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SlightlyMadman posted:edit: to be less of a douche, I propose a compromise. If everyone who's unhappy with the bright colors of the new game says "I'm unhappy with the reversal of the direction in which SC4 was headed, and wish they had continued further in that direction instead of going back to the roots of the series," then I'll stop being a pedantic twat about it. Not sure one can pinpoint the visual "roots of the series". For instance, SimCity 2000 had abstract, geometric terrain graphics mixed with real photos for the advisors and newspapers. I never viewed it as a cartoony game. It's not like there's an official look for the series anyway.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 18:56 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 09:56 |
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Toady posted:Not sure one can pinpoint the visual "roots of the series". For instance, SimCity 2000 had abstract, geometric terrain graphics mixed with real photos for the advisors and newspapers. I never viewed it as a cartoony game. It's not like there's an official look for the series anyway. I don't see why bright colors has to mean "cartoony" and don't view the current screenshots as cartoony at all. The new screenshots seem to share the same color pallet as sc2k and sc3k. The fact that there's not an official look for the series was really my point though. Complaining that the game differing from sc4 is somehow a betrayal of the SimCity name is silly, because sc4 differed just as much from sc3k.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 19:11 |
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I want the new game to be done with the artstyle of the old simcity (the one for the C64).
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 19:13 |
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The actual city creation will really only be the beginning of the game. Once you've filled up the tiny city area, Bungeling Bay, you'll be given a helicopter to control and bomb the factories.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 19:16 |
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SlightlyMadman posted:The fact that there's not an official look for the series was really my point though. Complaining that the game differing from sc4 is somehow a betrayal of the SimCity name is silly, because sc4 differed just as much from sc3k. You said the new one's visuals are a return to the roots of the series and that SC4 was the aberration, but I don't think the early games had an overarching visual motif. I do hope Maxis can touch up the visuals in the new one so it looks less flat and synthetic.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 19:52 |
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SpelledBackwards posted:And for related reasons, it ran far better in software rendering than with hardware rendering. Only game I've ever seen to do that. Andrew Willmott - Maxis posted:SimCity 4 was unfortunately the victim of changes to GPU drivers. To support the high building count and detail, it was a so-called "dirty rect" based game, where only stuff that actually changed from frame-to-frame was re-rendered. This required being able to copy the depth buffer around on the GPU, particularly when panning the camera. There was a standard path for doing this at the time, but it became deprecated in later versions of DirectX, and drivers started falling back to slow paths which copied the depth buffer down to the CPU, shifted it around, and then copied it back up. Even with today's cards and PCI-X buses, this is still a pretty slow process.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 20:45 |
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Toady posted:You said the new one's visuals are a return to the roots of the series and that SC4 was the aberration, but I don't think the early games had an overarching visual motif. I do hope Maxis can touch up the visuals in the new one so it looks less flat and synthetic. I said that it was an aberration compared to sc2k and sc3k, specifically with regards to the color pallet. I agree that it does look a bit flat, and would probably be more attractive with some additional texture detail, but on the other hand I want my computer to be able to run the game at a decent framerate.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 20:50 |
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I wish the new simcity looked more like quake. Brown and gray only please!
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 21:08 |
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So are there any essential mods for SC4? I just reinstalled it in anticipation.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 21:21 |
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There's a recently-made pack of all the good mods in the Simcity 4 thread. Look back a few pages and it should be there.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 21:29 |
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GAY RETARD posted:So are there any essential mods for SC4? I just reinstalled it in anticipation. NAM is absolutely essential, and like UP AND ADAM said, you can find it in the SC4 thread. Also be sure to check out sc4devotion.com. There are plenty of useful things there, like rural hospitals and schools with bigger coverage areas so you don't have to build three medical centers for a town of 8,000, etc.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 21:35 |
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Didn't know there was a SC4 thread, thanks.
