Why aren't there...

[elebit]

Why aren't there tons of members here on this site before this game's launch? On the sonic and the secret rings forums at gamespot and others there was like 1000s of people on the forums pre-launch of SSR. This is odd. I guess this game needs more promotion and attention then. I have noticed the traffic has died down a bit and this site does not have near as many members on it day to day. Has this site always been like this? I haven't been around long so I don't know much and the posts I did see brought attention to at other gaming sites have been deleted by now so I have no clue what this forum really was like when the initial hype about this game was brough.

Also I would have loved to see the thread where Chris Beatrice was on there talking about the direction of SCS and telling the other people about it.

this link brought me to wonder... http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160146 but the link to the forums was from another site I can't remember where from I've been on tons of gaming sites the past week about this game and 5 others so it's a blur.

Was there a flame war on that thread and that's why It got deleted? I am curious as to why it was deleted and would like to see it. I could only see a chunk of it in some archive but it did not have alot. There were links to it but the forum system said I followed an invalid link. I hope that there is some way I can view it becuase I have a couple people who want to see it for some odd reason too.

[King Faticus]

There used to be more members but many don't post anymore for whatever reason but even then this site has always been somewhat sleepy.
it always picks up a week or two before release and then dies down again.
part of the 'culture' here I assume

[elebit]

Aww ok.

Do you happen to have "the post" though?

[Romaq]

Aye, seems to go in cycles based upon news. It is tiring to repeat 'curvy roads, curvy roads', though there are those who would accuse me of being tired of me repeating it ad nausem. > : )

So I simply wouldn't post much of anything or respond so much. Then it picks up again, then slows down. I didn't know about Tilted Mill until it was mentioned on SimTropolis. Then I opened an account here and made a general pest of myself to the devs, while defending TM over things that are really *not* their responsibility, things that have no bearing on reality, things that have no place in an honest discussion of SC:S, at least in my opinion.

In general, though, 'real news' that is posted here is mostly reviews based upon outsiders seeing SC:S in person and anything new they would notice, or based on THAT anything new noticed on screen captures from said third-parties. There is also the cycle of commentary on new ideas posted here and such.

TM *is* reading, they do post comments, but 'bean spillage' invariably does *not* come from TM, it's from the third parties who have direct contact with the game in it's then current form. Those contact sessions mostly drive activity here.

--Romaq

[elebit]

Yah seems like it's a down cycle I guess. Still does anyone have "the post"? Or have seen it at least and can tell me generally what went on?

[Romaq]

Downcycle? Not at the moment. This Friday early evening is a good spike. I've been greatful for the slowdown in forum message churn. It's allowed a much needed PC upgrade.

--Romaq

[elebit]

Yep I like more activity! Too bad I can't really think of anymore that i want for SCS at the moment. Oh well pretty sure I will.

[Need_Help]

If I remember correctly, there are more discussions before the release of Caesar IV, but SCS seems to be a bit 'quiet'.

[deathtopumpkins]

It's been quiet since early july (or at least as far as I know, I've only been on here since june). There has been a lot of activity recently though.

It probably will pick up right before release, and then everybody will move to the actual game site if it has an exchange and forum (WHICH I HOPE IT WILL) :D

[Romaq]

There's the BSC team for SC4, the NAM and the CAM team, some teams share the same people. Pegasus, and so on. They have their own forums, and as an example if you want to talk about NAM 2007 or the CAM, you need to discuss it over at http://sc4devotion.com/.

Ideally, you would have the same sorts of groups form and take on projects with SC:S. Groups will tend to have a much better time controling forum activity on forums they control. And I suspect I'll drop off pounding the TM forums on the release of SC:S. That is, except for the occasional question (or griefing) with TM over a specific aspect of what I'm involved in at the time.

--Romaq

[MarkDuffy]

The only question I have, Elebit, is why did it take so long to Nuke that thread? :D

[panikattak]

I don't have much to say or ask until TM starts to take modding questions.

[Romaq]

I've been a pest to TM about it whether they asked or not. There's the German website thread, and I've already been a pest about having custom mods support localization.

--Romaq

[nexusdog]

Edit...

So I simply wouldn't post much of anything or respond so much. Then it picks up again, then slows down. I didn't know about Tilted Mill until it was mentioned on SimTropolis. Then I opened an account here and made a general pest of myself to the devs, while defending TM over things that are really *not* their responsibility, things that have no bearing on reality, things that have no place in an honest discussion of SC:S, at least in my opinion.

