|
SIMCITY 4
SimCity 4 (SC4) is a 2003 simulation/city building computer game; the fourth installment in the SimCity series of games. It was published by Electronic Arts (EA) and developed by series creator Maxis, a wholly-owned subsidiary of EA.
Gameplay
As with previous SimCity titles, SimCity 4 places players in the role of a mayor (or several mayors), tasked with populating and developing tracts of lands into cities. There are many differences between this game and previous versions, the largest difference being that cities are now located in regions that are divided into segments, each of which can be developed. The regional play concept adds a whole new dimension to this sequel of SimCity. The player also has the option of starting the city in a segment of any of three area sizes, the largest being 256 by 256 tiles, approximately 4 by 4 miles in real measurement.
Neighbor cities play a larger role than in the previous version of the game, SimCity 3000. For example, neighbor deals can be established, where a city can exchange resources such as water, electricity, or garbage disposal for money. In this version, the player may develop several dependent cities at the same time, eventually populating the entire region. Because of the new region feature, focus of the game shifted from building the largest city possible on its map to creating a functioning, varied, and aesthetically pleasing region, making small towns a practical possibility for the first time. Additionally, the simulated city can now be seen at nighttime as well as during daytime.
The functions of civic buildings have been overhauled in SC4. Facilities that had previously provided citywide coverage (educational facilities and hospitals) have now been modified to provide a more limited coverage, as it has been with police stations and fire stations in previous SimCity titles. This would require players to plan the best locations to provide sufficient civic services to Sims effectively (e.g. placing schools in or around residential areas). SC4 has also introduced a feature to adjust funding for individual buildings, allowing users to specify how much money should be spent to supply services in accordance to the population. Maintenance expenses for public utility facilities (power plants, water plants and garbage disposal services) are also introduced in SC4.
Zoning and building size have also changed. Rather than have a large area zoned and have roads ringing it, zones are automatically aligned towards roads to avoid the aesthetic frustration in earlier SimCity games, such as buildings and garages constructed facing the wrong way from the road. Buildings are now classified into several wealth levels, zone types and "stages" (building size and density), which are affected by the region's population and the city's condition; commercial buildings, for example, may be divided into services and offices, with the former typically in higher demand and better suited for less educated Sims. In addition, the game better simulates urban decay and gentrification; buildings originally constructed for occupation by higher-wealth tenants can now support lower wealth tenants in the event surrounding factors forces the current tenants to vacate the building; this allows certain buildings to remain in use despite lacking its initial occupants. Also, for the first time in the series, buildings and lots can be constructed on slopes.
SimCity 4 can be used in conjunction with Maxis' popular game The Sims. Sims can be imported into the city where they will report what they think of the area they are living in. SC4 comes with 21 default Sims for those without a copy of the game. Moreover, SC4 has a control interface very similar to The Sims.
Unlike its predecessors, which used an engine based on 2D dimetric projection and sprites, SimCity 4 primarily uses a 3D engine to render its graphics. The landscape and moving props such as vehicles are modeled as fully polygonal 3D objects. Small buildings and props are drawn as flat images, which are pasted onto billboards - polygons with their surface normal facing into the camera. Larger buildings are modelled using a hybrid approach - a simple polygonal model defines the shape of the building, then textures are added to create detail such as doors, windows and rooftop clutter. Although a 3D engine is used, the camera in SimCity 4 is restricted to a fixed trimetric orthographic projection, giving a similar feel to older SimCity games. This is for performance reasons. [1]
The game includes over three hours of background music (mostly library pieces) in MP3 format, ranging from four to seven minutes in length. The music is divided between that used in Region Mode and God Mode, and that used in the city view in Mayor Mode (see below). In addition, the game has a facility for players to use their own music in the game, also divided between the two views.
Game modes
Upon selecting a specific segment in a region, gameplay is divided into three "modes". The first of which is the God Mode, which allows players to design or terraform a selected tract of land where the city will be built. God Mode also allows players to trigger disasters, including tornados, earthquakes, UFO attacks, robot attacks, among several others. Terraforming tools are disabled after the city is named and founded.
The second of the modes is the Mayor Mode, the fundamental mode of the game where the actual city building is conducted. The mode allows players to insert necessary structures and facilities, such as roads, civic buildings, zoning and power stations, for the city to attract its intended tenants and grow.