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| # ? Jun 14, 2012 21:44 |
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I felt like wasting 10 bucks, so I bought Cities XL today. I knew the game was bad, I played it in beta and refused to buy it when it came out. I thought I'd at least get some enjoyment out of setting up bus lines, but after playing it today for 40 minutes, I just gave up in frustration. It's good to know the company that made this game went bankrupt, they really deserve it for screwing up.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 01:49 |
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zalmoxes posted:I felt like wasting 10 bucks, so I bought Cities XL today. I knew the game was bad, I played it in beta and refused to buy it when it came out. I thought I'd at least get some enjoyment out of setting up bus lines, but after playing it today for 40 minutes, I just gave up in frustration. It's good to know the company that made this game went bankrupt, they really deserve it for screwing up.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 04:39 |
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EA is notorious for shutting down servers though. Simcity seems like the kind of thing they could patch it out or give us the ability to host private servers, but that would be assuming they'd put in the effort.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 05:07 |
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Grand Fromage posted:EA is notorious for shutting down servers though. Simcity seems like the kind of thing they could patch it out or give us the ability to host private servers, but that would be assuming they'd put in the effort. There are still active BF1942 servers today, and when origin was invented EA went through the effort to migrate all reasonably recent games(including 6 year old BF2) to it.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 05:09 |
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That's the distinction I think is important, that a corporate decision to shut down obscure or a lame new IP or truly ancient software shouldn't be compared to legendary series like Battlefield or SimCity. There is a benefit to this iteration being published by a greater entity than simply Maxis. I would hope that EA built their dream team of a reboot not just so they could crank out DLC. I'm reminded about how supposedly everyone "hated" Civ V with all its overhauls (at least many of us confessed to having at least a 100+ hr playtime for its vanilla; lo' and behold the game is.still supported with modding or not. We all have our ideas for our perfect game, but what's the fun in that? SimCity fun is all about projecting imagination onto a highly ruled, dev or modded, gamespace. I'd rather wait closer till release with baited breath to pass serious judgement.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 05:42 |
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EA only shuts down servers when nobody actually plays the games anymore. And I don't think they've ever done it to a game that has depended on it. They even still keep Ultima Online running, for christ's sake.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 05:48 |
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Ultima Online presumably still makes them money after all this time. Didn't EA shut down that spaceship MMO they made after a year though? Or was that Microsoft?
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 06:01 |
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Demiurge4 posted:Ultima Online presumably still makes them money after all this time. Didn't EA shut down that spaceship MMO they made after a year though? Or was that Microsoft? Oh yeah, Earth and Beyond, that was EA. I forgot about that one. That game was a disaster in every possible way though. Completely shutting it down was a mercy kill.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 06:04 |
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Man I remember how much I wanted Earth and Beyond to be great. That and Neocron. I don't play MMOs so I don't really know EA's policy, I just seem to read stories every few months about a game getting shut down and the players being pissed.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 06:07 |
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Grand Fromage posted:Man I remember how much I wanted Earth and Beyond to be great. That and Neocron. People want to be mad about a percieved injustice. They shut down Mercenaries 2's multiplayer servers? Take to the streets!  But then they forget that Mercenaries 2 was terrible and literally nobody played that shitshow. Games like Madden are a different story, but the impression I get is that they always shut down versions a few years after release when pretty much everybody has moved on. When you release dozens of multiplayer games every year, at some point it just stops being viable to continuously keep every single one active, especially if nobody plays them anymore. SimCity is in a different boat. If it's not a disaster, you can expect it to be reasonably popular and to sell well. They're going to keep the servers active for quite a while, because anything with the Sim name attached will continue to sell for a long time. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at Jun 15, 2012 around 06:10 |
| # ? Jun 15, 2012 06:08 |
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If it is legit good I still hope they eventually patch it out, I still play 2000 occasionally.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 06:11 |
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Demiurge4 posted:Ultima Online presumably still makes them money after all this time. Didn't EA shut down that spaceship MMO they made after a year though? Or was that Microsoft?
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 06:43 |
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:People want to be mad about a percieved injustice. They shut down Mercenaries 2's multiplayer servers? Take to the streets! Much of the server-related criticism against EA stems from them selling multiplayer access to people with used copies and never actually warning about impending server shutdowns until they go "We are doing it this weekend". There was a bit of a stir a while back when some game had its servers shut down while they were still selling online passes in the EA store, so some customers got less than twenty minutes of play out of their  due to missing a low-key press release.I honestly think the PC gaming crowd are more vocal about this stuff as the idea of the multiplayer segment of a game disappearing overnight is strange and terrifying to them. For most PC games you can emulate servers (or, in rare cases, even have a P2P server system patch released by the devs), but EA is big on keeping people's hands off their IPs and have threatened legal action against projects aiming to revive online play for older games. All of this is moot as long as you do not plan to play the game for longer than a few years of course. Then again, with the online system in place it might be impossible to play it properly once the number of players dips below a certain level. At this point it is all paranoid conjecture as the details of the online model are unreleased, so let us continue our baseless speculation and fearmongering!
