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SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

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Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#161

Post by aceazzameen »

codingdave wrote: post #122
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.

That is also just a few years before World of Warcraft came out, which drove everyone to focus more on multiplayer games. Not that we didn't all do multiplayer at LAN parties, but that is when it really switched to being done across the internet. FWIW, I have a pet theory that WoW took over at that point not because of the MMO concept (which already existed), but because their UX was so smooth. That was the first MMO…

You're right on the UX. But not just the UX, eeeeverything was polished with little details put into place around every turn. Nothing else was like it at that scale.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#162

Post by aceazzameen »

sumtechguy wrote: post #142
Aeolun wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All game generations have their 'best of' games. Of the 1700+ NES games maybe 50 or so are actually classics and worth your time. Then you have the band of 'nostalgia and tough', only play if you are in for a challenges, or it is a game you grew up with. Then 'do not bother' which is the majority of the games. The same is true for MSDOS games, Genesis, 2600, MSX, PS1/2/3/4, XBox, GB, GC etc etc etc. The majority of g…

I grew up with the NES and loved the hell out of it at the time. But today, there's not a single game I want to go back to. I'd rather play the SNES versions of many of the best series. Also emulation with CRT shaders is the best way to visually play older games these days. This includes PS1/2 games.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#163

Post by KptMarchewa »

noirscape wrote: post #133
mattmanser wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High content, big budget, games still exist, e.g. Elden Ring + Zelda (as someone mentioned) are two recent releases. There's also plenty of sim games in the indie market, Factorio, Banished, Frostpunk. Then things that are close to the market like They Are Billions, Kenshi, etc. to name a few I've personally had time to play. Kenshi is a bit rough around the edges, but absolutely brilliant in terms of sandbox play. T…

The difference with sim/4X/any genre that's fallen outside of the general "popular games" trend is that they ended up becoming overly specialized and inaccessible to newcomers. Yes, technically you can still play a bunch of cool 4X games, but most people still making them (with the exception of like, CAs Total War, which also notably defocused the 4X part in favor of RTS combat) is copying the Paradox approach and Pa…

I would love if Total War games had more complex strategic layer... The battles itself are great enough, maybe besides dumb AI sometimes and balance. On the other hand I had a lot of fun before campaign map economy became just balancing income and happiness. On the other hand, I never thought having armies a discrete entities on the map Heroes 3 style actually added any depth to the game.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#164

Post by jcarrano »

The only issue for me was that sims would choose the shortest path, not the fastest, leading to traffic problems which were very hard to solve. This I learned later from the Internet, at the time I didn't know it and I was just perplexed as to why they wouldn't take a newly built highway. Otherwise, excellent game.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#165

Post by tgtweak »

I don't know - the Cities series is taking the next steps on what a city building sim should have progressed as. The last SimCity game was an afront to the series and should never have been released in that state. I say this as someone who's early commandline experience was typing sc2000.exe from dos.

I have hope that there is an online massive Sim world where Sims and SimCity players can co-play and create some amazing real-world scenarios.

I agree that SimCity 4 was the peak of the series but there are many hardcore simcity players that claim 3000 was peak SimCity. Just look at Magnasanti city for some proof of the dedication.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#166

Post by tgtweak »

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.

All of which were very direct progressions on the gameplay depth and replayability. Also... grand theft auto 2 and gran turismo 2.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#167

Post by LarsDu88 »

midasuni wrote: post #75
LarsDu88 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When these games came out, the PC game market was smaller with less competition. Programmers and game makers drew from what they grew up with which was table top board games. That's why the instruction manuals were thick (like a DnD manual), the rules were incredibly complex, and the learning curves were steep. These games were a product of their time and you definitely do have an age based selection bias!

I don’t remember a thick manual for red alert. Or much of a manual at all.

http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/manuals/Red%20Alert%201/...

99 pages long my friend.

Checkout the manual for StarCraft, which gives you the entire backstory!

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#168

Post by shrimp_emoji »

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.

The "best (according to me)" games are still 2D or 2.5D:

Roguelikes

Dwarf Fortress

Factorio

EU4

My theory is that deep gameplay and AAA 3D graphics are mutually exclusive because deep gameplay fundamentally requires "tile grids" of some kind, which don't lend themselves to AAA 3D graphics.

(Diablo 1 and 2 kind of railed against this by taking the approach, "Hey, what if we took a tile-based roguelike and rendered it in isometric 3Dsortof?" At the time, that isometric 3Dsortof was state of the art, I guess.)

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#169

Post by harha »

izacus wrote: post #159
bleep_bloop wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum requirements for Civ 6 are far below the capability of the M1 series macbooks so I don't know why you'd think so.

Because that's not how games work - they don't run "at minimum capabilities" and they run their game loop constantly, rendering graphics. This means that it will almost certanly saturate at least M1s GPU and probably at least one of P cores. At that stage, even the M1 starts drawing a lot of power which needs disspiation. Also Civ 6s target GPU is much faster than any of the M1s (which, despite the marketing, are sti…

Curious to learn more here: everyone was praising the M1 so much, but here’s a case that based on this wouldn’t fit the bill.

also how high do you think the penalty for running an intel binary is?

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#170

Post by bombcar »

kuon wrote: post #160
bombcar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yeah I tested a bit, but in the end you always feel that the game was designed around roads. I have not tested the latest DLC I think. I thought it was about airports only.

It was the one after airports, Plazas and Promenades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Q8RN9ut4s

I've not played with it much, but I used similar mods that let the paths from the earlier Parklife and Campus DLC do similar tricks.

I couldn't and didn't entirely get rid of roads, but I had 50+ utilizing non-car transportation.

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