message posté le 14 déc 2012 à 23h55édité le 15 déc 2012 à 01h08 par dave8888 [membre]
Problématique de la connexion internet permanente
Question : What will happen to the game if I am playing and lose my internet connection - will the game still be playable and update the servers when my internet connection resumes or will it pause and wait for the connection?
Réponse : I actually just ran over to our online engineering team to get the latest info. We do handle "short" internet outages gracefully. Meaning, if your internet goes out while you're logged in and playing the game, we can can recover gracefully. You shouldn't notice a thing. "Short" is still being defined
Il s'agit donc d'un fonctionnement proche de celui d'Anno : Votre progression ne peut pas être sauvegarder si vous perdez votre connexion. Assurez vous donc de retrouver une connexion avant de quitter votre jeu afin de sauvegarder celui ci.
Le comportement est donc bel et bien confirmé, votre ville n'est jamais sauvegardée sur votre pc... uniquement sur les serveurs.
Question sur le difficulté du jeu : Casual/Hardcore gamers?
Question : Would you say this is a game for hardcore fans of the franchise or are we aiming to open it up to new players like Societies?
Réponse : Great question!
This is definitely a game for the hardcore fans. When we started this project, we looked at previous SimCity games and evaluated what made them great. We looked at fan sites, spoke with fans, looked at reviews, and looked at what the SimCity 4 community was up to. We wanted to make sure that we delivered on the core values of SimCity. Probably the most important pillar of the game has always been simulation and that's where we put the bulk of our efforts. We felt if we did satisfy our core audience, then why make it.
We also took into account that there is an entirely new generation of SimCity fans who may have played SimCity on mobile or console or maybe not at all. We wanted to make this game accessible to them as well. This is where the data layers and infogrphics came in. We wanted to present these complex systems in a friendly way.
At the end of the day, I think you'll find that SimCity is a game for everyone.
Réaction : I disagree kind of. I always thought the deep complex management, graphs, and number crunching were the most important. I mean watching sims move around the city is cool and all, but I like playing my games, not watching them.
Réponse : I think we are saying the same thing. You can't have all those graphs, numbers, complex management if you don't have a simulation that has integrity and is real. I would roll all of your key points into simulation. We've delivered on all of that. Wait until you see all of data layers and numbers we have, Crime, Health, Sickness, Coal, Ore, Oil, Global Markets, loans, student (Grade and College). We track more than 30 sim types from homeless, to shoppers, to tourisist, to criminals. If you like stats, this is the game for you.
Question sur l'architecture
Question : Are there wall-to-wall buildings? As we've seen in the movies so far it's mostly the 'open' American-style architecture, no European or American urban (eg. brownstones) style buildings. Have you incorporated other styles in the game as well?
Réponse : Figuring out the best way to place buildings close together in a given space (read: city block) is one of the more daunting engineering challenges on the project. We have a dedicated programmer who's sole job is driving how buildings spawn in zones; it's a full-time job. And it's looking good! I was building a university town last night and even my curvy suburban roads were getting backed to the brim with homes.
But even with all of that tech, our tallest skyscrapers still need breathing room for certain features. Garbage is piled in the alleys between buildings until garbage trucks can come pick it up, for example.
Question sur les espaces entre batiment
Question : Will we be able to fill in the "Grass" areas between buildings with other things, such as concrete or stones?
For example, in the Casino City gameplay videos there was a lot of grassy areas between the large buildings. I'd like to fill these in with ally's or concrete so it looks much more like an actual inner city environment.
Réponse : We're still working on infilling between buildings with appropriate stuff. Asphalt, concrete, storage yards, etc, depending on what sort of buildings are nearby.
Buildings come in at different densities - low density buildings (like standalone houses) have space between them. By the time you get to middle density, buildings are packed much more tightly. High density buildings are mixed. Some have plazas or other spaces around them, some are tightly packed.
Questions sur le transport
Question : Sad to hear it, any reason why you're not considering to add it? Would it be possible to get subways as DLC at some point? Why would they not include subways? That's saddening.
Réponse : That's pretty much it. We'd rather have all that is happening in the game be immediately visible, touchable, rather than buried. And if you put subways on the same layer as the city, well, then they're a lot like light rail streetcars!
Question : What are some other public transit options other than the already announced train, bus, and light rail?