The final mode is the MySim mode which enables players to create MySims and closely assess citizens' needs. The mode primarily involves the deployment of Sims into the present city, where they will reside and provide feedback on the areas surrounding their home, commute and workplace.
Building designs
Repeating the limited design principle practiced during SimCity 3000, commercial and residential buildings in SimCity 4 borrow heavily from early 20th century architectural styles, particularly Art Deco and Romanesque Revival, while most houses appear in a traditional American Craftsman bungalow style, and modern architecture is sprinkled throughout this mix. Architect Richard Meier consulted on the design of many of the game's more modern buildings.[citation needed] This mixture of historic and modern styles creates a much more realistic impression of a city that has developed over a long period of time.
Since the game's developer is located in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are a number of buildings based on those found in San Francisco, including the Shell Building (appearing as "Wren Insurance"), 450 Sutter (appearing as "Vu Financial"), and the PacBell Building (as "The Galvin Corp"). Three of the bridges are also based on the Golden Gate Bridge, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (which is later included in the Rush Hour expansion pack), and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Reception
For the original release, some users complained that the system requirements were prohibitively high, and that the game ran slowly on relatively powerful computers, sometimes even crashing when building a large city.
Also, some users reported that the game had many bugs, although many were solved by subsequent patches. Furthermore the increased focus on transportation combined with the closer zoom levels has driven many players to feel compelled to micromanage their cities.
Another common criticism of SimCity 4 is that the path-finding system the game uses to figure out which routes traffic will take between two points does not work as effectively as it could. Rather than finding the fastest route to the destination, the system works by finding the shortest path, which is most often not the same. A common example a player would encounter is a small, two-lane suburban street being used by thousands of routes, while a nearby six-lane highway that parallels the small street may be relatively deserted. User communities have created "pathfinding mods" that modify the simulated citizens' ability to find the best route. These can be found in several fansites (see third party fan and resource sites section).
Add-ons and modifications
Official add-ons
Following SimCity 4's release, several add-ons and development kits were made available in its official site. These include:
- New landmarks, including Rockefeller Center, the Brandenburg Gate, and Stonehenge. Later landmarks were no longer based on real-life buildings and were primarily used to demonstrate the capability of Gmax and the Building Architect Tool (BAT) around the time of the BAT's release.
- The Lot Editor (LE), a lot builder, which allows users to edit or design lots for SC4 using available props. Because it was released several months before the BAT as a stand-alone version, users at the time were only capable of producing lots that consisted of pre-existing props from SC4. The BAT provides users with an updated version of the LE, rendering the original LE utility obsolete, although it is still made available in the official site.
- The Building Architect Tool (BAT), a suite of tools developed for producing custom buildings. The suite consists of three applications: The Building Architect gamepack for Gmax, which enabled users to render Gmax models into SC4 sprites or props to be imported into the LE; an updated version of the LE; and the Plug-in Manager, which enables users to modify simulation properties for the lots. Several modified versions have been released that have, in effect, served as bug fixes for various problems that had not been discovered before the initial release. First released on February 2004, it sparked the formation of many new projects in the SC4 community in the following months.
SC4's Building Architect Tool is similar in function to SimCity 3000's Building Architect Tool and SimCity 2000's Urban Renewal Kit; however, previous programs of this kind were created from scratch by Maxis and used completely different interfaces.
The last official add-on was released on December 14, 2004.
Third party add-ons
In addition to official tools, third party programs were released for further accessibility in editing SimCity 4 contents, potentially allowing users to change the nature of the game itself.
Since the release of the LE and the BAT, the majority of add-ons in circulation consists of user-created content; most are buildings and lots, while others include cosmetic changes for terrains, custom vehicles and modifications in the game's behaviors. Both the skills of lot building and modding are also integrated at times, producing lots that are capable of affecting a city in a variety of ways.
Modd Squad
The Modd Squad is a name coined for the SimCity 4 modification community, consisting of individual "BATters", modders, BAT teams, and BAT projects, aimed at releasing custom contents and modifications for SC4. The majority of the Modd Squad's public activities are based in a popular SC4 fan site, Simtropolis (see also External links), while others are conducted in separate fan sites and Internet forums.
The Modd Squad has unlocked many of the game's internals to modification, and has created a wide array of changes to the game. Their work has also permitted the development of more realistic user created plug-ins made with the LE and BAT. Third-party modifications have also been created to solve problems that were not yet fixed in official patches, add functionality to the game, or make the high learning curve slightly lower by modifying environment variables. Typical custom contents range from buildings, to transportation additions, to game-altering files and conversion mods.
