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Let the DRM rape continue! New SimCity

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
Good simulations need tons of processing power,

Don't worry, I'm sure they learned from EA how to bypass this problem. Just direct the processing to the servers, isn't that why SimCity couldn't work offline? :troll:
 

Delterius

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2012
Messages
15,956
Location
Entre a serra e o mar.
You do have to admit the pattern though. Company starts off, becomes a classic, joins EA, turns into shit.


But then again, EA's evil might just rotten companies to their core, with developers becoming as shitty as EA itself is.

A lot of people like to think that if their favorite companies from yore would just free themselves from EVUL PUBLISHING, like Larian did, they would become awesome again. But the whole point is that these companies didn't - old employees went away, others remained and got used to an entirely new tone at the top but, ultimately, remaining within EA served the companies' interests.

TL ; DR Everything is much more shit than it appears to be.

Good simulations need tons of processing power,


Don't worry, I'm sure they learned from EA how to bypass this problem. Just direct the processing to the servers, isn't that why SimCity couldn't work offline?
Highlander-Clan-Macleod-Swords.jpg

THE CLOUD WILL SAVE US
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
Joined
Jun 16, 2007
Messages
23,731
You do have to admit the pattern though. Company starts off, becomes a classic, joins EA, turns into shit.


But then again, EA's evil might just rotten companies to their core, with developers becoming as shitty they themselves are. A lot of people like to think that if their favorite companies from yore would just free themselves from EVUL PUBLISHING, like Larian did, they would become awesome again. But the whole point is that these companies didn't - old employees went away, others remained and got used to an entirely new tone at the top but, ultimately, remaining within EA served the companies' interests.

TL ; DR Everything is much more shit than it appears to be.


EA is shit.
X company WAS a classic.
X company degrades.
X company decides to join EA because the heads of both companies have similar persona's.
X company is now fully integrated shit.

?
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
Good simulations need tons of processing power,

Don't worry, I'm sure they learned from EA how to bypass this problem. Just direct the processing to the servers, isn't that why SimCity couldn't work offline? :troll:
I guess you can successfully use lies like that with a household name with inbuilt fandom like SimCity, but I doubt that works with an unknown app. On the other hand, they may try to do something like Kickstarter or an expensive closed beta and grow their own customers with Stockholm Syndrome.
 

Surf Solar

cannot into womynz
Joined
Jan 8, 2011
Messages
8,828
Played the game again a bit over my account on my brothers PC, had actually some fun and didn't encounter any bugs. Now I am at home and thought I can just hop in my city because of the "awesome" cloud saving feauture, but ofcourse I can't access it. Also, when I want to build a new city, I have to connect its streets to the highway. I did that, but ofcourse the game doesn't recognize it and thus I can't build anything. Awesome.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
Patron
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
17,274
Location
Terra da Garoa
So they just need to mod a offline mode, larger city areas, fully simulated citizens (for real this time) and some actual challenge.

It's easier to make a new game.
 

Minttunator

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 26, 2012
Messages
1,649
Location
Estonia
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This might have actually gotten them some sales and goodwill, had they done it immediately after launch - it's a bit too late for anyone to care now.
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
Joined
Jun 16, 2007
Messages
23,731
So they just need to mod a offline mode, larger city areas, fully simulated citizens (for real this time) and some actual challenge.

It's easier to make a new game.

It's easier to just replay Dragon's Dogma / Dark Souls / [Insert some Japan weeboo classic here]
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
So they just need to mod a offline mode, larger city areas, fully simulated citizens (for real this time) and some actual challenge.

It's easier to make a new game.

While that is in principle true, Simcity 4 was also pretty shitty when it was deserted by Maxis. The community had to fix that one, like the broken traffic simulator.
 

Angthoron

Arcane
Joined
Jul 13, 2007
Messages
13,056
So they just need to mod a offline mode, larger city areas, fully simulated citizens (for real this time) and some actual challenge.

It's easier to make a new game.

While that is in principle true, Simcity 4 was also pretty shitty when it was deserted by Maxis. The community had to fix that one, like the broken traffic simulator.
Not quite as shitty as EAcity though.
 

Zewp

Arcane
Joined
Sep 30, 2012
Messages
3,566
Codex 2013
It was sort of implied, but sure

images


Since the game seems based in environment manipulation.

God that game was fucking terrible. I actually think I'd rather play SimShitty than that game again. It was constantly wrestling control away from the player, forcing him to watch little people dancing or jumping up and down and then forcing you to watch an unskippable cinematic at the end of each level, which just happened to be the exact same cinematic every single time. I firmly believe Ubisoft made that game as a "fuck you" to world from French devs.
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
While that is in principle true, Simcity 4 was also pretty shitty when it was deserted by Maxis. The community had to fix that one, like the broken traffic simulator.
Not quite as shitty as EAcity though.

No doubt. SC4 is a great game, and I still play it regularly.

Edit: Steam claims I spent more than 1000 hours with it. Good grief.
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
It was sort of implied, but sure

images


Since the game seems based in environment manipulation.

God that game was fucking terrible. I actually think I'd rather play SimShitty than that game again. It was constantly wrestling control away from the player, forcing him to watch little people dancing or jumping up and down and then forcing you to watch an unskippable cinematic at the end of each level, which just happened to be the exact same cinematic every single time. I firmly believe Ubisoft made that game as a "fuck you" to world from French devs.

Yup, this one is fundamentally flawed. It's great that, on some desert map, you have to dig for water, and after a bit of digging, the whole map starts drowning. It's ridiculous.
 