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 07:36 |
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Grand Fromage posted:Man I remember how much I wanted Earth and Beyond to be great. That and Neocron. I also was pretty hyped about Ultima Online 2 before it got canned. I had City of Heroes for a whole month (the month you got when you bought the game, back when MMO games could still cost money in stores), when coincidentally I had a summer job offer back in Austin that meant I'd have no more time for the game, and it started right as my initial month ended. Eight years later, I'm much older and more professionally established, and I can't see myself getting into any MMORPG-type games any more, even though I never actually did play a single one more than the month I gave to CoH or a PlanetSide demo that got heavily promoted here on the forums.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 07:36 |
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I had an advertisement show up for this game on Origin and it's £65 to preorder. SIXTY FIVE POUNDS What the gently caress
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 20:36 |
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Holy gently caress that's way too much! Even if it's the usual £65 = $65 = €65 bullshit.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 21:03 |
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Hezzy posted:I had an advertisement show up for this game on Origin and it's £65 to preorder.  It's 999 rupees for standard and 1499 for deluxe in India, which comes out to £11 and £17 respectively. I'll probably get it from there like BF3 premium with a VPN. whiteshark12 fucked around with this message at Jun 15, 2012 around 21:09 |
| # ? Jun 15, 2012 21:04 |
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Hezzy posted:I had an advertisement show up for this game on Origin and it's £65 to preorder. £65 for the digital deluxe, the standard version is still ludicrous at £45.
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 21:22 |
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Metrication posted:£65 for the digital deluxe, the standard version is still ludicrous at £45. Ah yeah, I see that now. They didn't advertise the cheaper version, but that's still ridiculous. Goddamn
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| # ? Jun 15, 2012 21:36 |
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Wow, Maxis sure has done a great job of maintaining enthusiasm after E3.
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| # ? Jun 19, 2012 15:14 |
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Wow, Maxis sure has done a great job of maintaining enthusiasm after E3. There's no time for this SimCity stuff! They've got SALES on Origin to focus on!
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| # ? Jun 19, 2012 18:01 |
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ExtraNoise posted:There's no time for this SimCity stuff! They've got SALES on Origin to focus on! But their IP... won't someone think of the integrity!
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| # ? Jun 19, 2012 18:08 |
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I do have to say they've been doing a fairly lovely job on the PR/marketing so far. I follow a lot of games with far smaller budgets that manage to keep the community excited and feeling connected. Weekly dev diaries and general updates, active forums where the devs actually post. It seems like EA is just too big and lacks the ability for any sort of nimble or direct dev to community PR. I hope for their sake they really ramp it up for next year. Still a long ways off so they have plenty of time to catch up.
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| # ? Jun 19, 2012 19:12 |
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ExtraNoise posted:There's no time for this SimCity stuff! They've got SALES on Origin to focus on! They've been updating their blog every tuesday for the last few months or so. http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/a...Tilt-Shift-Lens
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| # ? Jun 19, 2012 19:17 |
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Well that's something I guess! Ah crap they're outright saying they won't have any sort of consistent scale in the buildings. That always drove me nuts in older simcity's. I don't mind selective compression but it looks awful when a house has 4m ceilings and a skyscraper has 2m ceilings. Tilt shift is an ok gimmick but they seem overly-obsessed with it. We've heard enough about tilt shift, lets hear about the gameplay finally. Anno 2070 had a sort of tilt-shift thing and it was awful, any building more than a hundred meters away or so was blurred to nothing. Was so happy to turn it off. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at Jun 19, 2012 around 19:25 |
| # ? Jun 19, 2012 19:19 |
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This looks like Stickybear Town Builder. Good job EA.
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| # ? Jun 19, 2012 19:23 |
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TomatoActivator posted:They've been updating their blog every tuesday for the last few months or so. Man they really do love their tilt shift. It's practically every other word in any interview or post I've seen. Okay, gonna stop posting and wait for something positive.
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| # ? Jun 19, 2012 19:28 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 09:56 |
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TomatoActivator posted:They've been updating their blog every tuesday for the last few months or so. lol quote:It's a terrible idea,Simcity isn't a model city it's a simulated city if this happens then I'll stick with SimCity 4 and that doesn't require you to be online either!
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| # ? Jun 19, 2012 19:30 |
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