Sim City 5

Page 14 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Wyndru

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2009
7,318
4
76
I bet single player will be playable offline in the future.

Is that possible though? I thought a large amount of the number crunching was being done on the servers, which is why it was designed without any single player element?

I was under the impression that your computer handled the graphics and the "cloud" handled the calculations of the sims and buildings.

Well, Maxis' Lucy Bradshaw has responded to this DRM food fight, sort of. Earlier comments on the always-on connection attributed it to the fact Maxis is building what it considers to be a multiplayer game. To this, Bradshaw adds the always-on connection is necessary because there's an enormous amount of cloud computing required to power this game, billed as the most advanced in SimCity's history. It's not something your individual PC will be able to handle on its own, not when the cloud servers are handling up to 100,000 Sims inside each city.

http://kotaku.com/5971235/cloud-com...ity-needs-an-always+on-connection-studio-says

I don't know why they require it to be done on a cloud though, what additional data are they calculating that wasn't in the previous games? There have been people in SC4 with a large tile containing 5 million sims, and while it was slow, it worked. And for a 10 year old game, that's impressive. I don't know why this game needs a cloud computing system to run it, but I don't think they will ever make it single player.

Unless they are referring to all of the tiles being active at the same time (multiple players logged into a region simultaneously). That I think is really cool and something I think will make this game shine, and it makes sense that you wouldn't be able to do that on a single PC.

But for single player they should have kept it simple, split up the tiles, and when you log out of one, it stops and you log into the new one. Maybe add a region wide time increment (not city simulation, just time) just to keep all of the tiles dates synchronized, and just estimate pollution carryover based on what buildings are close to the edge. Region play in SC4 was great and worked really well, other than the fact that the pollution didn't spread to neighbors and time stood still in regions when you weren't playing them.
 
Last edited:

Canbacon

Senior member
Dec 24, 2007
794
4
91
It is because the sims in the other games were individual workers. Each sim you see in the game are actual workers that the game tracks. They have jobs, create traffic, move water/oil/ore/waste around.

There was a video about how everything you see move around is a packet of information the game tracks instead of an arbitrary number from old games. I'll see if I can dig it up.
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
19,915
2
76
ostif.org
It is because the sims in the other games were individual workers. Each sim you see in the game are actual workers that the game tracks. They have jobs, create traffic, move water/oil/ore/waste around.

There was a video about how everything you see move around is a packet of information the game tracks instead of an arbitrary number from old games. I'll see if I can dig it up.

They still chose to cheap out on the engine and make everything single threaded.

They needed threading 10 years ago with simcity 4. In 2013 it is a hilariously bad decision.
 

Canbacon

Senior member
Dec 24, 2007
794
4
91
It is not that easy to do multi threading. Sounds great, not necessarily better in practice.

Again, a different Sim City thread on this board already talked about multi threading. I'm not going to dive into that area.
 

pcslookout

Lifer
Mar 18, 2007
11,959
156
106
It is because the sims in the other games were individual workers. Each sim you see in the game are actual workers that the game tracks. They have jobs, create traffic, move water/oil/ore/waste around.

There was a video about how everything you see move around is a packet of information the game tracks instead of an arbitrary number from old games. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Thanks. Did you find anything?
 

Dominato3r

Diamond Member
Aug 15, 2008
5,109
1
0
They still chose to cheap out on the engine and make everything single threaded.

They needed threading 10 years ago with simcity 4. In 2013 it is a hilariously bad decision.

OK it's not multi-threaded. Does it matter though if the game runs smooth?
 

pcslookout

Lifer
Mar 18, 2007
11,959
156
106
There to many people whining about EA on the internet right now. I refuse to take MetaCritic seriously with all the fake reviews.

If you ask me this is backlash from the pirate community that they can't crack the game.
 

irishScott

Lifer
Oct 10, 2006
21,562
3
0
They still chose to cheap out on the engine and make everything single threaded.

They needed threading 10 years ago with simcity 4. In 2013 it is a hilariously bad decision.

