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The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

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Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#101

Post by dsl »

intull wrote: post #33
creshal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. SimCity 5 with a pure agent-based simulation model (it had flaws though, especially traffic), but again the series pioneered a new way of creating games in this genre. It irks me how SimCity 5 is praised for that. The Caesar series had pure agent-based simulations in the 1990s, and somehow had none of the agent routing bugs SimCity 5 had. How can being worse than your competition 20 years ago be considered an ac…

Ah but the level of detail and graphics? I could see the contrusction workers actually working, moving vans with families, kids boarding coming out of the house, boarding the school bus (actually walking/climbing), going to the school, playing on the swings, the sand, the slides, people actually walking in the park, a car actually owned by a sim being parked at work, etc. SC5 is praised for this level of detail in it…

The art department just makes things pretty. They don't have much to do with the simulations folks, aside from being asked for assets for specific actions (car driving, person walking, etc).

SC5 might have been really pretty, but the agent simulation was entry level CS at best. As others have noted, sims woke up and drove to the closest available job regardless of past behavior for example.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#102

Post by bentcorner »

blueskin_ wrote: post #74
zzleeper wrote: post #52

I think we are all playing into EA's strategy by calling it Maxis instead of just EA. Simcity 2013 was a failure of EA, but by mentioning Maxis 11 times and EA only once (and in passing), it's as they give EA a carte blanche to fail without the lowered reputation for future games (which means many people will preorder, and so on)

To many, many gamers, as soon as the word EA comes up, it already means "prepare for disappointment, DRM, and disastrous launches".

To me they're a mixed bag. I've enjoyed many titles from them (Dragon Age, Titanfall, Dead Space, NFS: HP, Mass Effect, Bulletstorm, BF: BC2, and countless other titles from older gen consoles and even older PC games like Archon and Kings of the Beach).

I think that when expectations are set high (most any recent BF release), disappointment is sure to follow.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#103

Post by matwood »

icehawk219 wrote: post #5

Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator. Which itself wouldn't be a problem if…

Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend.

I agree! I found this game on Steam last weekend and spent 5-6 hours building a city. It really is the next SimCity city building fans have been waiting for.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#104

Post by zrail »

gergles wrote: post #60
zrail wrote: post #16

This looks awesome! Does anyone know if it plays acceptably on a new Macbook Pro 13"? The spec sheets for the game say it doesn't support Intel integrated graphics, but maybe that means it just can't run full resolution?

It crashes on start for me on my MBP 13, so I'd say no.

What GPU does your machine have?

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#105

Post by matwood »

steveklabnik wrote: post #36
zrail wrote: post #16

This looks awesome! Does anyone know if it plays acceptably on a new Macbook Pro 13"? The spec sheets for the game say it doesn't support Intel integrated graphics, but maybe that means it just can't run full resolution?

I have a ThinkPad 440s, which is a beefy machine in other respects, but has integrated graphics. I can't currently play the game due to rendering glitches :/

Are you playing through Steam? I had rendering glitches on my MBP until I turned off the Steam overlay. Everything has worked fine since.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#106

Post by notatoad »

rexignis wrote: post #9
icehawk219 wrote: post #5

Skylines is hands down my favorite game right now and is directly responsible for my highly unproductive, but fun, weekend. But it's not without faults. For me one of the telling things will be how they handle a very similar problem that EA had with the latest Sim City. Traffic. Once your city becomes a certain size the game goes from City Builder to Traffic Management Simulator. Which itself wouldn't be a problem if…

There's another city sim in the works called Citybound and the dev is seemingly obsessed with getting roads and traffic right. http://blog.cityboundsim.com/

I absolutely love the citybound dev blog, it's such a great exploration of problems that i would never think about otherwise.

However, I have no faith that the game itself will ever be finished. It's the epitome of "perfect is the enemy of good", they spend so much time getting little things absolutely perfect. At least it makes for an interesting blog.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#107

Post by burger_moon »

lucaspiller wrote: post #43
zrail wrote: post #16

This looks awesome! Does anyone know if it plays acceptably on a new Macbook Pro 13"? The spec sheets for the game say it doesn't support Intel integrated graphics, but maybe that means it just can't run full resolution?

I've got an Air with Intel HD 5000 and it runs ok. The framerate is a bit low, but for a simulation it's fine.

That's good to know. I bought it for my pc but wouldn't mind getting a copy for my mb air.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#108

Post by edias »

dsl wrote: post #96
TylerE wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think that's a pattern. I think it's a result in AAA development in general being in a slump. If anything, I'd say Ubisoft (outside of one or two lone bright spots like Rayman) has been worse than EA the last few years, with the rotten cherry of Uplay on top.

Have a look at Activision/Blizzard. They built essentially the same thing (Origin/Uplay) but being very customer friendly about it and have had crazy success with Battle.net.

You've never played their recent games then. Battle.net 2.0 is routinely called 0.2 and considered a step back in every single way, aside from FB integration I guess. It didn't even have chat channels until recently or clan support. Promises made for starcraft 2 5 years ago have yet to be delivered on. Diablo 3 was a terrible cash grab and mostly abandoned by players.

After Activision purchased blizzard it has not been the same company.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#109

Post by gdulli »

TylerE wrote: post #78
gdulli wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely just as unfair to tarnish the Maxis name for the game design failures of the EA SimCity era. Would a pure Maxis game have been as badly received? I guess we can't know for sure.

Doesn't hold up to scrutiny. http://gamerant.com/simcity-maxis-ea-online-connection/

Perhaps not by EA's accounting of the situation.

Re: The 'SimCity' Empire Has Fallen and 'Skylines' Is Picking Up the Pieces

#110

Post by steveklabnik »

matwood wrote: post #105
steveklabnik wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a ThinkPad 440s, which is a beefy machine in other respects, but has integrated graphics. I can't currently play the game due to rendering glitches :/

Are you playing through Steam? I had rendering glitches on my MBP until I turned off the Steam overlay. Everything has worked fine since.

I am! I'll give that a try, thanks!
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