
SimCity Offline Is Coming - simias
http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-offline-is-coming
======
bane
I'm _still_ playing and enjoying SC4k. There's tons of people who love SC3k,
and even 2k. I pretty much exhausted all I care to do with this new SC inside
of 2 weeks and uninstalled it. It's easily the worst city sim game I've ever
played. And not just because of the issues with the AI and city size and all
that. It just has no _joy_ in it.

This is what happens when the marketing department takes over a company.

(I would have been perfectly happy with SC4k with curved roads, mixed-use
zoning and a few fixes for highways and such).

~~~
3JPLW
It'd be so wonderful to have a SC4.5k. Or, hell, could you imagine what the
modding community could do with the source? No chance in hell of that ever
happening, but one can dream...

~~~
zanny
Existential quandary here, but I loathe how we are now hitting the 20 year
mark on the modern PC gaming era. 1993 opened the floodgates with Doom, and we
are already seeing the loss of many games from that era that just don't run on
a modern computer but have never seen a source release to let anyone update
the engines.

And it only is poised to get worse over time, especially now that ARM is
superseding x86 for a lot of computing. Is it reasonable to expect everyone to
know how to run VMs of old operating systems (where you are already in
questionable legal water if you download isos of, say, Windows 98, which is no
longer available for money but still is copyrighted forever).

And titles like "Baldurs Gate Enhanced Edition" I feel hurt the industry
hugely by presenting the legal departments an excuse to deny source release,
because later on they could touch the game up for a few weeks and sell it all
over again. Same way companies like Square will re-release 20 year old games
like Final Fantasy rather than do source releases on the original engine code.
Except for most games they won't see a re-release, and they will just drift
into the binary purgatory of unrunnable titles.

~~~
DanBC
I agree.

We expect English Students to study classic texts. It is hard to impossible
(especially with legal considerations) for programmers to play the classics,
let alone investigate the source code.

It is a very great shame that so much is effectively locked away and going to
be lost.

~~~
SimHacker
The original SimCity Classic source code is open source, and instructors like
Chaim Gingold and Mark Sample are actually having their students study (and
deconstruct) the source code:

Chaim Gingold, Simulation for Games:
[http://classes.soe.ucsc.edu/cmps179/Spring13/](http://classes.soe.ucsc.edu/cmps179/Spring13/)

Mark Sample, Criminal Code: The Procedural Logic of Crime in Videogames:
[http://www.samplereality.com/2011/01/14/criminal-code-the-
pr...](http://www.samplereality.com/2011/01/14/criminal-code-the-procedural-
logic-of-crime-in-videogames/)

~~~
kineticfocus
Prince of Persia's source is also available...
[https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-
II](https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II)

------
tinfoilman
EA, desperately trying to force life in to a product they did not understand
and now attempting to recover the large part of their fan base they alienated.

Not going in to the rant, there were many around the time this PoS hit the
market. All I can say is, as an avid sim city player, Sim city 4 had it. This
new thing called Sim City, was more a city based sims level. I was just
waiting for the "sim City delux edition where you could get +5 more houses,
and some new cars"

Honestly I used to love sim City, but after spending £50 on sim city, it
really is (and i said this before sim city) the last EA game i buy.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me

~~~
timje1
fool me consistently for a decade or two... why aren't more people boycotting
EA yet?

~~~
jamesaguilar
Because many of the games they publish are quite good? Just in games that are
current, AC4: Black Flag and BF4.

~~~
luckyno13
AC is a Ubisoft product and BF4 has been so screwed up that investors are
exhibiting enough concerns that the team for BF has moved from working on ANY
dlc, to fixing the immediate issues that BF4 shipped with. Not to mention they
trashed the most recent C&C because it was terrible.

~~~
BlackDeath3
I know that I pre-ordered BF4 and have yet to play more than a couple of hours
since launch. How much have things improved since then? Has the CPU parking
issue been fixed? It's silly that I have to run some third-party CPU utility
to make the game playable.

~~~
potatolicious
I haven't heard of any CPU-related issues, but the current patches are sort of
in a "two steps forward, one step back" tango. Some major thing would get
fixed that breaks a myriad of smaller things, which would get fixed in the
next patch that would then break some other minor things...

