SimCity... the end is near

[Nikolai]

It looks like a hybrid between SC3k and SC4 graphically.

[Kuciwalker]

It looks like Sim Town

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Sn00py
Well, look at the bright side, this could be a great experiment to shed light on the "does graphics add to gameplay?" debate.

No it couldn't. Gameplay comes from mechanics, graphics aren't part of mechanics. I don't know why you're too dense to understand that (the third or fourth time I've said it?)

[lord of the mark]

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/G/gameplay.html

http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_701706203/gameplay.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameplay

This last isnt a def, its a discussion of the way the word is used

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/gameplay/

[Patroklos]

[FrostyBoy]

Thanks lotr for the last link; damn it, I was brainwashed, but so was an executive of a game developing company, and countless game magazines, so I don't feel too stupid.

From now on I will not use the term "gameplay". It is a rubbish word and is making things confusing. To me, gameplay meant more than just the mechanics, it involved the entire package of a game, so graphics are included.

The term "game" does not include the meaning of graphics, this I understand and always did; and as the article has clearly pointed out, "game" has been around longer than art, but movies have only been around a short time. When movies become interactive, maybe something like the holodeck on Star Trek, where you can walk around inside a movie, interact with the people, changing its story as it goes along, I would no longer consider this to be a movie, but a movie + interactivity. And if someone were to design one of these interactive movies properly, they would have to make the movie good AND the interactivity good. If one of the two were to be done poorly, the entire interactive movie would not be a success.

Games on computers have an additional feature that has not been used before in the history of gaming and that is: graphics. So again, if the graphics or game mechanics are poorly done, then the overall (what do we call it now?) Visual Game? will not likely be successful.

I am not one to think that realistic graphics are better, as an artist I do understand that the style in which graphics are done effect the players emotion towards them. For example, I loved Lesuire Suit Larry's whimsical graphics, but if they were photo-realistic, the game would have sucked and never took off.

Another example is Monkey Island, 1 2 and 3 were great, but when they made MI4 into 3D, it lost all that character it once had.

As for FPS's, people are aiming for realism for a reason, but that doesn't mean you can't have your stylised FPS games either.

[Blake]

Gameplay is based on interacting with the "game", the role of graphics in gameplay is to make it obvious what's going on.
For example, it's obviously useful if an industrial block is a factory pouring out smoke - makes it obvious that it pollutes and is ugly. That's an example of graphics lending to gameplay.

But then again, there's no need for the factory to be super-realistic, if the realism of the graphics causes the game to lag, that impedes gameplay.

So the role of graphics in gameplay is to reach a happy medium, where it's most obvious what's going on, without being too superfluous.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Blake
Gameplay is based on interacting with the "game", the role of graphics in gameplay is to make it obvious what's going on.
For example, it's obviously useful if an industrial block is a factory pouring out smoke - makes it obvious that it pollutes and is ugly. That's an example of graphics lending to gameplay.

But then again, there's no need for the factory to be super-realistic, if the realism of the graphics causes the game to lag, that impedes gameplay.

So the role of graphics in gameplay is to reach a happy medium, where it's most obvious what's going on, without being too superfluous.

Thats basically what I think (though I can accept graphics importance for the sake of immersion in some games). Some folks have defined gameplay in such a way as to completley exclude graphics. I think they are focused on the game is broken up from the technical code POV, rather than from the experience of the players.

[Adagio]

Cities Unlimited website has gone public:

http://www.cuplanet.com

There's a few small videoes (about how they're making the game, not what the players see when playing the game)

So far it looks good (much better than societies), but the question is still about the gameplay

[Adagio]

Now that societies has been released, let's look at the score:

Gamespot: 6.0
GameSpy: 6.0
IGN: 5.8
TotalVideoGames: 5.0
GameZone: 8.7
EuroGame: 5.0

Average score seems to be just above 6

And if we look at the rating from GameSpot users we get and average of 4,5 (from 592 users)


The gameplay and the ratings are what I expected them to be



While the game might be fun for some people (sounds like it's mostly tilted mill fans), it's not my type. The only reason why I still have it on my HD is because it's good to test my new video card, as soon as testing is done the "game" will be gone forever




As for Cities Unlimited, that sounds a lot more promising, even though we haven't really heard much about gameplay
From their website they have this picture:

And for those who may be wondering… Yes! These are curved roads!