Réponse : We've got planes and cruise ships to bring in tourists into your city, and then ferries to shuttle Sims on the water ways between cities. We're not planning on doing subways at the moment, no. Streetcars is really where it's at, they're awesome to watch as they go up and down the rail tracks.
Question sur le nombre la taille des régions
Question : Since is online, will be a limit in the number of regions/cities that I can play?
Réponse : Yes, we had to put a cap here. We learned alot on Spore about this. You'll have plenty of save slots, which will allow you to create and manage many regions and cities. We haven't locked the number yet, but what I can say is that they are bound to regions. So if you created a 16 city region, you could play all 16 cities and that would be one save slot. We've created different region maps of different sizes. We have smaller maps that are only 2-3 cities, for a shorter more initmate experience. And larger ones, like our 16 City Regions for something a little more epic. You'll have plenty of choices on how to play.
Questions multiples
Question : Hey Devs, thanks for taking the time to do this AMA and best of luck on your release! The agent engine looks really impressive. Can't wait to play around with it.
I've got a few questions.
1) What new feature in this Simcity that wasn't in the previous iterations are you most excited for (besides the paint-brush like roads)?
2) Is there a feature that was in the previous Simcitys but isn't in this one that you miss?
3) Can you go in depth at all about modding? How you will support it? What you're doing to make it accessible.
4) What is, in theory, the maximum population a city could hold in Simcity?
5) Simcity 4 had a great balance between macro (early game zoning, highway building, roads/mass transit) to micro (school/health/police funding, budget balancing, mass transit perfecting). How would you say your game tackles this balance? Do you feel that it sways to more micro than macro, or the other way around? Can you give some examples of early, mid, and late game macro/micro?
Bonus Question: What films do you watch to get you pumped up to work on/play Simcity? Towering Inferno?
Again, thank you very much! I look forward to playing the beta.
Réponse : 1) What new feature in this Simcity that wasn't in the previous iterations are you most excited for (besides the paint-brush like roads)?
For me, it's not so much a specific new feature, but all of the things that follow from a fundamental reworking of the simulation (basing it on roads, agents and units, rather than grid-cells). For example, having sims walking about and seeing what they need, where they came from and where they're going. Also, looking at a specific buildings and seeing what it's doing at that moment. Creating systems that work together.
I'm also really happy with the visuals, and the way that the visuals represent what's going on with the simulation.
2) Is there a feature that was in the previous Simcitys but isn't in this one that you miss?
Sure, terraforming is the big one (and I'm the guy who designed SimCity 4's terraforming!). But, we put all of our chips down on the city simulation and on city regional play. That's the heart of the game. We're a fairly small team, so we can't do everything we want.
Also, building tools for free-form city creation turned out to be much harder than I thought! In retrospect, having everything on a nice, neat gridded landscape would have been much easier to program.
3) Can you go in depth at all about modding? How you will support it? What you're doing to make it accessible.
It's still too early -we need to get the game out first. Our simulation engine (GlassBox) is modular, our data format is the same one we've been using for years (SimCity 4, Sims2, etc.), so we've laid the groundwork. But it's going to be tricky! Buildings in SimCity 4 were sprites, projected onto low-poly cards, so it was easy to make new ones. Our new buildings are pretty complicated - they're rigged, animated, LOD'd Maya models, with complex material assignments. They're more like animated characters than like SC4 buildings. Remember, modding didn't get off the ground on SC4 until a year or so after the Rush Hour expansion - this stuff is hard, and can take a while.
4) What is, in theory, the maximum population a city could hold in Simcity?
Oh, I don't know. Hundreds of thousands, in any case. Depends on how well you do it, and if your city is focused solely on residential (so you're packing nothing but apartment blocks in and doing everything else in other cities)
5) Simcity 4 had a great balance between macro (early game zoning, highway building, roads/mass transit) to micro (school/health/police funding, budget balancing, mass transit perfecting). How would you say your game tackles this balance? Do you feel that it sways to more micro than macro, or the other way around? Can you give some examples of early, mid, and late game macro/micro?
There's still that micro to macro balance. Like you say, you're doing macro things like laying out roads & zones, you're building utilities and services. At the micro level you're querying buildings and sims and seeing what their needs are, and you're customizing your buildings to satisfy those needs. With various big-businesses, you're optimizing your city for tourism, or mining or manufacturing, and setting up the systems to grow.
