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[Jinaar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yySa34R0D_4

This was posted a page ago but wow, at 0:50 seconds mark, the cars heading down do an illegal U Turn, even the cars in the far right lane!!! WHAT THE FUK! Then the rest of the cars go straight down as per normal real world situations. What the heck is going on here!?!?! What does this simulate? This is bazaar.

"I made a huge mistake, I'll just do a U Turn here and hope the cars in the left lane next to me don't T Bone me while I drive into them."

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Arthur, what the flying fuck? Please stop. Please. Why is he so vocal about it? Is he pissed that they had to reduce the score of the review? He didn't even review it!

I'm sorry, but the moment these so-called gaming journalists defend every action of a company, it doesn't matter whether they represent the company or not; his actions are questionable even after been proven wrong countless amount of times.

Maybe he applied for a PR position and wants to show how dedicated he is, who the fuck knows. Admit it that you're wrong and move on. That or admit that the information available is very limited and that he may be wrong but he is willing to leave the matter behind.

Having a fancy website financed by a major corp doesn't make your opinion any better, but it's painful to read it right now.

Good grief.

 

[Mengy]

How can You say that it is more accurate, when You just said its less accurate? In Simcity 5 You have real-time changes every day, not every week/months and actual goods deliveries are done real-time, what is produced in factory/shop goes out in real-time by agents and is delivered to clients - thats all simulated, when in SC4 You had statistical approximation every few days for that data. Reemploying citizens everyday is not realistic, but it definitely gives better precision of simulation overall.

That's the problem, it's not giving a more realistic overall simulation. Simcity 5's design is creating "herds" of cars all rushing towards one empty house or one available job, then the next, and then the next, every day. Roads and avenues remain open with no traffic at all while other roads are congested into the red simply because it's the shortest path available to the "next" house or job. Simcity 4 never suffered this phenomenon, not even before Rush Hour and certainly not after the NAM mod.

Simcity 5 may be more enoyable to watch when it luckily happens to work right, but any large city is going to have traffic problems with this model. Not realistic traffic problems, stupid silly traffic problems.

In the overall modeling sense, yes Simcity 4 produces more realistic traffic patterns and data. Graphically, Simcity 5 wins. The question is which style do you prefer in your city simulation game?

 

[KKRT00]

He's obviously talking about the results. And the more astract simulation of Sim City 4 produced results closer to real-life behavior than the more complex simulation in Sim City 5 apparently does. It's the results that matter.

Yeah, results could be better, if algorithm behind more precise model is bad or have some bugs, but he hasnt proved it in his post. He just wrote about stuff that SimCity 5 simulates too, but everyday, instead of every week/month.

 

[gutterboy44]

So much could be fixed if we were allowed to designate one way streets. You know, like every major city ever.

 

[WedgeX]

How can You say that it is more accurate, when You just said its less accurate? In Simcity 5 You have real-time changes every day, not every week/months and actual goods deliveries are done real-time, what is produced in factory/shop goes out in real-time by agents and is delivered to clients - thats all simulated, when in SC4 You had statistical approximation every few days for that data. Reemploying citizens everyday is not realistic, but it definitely gives better precision of simulation overall.

Real people stay in jobs and houses for months at a time, and don't migrate and switch jobs daily. Real people also take the same, regular routes to and from places they regularly visit. When agents representing people are migrating from house a to job a to house b to job b...that's not precision in terms of how humans act. It's not precision at all, it's missing the point of the human experience entirely.

 

[Aquamarine]

Arthur, what the flying fuck? Please stop. Please. Why is he so vocal about it? Is he pissed that they had to reduce the score of the review? He didn't even review it!

I'm sorry, but the moment these so-called gaming journalists defend every action of a company, it doesn't matter whether they represent the company or not; his actions are questionable even after been proven wrong countless amount of times.

Maybe he applied for a PR position and wants to show how dedicated he is, who the fuck knows. Admit it that you're wrong and move on. That or admit that the information available is very limited and that he may be wrong but he is willing to leave the matter behind.

Having a fancy website financed by a major corp doesn't make your opinion any better, but it's painful to read it right now.