It's also taken a frustratingly long time to patch major game-breaking issues
- the main one I kept running into was getting the "accept revive yes/no?"
prompt when you die, which you can then not get out of short of quitting the
game entirely.

They also managed to break SLI support completely during a recent patch. Like,
completely. SLI users would have their screens turn into a flashing disco-
tron.

Client crashes are still an issue, but a lot less common than before. Server
crashes are likewise still an issue, but a lot less common than before. The
general stability of Battlelog seems improved also - right now the general
crashi-ness situation resembles what the game _should have_ looked like at
launch.

~~~
shawn-furyan
As a Texan, I can tell you that "two steps forward, one step back" is a two-
step, not a tango :)

------
llamataboot
So much for all the excuses about needing the cloud to run the simulation
engine, etc

~~~
debaserab2
Chances are those excuses were true considering it took them nearly 8 months
to release an offline patch that pretty much every SimCity fan immediately
wanted upon (and prior to) release of the game.

~~~
serf
doubt it; their solutions from earlier bugs included such gems as disabling
the fastest play speed in order to improve stability.

I wouldn't give EA the benefit of the doubt about an 8 month patch. They
probably began work on it late last week. The company has shown time and time
again that they don't give a fuck about you -- the offline patch is just the
minimum amount of work they have to do in order to unplug the servers on a new
game without total outrage.

"Look, we pushed an offline patch before terminating the servers, WHAT MORE DO
YOU WANT FROM A GAME LESS THAN A YEAR OLD!?"

------
uptown
I was a lock to give them my money - and that's extremely rare for me to be
committed to buy a game. But their delayed Mac version, the botched launch of
their PC version, and the outright lies from their executives changed all of
that. I've moved on.

~~~
SimHacker
I think Origin deserves the blame for making bad decisions and forcing them on
Maxis, and I feel sorry that it was Maxis's job to repeat the lies they were
told to say, because they didn't agree with the bad decisions (i.e. offline
play, and needing more servers for launch), but it was their job to take the
credibility hit, while Origin got to have their way.

------
carlmcqueen
I'd be interested to see the data of how Simcity sales did averaging out past
the launch date compared to other sim city games. Or, since it's all online, a
view of active players past the first few weeks of play.

I know I bought it because the articles about the game failed to mention the
size issues or any of the faulty AI issues (like traffic). I was amazed the
reviewers didn't find any of those faults because they happened pretty fast
and ruined the game for me.

Offline or not, Simcity was a huge step back for me and not worth all the hype
it got.

~~~
belorn
They sold 1.1 million copies in its first two weeks, and around 2 million
copies in total.

Compared to Sim city 3k/4k, that is less than half the sale numbers in a
growing industry. I would also guess that Sim city 2013 had a much higher
production cost, server costs, administration cost and support costs.

And most wonderful thing, they can't blame pirates.

~~~
uptown
Worse for them - though they'll continue to have some new sales, the initial
spike is over, and the costs of maintaining their online infrastructure will
continue to eat into any sales revenue for as long as they keep it active.

Makes you wonder how big a margin there is between sales revenue and ongoing
costs.

------
mkautzm
The damage is done, and if they actively enforce their modding rules,
specifically:

"Mods may not modify any .com, .exe, .dll, .so or other executable files."

Then what's the point? The game is still awful, and the means to fix that
aren't available.

------
ry0ohki
The servers/DRM ended up being one of the least of this game's problems. Tiny
plot size and oversimplification of the engine made this beautiful game
basically no fun.