Ok - more specifically. Early game macro: roads, zoning, utilities. Early game micro: Seeing who moves in and what they want. Mid game macro: expanding, developing services, connecting with neighboring cities. Mid game micro: tweaking & tuning transit options, capabilities of services & utilities. Late game macro: City specialization, large scale regional projects. Late Game micro: Optimizing big businesses, taxes, transit.
Question sur la musique
Question : From the SimMars Team, and as a fellow Simcity music lover (from 2k, 3k, 4, and hopefully 5), hello!
Does the music consist of several tracks playing simultaneously, so that when you switch layers or views, different music is playing but all at the same tempo and key signature?
I'd like to make a SimCity music album that is compatible with the new Simcity. Can I replace the ingame music with my own, and with the same synchronization features? (I would have different tracks for different layers and views of course).
Any update on the plans to add mod support?
Réponse : Hello SimMars Team! I'm a huge fan. How's the project going?
Some answers...
Yes! Our music is dynamic, so it changes based on many factors. If your City is running fine, you'll hear a beat that carries through the entire game. You'll actually see your sims, the cars, and smoke, everything timed to this beat. If things start to go sour, you'll hear the music change. It could get quite intense if the situation is serious enough, if you begin to go bankrupt for example. The music will change based on where you are at in the game. If you open a data layer, enter a building editor, or pop up to the region, the music will change. It's incredibly well integrated into the experience.
Swapping the music out is on our wishlist, something we've talked about doing. We won't have it at launch, but we haven't engineered ourselves in a corner.
We know modding is important to our fans. We've always engineered our games with modding in mind. I can't confirm anythig today, but we have started talks with some of our key community members. We've shown them the game and asked them what tools they are looking for. Conversations started!
Thanks.
Question sur la taille de la ville
Question : Seems everyone on the YouTube videos is complaining about the small size of the cities and the huge gaps between regions. Will there be restrictions on city sizes? Why are they so small?
Réponse : We've only got one city size - 2k square.
We're trading off performance against simulation & visual density.
Given finite computing resources, we decided it would be better to make the simulation rich, and the visuals detailed and animated, even if that meant smaller cities. Better that than to have big cities with sparse life & activity.
Gaps are there because the proxy impostors for neighboring cities are pretty low resolution, and don't look good if they get too close.
Regions are 16 kilometers square, and we might do some 32 kilometer square ones if we have time.
Donc là une belle confirmation : La taille est fixé à 2 km² seulement... et aucun espoir d'autres tailles.
Problématique de programmation
Question :A few questions for Xin Liu and Richard Shemaka - can you talk about the programming involved for this project? What were some of the biggest technical challenges and most satisfying solutions? What languages were used? Was any source code reused from other projects or did you start from a blank slate?
Réponse : I do most of my work in C++ and HLSL since I'm a graphics engineer. Our engine is built in C++, but our gameplay systems are built using a custom scripting language, which is great for fast iteration and testing because you don't need to recompile the game every time you need to change something.
Our core simulation engine, GlassBox, was written from scratch in C++ and is the culmination of several years of development. The other systems, like audio, graphics, input capture, and UI, are built off existing middleware or in-house technology and (heavily) modified for SimCity's needs. No one truly builds an engine from scratch because the cost would be astronomical and it doesn't make sense to rewrite systems that don't change very often e.g. input handling, audio processing, asset loading.
The two things I've worked on that I'm most proud of are volumetric lighting and the general upgrade of our lighting system to support an effectively arbitrary number of dynamic lights (up to the limits of your CPU/GPU processing capabilities). If you'd like more specific details on those, reply and I'll elaborate.
Question sur l'algorithme routier
Question : Dev Team-- Traffic AI was rather...rigid...in SC4. Zots would follow the same path even with congestion. Will SimCity 2013 bring a more dynamic traffic system? Will our Sims choose a different route based on road conditions; sacrificing time/distance to get to work, for instance?
Réponse : Yup. Agents will re-route themselves if they detect that they're getting stuck in traffic. They will also prioritize using main arteries like avenues over smaller roads when possible. It's pretty mesmerizing just watching the traffic flow through your city.
We've also got a congestion heat map similar to Google Map's traffic overlay that'll let you instantly spot your most traveled paths at that point in time, if the big back up of stuck traffic isn't visible enough.