Within the last couple of weeks your activity in the forums has brought a lot of ideas and raised several questions that we would like to evaluate in more detail

[DrSpike]

[EternalSpark]

Societies isn't all that bad. It has a much different focus than earlier Simcity games, and it does pay off if you go into it with the right goal. If you go into it thinking you're going to play Simcity 5 then you'll come to the opinion that many of the reviews share.

Take Simcity 4. I can predict things you've done, and I don't even know you:

You zoned low-density everything. You zoned your residental areas in such a way that you didn't have a lot of traffic, put your commercial zones near the residential, and you put the industrial zones a distance away because of the pollution, but not far enough away that you got issues about the distance the workers have to drive. You then upped your taxes on all of these zones to the optimial rating (the percentage that neither increases or decreases demand), and let it run. Then you started to build hospitals and police and fire when your town got bigger.

The end result of all this is that all the cities came out as by-the-numbers cities. I have yet to see a city from Simcity, 2000, 3000, or 4000 that worked well and was even remotely unique. Comparing one city to another was a comparison in stats, since that was all they were different in. They all had hospitals, they all had police stations, they all had mass transit, they all had most of the same buildings. Maybe one had a farm or something, but that was the extent of it.

Societies is a much different Simcity game. Instead of being driven by numbers and statistics, cities are designed by or with an underlying concept that drives the beancounters and micromanagers in computer gaming livid: flavor. The numbers you have to deal with are simple, clear, and don't take a lot of time to balance.

For example, I was building a city that, from the get go, used clean, high-tech science jobs, with people living in high-rise buildings. I was building it up for a while, and set it to the lowest speed possible to take a piss.

When I came back, my city was different. All the skyscrapers I had before were now adorned with garish neon advertisements. The roads, formerly just normal roads, were now ruined and craggy, with debris strewn about. Police cars were now Blade Runner-style Spinners. The parking lot of my sports stadium now had people huddling next to burning barrels to keep warm.

Other Simcities worked from the back to the front; you worked on the behind-the-scenes stuff, and eventually out popped a standard, un-unique city. There's nothing wrong in and of itself in that, but like Wright himself said: Simcity was starting to have so many behind-the-scenes stuff to micromanage that you

Societies works the other way. You build exactly what you want, the behind-the-scenes stuff takes care of itself, and your city becomes what you want it to be. And it isn't as simple as "build a lot of authority buildings and you turn your town into Oceania", quite a few buildings will surprise you on what makes your city closer or farther from candycane streets.

There's problems, of course. The framerate is horrendeous, and occasionally I need to quit and reload to cure some jitteries. Same thing with certain options being set; the game may stop rendering from shadows, but the game doesn't get smooth again until you restart. Choosing the right building can sometimes be a pain, since the game doesn't tend to understand things like "I want a building that produces X, but doesn't have anything to do with Y, in the group of buildings called Z". Occasionally, I can't seem to find adequate room for a social-energy producing building, so I have to put them far away from the city. While slightly annoying, I don't really mind that too much. Some might since it takes away from realiism, but oh well.

So, yeah, I'm way to tired to write any more. Bottom line: not a bad game. It's Simcity, but if Simcity was about stats and numbers and micromanaging and hoping that more than 10 people will use your highway system, then its not SImcity for you.

[FrostyBoy]

nice pov eternalspeak

I wouldn't mind giving it a try.

[Proteus_MST]

So, finaly I got societies for myself,
after they had it at Kaufhof für just 19.99 Euro (dropped from 59.99 )
Cheap enough to risk making a mispurchase

Will play it as son as OI have a little bit more time

[Patroklos]

I bought it for my girlfriend for Christmas, because that is exactly what kind of game it is.