Given the variety, number and complexity of the interactions they're apparently trying to simulate, multi-threading outside of a very limited scope would be ridiculously complicated. You'd end up with what amounts to a single thread of short multi-threaded sequences, during which everything else would have to pause. Performance gains would be marginal at best.

Not saying it couldn't be done, but having some limited multi-threaded programming experience I can see how it could easily turn into a nightmare. Even if they got basic functionality I imagine there'd be bugs galore once millions of people started running millions of separate, interconnected simulations. It would be nigh impossible to properly test prior to release, and people are reporting bugs as it is.

I agree that the server-side number crunching is bullshit though; it's pretty hard to imagine a modern CPU outside of the low end that gets beat on performance and latency by some cloud server. IMO it's just an excuse for the most invasive DRM seen to date. At least they won't be able to blame piracy if it flops.
 

pcslookout

Lifer
Mar 18, 2007
11,959
156
106
There to many people whining about EA on the internet right now. I refuse to take MetaCritic seriously with all the fake reviews.

If you ask me this is backlash from the pirate community that they can't crack the game.
 

irishScott

Lifer
Oct 10, 2006
21,562
3
0
There to many people whining about EA on the internet right now. I refuse to take MetaCritic seriously with all the fake reviews.

If you ask me this is backlash from the pirate community that they can't crack the game.

You realise you just made the same post twice, 15 minutes apart, right?
 

pcslookout

Lifer
Mar 18, 2007
11,959
156
106
Given the variety, number and complexity of the interactions they're apparently trying to simulate, multi-threading outside of a very limited scope would be ridiculously complicated. You'd end up with what amounts to a single thread of short multi-threaded sequences, during which everything else would have to pause. Performance gains would be marginal at best.

Not saying it couldn't be done, but having some limited multi-threaded programming experience I can see how it could easily turn into a nightmare. Even if they got basic functionality I imagine there'd be bugs galore once millions of people started running millions of separate, interconnected simulations. It would be nigh impossible to properly test prior to release, and people are reporting bugs as it is.

I agree that the server-side number crunching is bullshit though; it's pretty hard to imagine a modern CPU outside of the low end that gets beat on performance and latency by some cloud server. IMO it's just an excuse for the most invasive DRM seen to date. At least they won't be able to blame piracy if it flops.


Exactly there is no way piracy can make this game flop it is impossible. That why they are so mad.

I think it is doing pretty well with how stressed the Origin servers are getting would love if they had a url like steam to see the server bandwidth load right now.
 
Sep 7, 2009
12,960
3
0
Exactly there is no way piracy can make this game flop it is impossible. That why they are so mad.

I think it is doing pretty well with how stressed the Origin servers are getting would love if they had a url like steam to see the server bandwidth load right now.

Gaurantee that EA will talk about the DRM as to why the same is so successful.
 

Maximilian

Lifer
Feb 8, 2004
12,604
15
81
There to many people whining about EA on the internet right now. I refuse to take MetaCritic seriously with all the fake reviews.

If you ask me this is backlash from the pirate community that they can't crack the game.

100% agreed

I mean look at this:



Its obvious the professional reviews are largely BS if they don't even remotely sync up with what the actual users are saying.

Brings me to this pic:

 

Dominato3r

Diamond Member
Aug 15, 2008
5,109
1
0
100% agreed

I mean look at this:



Its obvious the professional reviews are largely BS if they don't even remotely sync up with what the actual users are saying.

Brings me to this pic:


Fuck reviews honestly. I still enjoy Diablo 3 despite the ass-blasting it received.
 

gorcorps

aka Brandon
Jul 18, 2004
30,739
454
126
Fuck reviews honestly. I still enjoy Diablo 3 despite the ass-blasting it received.

The average of the professional reviews for D3 were positive (if I remember what metacritic showed). It was the users that destroyed that one.
 

Wyndru

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2009
7,318
4
76
Fuck reviews honestly. I still enjoy Diablo 3 despite the ass-blasting it received.

Yup.

For this game, I'm just going to wait until the dust settles and see what the simtropolis community thinks on their forums. A lot of serious SimCity players (and batters and modders) post over there, so it will be a good place for feedback (good or bad).