In general, though, 'real news' that is posted here is mostly reviews based upon outsiders seeing SC:S in person and anything new they would notice, or based on THAT anything new noticed on screen captures from said third-parties. There is also the cycle of commentary on new ideas posted here and such.

You do realise all newsgroups and forum based software was created by psychotic psychology students investigating social engineering and behaviour, don't you?

We're all part of one twisted experiment designed to break our will :D

[Romaq]

Uhm... ok. ;-)

--Romaq

[MarkDuffy]

We're all part of one twisted experiment designed to break our will :D

How are we doing?

[arcan]

How are we doing?
OK for me. They can't break something that dosn't exist ! lol

[Kiya]

Still does anyone have "the post"? Or have seen it at least and can tell me generally what went on?
I don't have "the post", sorry, but I do remember us few having some great time in this thread, to be more precise we had one of our lovely Tea Parties, Earl Grey and some cookies. That took a page or two. :D

[Corinthian]

Well, the thread was entitled "You killed simcity!" What does that tell you?

It sort of went: a bunch of people agreeing with the OP, and a number of people disagreeing. There was whining and complaining from the first crowd, and generally, attempts by the second crowd to reason with the first. A number of troll posts and off-topic bickerings. I didn't see how it died, as I wrote it off as a bad job at some point and stopped reading it.

I have no idea whether Chris or TM got anything useful from it. Generally, the complaints voiced there have been echoed elsewhere in reasoned form, and TM probably gets what makes the anti-SC:S crowd upset, as well as the concerns of people who are not anti-SC:S, but who just want to make sure certain features are in or out, and want more information on their particular pet* features.

[* There will be pets? OMGWTF TM is teh sux this game is so stoopid i hate TM stop making simcity!!! :mad: [:rolleyes: :D That's something that might have been seen in the "You killed simcity!" thread, you know.]]

Anyway, I haven't found the thread; I think it's really quite gone from the forum. Hope the door hit it on the way out, though. :p

[elebit]

Oh well. Nice try then. Hehe. I might have to dig it out some archive.org like site or something or search for it. Too lazy ATM.

[Romaq]

Some things are best left burried. You may be able to find the same material rehashed on SimTropolis. I'm one of those who are not Anti-SC:S, though I do have some sense of disappointment in the current approach. I'm still campaigning for certain feature sets for SC:S. I'm not clear to what extent my campaign may take the form of leaving hooks and sockets for custom content to fill those aspects important to me. Maybe I'll find opportunity here, perhaps not. I'm open to being surprised by joy.

With respect to any message thread under the heading, "YOU KILLED SIMCITY", I have no respect. Such indicates an immature mindset incapable of distinguishing histronics for discussion, ranting for discourse, closed dismissal for the persuit of opportunity. Perhaps something good can come from such a thread, but I don't usually go looking for tasty peanuts in fecal matter.

I pursue opportunity until the opportunity is clearly closed. "YOU KILLED SIMCITY" shuts out opportunity for discussion as an opening remark.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell?
blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field
from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you trade
your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
a walk on part in the war
for a lead role in a cage? --R. Waters

--Romaq

[elebit]

Yep well I guess this concludes it then! Thanks for at least filling me in! There are alot of immature people out there and alot of the anti-scs crowd will regret when it comes out if it was awesome and they will feel it. I have dissed one game before and it ended up being a great game in the end. Their thoughts will change once they play it for sure.

[King Faticus]

I learned my lesson when I was 10 :rolleyes: I made fun of an Anime called 'Outlaw Star' and it turned out to be one of my favorite shows ever o-0
it even has the poem 'Midday Moon' as a closing scene I have to admit it is a very nice poem but the English and Japanese versions are different lol

Edit: Romaq I listen to that song all the time btw:p

[Romaq]

I do enjoy Pink Floyd, both the music and the lyrics. I do hope that SC:S has as good a music track to it. The artist they used for C4 and CotN is promising, I think.

For what I can see, right from where I'm sitting, I don't believe I'll have the fun in SC:S that I know I have with SC4. I want the SimCity advertised here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-mJQcrKSkY&NR=1 but oddly enough, it's actually for SC4 and not SC:S. I want to do what the guy does on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwrPMm4yFs, what EA promises of SC4 in 3D, but doesn't actually PRODUCE with in 3D.

What I want is SC4 in true 3D.

That is NOT what TM is contracted to provide for Electronic Arts.

Ok, I can deal with this, and see what areas I can push. There's a chance, however slim, that even if TM can't actually provide 'the goods' on a contractual basis and due to time constraints, perhaps they'll leave hooks, holes and APIs that a group like NAM2007 can fill in.