------
sirkneeland
File under: "breaking news from 1989" :)

~~~
libria
It's cool if they're responding to the user base and meeting the demand. It's
not cool if they're unveiling this like a feature sans apology for prior
behavior.

They're restoring original, sane functionality. The GM should be expecting
relief/forgiveness, not excitement.

------
Danieru
It's amazing how close this iteration has followed in the path of the original
Cities XL.

Take for example the Sim City world:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3oFKhftK88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3oFKhftK88)

If you didn't play the Cities XL beta nor were around for the first bit of
Cities XL there was something called the "Planet Offer". The world map Maxis
shows 12 seconds into the trailer looks just like the Planet Offer's globe.
Maxis even shows a commodities market at 22 seconds which looks like the
Planet Offer's trading.

Just like the Planet Offer things did not work out as planned. Core components
of the city builder were left undone such as the terrain manipulation or map
creation. In part I suspect both were business decisions made to allow a DLC
market.

From the beginning EA promised DLC. In the case of Cities XL the DLC was less
obvious. The way things worked out the developers of Cities XL went bankrupt
and the game was bought out by its current publisher. Every Cities XL game
since has just been the original edition plus some extra maps and buildings.

The real shame is that both Cities XL and Sim City 2013 were beautiful and did
not lack anything art wise. Instead they just failed at game play. Part of
said problem was crippling the game to open DLC avenues. The other part was
horrible balancing.

In the case of Cities XL there was no balancing. Every city service cost the
exact same with no room to adjust service level like in Sim City 4. Cities XL
also made the mistake of tying medium and large density zones plus most
services to your city's population. In effect every new city felt the same
since you had to bootstrap everything every-time. Of course finances were also
dead easy to balance.

During Cities XL beta my biggest problem was opening enough inter-city
transport capacity to export my over supply of office services. For a while I
could just open international airports one after the other but I soon ran out
of space. My city got so big I triggered a rare bug where the game replaced my
entire city with a hilly field. Since said hilly field had no export routes I
couldn't rebuild. This was a shame since the glitch managed to delete
everything which was costing me money but leave all the export revenue. Thus
despite being a hilly field I must have amassed more money than any other city
during beta.

Sorry back on topic: just like Cities XL's planet offer Maxis is now stepping
back from the online. In theory online would be fantastic but first you need
to make a fun city builder. Maybe in the future we'll get one.

~~~
sentenza
What surprises me is that they didn't realize that SimCity doesn't have the
right game mechanics for classic DLC.

Instead of going the DLC route, they should have gone the user-gernerated
content route. Allowing users to not only share and rank their cities but also
to create additional content (3D models, conversions) and to interact with the
game mechanics using an in-game scripting language.

By that last part I mean things like programming the logic of the in-game
traffic lights, train schedules, and so on.

Pure, raw, script-based micro-management.

Had they managed to implement a game incorporating content-sharing, they might
have seen the sales of their core game skyrocket, fueled by the positive
marketing feedback of a content-generating community.

~~~
DanBC
Someone needs to write a short essay about the power of user generated content
to sell product.

Doom was released as shareware. You got the first few levels for free. You
paid and got the rest. Doom had a huge amount of user generated content, but
the community was careful to make sure it would only work if you had the full
paid version of the game. Obviously some people didn't, but you'll always get
pirates. That's an early example of the community protecting the ip while
helping to boost sales.

Minecraft is a more modern example of user generated content driving huge
sales of a game.

We just need a short easy to read essay to point the accountants and suits at.

~~~
SimHacker
Absolutely. I believe that's the reason behind the success of The Sims (and
the lack of user generated content was the reason behind the failure of The
Sims Online).

A browser based version of SimCity Classic could use WebGL to render the
buildings with digital bricks (i.e. Legos). Then it would be very fun and easy
for players to create their own buildings with existing tools (or new browser
based tools build into the game), and even construct those buildings in the
real world out of Legos.

There is an active community of Lego fans and a rich ecosystem of open source
digital brick editing tools, and Lego Digital Designer even imports and
exports some of the file formats that were developed by the open source
community, as well as Lego's own xml file format.
[http://ldd.lego.com/](http://ldd.lego.com/)

In fact there's already an open source JavaScript/WebGL/three.js library for
rendering digital bricks:
[https://bitbucket.org/msx80/brigl](https://bitbucket.org/msx80/brigl) demos:
[http://www.lugato.net/brigl/index.html](http://www.lugato.net/brigl/index.html)

Check out the Lego Micropolis Micro City Standard:
[http://twinlug.com/micropolis-micro-city-
standard/](http://twinlug.com/micropolis-micro-city-standard/) and the
beautiful stuff people have made:
[http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/micropolis/Interesting](http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/micropolis/Interesting)

Bad day for Micropolis contest:
[http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/](http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/)
winners:
[http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/badday.h...](http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/badday.html)
[http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/basic.ht...](http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/basic.html)
[http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/double.h...](http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/double.html)
[http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/doublepl...](http://www.reasonablyclever.com/lego/contest/badday/doubleplus.html)

Imagine importing that great stuff into SimCity, or rather, the open source
version of SimCity, whose name also just happens to be Micropolis:
[https://code.google.com/p/micropolis/](https://code.google.com/p/micropolis/)

I'd write a short essay, but I'm afraid it would end up being a long essay! ;)

------
ihsw
Will we get an apology for being so obstinate and narrow-minded, too?

