So Maxis had a session at GDC about the Glassbox engine - I saw it on my short guide that just had session names and thought it was going to talk about graphics or engine architecture or something - turns out the Glassbox engine isn't just a rendering engine but also the simulation engine behind the new SimCity. DOH!!! I should have looked up the full description for the session or I would have attended it myself. Or, tried to at least seeing how early in the morning it was ;) Anyways here's some coverage, which goes into the simulation behind the various "agents" that will run the city:

http://www.gamasutra...n_simcitys_.php
http://www.g4tv.com/...ugh-simplicity/
http://www.hardwarec...-not-final-1of4

If you have Vault access you can see the session when the video gets up as well...

The other sim cities that I've tried (2000 and 3000) were less fun. Once I got the formula down, it got easy, even on hard mode. All I needed to do was start on a flat map with minimal water, put industrial zones on the edge, commercial/residential zones at the center, and plop various public buildings and parks in the middle of those clusters. I only paid attention to the land value, since that was the most important.

Sorry but it sounds to me like you were the one making things easy, not the game. Maybe if you have varied up the landscape and starting time/money and created some goals for yourself like "industrial wasteland" or "garden city utopia" things would have been more challenging and interesting?

P.S. Did anyone else ever see the ending of SimCity 2000 when you finally build the ultimate city?

The Arcologies? Yep Although I never managed to make that happen myself. Yay youtube!

P.S. Did anyone else ever see the ending of SimCity 2000 when you finally build the ultimate city?

I was surfing youtube one time, and saw "SimCity 2000 Ending" and thought: How do it actually end if it's just a simulation, so I watched it. Turns out if you build 50 or something launch acros, the game "ends" but you can still build stuff afterwards.

I haven't tried this yet with or without cheating. I need to get it from gog.com and try to get that ending the legit way!

Yeah, they give a hint somewhere in SC2000 that launch arcologies might reveal the fate of sim-earth (which I'd already seen -- at it's peak, your civilisation blasts off into space, leaving you with a prehistoric planet again).
I've never reached the "ending" myself, but I saw my Dad do it! It took hours on our ancient Macintosh for the "cutscene" to play out, and afterwards, he was seriously pissed because his city was all launch arco's, so he only had a city of police and firefighters left and no income.

SimCity2000 and SimCity 4 are my favorites. I'm really exited about SimCity 5, I hope it's a 100 times better than SimCity Societies (yeah I bought it and it was s....special?)

BTW, now than the SimCity topic comes out, does anyone here plays CitiesXL?

I have CitiesXL, but I never really got into playing it. I don't find it nearly as fun or interesting as any SimCity game I played. I think my main problem was the way the city grows and is assembled from road segments and boxes. It doesn't feel at all organic to me, and I really would have preferred lower quality graphics, and building lots that did more to conform to their environment.

I have CitiesXL, but I never really got into playing it. I don't find it nearly as fun or interesting as any SimCity game I played. I think my main problem was the way the city grows and is assembled from road segments and boxes. It doesn't feel at all organic to me, and I really would have preferred lower quality graphics, and building lots that did more to conform to their environment.

You're right, CitiesXL is more about beautiful and massive cities, but it's kind of boring.

Yeah I played it too and had a bit of fun, but it's a completely different game -- it's a game where you build cities, instead of growing cities.

Yeah I played it too and had a bit of fun, but it's a completely different game -- it's a game where you build cities, instead of growing cities.

I think that is a wonderful description of the differences. Thanks.

Something I wish we had more of in the game market are good Colony games. Either space, or historical based colony management games. At least ones that didn't suck.

Why hasn't a proper sequel to Outpost been made? (And not the RTS war game.)

It's not exactly the same thing, but the Tropico series is about as good a city building sim I've played in a while. I hope the new one gets back to simulation. I understand some of the 'self-directed' need, but the later sim city games were very formulaic... You plopped down the pattern and it just worked. In 1 and 2 there was a lot more variance. Your city grew and changed; you had to tweak things over time to keep the riff-raff out and the such.

That and a good random map generator... Missing one pretty much ruined Sim City 4 for me.

Here's just the video from the links I posted earlier, but released straight from Maxis EA. Only Part 1 so I'll keep my eyes out for the remaining parts and update them here when I see them.

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