Question : What will happen to the game if I am playing and lose my internet connection - will the game still be playable and update the servers when my internet connection resumes or will it pause and wait for the connection?
Réponse : I actually just ran over to our online engineering team to get the latest info. We do handle "short" internet outages gracefully. Meaning, if your internet goes out while you're logged in and playing the game, we can can recover gracefully. You shouldn't notice a thing. "Short" is still being defined
Il s'agit donc d'un fonctionnement proche de celui d'Anno : Votre progression ne peut pas être sauvegarder si vous perdez votre connexion. Assurez vous donc de retrouver une connexion avant de quitter votre jeu afin de sauvegarder celui ci.
Le comportement est donc bel et bien confirmé, votre ville n'est jamais sauvegardée sur votre pc... uniquement sur les serveurs.
Question sur le difficulté du jeu : Casual/Hardcore gamers?
Question : Would you say this is a game for hardcore fans of the franchise or are we aiming to open it up to new players like Societies?
Réponse : Great question!
This is definitely a game for the hardcore fans. When we started this project, we looked at previous SimCity games and evaluated what made them great. We looked at fan sites, spoke with fans, looked at reviews, and looked at what the SimCity 4 community was up to. We wanted to make sure that we delivered on the core values of SimCity. Probably the most important pillar of the game has always been simulation and that's where we put the bulk of our efforts. We felt if we did satisfy our core audience, then why make it.
We also took into account that there is an entirely new generation of SimCity fans who may have played SimCity on mobile or console or maybe not at all. We wanted to make this game accessible to them as well. This is where the data layers and infogrphics came in. We wanted to present these complex systems in a friendly way.
At the end of the day, I think you'll find that SimCity is a game for everyone.
Réaction : I disagree kind of. I always thought the deep complex management, graphs, and number crunching were the most important. I mean watching sims move around the city is cool and all, but I like playing my games, not watching them.
Réponse : I think we are saying the same thing. You can't have all those graphs, numbers, complex management if you don't have a simulation that has integrity and is real. I would roll all of your key points into simulation. We've delivered on all of that. Wait until you see all of data layers and numbers we have, Crime, Health, Sickness, Coal, Ore, Oil, Global Markets, loans, student (Grade and College). We track more than 30 sim types from homeless, to shoppers, to tourisist, to criminals. If you like stats, this is the game for you.
Question sur l'architecture
Question : Are there wall-to-wall buildings? As we've seen in the movies so far it's mostly the 'open' American-style architecture, no European or American urban (eg. brownstones) style buildings. Have you incorporated other styles in the game as well?
Réponse : Figuring out the best way to place buildings close together in a given space (read: city block) is one of the more daunting engineering challenges on the project. We have a dedicated programmer who's sole job is driving how buildings spawn in zones; it's a full-time job. And it's looking good! I was building a university town last night and even my curvy suburban roads were getting backed to the brim with homes.
But even with all of that tech, our tallest skyscrapers still need breathing room for certain features. Garbage is piled in the alleys between buildings until garbage trucks can come pick it up, for example.
Question sur les espaces entre batiment
Question : Will we be able to fill in the "Grass" areas between buildings with other things, such as concrete or stones?
For example, in the Casino City gameplay videos there was a lot of grassy areas between the large buildings. I'd like to fill these in with ally's or concrete so it looks much more like an actual inner city environment.
Réponse : We're still working on infilling between buildings with appropriate stuff. Asphalt, concrete, storage yards, etc, depending on what sort of buildings are nearby.
Buildings come in at different densities - low density buildings (like standalone houses) have space between them. By the time you get to middle density, buildings are packed much more tightly. High density buildings are mixed. Some have plazas or other spaces around them, some are tightly packed.
Questions sur le transport
Question : Sad to hear it, any reason why you're not considering to add it? Would it be possible to get subways as DLC at some point? Why would they not include subways? That's saddening.
Réponse : That's pretty much it. We'd rather have all that is happening in the game be immediately visible, touchable, rather than buried. And if you put subways on the same layer as the city, well, then they're a lot like light rail streetcars!
Question : What are some other public transit options other than the already announced train, bus, and light rail?