Oh, and the sandbox cheats are available too (although these were known during beta, so they might not work in release):

Here are all the sandbox mode cheat keys:
Toggle Fire On/Off ALT + F
Toggle Crime On/Off ALT + C
Toggle Health Issues On/Off ALT + M
Toggle Air Pollution On/Off ALT + A
Toggle Ground Pollution On/Off ALT + P
Toggle Homeless Sims On/Off ALT + H
Add §100,000 to City Budget ALT + W
Toggle Sewage On/Off ALT + S
 
Last edited:

silverpig

Lifer
Jul 29, 2001
27,703
12
81
OMFG model of the VIDEO CARD. The topic we're discussing and the one you're complaining about!

30 seconds of googling "N5110" shows that it's a Dell Inspiron N5110 laptop most likely. This comes with either a 1GB Nvidia GT525, or an Intel HD3000 graphics card.
 

pcslookout

Lifer
Mar 18, 2007
11,959
156
106
Yup.

For this game, I'm just going to wait until the dust settles and see what the simtropolis community thinks on their forums. A lot of serious SimCity players (and batters and modders) post over there, so it will be a good place for feedback (good or bad).

Oh, and the sandbox cheats are available too (although these were known during beta, so they might not work in release):

Here are all the sandbox mode cheat keys:
Toggle Fire On/Off ALT + F
Toggle Crime On/Off ALT + C
Toggle Health Issues On/Off ALT + M
Toggle Air Pollution On/Off ALT + A
Toggle Ground Pollution On/Off ALT + P
Toggle Homeless Sims On/Off ALT + H
Add §100,000 to City Budget ALT + W
Toggle Sewage On/Off ALT + S

Thanks.
 
Sep 7, 2009
12,960
3
0
30 seconds of googling "N5110" shows that it's a Dell Inspiron N5110 laptop most likely. This comes with either a 1GB Nvidia GT525, or an Intel HD3000 graphics card.


I was really more making a point of why the tech support people are so frustrated with this guy.
 
sale-70-410-exam    | Exam-200-125-pdf    | we-sale-70-410-exam    | hot-sale-70-410-exam    | Latest-exam-700-603-Dumps    | Dumps-98-363-exams-date    | Certs-200-125-date    | Dumps-300-075-exams-date    | hot-sale-book-C8010-726-book    | Hot-Sale-200-310-Exam    | Exam-Description-200-310-dumps?    | hot-sale-book-200-125-book    | Latest-Updated-300-209-Exam    | Dumps-210-260-exams-date    | Download-200-125-Exam-PDF    | Exam-Description-300-101-dumps    | Certs-300-101-date    | Hot-Sale-300-075-Exam    | Latest-exam-200-125-Dumps    | Exam-Description-200-125-dumps    | Latest-Updated-300-075-Exam    | hot-sale-book-210-260-book    | Dumps-200-901-exams-date    | Certs-200-901-date    | Latest-exam-1Z0-062-Dumps    | Hot-Sale-1Z0-062-Exam    | Certs-CSSLP-date    | 100%-Pass-70-383-Exams    | Latest-JN0-360-real-exam-questions    | 100%-Pass-4A0-100-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-300-135-exams-date    | Passed-200-105-Tech-Exams    | Latest-Updated-200-310-Exam    | Download-300-070-Exam-PDF    | Hot-Sale-JN0-360-Exam    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Exams    | 100%-Pass-JN0-360-Real-Exam-Questions    | Dumps-JN0-360-exams-date    | Exam-Description-1Z0-876-dumps    | Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps    | Dumps-HPE0-Y53-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-HPE0-Y53-Exam    | 100%-Pass-HPE0-Y53-Real-Exam-Questions    | Pass-4A0-100-Exam    | Latest-4A0-100-Questions    | Dumps-98-365-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-98-365-Exam    | 100%-Pass-VCS-254-Exams    | 2017-Latest-VCS-273-Exam    | Dumps-200-355-exams-date    | 2017-Latest-300-320-Exam    | Pass-300-101-Exam    | 100%-Pass-300-115-Exams    |
http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    | http://www.portvapes.co.uk/    |