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You're comparing apples and oranges. I'm sure the simulation engine in Sim Tower was wildly less complicated than in Sim City 5, or any other Sim City game afte

by morsch 14y ago

You're comparing apples and oranges. I'm sure the simulation engine in Sim Tower was wildly less complicated than in Sim City 5, or any other Sim City game after the original, for that matter. Honestly, I don't really care about following individual Sims in a Sim City game. It's out of scope. If anything, they went too far in that direction in the current Sim City game, wasting resources on individual entities as opposed to having a solid macro model. I assume that's why we ended up with these pathetic city sizes.

Ntrails 14y ago
But... now you can connect your city to that of your friends. That's far more fun than building a sprawling metropolis right?
- 46Bit 14y ago
  > But... now you can connect your city to that of your friends. That's far more fun than building a sprawling metropolis right? It's fun right up until the day your friends buy another $40 game to play. Then the game starts to die for you.
tiglionabbit 14y ago
Is SimTower really less complicated? They each have multiple methods of transportation. SimTower has stairs, escalators, elevators, and express elevators. You can see congestion as your sims' silhouettes pile up in front of elevators. To get to their destination, they can switch elevators once, and take four staircases/escalators. Sure everything is orthogonal and not curvy like SimCity5, but cities could be build that way too.
- morsch 14y ago
  I don't have any special insight into the internals of both games, so I can't say for sure. I certainly think you could make a tower management game that has a simulation engine that is just as complicated as SimCity 4 or 5. On the other hand, I think that in principle a game attempting to simulate, to a degree, an entire city is bound to offer more complexity than a game attempting to simulate the goings-on in a single building. I can make an argument from observation: Sim Tower is a 68030/386-era game, and from what I remember, my 68040 ran it very well. SimCity 4, OTOH, can still bring (a single core of) a modern CPU to its knees. Of course it's possible that SimTower was incredibly efficient and SC4 incredibly inefficient, but it seems much more likely that SimCity 4 is in fact vastly more complicated.
  - zaphoyd 14y ago
    Simtower definitely seemed to simulate individuals and had a population cap of 15-20k. Its path finding was drastically simpler though. Every floor (110 floors max) was essentially a single zone that could be crossed instantaneously so each person needed a path only from floor A to floor B. There were strict limits as well about how many transfers were allowed per path and how many total stairs, escalates, and elevators were build able. Sim City 4 allowed many millions of "people" on networks of significant complexity. The SimTower simulation was simple, satisfying, and relatively bug free. It also wasn't complex enough to continue to be satisfying for 10+ years the way SC4 has been.

by morsch 14y ago

Ntrails 14y ago

But... now you can connect your city to that of your friends. That's far more fun than building a sprawling metropolis right?

46Bit 14y ago
> But... now you can connect your city to that of your friends. That's far more fun than building a sprawling metropolis right? It's fun right up until the day your friends buy another $40 game to play. Then the game starts to die for you.

tiglionabbit 14y ago

Is SimTower really less complicated? They each have multiple methods of transportation. SimTower has stairs, escalators, elevators, and express elevators. You can see congestion as your sims' silhouettes pile up in front of elevators. To get to their destination, they can switch elevators once, and take four staircases/escalators. Sure everything is orthogonal and not curvy like SimCity5, but cities could be build that way too.

morsch 14y ago
I don't have any special insight into the internals of both games, so I can't say for sure. I certainly think you could make a tower management game that has a simulation engine that is just as complicated as SimCity 4 or 5. On the other hand, I think that in principle a game attempting to simulate, to a degree, an entire city is bound to offer more complexity than a game attempting to simulate the goings-on in a single building. I can make an argument from observation: Sim Tower is a 68030/386-era game, and from what I remember, my 68040 ran it very well. SimCity 4, OTOH, can still bring (a single core of) a modern CPU to its knees. Of course it's possible that SimTower was incredibly efficient and SC4 incredibly inefficient, but it seems much more likely that SimCity 4 is in fact vastly more complicated.
- zaphoyd 14y ago
  Simtower definitely seemed to simulate individuals and had a population cap of 15-20k. Its path finding was drastically simpler though. Every floor (110 floors max) was essentially a single zone that could be crossed instantaneously so each person needed a path only from floor A to floor B. There were strict limits as well about how many transfers were allowed per path and how many total stairs, escalates, and elevators were build able. Sim City 4 allowed many millions of "people" on networks of significant complexity. The SimTower simulation was simple, satisfying, and relatively bug free. It also wasn't complex enough to continue to be satisfying for 10+ years the way SC4 has been.