Réponse : We've got planes and cruise ships to bring in tourists into your city, and then ferries to shuttle Sims on the water ways between cities. We're not planning on doing subways at the moment, no. Streetcars is really where it's at, they're awesome to watch as they go up and down the rail tracks.
Question sur le nombre la taille des régions
Question : Since is online, will be a limit in the number of regions/cities that I can play?
Réponse : Yes, we had to put a cap here. We learned alot on Spore about this. You'll have plenty of save slots, which will allow you to create and manage many regions and cities. We haven't locked the number yet, but what I can say is that they are bound to regions. So if you created a 16 city region, you could play all 16 cities and that would be one save slot. We've created different region maps of different sizes. We have smaller maps that are only 2-3 cities, for a shorter more initmate experience. And larger ones, like our 16 City Regions for something a little more epic. You'll have plenty of choices on how to play.
Questions multiples
Question : Hey Devs, thanks for taking the time to do this AMA and best of luck on your release! The agent engine looks really impressive. Can't wait to play around with it.
I've got a few questions.
1) What new feature in this Simcity that wasn't in the previous iterations are you most excited for (besides the paint-brush like roads)?
2) Is there a feature that was in the previous Simcitys but isn't in this one that you miss?
3) Can you go in depth at all about modding? How you will support it? What you're doing to make it accessible.
4) What is, in theory, the maximum population a city could hold in Simcity?
5) Simcity 4 had a great balance between macro (early game zoning, highway building, roads/mass transit) to micro (school/health/police funding, budget balancing, mass transit perfecting). How would you say your game tackles this balance? Do you feel that it sways to more micro than macro, or the other way around? Can you give some examples of early, mid, and late game macro/micro?
Bonus Question: What films do you watch to get you pumped up to work on/play Simcity? Towering Inferno?
Again, thank you very much! I look forward to playing the beta.
Réponse : 1) What new feature in this Simcity that wasn't in the previous iterations are you most excited for (besides the paint-brush like roads)?
For me, it's not so much a specific new feature, but all of the things that follow from a fundamental reworking of the simulation (basing it on roads, agents and units, rather than grid-cells). For example, having sims walking about and seeing what they need, where they came from and where they're going. Also, looking at a specific buildings and seeing what it's doing at that moment. Creating systems that work together.
I'm also really happy with the visuals, and the way that the visuals represent what's going on with the simulation.
2) Is there a feature that was in the previous Simcitys but isn't in this one that you miss?
Sure, terraforming is the big one (and I'm the guy who designed SimCity 4's terraforming!). But, we put all of our chips down on the city simulation and on city regional play. That's the heart of the game. We're a fairly small team, so we can't do everything we want.
Also, building tools for free-form city creation turned out to be much harder than I thought! In retrospect, having everything on a nice, neat gridded landscape would have been much easier to program.
3) Can you go in depth at all about modding? How you will support it? What you're doing to make it accessible.
It's still too early -we need to get the game out first. Our simulation engine (GlassBox) is modular, our data format is the same one we've been using for years (SimCity 4, Sims2, etc.), so we've laid the groundwork. But it's going to be tricky! Buildings in SimCity 4 were sprites, projected onto low-poly cards, so it was easy to make new ones. Our new buildings are pretty complicated - they're rigged, animated, LOD'd Maya models, with complex material assignments. They're more like animated characters than like SC4 buildings. Remember, modding didn't get off the ground on SC4 until a year or so after the Rush Hour expansion - this stuff is hard, and can take a while.
4) What is, in theory, the maximum population a city could hold in Simcity?
Oh, I don't know. Hundreds of thousands, in any case. Depends on how well you do it, and if your city is focused solely on residential (so you're packing nothing but apartment blocks in and doing everything else in other cities)
5) Simcity 4 had a great balance between macro (early game zoning, highway building, roads/mass transit) to micro (school/health/police funding, budget balancing, mass transit perfecting). How would you say your game tackles this balance? Do you feel that it sways to more micro than macro, or the other way around? Can you give some examples of early, mid, and late game macro/micro?
There's still that micro to macro balance. Like you say, you're doing macro things like laying out roads & zones, you're building utilities and services. At the micro level you're querying buildings and sims and seeing what their needs are, and you're customizing your buildings to satisfy those needs. With various big-businesses, you're optimizing your city for tourism, or mining or manufacturing, and setting up the systems to grow.
