SimCity

[Whizbang]

Mentioned this earlier to MS in IRC, but I'll reiterate here for everyone else.

If you guys want a forum, or a place to upload screenshots of our region at some point, just shout. Quite clear there's enough of us playing, and very interested in the game

The more that I play the more I realize having a place to list tips and information discovered is helpful. It seems that this game is currently in a state of flux and any patches that are released either fix something or break something else. Maybe having a forum for all of this would be easier to provide/search information to help us have a better grasp of such changes/discoveries.

[Whizbang]

Also, I've noticed that I now have 5 different servers that contain regions I belong to and cities I'm controlling. This means that at least half of these cities are being neglected due to spending time working on specific ones. Since the EU West 1 never really happened I'm going to be abandoning that region as well as that server. My question for you all is this: Does everyone plan to continue work on cities in both NA West 2 and EU West 3 or is there a particular server that people have started focusing on? I'd like to get myself down to 2 servers if possible, 3 at most, so I'm not having to server bounce when working on projects.

[Chimera]

I haven't played it myself, but beyond the DRM/server fiasco, some other players are voicing concerns over poor Sim pathfinding.

http://news.yahoo.com/simcity-pr-nightm ... 21213.html

Maybe others playing the game can better comment.

[M.Steiner]

Didn't get around to taking or uploading any screenshots yesterday as I had problem after problem with my city and was constantly fighting with it. First I had a massive traffic problem like many others have too, though with tips from some of you guys on IRC that has helped a ton - ta again . Had several rollbacks too (3 today) so I'm not going to play that city for the time being. No point when I kept losing progress, just a waste of my time.

Oh and this:

Meteor shower right above my nuclear power plant. Thankfully it didn't do any damage but it was bloody scary to watch on top of the other problems I was having, could have gone terribly heh.


Uploaded 1 of my own shots just to see if it was working ok and all seems good, Anny. Uploaded without a prob and appears in the gallery just fine, though the drop-down does say "Sim City" instead of "SimCity". No biggie though, thanks again mate
I'll go around taking some pics of other peoples cities later on today whilst I'm not playing my own.

[M.Steiner]

Question for you guys


The 4th option there always seems to stay at "nothing to fight", how do I capture Dr. Vu exactly? I don't need both Maxis Manor and the Vu Tower in my city do I? and is there any special reward for capturing him other than the 100k or whatever for the challenge?

I'll give it a miss if I need to place to Vu Tower down as well I think.

Also MaxisMan is amazing for putting out fires it seems (my first time having him at 5k renown). He'll put out several fires in a row if needs be and flys over the tops of buildings so doesn't have to cut through traffic. Highly recommend

[SL33PY]

So apparently we can improve SimCity ourselves, including, but not limited to making region highways that are saved on the server, meaning we could finally interconnect all cities in a region trough highway and trains

http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a9n5j/you_can_edit_highways_outside_of_city_boundaries/c8vbw6k

Also you can enable 1024 x 1024 sized maps:
http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/1a8bw7/how_to_mod_sim_city_2013_getting_started_basics/


Furthermore: I was astonished to find that they use javascript for this. I'm happy at the same time because it's in my view a very easy to grasp language. On the other hand it's a <censored> bitch to debug, if you make mistakes, they're going to be hard to find and sometimes, especially with javascript, unlogical in a sense... except within js, just ask anubis he must have had a few fairings with javascript on our website alone

Edit: new from this afternoon:
movie of the above hacks

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/87858/modder-activeert-debug-modus-in-simcity-voor-extra-opties.html

[Anubis]

Furthermore: I was astonished to find that they use javascript for this. I'm happy at the same time because it's in my view a very easy to grasp language. On the other hand it's a <censored> bitch to debug, if you make mistakes, they're going to be hard to find and sometimes, especially with javascript, unlogical in a sense... except within js, just ask anubis he must have had a few fairings with javascript on our website alone

Yeah, JavaScript isn't fun to debug blind. There are various tools out there that help a LOT though when it comes to doing it for the web - Firefox's "Web Developer Toolbar" addon is a godsend.

Not sure you'd be writing it through a web like interface though, so that may make life harder...

[M.Steiner]

Those of you in the same cluster of the region as me, I've just finished building the arcology for us:




It has a $300/hr upkeep as well as 300MW/hr power & 120kGal/hr of water. I've built an extra solar field in my city and turned on several extra water pumps to single-handedly power it myself but as your cities grow and you can afford it, if you guys can churn out a little extra power/water too I can turn a couple off later. No prob atm though unless I have a disaster or something lol
The Arcology basically functions as a massive apartment building. If your city is short of workers, shoppers or students, or if you just want to focus on an industrial or commercial city with no residential housing for example, the arcology will send sims around the region to fill these vacancies up and then at the end of the day they'll go back home to the arcology. Pretty nice!
We level the density of it up over time with use it seems, at the time of writing this it's at density 2 of 8.

Have got a few more screenies to share too

My electronics/trade city in the SSX playground. Taken before I had finished building the arcology. You can see the base of it over in the distance.





Current population is 318,068. Most I've ever had hehe.

[Anubis]

What do you guys think of this? Eurogamer Sim City Review

Interesting to get the view of those of you who are playing and enjoying the game. The point he makes specifically about achievement being more luck than skill reads somewhat harsher than many other comments I've read about the game...

[M.Steiner]

Tbh I think a lot of the complaints and criticisms the game has received in reviews etc lately are very honest and for the state the game is in atm they're completely relevant & justified. I love the game very much and even with all the issues I have been enjoying myself immensely, but some of them do start to spoil the enjoyment of it more than others and some are down right infuriating. Things are very broken atm and whilst I'm sure they're doing everything they possibly can and as fast as they can, and I don't doubt that the game will be even more enjoyable when these problems are non-existent, I just hope all of this doesn't do too much damage to the success of the game in the long run and their team. My other worry being that people get so fed up that they stop playing and don't come back when problems are fixed.

Improvements to the traffic pathing is just one thing they've vocally been speaking about, which they're already working on fixing atm. Tbh though I could wait for that. Their priority atm should be rollbacks and people being locked out of their cities imo. I can cope with traffic and work around some of that even in my city with its 350,000 population. Rollbacks on the other hand piss me off. Neocron is the only other game I can remember off the top of my head which I've personally experienced a rollback in but SimCity... I've already lost count. Sure it's only ever been a matter of minutes lost (except for a problem with the arcology build which was fixed for me thankfully), but they're still extremely annoying. Some people are lucky and haven't experienced one of these but yesterday I had 3 within the space of an hour
Hopefully it won't be long before stuff like that are a thing of the past. At heart the game is amazing and it's very sad that this won't really be reflected in reviews for people to read in some weeks/months/years from now when we've all forgotten about this shit. But atm it's plagued with problems sadly.

[SL33PY]

Well, I can't say he's not right

Recycling centers is another one of the features that is broken, especially when combined with the regional 'functionality' which still feels more like dysfunctional to me.