How about a promise to never again shove always-on down the throats of their
customers, and admit that it's a fruitless effort to exert absolute control
over the ways users play their games?

How about Blizzard and Diablo 3, where you feel lag in a game that's
predominantly single player?

------
lmkg
My understanding is that SCO was designed and balanced around player-player
interaction between cities, to the point that a single free-standing city
couldn't really be "complete." Cities functioned better when they were
specialized and interacting with neighbors, than when they tried to be self-
sufficient. I didn't play the thing myself, but that's how the devs seemed to
portray things.

Given that (and other ways in which the online-ness was pervasive in game
design), this seems like the epitome of a band-aid fix on a bullet wound. Just
inserting an offline mode won't make the game better, because the game design
was based around online play from a very fundamental level, and it's not a
feature that can be removed simply. I.e., 'you can take SCO offline, but you
can't take the online out of SCO.'

~~~
bane
That's partially true. But the online plays was screwed from the start since
you simply couldn't delete cities. So that city you built when you were
screwing around with the build tools and made a giant happy face out of the
roads and didn't really have any intention of making it self-sustaining _or_
part of a larger region play? It's there forever.

SC4k _also_ had region play, cities weren't really as effective until they
were part of a region. The mechanic should have been to let you and some
friends start a region, each pick a zone or two and start cooperatively
developing them over time. Enhance things like cross-city usage fees (so I can
recoup cost for putting up a huge airport in my city that my friends use) and
it would have completely satisfied the multi-player requirement.

What you ended up with was a bunch of half-asses cities that nobody wanted to
play with in regions that nobody wanted to be multi-players in, that the only
benefit was regional construction projects that never really worked right and
had cryptic requirements in order to construct.

Coupled with impossibly small city sizes and broken AI and the game is
fundamentally broken in ways that no amount of patching or fixing is ever
going to solve. Time to deep six this failed experiment and move on to Sim
City 2.

~~~
kisielk
Hey, that actually sounds a lot like regional planning in real life :)

------
Vaskivo
Well, the harm is already done, but it's good to see Offline mode coming.

But, to me, the most interesting news is the mod support. If you want to at
least double your game's lifetime, make it easy to modify.

~~~
anonyfox
See Skyrim as an example for a successful modding culture. The community is
just awesome.

~~~
freehunter
And the complete Skyrim game (all expansions/DLC) still sells for $60 on PC,
two years after release. People still buy it at this price, and it's still a
pretty good value.

------
wil421
Too bad I returned my purchase to Amazon after I was unable to play during the
first week.

Corporate Execs from companies like EA and even Microsoft/Xbone are ruining
gaming.

~~~
jaredmcateer
Don't feel bad about returning your game, the game is still horribly broken in
many ways that an offline mode won't fix.

~~~
wil421
Mostly I feel bad for Amazon more than Maxis/EA. They probably ate the cost of
the game just to satisfy me and a bunch of other people.

------
tunap
RE: offline play & non-mod modding:

    
    
       Too little, too late.

------
SimHacker
Serious question:

Would anyone be interested in a version of SimCity Classic that ran in the
browser? (Playable offline, of course!)

In what ways do you think it could be brought up to date with modern
technology, without spoiling the fun of the original game?

What do you like about the original SimCity Classic? And what do you think
should be changed or added?