Ok - more specifically. Early game macro: roads, zoning, utilities. Early game micro: Seeing who moves in and what they want. Mid game macro: expanding, developing services, connecting with neighboring cities. Mid game micro: tweaking & tuning transit options, capabilities of services & utilities. Late game macro: City specialization, large scale regional projects. Late Game micro: Optimizing big businesses, taxes, transit.
Question sur la musique
Question : From the SimMars Team, and as a fellow Simcity music lover (from 2k, 3k, 4, and hopefully 5), hello!
Does the music consist of several tracks playing simultaneously, so that when you switch layers or views, different music is playing but all at the same tempo and key signature?
I'd like to make a SimCity music album that is compatible with the new Simcity. Can I replace the ingame music with my own, and with the same synchronization features? (I would have different tracks for different layers and views of course).
Any update on the plans to add mod support?
Réponse : Hello SimMars Team! I'm a huge fan. How's the project going?
Some answers...
Yes! Our music is dynamic, so it changes based on many factors. If your City is running fine, you'll hear a beat that carries through the entire game. You'll actually see your sims, the cars, and smoke, everything timed to this beat. If things start to go sour, you'll hear the music change. It could get quite intense if the situation is serious enough, if you begin to go bankrupt for example. The music will change based on where you are at in the game. If you open a data layer, enter a building editor, or pop up to the region, the music will change. It's incredibly well integrated into the experience.
Swapping the music out is on our wishlist, something we've talked about doing. We won't have it at launch, but we haven't engineered ourselves in a corner.
We know modding is important to our fans. We've always engineered our games with modding in mind. I can't confirm anythig today, but we have started talks with some of our key community members. We've shown them the game and asked them what tools they are looking for. Conversations started!
Thanks.
Question sur la taille de la ville
Question : Seems everyone on the YouTube videos is complaining about the small size of the cities and the huge gaps between regions. Will there be restrictions on city sizes? Why are they so small?
Réponse : We've only got one city size - 2k square.
We're trading off performance against simulation & visual density.
Given finite computing resources, we decided it would be better to make the simulation rich, and the visuals detailed and animated, even if that meant smaller cities. Better that than to have big cities with sparse life & activity.
Gaps are there because the proxy impostors for neighboring cities are pretty low resolution, and don't look good if they get too close.
Regions are 16 kilometers square, and we might do some 32 kilometer square ones if we have time.
Donc là une belle confirmation : La taille est fixé à 2 km² seulement... et aucun espoir d'autres tailles.
Problématique de programmation
Question :A few questions for Xin Liu and Richard Shemaka - can you talk about the programming involved for this project? What were some of the biggest technical challenges and most satisfying solutions? What languages were used? Was any source code reused from other projects or did you start from a blank slate?
Réponse : I do most of my work in C++ and HLSL since I'm a graphics engineer. Our engine is built in C++, but our gameplay systems are built using a custom scripting language, which is great for fast iteration and testing because you don't need to recompile the game every time you need to change something.
Our core simulation engine, GlassBox, was written from scratch in C++ and is the culmination of several years of development. The other systems, like audio, graphics, input capture, and UI, are built off existing middleware or in-house technology and (heavily) modified for SimCity's needs. No one truly builds an engine from scratch because the cost would be astronomical and it doesn't make sense to rewrite systems that don't change very often e.g. input handling, audio processing, asset loading.
The two things I've worked on that I'm most proud of are volumetric lighting and the general upgrade of our lighting system to support an effectively arbitrary number of dynamic lights (up to the limits of your CPU/GPU processing capabilities). If you'd like more specific details on those, reply and I'll elaborate.
Question sur l'algorithme routier
Question : Dev Team-- Traffic AI was rather...rigid...in SC4. Zots would follow the same path even with congestion. Will SimCity 2013 bring a more dynamic traffic system? Will our Sims choose a different route based on road conditions; sacrificing time/distance to get to work, for instance?
Réponse : Yup. Agents will re-route themselves if they detect that they're getting stuck in traffic. They will also prioritize using main arteries like avenues over smaller roads when possible. It's pretty mesmerizing just watching the traffic flow through your city.
We've also got a congestion heat map similar to Google Map's traffic overlay that'll let you instantly spot your most traveled paths at that point in time, if the big back up of stuck traffic isn't visible enough.
Jeux de gestion addict!