Anyone else here excited for the new simcity?

[Jay?]

Oh I wouldn't be too sure about that. When EA starts asking people to stop advertising their game you know things are starting to get serious.

Gee, it's almost as if always-on DRM is like... a bad idea or something.

[GreenWolf13]

I made a blog post about the SimCity Fiasco: http://tmblr.co/Z1MpUufo_Aky

[freakachu]

according to a response a dude on reddit got from the office of EA's CEO, the devs wanted the online only component. now, the source is somewhat suspect but I don't think you can place all the blame on "corporate fat cat suits" or whatever. the devs thought this was going to be a good idea, they went out and talked about how awesome it'll be and whatnot. not EA CEOs, maxis devs. I've watched multiple interviews, seen multiple articles and posts by maxis people and they all talk about how great the online component is going to be, how much they love it, how cool it is, how infallible it is, etc..

this is not simply a case of "oh EA fucked over these naive game devs and shoved their dirty online DRM down their throats against their will while shareholders laughed and counted money". a bunch of people at maxis, much like a ton of other people in the IT field, bought the idea that The Cloud is super amazing. they were wrong. they made the choice to go always-on, they built the entire region concept around their server infrastructure, they failed to do anything close to properly testing the game on real people. they themselves apparently play their own game in a way that I suspect is wholly alien to the vast majority of their customers. there is a video where ocean quigly (the creative director, however his name is spelled) is talking to apparently will wright about playing the game. they discuss how they spend upwards of 40 minutes following sims around for every 20 minutes or so of actual city building that they do. I don't know what version of the game they were playing, but if I spent 40 minutes just following some idiot sim around my entire town would burn down by the time I was done.

additionally, their reason for the problems in the fist place is basically, "people wouldn't stop playing". apparently they honestly expected people to log on, spend 10-15 minutes dorking off and then be like, "welp I'm satisfied for the week." and log off. this is not a CEO problem, this is a "the entire hardware and infrastructure team is spending all day doing crack with the technical design team" problem. some things can be blamed on upper management, I don't think this is one of those things.

[Xylord]

While there's all this drama, I thought I'd ask you guys your thoughts on this :

Civitas, the new hero of gaming.

I call a conspiracy by EA.

[freakachu]

another interesting tidbit from this reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/19y8ro/simcity_api_servers_more/

it seems the reason for the removal of cheetah speed is most likely due to this telemetry API they are using. according to this post it sends 34 separate messages to the server just loading up a city. the faster the game goes, the more of these messages are going to get sent in a given time span. all the API usage was probably causing them server issues, thus the lowering of the speed. it's also interesting to note the fact that all of their servers are amazon EC2 instances. all of them. they didn't setup their own data centers or servers for this, they are renting them all. despite all of that, the servers still choke and die, which is also fascinating because amazon cloud servers can expand their computational resources to meet demand. basically, it's not a server hardware problem unless they have some upper limits set or something, I have not used EC2 personally. even if there are some lowball upper limits, the fact that they are hitting those limits so hard points back to the same thing: the game is programmed like ass. nobody stopped to think about efficiency or optimization of network traffic. hell, even the simulation in the game itself is so derpy that it's a complete joke. I think it's pretty safe to say that a decent number of people were way out of their depth and/or had no idea what they were doing.

hell, all the communication it does with the servers is in plain text and over an http protocol, even the parts that are SSL encrypted.

[Niavmai]

http://ow.ly/iBQXA

[Xylord]

http://ow.ly/iBQXA

My heart is crushed by all the poor and naive folks asking them to simply remove the DRM.

[robotnikthingy]

Wow, its been an only slightly more than an hour since I last checked their page and they have already gained more than $1000.

I would really love to see this game get kicked off, even more so after reading how they and other developers ended up getting treated by their publishers.

[Michael101]

The simtropolis forums has an interesting discussion on the stupid pathing AI.

Buses are even worse. Just follow them for a few minutes. At times I got 10 buses attempting to pick up people from one stop. They go in circles and neglect other bus stops. It gets to the point where hundreds of people wait for buses in other parts of the city. And many times buses get stuck at bus stops for no reason. I kept adding more buses to reduce waiting times, but the buses kept traveling in packs taking crazy routs. Unplayable. Transportation networks are key for me. I can wait for bigger city sizes, but if simple buses act crazy then it ruins my experience.

My impression is that all agents are using the same pathfinding code. Remember that an agent is anything from a person walking, to a car, truck, power, water, and sewage.If this is the case then the best bet would be split vehicular pathfinding as a separate function with a slightly more advanced algorithm.

