Talk:SimCity

Experiences

This ran well on the B4 machine that we have (build 623). The only oddness was that the activity remained on the donut (can't remember the official name), after I quit. I had to go and end the activity from the home view too. I think it's really great that SimCity is being ported onto the OLPC. Games will make or break this project I suspect... Now we just need "Granny's Garden"... --Tomhannen 19:35, 13 November 2007 (EST)

Thanks for the experience report. We think we've found that bug, and it'll be fixed for the real release. --gnu

On a B4 machine with joyride 335, the activity runs a second, blank nameless icon in the donut. From the donut view, resuming the SimCity activity brings up a blank grey screen while resuming the nameless icon resumes the activity. Also, the activity goes back to the main simcity screen (Load city, gen terrain, quit, about, ...) randomly during gameplay and will not save progress during play. The directory where the city files reside was not writable by the activity. Once I changed permissions on the folder and the city files, I am able to play without interruptions and can save games. --Ewheeler 23 December 2007

kind of anti-science

Come on now, melt-downs?

SimCity comes from an irrational anti-nuke era. Coal power kills lots more people than nuclear does, but you'd never know it from the game. (coal mine collapses, train derailments, dust explosions, smog-induced lung problems, mercury in our food...) The new political correctness is that coal power causes floods, though even that is far from scientificly proven.

After decades of nuclear power use, we've seen exactly one disaster. (really: Three Mile Island was nothing) Chernobal was a horrible design. It was naturally unstable, partly so that it could quickly be converted to weapons production. It was flammable. It had no containment dome. The safety systems were manually disabled. Clueless people, under orders to get things done quickly, purposely messed with the settings in ways that one should not.

If the game needs balance w/o meltdowns: nuclear power is unable to quickly respond to load spikes. This means that it can not provide 100% of the power. Also because of that, when a big chunk of the grid (demand side) gets cut off, a nuclear plant shuts down and doesn't come back up for a day or so.

24.110.145.202 02:39, 23 November 2007 (EST)

I think it is a great game. It is only a model, and models will never be perfect emulations. Your criticisms might form a perfect lesson - why is SimCity imperfect? Where does the model break down, etc, etc.. It is only supposed to get people thinking about planning, design, geography, and interconnectedness. --Tomhannen 08:57, 23 November 2007 (EST)

port troubles

The problem maps are important. (crime, fire coverage, police coverage, pollution, etc.)

I kind of miss the music.

Music! Yes. All we need are free licks. We could probably get the original music released, once we make a big deal out of this; we were focusing on getting the code out there for people to work on, particularly to localize it into spanish, thai, amharic, &c. i18n is about 6 months out, unless someone new steps up to do it, but that will be a real delight.

The touchpad is hopeless. If there is a way to draw non-wiggly lines, please say so. Running rail and power square-by-square is really slow.

Scaling the tiles up would really help. To start, go with 2x. The tools also need scaling up. The fonts need to be bigger... there is a pattern here. :-) 24.110.145.202 02:50, 23 November 2007 (EST)

I agree totally on the scale issue -- it would be great to add a single-key zoom feature, that will move you in and out around the latest point of focus. Sj talk

port suggestions

I think it would be fabulous to first put back some of the networking that Don worked on years ago (taken out from this release b/c they are here).

Then, take advantage of being on a local network. Assume that people around you have some geolocation, and that you have more influence over regions that are close to you... perhaps developments cost less.

In order to expand their territory in some direction, they have to put themselves in the right part of their environment. Perhaps in order to form certain partnerships with other players, they have to physically meet as well! Sj talk 10:33, 30 November 2007 (EST)