I could guess that TM's not happy that I'd consider SC:S a 'pig in need of one hell of alot of lipstick'. I'm quite sure TM, on the whole, would not be happy about it. But that's my perspective. Still & all, perhaps enough lipstick and some snazzy dresses provided by the Custom Content Folks will make SC:S not so bad. SC4 has come a LONG WAY from the release of it with the content available today.

--Romaq

[elebit]

I really hope they have custom soundtracks in there like SC4 had, all you had to do was put mp3s in a certain folder and define it in the game's UI and there you go! I hope you can do this! My trance music would be awesome and I would play music to match the mood of my city. What would be a killer feature is the city would change moods when the songs changed but that would be painful to do that in a game.

[Romaq]

It depends upon how they went about it. I have some 300 CD's worth of legal music I can bring to bear on the game, as they would allow the flexibility for it.

--Romaq

[elebit]

I have about 700 :p he he! and I have alot of music from euro forums that is orginal by the site's djs and free. I hate mainstream music I like the underground trance stuff. I can't stand western music. It's boring and all about love and bad relationships and bad times. I also like j-pop and j-trance too. I love the DDR music and games!

I seriously think custom soundtracks would be awesome and I hope they continue on from SC4's thing.

[deathtopumpkins]

We already know that some of the music is the same as SC4 from one of the videos, I think it was from the german game convention that happened recently that I can neither remember how to spell or pronounce :)

[Romaq]

Well, *MY* idea would be to have each track have an associated 'tags' file. Like 'Police', 'Arena', 'Fire', 'Money' and so on. So I have something like this:

Song.mp3
Song.tag

Then each 'event' (building on fire, police intervention, growth of wealth) the computer can decide to trigger based upon the 'tag' associated with the event. If it's a disaster, such as a BIG fire, it'll trigger "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins, which happens to have that particular tag associated with that MP3. If you zoom in on a wealthy house, "Money" by Pink Floyd triggers. You can have events 'suggest' the strength of a tag change. If there's no particular 'event suggestion', the engine decides to pick whatever tag bobbles to the surface. A 'zoom' on a house might 'strongly suggest' a given tag type.

That gets into all sorts of complex issues, but some of the more complex ones don't really need to be advertized on the 'client end', but offered for high-end custom content modders. It would be a flexible way for the TM team to design the game, and they can simply 'allow' us to use 'their' tools for performing something like that.

Such an arrangement would be much better than 'god tracks' and 'city tracks' in SC4. It didn't take long to become repetitive, and you had no way to ensure your favorite country music played in a 'farm' city.

We'll see what they happen to cook up.

--Romaq

[deathtopumpkins]

Good idea. I like it. I would do it.
But instead of randomly selecting a song, it would have seperate tracks for if no event triggered one. That way you could use the background music to tell you if something happened.

[elebit]

The tag option is awesome. Great idea. That would work very well and be very easy to implement.

[deathtopumpkins]

Yes!
Positive feedback!

Listen TM!

[Romaq]

Some of the problem will be having events happen too fast for the music to make sense. If you have a fire track start, and then Men In Black head somewhere else within seconds, what happens? Three seconds of The Power Station's "Some Like It Hot" followed by The Police's "I'll Be Watching You?" It won't take much of that for a great feature to turn into great audio suckage. Cutting between music tracks is no picnic either, to have it sound consistant and make sense. Or do you simply 'spool' the music, so Power Station plays out, then The Police play long after the MIBs have come and gone with the mimes?

I'm not so sure if the idea is so easy to impliment, and that's the problem with a great many of these sorts of things. It's VERY easy to talk about. You set up a bunch of test cases for what you expect to happen and see how it works in practice, and my great idea could sound like 'Oh ick!'

And thus it is that great ideas on paper turn out like poop in practice. But you don't get great ideas implimented until you try them and work through the problems. And even then, does TM have it in the budget to do it, if they don't have 'audio event tags' in place already?

I don't mind offering the ideas, but I strongly suspect it's too late anyway. Oh well.

--Romaq

[deathtopumpkins]

I don't know. The solution I would use is that the music clip plays like 30 (or enough for it to make sense) seconds and then goes to the next one. Or it could be localized. If you zoomed in on the fire you would hear the fire song, and if you zoomed in on the MIBs, you would hear the MIB song. I'm sure that what they did do has been throughly tested and we will NOT have any bugs.
Hey, it happens. Some ideas just don't work out well. I've had that happen doing things in real life before.