Here is the link to EA's GDC presentation on glassbox on agent and pathfinding

Its actually MUCH worse than them just taking the shortest route, they also have no memory of where the live or where they work so they all are trying to take the most direct route to the closest available house (or job ect) Once that fills they all take the most direct route to the next available un occupied house. I confirmed this by building 2 residential areas, one a bit close to my industry and one a bit further. Every day all the cars would go to the first and when it all filled the would U turn and go toward the second. This is why all the busses follow each other, they are all trying to get to the same place.

Its efficient, the only problem is they never taught the agents to communicate with each other. So you get this massive herding instinct. As each agent leaving a certain property (be it home, factory, school etc) is all trying to get to the nearest goal. You saw it in my Jude thread. Due to that lack of agent communication, the ideal of keeping zones separate from each other is actually a very bad thing. As the longer the herd is in the streets, the worse the traffic (foot traffic included) gets as herds run into other herds and it just builds and builds. (you can see this effect very easy by watching an elementary school let out, as the walking school kids all head to the closest house, then ping pong house to house till the mob of kids is devoured by houses). I guess agent communication just took too much processing power..i dunno.

I think it was done for memory reasons, to have each sim remember their house and jobs location would take alot of memory(I think, I am not a programmer so maybe it would not, in which case it was just a stupid decision) The thing is they did it in simcity4 which makes me think they could have done it now, especially considering the cities are so much smaller.

As far as the communication goes yes, they could have done it in many cases pretty easily.

For fire fighters and police just do this

1.Is there a crime Y or no

2. Is there an available responder? Y or N

3. If there is send closest responder

Thats not hard, and is super obvious, they didnt do it that way do to stubborness on someone in the design team I am guessing.

For busses it would be more complex but first bus could tell the others where it was going and so therefore no demand would be left so now figure out what your new closest spot with demand would be and on down the line.

The thing is they used "Individual actors" in situations where individual actors dont exist, busses have routes, police and fire have dispatchers, power is either connected or not, no matter the distance from the source... Why use a system that was designed for traffic (Poorly but thats not my point here) for things that do not behave like traffic??

[Michael101]

More Simclusterfuck updates...

Maxis Insider Tells RPS: SimCity Servers Not Necessary

Our source, who we have verified worked directly on the project but obviously wishes to remain anonymous, has first-hand knowledge of how the game works. He has made it absolutely clear to us that this repeated claim of server-side calculations is at odds with the reality of the project he worked on. Our source explains:

People were already perplexed by EA’s explanation of the impossibility of offline play. Kotaku ran a series of tests today, seeing how the game could run without an internet connection, finding it was happy for around 20 minutes before it realised it wasn’t syncing to the servers. Something which would surely be impossible were the servers co-running the game itself. Markus “Notch” Persson just tweeted to his million followers that he managed to play offline too, despite EA’s claims. And now with the information from our source, it would seem the claims just don’t hold water.

They also removed the link between industry and commercial...

Think your region needs industry? You're better without it

As the servers come up, I've been spending a lot of time baffled at the behavior of the supposedly impressive GlassBox engine. I've gotten to thinking of it as the "TransparentStupidity" engine, or "why you hang curtains on bathroom windows."

A particularly notable quirk is the handling of freight - that stuff that industry produces that is then... well, it's not really clear what happens then. If you think it's used to supply goods to your Commerical district, then you might want to watch more carefully. Commerical stores magically refill once a day from no apparent source. You're probably thinking, "No, they get the freight shipments locally and then restock the shelves once a day." That's what I thought, so I started a new, private region, and built a city without ever zoning a single inch of Industrial.

You know what? It's the best city I've ever had, from a purely mechanical perspective. There is no pollution, lower power use, and a considerably simpler traffic scheme because work/shopping is all in the same place. People aren't getting sick as often, there are hardly any fires to speak of, and there aren't any seemingly-pointless shipments of "freight" clogging up the roads in and out of town. How much more convenient can it get?

I played it up to 10K residents, which hardly took any time. I didn't take out any bonds. I couldn't believe how much money I was making. They have fire, hospital, police, elementary schools, a library and over $2000/hr in parks. The budget is currently +$4500/hr. My population is so happy that they started upgrading to medium density just past 4000 residents.

But there is no industry. None. Not in the city, not in the region. My population details say that I have 8000 unmet freight orders. Um... ok. So what? My people don't seem to be suffering in any way. My shops magically refill with goods once a day, and I actually have a few excess goods of each type, and no unsatisfied shoppers.

