Pretty much every other building has a downside, high initial cost high maintaince, high power, whatever. This? 

 

Plopping down the station will add happiness to nearby buildings. It will not take power, water, or workers away from your city. Zoom in to the streets of cities, and players will start seeing a percentage of their Sims from all wealth classes driving the electric vehicles. The station produces no garbage or sewage, as well, making it pollution free

 

Basically a "I WIN" button with Nissan written across it.

It's not just a free module that makes your car go faster, it makes it defy physics all together, and yes(just as Gormongos says) it does annoy that the first thing after a launch they do is not to address balance issues but add something that basically sounds like it ignores the games balance all together.

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Hmm, I was coming in here to  say there might have been enough patches to give this game another try. Now its looking like they're just bandaging the problems with unbalanced advertising DLC. *sigh*

 

Additional dig: I wonder if if the tourists drawn in by these items will actually work correctly?

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Hah geez. There's so much potential for cool actual expansion and DLC stuff and this is what they come up with. I was lenient with the first Nissan thing, 'cause it's not like it's mandatory or anything, but now I'm just bleh.

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