Angthoron

Arcane
Joined
Jul 13, 2007
Messages
13,056
While that is in principle true, Simcity 4 was also pretty shitty when it was deserted by Maxis. The community had to fix that one, like the broken traffic simulator.
Not quite as shitty as EAcity though.

No doubt. SC4 is a great game, and I still play it regularly.

Edit: Steam claims I spent more than 1000 hours with it. Good grief.
How do I make it run normally on Win 7? It looks terrible, and it runs even worse, and I've no idea what to do.
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
How do I make it run normally on Win 7? It looks terrible, and it runs even worse, and I've no idea what to do.
I think there should be quite a few links and explanations from me buried somewhere in this thread.

In short, you have to set start options for the exe. For Steam, you have to do that in the "Properties" in your Steam library. Here are mine for instance, which set custom screen resolution, restrict it to one CPU core (prevents crashes) and turn the stupid intro video off:

-CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -CPUCount:1 -intro:off

Then you need to enable the game to actually use your RAM if you have more than 2 GB. The NAM installer has that as an option to do automatically for you.

If you have an AMD card, you need to put a bit of work into changing a few game files. When the game was made, AMD cards were very shitty, so the game will ignore all advanced settings you made in the ingame options and throttle performance to something unbearable. If there's need, I can see if I find a link to the procedure.
 

Angthoron

Arcane
Joined
Jul 13, 2007
Messages
13,056
How do I make it run normally on Win 7? It looks terrible, and it runs even worse, and I've no idea what to do.
I think there should be quite a few links and explanations from me buried somewhere in this thread.

In short, you have to set start options for the exe. For Steam, you have to do that in the "Properties" in you Steam library. Here are mine for instance, which set custom screen resolution, restrict it to one CPU core (prevents crashes) and turn the stupid intro video off:

-CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -CPUCount:1 -intro:off

Then you need to enable the game to actually use your RAM if you have more than 2 GB. The NAM installer has that as an option to do automatically for you.

If you have an AMD card, you need to put a bit of work into changing a few game files. When the game was made, AMD cards were very shitty, so the game will ignore all advanced settings you made in the ingame options and throttle performance to something unbearable. If there's need, I can see if I find a link to the procedure.
Cool, I'll look into this today again, MAYBE this time it'll actually work. Nice tip about NAM, I think last time I ignored the option somehow, or it wasn't present, or something.
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
Cool, I'll look into this today again, MAYBE this time it'll actually work. Nice tip about NAM, I think last time I ignored the option somehow, or it wasn't present, or something.

You can try the SC4 Launcher, which is easy to use for people who don't want to deal with the specifics. It principally contains the video card option I was talking about, but that didn't really work for me (or just sort of), and I had better results doing it the old-fashioned way.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2007
Messages
3,181
"Offline singleplayer? Unpossiburu!" (c) EA
8r6JVNS.jpg
So, now that SimCity's got this innovative new feature (Could you imagine playing like this just 10 years ago? Tech progress, wow!), are there any mods of note? Some road organization and placement efficiency tips or links to such would also be welcome.

By the way, first impression: not terrible. It's not SC4, but I could see myself wasting time with it for a while.
Also, I'm guessing the game's seen a ton of patches since release, as I'm not finding any technical problems. Performance is good, too.
 

Stokowski

Arcane
Joined
Nov 23, 2011
Messages
4,580
Location
Gehenna
Back in SC4's heyday this used to be the de rigueur site. Looks like at least some of the community has embraced the newer title so you might find something useful there.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
Finally got to play this. And you know, it is a pretty and clever game. Although I would still prefer sprites over 3d. And I doubt all the options and maps are necessary for successful play, but it has that RPG planning element where you want to do more with less. A lot of services, from water and electricity to sewers and infrastructure have that clear connection to land and resources and placement, and because map is small, you don't get to just slap a gas plant and junk yard on the other side of a map and forget about it forever, like in previous games. And to create a beautiful and prosperous city you want to make every chunk of map count. And you want to grow vertically, and to do that you have to take care of a few things, not just slap a darker green instead of lighter green. I think in previous games all that was a bit more abstract.

So it's not the size of a map itself which is bothering me. What started to bother me right after a few minutes of play are sticky roads. In previous games, you could build anything anywhere. But without services like roads and electricity it just wouldn't work. But you could slap a park, then zones around it, and then add a road. In SimCity 2013, you can't build anything for shit unless you first draw a road. And everything has that sticky effect to roads that, everything must go to a side of a road. So you can't even put a house at the end of an avenue. And it's realistic and adds some planning, but it also kills creativity and does not allow players to build cities the way THEY want. No longer you can create a little beach with only 4*6 cottages on it. Or skyscrappers around parks and school with a subway station. Or pop and island from river and put something there.

Instead of that God-like ability you now have cosmetic options. Since every building matters, you can customize them, add flags and upgrades, but it's not the same. Guess developers wanted you to know and remember every street and corner. So instead of letting you draw a huge painting, they made a game where you make a little toy out of clay and can paint it however you like, inside and outside.

I'd guess the saving feature should have been regional building, but because of a system of grants every city starts absolutely the same - you can't press any button before you add a road to country highway; you can't add other things before you add this and that, I don't believe that would work. Maybe in this city I do want to start with a univercity right away; maybe in this one I'd like to place huge world wonder first and then create something around it. But I can't.

That's it for now, I'll play and see how quickly I become bored with this.
 
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