So why do I need freight? And if I don't need freight, why do I need industry? And if I don't need industry, then why is it even in the game? And if that's a reasonable question, then Maxis has done something terribly, terribly wrong.

UPDATE:

- You don't need freight to build Great Works. Some of them *accept* freight, but none actually require it.

- You only need Industry to *unlock* some of the specialization buildings. Once they're unlocked, you can delete all your industry and still build your specializations. This is actually better, since your industry won't be competing with your specialty buildings for jobs.

[miniboxer]

EA is officially the stupidest company ever now.

[xtrasyn]

I'm disappointed about what they did to the title. :(

[freakachu]

if your workforce was actually proportional to your population, it might be harder to avoid industry than it is. as it stand though, only a very small percentage of your sims actually work. like 10-20%, if that. because of that you can easily give them all jobs with commercial. if the worker numbers made sense, you would have a hard time keeping up with just commercial since they provide less jobs per area than industry does. that's my theory anyway.

regardless, it's stupid.

[GreenWolf13]

EA is officially the stupidest company ever now.

They weren't before?

[miniboxer]

They weren't before?

They were doing stupid shit, but it was pretty much level with the Ubisoft and some other companies of shit. Ubisoft got flooded with letters (PHYSICAL LETTERS) complaining about their DRM, as part of a campaign, and figured out that games with stupid DRM are pirated more, and a lot of other companies realized how bullshit DRM is too. EA still doesn't get it and marketing still constantly sticks their nose where it doesn't belong. Not to mention they put incompetent coders and marking executives on big name projects.

[Michael101]

It's not enough that industry isn't needed any more, you can now make purely residential/parks citys...

There are no other adjacent cities, this is the only one in the region! I am guessing this is possible due to the parks and low taxes. The sims get happiness from the parks, and the low taxes. Despite not having jobs and nowhere to shop, it seems to encourage them to grow and expand regardless so long as basic services are met.

This has been confirmed to work in non-sandbox/normal mode as well.

Sorry for the poor recording, it got cut off at the bottom. I pull up the population panel frequently!

The 10%~20% of the population that is supposed to want jobs just spend their work hours in the parks/plazas/libraries, then go home at quiting time... :rolleyes:

[Michael101]

And if you skip the parks you can get a 900k population residential only city...

It's not even a fucking game anymore...

[Cheap Shot]

No I was not excited for the new Simcity. EA's stock value dropping 40% since the start of this year was pretty thrilling though.

[Lethosos]

No I was not excited for the new Simcity. EA's stock value dropping 40% since the start of this year was pretty thrilling though.

I thought Will Wright coming out on stage in nothing but coconuts and grass skirt, singing "Fins" on an ukulele, was a nice touch.

[Michael101]

Modder Runs SimCity Offline, Maxis Remains Silent

I wonder how EA will respond after spewing that bullshit about too much of the simulation being serverside for an offline mode to even be possible.

[Jay?]

You know what i'm ACTUALLY excited for? The long overdue pricedrop that simcity 4 will probably experience. If it makes it into "cheap as chips" category, i'll finally get the chance to play it and see what all the fuss was about.

In fact, that's usually what excites me about new games. "Skyrim's coming out! WOO PRICE DROP FOR OBLIVION!" "FFXI coming out? PRICE DROP FOR FFX" etc. etc.

[Lethosos]

You know what i'm ACTUALLY excited for? The long overdue pricedrop that simcity 4 will probably experience. If it makes it into "cheap as chips" category, i'll finally get the chance to play it and see what all the fuss was about.

Been 10 bucks ever since I picked a copy up from Office Depot several months ago. (Or was it a year ago? Can't recall.)

[Neowulf]

Yeah, don't try with EA's official stores, they keep the price propped up forever.

Just look at sims2. The main game and expansions are still in the $10-$20 range (original $40), and the stuff packs are still the original $20 a piece.

[Jay?]

Yeah, don't try with EA's official stores, they keep the price propped up forever.

Just look at sims2. The main game and expansions are still in the $10-$20 range (original $40), and the stuff packs are still the original $20 a piece.

Yeah, that's the only thing that bothers me about digital distribution platforms. Games keep their high prices for ages, and it seems like DLC never goes down in price at all. That being said, there's nothing stopping me from going to a game shop or ordering a physical copy from somewhere.

[Xylord]

Yeah, that's the only thing that bothers me about digital distribution platforms. Games keep their high prices for ages, and it seems like DLC never goes down in price at all. That being said, there's nothing stopping me from going to a game shop or ordering a physical copy from somewhere.

You seem to not use Steam to it's full potential. I think that's just EA being... EA.