Author Topic: New SimCity (Read 22606 times)

nickmitch · « **Reply #50 on:** March 11, 2013, 10:14:39 PM »

But how much work would that take? I know EA can't have unlimited servers, but a BIG marque game like Sim City would warrant the extra work. Hell, people who I know that aren't gamers at all got as excited about Sim Fucking City as people I know that are gamers. It's kind of a big deal.

Oblivion · « **Reply #51 on:** March 11, 2013, 10:25:45 PM »

Why would Sim be fucking a city? That seems a little kinky.

oohhboy · « **Reply #52 on:** March 11, 2013, 10:39:43 PM »

It wouldn't be that hard. For launch they can hire extra servers to help gauge the impact then let them go as needed or as they bring in permanent in house replacements. Who ever did the launch had no idea how technology works and had no contingency planning and wanted to do everything on the cheap. Basically a suit ran the launch.

Ceric · « **Reply #53 on:** March 11, 2013, 11:09:11 PM »

Its amazing how much Bean Counters and out of touch Bosses ruin Tech.

nickmitch · « **Reply #54 on:** March 11, 2013, 11:10:55 PM »

As an accountant, I find that offensive.

Ceric · « **Reply #55 on:** March 11, 2013, 11:29:59 PM »

Quote from: nickmitch on March 11, 2013, 11:10:55 PM

As an accountant, I find that offensive.

Don't feel bad.
I haven't met an Accountant that I don't personally like.
Professionally on the other hand, I just find the two worlds so close together that it makes us worlds apart.

oohhboy · « **Reply #56 on:** March 13, 2013, 06:19:34 AM »

Don't worry about it. Accountants are given the numbers, you don't make them.

In thw world of news, apparently EA might have been lying their ass off the entire time according to an insider.

Quote

“The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything. I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise. It’s possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I’m clueless.”

“Because of the way Glassbox was designed, simulation data had to go through a different pathway. The game would regularly pass updates to the server, and then the server would stick those messages in a huge queue along with the messages from everyone else playing. The server pulls messages off the queue, farms them out to other servers to be processed and then those servers send you a package of updates back. The amount of time it could take for you to get a server update responding to something you’ve just done in the game could be as long as a few minutes. This is why they disabled Cheetah mode, by the way, to reduce by half the number of updates coming into the queue.”

“It wouldn’t take very much engineering to give you a limited single-player game without all the nifty region stuff.”

I expect TJ to ride in on his horse any time now...

TJ Spyke · « **Reply #57 on:** March 13, 2013, 08:33:48 AM »

What do you mean?

Anyways, are we supposed to believe some no-name website quoting an "anonymous source" (to shield themselves if they are making it up)? If this guy was telling the truth, why wouldn't he at least contact a credible gaming site?

oohhboy · « **Reply #58 on:** March 13, 2013, 08:52:54 AM »

Like clock work.

It's called protecting your sources. People won't tell you anything if you don't protect them from retaliation. It's the journalist version of a Witness Protection Program.

If you read the article I linked to, there is the collaborating evidence and experiments that back up the source's claims.

In more related news, Simcity has broken path finding! Comedy ensures!

Your smites of salty tears brings me great pleasure.

nickmitch · « **Reply #59 on:** March 13, 2013, 09:33:56 AM »

So, a couple people were able to play offline before the game realized it? Sounds like the game just does an occasional check in, and spazzes out when it can't reach the server.

TJ Spyke · « **Reply #60 on:** March 13, 2013, 11:41:26 AM »

Like clock work? Because I'm not a sheep and believing claims made by some site that no one has heard of and has no credibility or reliability?

Louieturkey · « **Reply #61 on:** March 13, 2013, 12:31:09 PM »

Quote from: TJ Spyke on March 13, 2013, 11:41:26 AM

Like clock work? Because I'm not a sheep and believing claims made by some site that no one has heard of and has no credibility or reliability?

What he means is that you are usually the one who comes in to defend a game publisher when someone is not happy with said publisher.

TJ Spyke · « **Reply #62 on:** March 13, 2013, 12:34:00 PM »

I did not defend EA, all I said was that EA did not have to give a free game to people, and that it's silly to be complaining about a FREE game.

Louieturkey · « **Reply #63 on:** March 13, 2013, 12:45:30 PM »

Quote from: TJ Spyke on March 13, 2013, 12:34:00 PM

I did not defend EA, all I said was that EA did not have to give a free game to people, and that it's silly to be complaining about a FREE game.

That is still a defense. I'm not saying it's bad or good. Just that regardless of your intentions, it comes off as a defense.

