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SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

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Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#61

Post by jtwaleson »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #39
jtwaleson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean with painter?

At a certain point in Cities Skylines you stop having any real challenge to make money or to keep your city running, so it becomes pretty much a sandbox. You can make the city look pretty much however you like instead of being bound by the needs of the city. In effect, you can just paint whatever kind of city you like onto the terrain. There's still a little challenge to deal with transportation but its fairly trivia…

Ah, right, that’s pretty recognizable from my gameplay, thanks :)

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#62

Post by csomar »

xixixao wrote: post #44
genocidicbunny wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought 3000 was the best showing, though perhaps that's looking at it back later when performance is not as much of a concern. It felt like an upgraded SimCity 2000, rather than a big change in game mechanics that 4 was.

Age of Empires 2, Sim City 3000, Diablo2 and Red Alert 2. Released in the span of 3 years. What an incredible era. Can’t shake off the feeling that 3D took away as much as it gave gaming. Also can’t believe it’s just my age-based selection bias.

It's not an age-based bias. These games couldn't expand on graphics, so they expanded on the logic of the game. That made them interesting.

Very few games do that today (EU4, a favorite of mine, for example) but the trend now is to confuse the user with graphics while giving really little in term of content.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#63

Post by bombcar »

tracyhenry wrote: post #24
db48x wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s actually why I like the game. Logistics is everything. A city is not merely a beautiful arrangement of buildings, it is a machine with many moving parts. If you neglect the movements, the city won’t function and your people will move out. Unless it kills them first.

The problem is that the traffic issue is nonstop and affects things, so you have to fix it. In reality at least the traffic will resolve itself overnight.

There are mods that can do that (literally wipe every simulated traffic off the map) but you can handle traffic pretty easily if you plan ahead.

My last few cities really had no traffic problems at all except for one old main road that I really didn't want to redevelop for some reason.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#64

Post by bombcar »

kuon wrote: post #29

I have fond memories of simcity 1 and 2000. I currently play cities skylines but it has its cons. I hope cities skylines 2 will have less central traffic and we can zone without road. It's our best hope to a modern simcity. But this article motivated me to play sc4 again.

There are mods for CS that let you zone against the park paths, IIRC.

You can make road-free portions of the city, but you need other mods to handle garbage, etc (basically dumpsters) because without roads you can't get the trucks in.

The latest DLC seems to have some more on that area (roads that ONLY emergency/bus/service vehicles can use).

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#65

Post by agumonkey »

Aeolun wrote: post #56
xixixao wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age of Empires 2, Sim City 3000, Diablo2 and Red Alert 2. Released in the span of 3 years. What an incredible era. Can’t shake off the feeling that 3D took away as much as it gave gaming. Also can’t believe it’s just my age-based selection bias.

When I talk to people older than me they think some of the NES games were the best ever released. But I look at the graphics and I just can’t get over it.

I don't know how to call this but the ratio of magic versus graphics resolution fascinates me. 8bit games were often very crude, but you got the essential for a gamer's mind to rejoin for hours.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#66

Post by bombcar »

sidibe wrote: post #50

I enjoyed the first couple Sim Cities but at the time I really loved those city building games like Caesar and Pharaoh, so satisfying watching the houses level up and immigrants pour in

Talk about walkable cities! I loved those games; spent hours in class with graph paper working out optimal city blocks.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#67

Post by meowtimemania »

wtvanhest wrote: post #55
xixixao wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age of Empires 2, Sim City 3000, Diablo2 and Red Alert 2. Released in the span of 3 years. What an incredible era. Can’t shake off the feeling that 3D took away as much as it gave gaming. Also can’t believe it’s just my age-based selection bias.

Red Alert 2. That was such a fun game. One thing that has been majorly lost in games now is the ability to create levels too. I loved the creation part

it's still kinda there. Halo forge, fortnite creative mode, starcraft 2, mario maker 1+2, etc.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#69

Post by Moru »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #12
iJohnDoe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. Fond memories of SC 2000. The open creation of any layout you could think of was my favorite aspect of the game. Anyone have a particular recommendation on how to play SC 2000 today on Windows 10?

GOG has SC2k available and it should work just fine on Windows 10.

And it downloads AND installs in less time than it would take to insert the CD into the drive, not to mention finding the thing... Modern wonders :-) Gonna play some tonight!

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#70

Post by nateberkopec »

devman0 wrote: post #40
chongli wrote: post #5

I prefer SimCity 2000. I feel like it hit a pretty good sweet spot between simulation and fun (which is to say, not even a vague gesturing at anything remotely realistic). Realistic simulation in games is almost universally less fun than simple, predictable game logic. Probably the most extreme example of this is chess: way more enjoyable than real warfare. Back on topic though. My beef with SimCity 4 is that it adde…

The ability to import a SimCity 2000 map in to SimCopter was amazing for the time, imo. I remember flying around cities I had worked really hard on thinking how the cross over between the two games was really cool.

I did the same with Streets of SimCity.
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