Bugs
Maxis and Electronic Arts have released a total of three patches that improve or fix issues discovered in the original versions of SC4 and Rush Hour (two for the original SC4 and one for Rush Hour). Among other things, the patches contain performance improvements for larger cities and a variety of minor bug fixes. The two pre-Rush Hour patches each fixed errors in the game code that, while not impeding actual gameplay, were previously preventing nearly a third of the Maxis-designed buildings from ever appearing in the game. The first patch fixed the so-called "Houston Tileset Bug" which was leaving one of the game's three tilesets, a collection of contemporary Houston-inspired buildings, completely out of the rotation, meaning that the only buildings from that tileset ever to appear were several smaller variations shared by all three of the game's original tilesets. With the introduction of that patch, it rapidly became apparent that there was another underlying bug that was preventing approximately two dozen of the game's largest buildings from appearing. This issue was fixed in the second patch.
Maxis received much criticism from online fan communities over both of these issues; more specifically, over their seeming denial of the existence of these issues. In the case of the Houston Tileset bug, the bug was not acknowledged until the release of the first patch. Furthermore, they never publicly acknowledged the existence of the bug that left many of the larger buildings out of the game, even though their own published list of buildings gave the players the names of the two dozen buildings that had never previously been seen.
SimCity 4: Rush Hour
On September 22, 2003, Maxis released an expansion pack for SimCity 4 dubbed Rush Hour. SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, a bundle of the original SimCity 4 game and the Rush Hour expansion pack, was released on the same day. On August 25, 2004, Aspyr Media released Deluxe Edition for Mac OS. This was followed by the September 4, 2004 release of the Rush Hour expansion pack for the same operating system.
Rush Hour provides a number of major transportation additions to the game. These additions include:
- Avenues, with twice the capacity of roads, in both directions.
- One way roads, with twice the capacity of standard roads, but only allowing traffic in one direction.
- Ground-level highways, which are cheaper to build in the first instance, but are more expensive to run roads over, and impossible to run rails over.
- Monorails, above ground train systems.
- Elevated rails, an above ground extension of subways. A subway-elevated rail connector is also provided to connect both transit systems.
- Tollbooths, which are placed on any road or highway to generate income based on the intensity of the traffic.
- Ferries, which are used to transport pedestrians or vehicles across a body of water, and are significantly cheaper to build than bridges.
- A wider range of bridges for roads and railway lines.
The expansion also includes a contemporary European building set, minor gameplay tweaks (including the addition of difficulty levels) and new, larger service buildings suitable for larger cities.
One of the main features of Rush Hour is U-Drive-It, a mode where players can take control of cars, planes, and many other vehicles and drive them around the city. A set of missions have been included with the game that involve things such as rescuing cats with a fire truck and drawing images in the sky with a skywriting plane. This feature has some similarities to SimCopter and Streets of SimCity.
Another new feature in Rush Hour is the route query; with it, it is possible to check the routes the Sims use to get to their jobs, allowing the player to see directly where the Sims need to go and how they do it. However, the route query does have some flaws: often, the number of Sims reported to be working at a building differs from the number given by standard query; some impossible travel routes can be seen, such as cars "jumping" off highways onto adjacent buildings or going through structures; the data reported by the route query tool are also, more often than not, out-of-date.
Future updates
Many users have expected more expansion packs after Rush Hour, but none have been announced to date. However, Will Wright has previously stated in an interview on May 16, 2003, that there would probably be more expansion packs after Rush Hour, [2] suggesting that they have been cancelled or delayed. In another interview on May 22, 2004, Wright stated that Maxis is currently attempting to work out a "new direction" for SimCity after new versions had become "steadily more complex".[3] He ended his comments on SimCity with the following:
|
|
SimCity kind of worked itself into a corner, (because) we were still appealing to this core SimCity group. It had gotten a little complicated for people who had never played SimCity. We want to take it back to its roots where somebody who had never heard of SimCity can pick it up and enjoy playing it without thinking it was really, really hard. |
|
In May 2006, French game developer Monte Cristo published a new city simulation game, City Life. It had basically the same concept as SimCity 4, but more advanced construction options and an entirely 3D graphics engine. City Life has noted that it is not intending to rival SimCity 4 and is simply bridging the gap between SimCity 4 and a future version, since fans have been waiting so long. [citation needed]
References
External links
Official sites
Additional resources
|