Morari · « **Reply #64 on:** March 13, 2013, 11:26:00 PM »

Quote from: TJ Spyke on March 13, 2013, 11:41:26 AM

Because I'm not a sheep

That made my day. Thanks.

Shorty McNostril · « **Reply #65 on:** March 13, 2013, 11:34:38 PM »

It's actually not surprising. If connection is lost with the server you are still able to play for a reasonable length of time before you get booted off. If calculations were all done server side I would imagine that you would be booted out of the game pretty much instantly upon disconnecting, due to the game not knowing what the hell to do.

S-U-P-E-R · « **Reply #66 on:** March 14, 2013, 06:18:29 AM »

Death to EA

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/14/modder-runs-simcity-offline-maxis-remains-silent/

NWR_insanolord · « **Reply #67 on:** March 14, 2013, 06:21:12 AM »

As someone who was waiting for the Mac version, I'm hoping all this gets ironed out by the time that comes out.

oohhboy · « **Reply #68 on:** March 14, 2013, 08:11:11 AM »

I would skip it and play the older versions. It's no good supporting this kind of behaviour.

NWR_insanolord · « **Reply #69 on:** March 14, 2013, 08:39:05 AM »

I may just do that. Like I said, in the aftermath of this I went back and reinstalled SimCity 4, and I've been digging into the vast amounts of mod content for it.

oohhboy · « **Reply #70 on:** March 17, 2013, 12:31:21 PM »

It's official. The new Simcity is a complete farce.

Almost everything about this game is a lie. The above video just scratches the surface. I have seen cities built out of nothing but residential and parks filled with criminals and the homeless. Nuclear power planets explode because the educated workers that were suppose to work there change jobs to pump gas. Fires rage out of control because the FD is too busy sending every engine on the otherside of town to put out a BBQ fire. 50 cop cars raid one house. Choking of regional cities when players send in one recycling truck. Overtaking? **** that nosie.

The **** surrounding this game is unbelievably entertining. I have no doubt this is going to be a gift that will just keep on giving. If you are thinking of buying this game, stay very, very far away.

azeke · « **Reply #71 on:** March 17, 2013, 12:59:10 PM »

From what i see they switched to model with walking visible agents distributing resources used in Caesar/Zeus/Emperor/Tilted Mill games.

I have no idea why it's causing them so much trouble since Caesar III did that decades ago. Even if pathfinding was acting up at times, later games fixed it giving you some control over agents' waypoints.

SixthAngel · « **Reply #72 on:** March 17, 2013, 02:49:04 PM »

Looking back it was obvious that they wouldn't run anything on their servers because it costs money. Unless the game has a subscription model somewhere or some weird monetization strategy that brings in money everyday it doesn't make financial sense to run any part of the game on servers.
EA is so cheap they don't even have the servers to handle the first week "check ins" so they will never move part of the game there. If they ever did the game would be closed down the minute they could get away with it because outside of possible very successful DLC it becomes a drain on the company after of the first month.

oohhboy · « **Reply #73 on:** March 18, 2013, 12:41:35 AM »

The problems comes the very first design decisions they made. The "Agent" system simply doesn't work especially in the way they implemented it.

Unlike better games of this type like the Tropico series those agents are not only carriers of resources, they are are carriers of information and they keep a persistent identity. SC's agents are only resource carriers, nothing more than coins in a soda machine using nothing more than gravity as their "AI". SC agents simply doesn't have an AI, it's a physics simulation using particles to simulate the flow of water when they should have been using a distribution function to do the job. The very core of the game is built on a flawed premise. Because of that this game will never be fixed.

Everything they have done was to cover up the fundamental design mistake they made at the beginning. The smaller city size was not a problem of not having enough computational power, it was a poor attempt to hide the fact the system doesn't work and came with a side benefit of enabling them to sell you DLC. They broke the RCI relationship because they couldn't get the agents to ship resources to the commercial zones. Nothing about the agent system works because they don't reserve any slots anywhere. Each agent is completely unaware of each other.

Those old games worked out well with the agent system because they assigned each agent with an identity and they were aware of each other so you didn't have half the town each morning racing to the first job they could see. They have a job and this is where they worked. They also did their best to find a home near their job. They didn't have traffic problems since everything was foot traffic, so the assumption was made that they could infinitely "stack". They also had needs so they would take breaks to tend to them filling in the rest of the economy like shopping and food.

The problems of SC run so deep they effectively have to make a new game to fix the issues.

Oh another smite! Is someones corporate masters not pleased and not trickling down? Still a temporarily embarrassed millionaire?

oohhboy · « **Reply #74 on:** March 18, 2013, 02:30:02 AM »

Because IT PUTS THE LOTION ON IT'S SKIN.

News:

Author Topic: New SimCity (Read 22606 times)