What I'd really appreciate is advice on how to fund the development.
Kickstarter is out because I'm not in the United States, but I'm considering
Indiegogo, but open to alternatives, especially ones focused on open source
and educational software.

~~~
DanBC
I used to play simcity classic on a hercules monitor.

I would like to play it in the browser.

Things I'd like to see:

Nice graphics. Doesn't have to be high res or anything, just nice. Perhaps
allow tilesets to be used so the community could easily create and share
tiles.

Easy laying of road and track. I remember the odd rubber banding of classic
being a bit frustrating.

Some nice easy to use terrain editor.

Some social features? Allow more than one person to work on a terrain map at a
time? (I understand this raises complexity significantly). Or Allow people to
passively view the terrain and sent chat suggestions?

Have a free play version, and a well tested challenges version with a wide
variety of challenges. Eg "last X years", "grow to Y size", "survive these
disasters", "earn Z money" etc.

Have a way for me to pay you. I much prefer a single payment for full access
rather than a freemium model. (Wait x hours to collect enough coins to build
this road, or unlock coins for $x now!!" Would not be pleasant.

Hope these are some use!

~~~
SimHacker
I think the easiest way to lay road and track is to drive a road laying
vehicle around: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkVBg_-
OviI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkVBg_-OviI)

Definitely a terrain editor, plus more tweakable procedural terrain
generation.

There are many interesting ways to support multiple players, beyond the
"cooperative committee with god mode limited by unanimous voting on expensive
things" approach I implemented with the X11/TCL/Tk version:
[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/SimCityNetDemo.mov](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/SimCityNetDemo.mov)

Your friends could fly helicopters around your city, reporting on problems, or
just chatting with you as you drive your brick laying machine around to make
roads.

Your enemies could fly drones around and turn your citizens into terrorists by
bombing their wedding parties.

Your governor could conspire to cause terrible traffic jams by closing lanes
on your bridges.

Deconstruct the god mode tool pallet into something more like Magic the
Gathering cards, that have particular tailored zones, purposes and budgets
that multiple players can win, trade and play.

The code must be open source, and the basic game free down download and play
(online or off), but I'd like to think of a revenue model that will support
the development of the game, as well as educational courseware (for free
educational use).

I don't think many people would pay to download other people's cities, but
maybe artists/architects could sell their buildings in an online real-estate
(virtual-estate?) market like eBay.

I'm seeking advice and suggestions about how to fund the development and
support running it! It's futile to pitch an educational game to a big
publisher like EA, but Indiegogo may be a good route. Are there other
alternatives focused on open source or educational software? I would really
appreciate some mentoring and guidance from people experienced with that.

------
mcv
Offline? What a brilliant innovation! I can't believe nobody thought of that
before.

------
sarreph
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Oh wait... It was just the worst of times.

------
Aardwolf
Is Coming? Isn't it there for a long time already? SimCity 2000 etc...

------
mratzloff
Why exactly are people willing to blame EA but not Maxis?

~~~
ForHackernews
I don't think Maxis even exists as separate entity anymore. Aren't they just a
small division within EA now? EA kept the brand name because Maxis used to be
good, but it doesn't mean anything today.

~~~
SimHacker
Maxis has a separate studio in Emeryville (by Berkeley), where Spore and
SimCity were developed. Maxis isn't exactly small, since The Sims franchise
has been responsible for a large share of their profits: A few years ago EA
reorganized into three parts, and The Sims division was one of them, but I
don't know how they're organized now.

------
yngccc
Is it just me but simcity was the best game I played in 2013, maybe I am just
new to the genre, but it was like playing video game for the first time.

~~~
fennecfoxen
It's just you. SimCity 4 / Rush Hour is widely regarded as better. Give it a
try:
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/24780/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/24780/)

Allow me to lift a review: "While you cannot build crazy windy roads, SimCity
4 is perfect for building a city with grid street plan and you'll get
everything you didn't get in SimCity 2013: huge maps, multiple entrances,
zoning lots, detailed statistics/graphs/budgets, multiple transportation
options from subway, elevated train, freeway, toll gates... the list goes on."

Heck, I think even SimCity 3000 will give you more raw City to play with.

------
dalacv
I'd be curious to know how many of the folks making such negative comments
actually purchased and have played the game recently.

~~~
johnward
Purchased played. Uninstalled several time and reinstall after "updates". The
game is just not up to SC4 standards. Once it was stable I could only be
entertained for a little more than an hour and then there was nothing more to
do.

------
macinjosh
Sweet, I might actually start playing this game again!

------
lingben
now? after people have been playing it offline by hacking it since the second
week it was release? incredible!

------
jackmaney
Way too little, way too late.

