Cartoonish graphics will ruin this game

[qscott86]

I'm hoping Tilted Mill doesn't go the direction of City Life, Sim Theme Park, or other similar games and ruin it by using cartoonish graphics. Loyal Sim City fans want realistic looking cities like that of previous editions, not this unrealistic stuff. The screeenshots so far are highly disappointing.

[deathtopumpkins]

i agree with you. i couldn't believe it when i saw the first screenshots and theu were all cartoonish. I never played any of the other games because of the cartoonish graphics. The realism is what i like about simcity 4.

[prof786]

yeah i won't play it either if the game came out looking like that TODAY!!!!

however, the game will be released around christmas time. thus tilted mill will be working on it a lot more to improve the game.

remember: those are just initial screenshots. as time passes, they will get better. or bad things might happen.

[Greyleaf07]

The second round of screenshots are a lot more encouraging IMO. The dirty industry looks very similar to that of SC4. It's not perfect yet, but I have faith in this area at least - I think we'll see improvement as the game progresses, especially in the level of detail.

[AdrianWerner]

city Life wasn't cartoonish

[Gil]

I wonder why TM doesn't use the SC4 engine, we all love the possibilities with that engine, it makes it possible to use the old custom content without mouch trouble, gives great detail and possibilties. etc etc.

[Romaq]

Originally Posted by Gil

I wonder why TM doesn't use the SC4 engine, we all love the possibilities with that engine, it makes it possible to use the old custom content without mouch trouble, gives great detail and possibilties. etc etc.

There are certain problems and limitations with the SC4 engine. The biggest problem is that it isn't really '3d', though it may use a 3d rendering card. All sides of static objects are pre-rendered. Cities exist within a region, and the behavior of cities within a region is ... not so good. The SC4 engine doesn't really handle water above 'sea level'. Menu options for 3 Gig of custom content do not handle very well. 3G of custom content doesn't play nicely for regions that ought to have different land textures and behaviors. Even within a given large enough region, it simply isn't appropriate that all 3G if custom content apply across the entire region. I'm going to have to hack in 'concurrent multi-player support' using SubVersion, and at that I'll require the use of yet another third-party tool, the SC4 Startup Manager.

I have a big list on why the raw SC4 engine is simply *not* a good choice for SC5, but it's even more basic than that: SC4 was already done, so what would a whole new SimCity built from scratch be like using Winter 2008 technology? If *I* were designing SC5, I wouldn't be happy being forced to make a mere '3d upgrade' to SC4. SC4 was already done. So what's SC5 going to be like? I doubt the developers themselves know in detail, or will be entirely sure about it until this fall. I read Game Developer, and they have 'Post Mortems' about various games created in the industry. Post mortems make for a fun read, and I look forward to the Post Mortem on SC5.

Now… something that *might* be possible, and the Dev team should be politely encouraged to consider it. All of the SC4 custom lots *were* at one point full 3-D models in GMax Building Architect Tool (BAT). So long as the original author still has access to the models, it should be trivial to port *THOSE* into SC5. I’m not worried the least about SC5’s current ‘cartoony’ look. I’m much more concerned that SOMY, SimGoober and too many countless to name will still be able to produce their work in SC5. I want to see what the NAM team can do with SC5. Yes, SC5 needs to be popular enough to sell well and get the fan base going. SC5 needs to be attractive enough that the above giants of SC4 would *want* to port to SC5. But if SC5 doesn’t have the hooks to allow custom content, then no matter how great SC5 looks, it won’t be particularly interesting to the fan base that currently keeps SC4 alive.

So concerning SC5’s screenshots, there is a context (WAY freakin’ early in the development cycle) and there are priorities (having ‘something’ to show, decisions on what custom content to allow if any). With no word on custom content made official, how SC5 ‘looks’ at this stage doesn’t bother me. What and end user can *do* about the looks bothers me a great deal.

--Romaq

[Chris Beatrice]

Originally Posted by Romaq

I read Game Developer, and they have 'Post Mortems' about various games created in the industry. Post mortems make for a fun read...

Yeah, I get a kick out of reading other developers' post mortems too.