Good grief.

Gotta defend Polygon's "street cred."

 

[Twinduct]

So that pathfinding patch released yet?
Living in Gridlock City so would love to do a 'before' and 'after' thingie.

 

[KKRT00]

That's the problem, it's not giving a more realistic overall simulation. Simcity 5's design is creating "herds" of cars all rushing towards one empty house or one available job, then the next, and then the next, every day. Roads and avenues remain open with no traffic at all while other roads are congested into the red simply because it's the shortest path available to the "next" house or job. Simcity 4 never suffered this phenomenon, not even before Rush Hour and certainly not after the NAM mod.

Simcity 5 may be more enoyable to watch when it luckily happens to work right, but any large city is going to have traffic problems with this model. Not realistic traffic problems, stupid silly traffic problems.

In the overall modeling sense, yes Simcity 4 produces more realistic traffic patterns and data. Graphically, Simcity 5 wins. The question is which style do you prefer in your city simulation game?

You know that path-finding in SimCity 4 is almost exactly the same as in SimCity 5? Its using A* algorithm, when in SimCity 5 is using D*.
http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:Understanding_the_Traffic_Simulator
What is different, is traffic wage system for roads and global statistic.

--

Real people stay in jobs and houses for months at a time, and don't migrate and switch jobs daily. Real people also take the same, regular routes to and from places they regularly visit. When agents representing people are migrating from house a to job a to house b to job b...that's not precision in terms of how humans act. It's not precision at all, it's missing the point of the human experience entirely.

It would be true if statistical data and patterns searching worked exactly like You would imagine, but its not. House to work patterns that happen every week work exactly the same in Simcity 4 and 5.

And i can agree that searching for nearest house/job change traffic behavior generally, but in established city the traffic will be similar if they search for house every time or get back to the same house every time, in cases when most sims do not live in the farther residential zones.

 

[Foffy]

Gies has a NeoGAF account, has he even used it at all during this debacle? He looks like a jester, except he forgot the attire.

 

[rohlfinator]

We need performance tests for agents scheduling. Everyone here wants bigger spaces for city, but are theirs 4 cores processors ready for it? Because i think that for 3 times bigger city plot, You will need at least 4 cores processor [my is ready btw ].
You need to understand that they are calculating at least 50k agents in real time and on speeds from 1x to 3x and with bigger cities amount of agents will increase drastically.

Maxis has already said that the main game loop runs on a single thread, so it's not going to make any real difference whether you have 2 cores or 20 cores.

 

[inky]

Arthur, what the flying fuck? Please stop. Please. Why is he so vocal about it? Is he pissed that they had to reduce the score of the review? He didn't even review it!

He's just counting the hours, man. You guys are just making it hard on him finding all these bugs and shit they completely missed.

 

[BolognaSoup]

Gies was the "badass" from that polygon video who was getting getting a totally edgy tattoo while talking about new games journalism, right?

Yes and if you listen to his podcast he's the guy that always sounds like he hates living and is annoyed/angry at everything. He comes across as the guy that walks around the high school hallways with his arms turned out thinking "I'm so hard" (you know, kinda like his Polygon avatar). His discussion about games he's playing on RebelFM essentially boils down to this game either is or is not an "abortion" with about 2.5 F-bombs per sentence, and you can almost feel him roll his eyes every time any mobile platform game is mentioned.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

He's just counting the hours, man. You guys are just making it hard on him finding all these bugs and shit they completely missed.

Now, he has to be fishing the thread and seeing who bites. I'm convinced of it.

 

[nbthedude]

Yes and if you listen to his podcast he's the guy that always sounds like he hates living and is annoyed/angry at everything. He comes across as the guy that walks around the high school hallways with his arms turned out thinking "I'm so hard" (you know, kinda like his Polygon avatar). His discussion about games he's playing on RebelFM essentially boils down to this game either is or is not an "abortion" with about 2.5 F-bombs per sentence, and you can almost feel him roll his eyes every time any mobile platform game is mentioned.

It is true. I have been listening to Rebel FM since Phil Kollar and Nick Suttner started it after 1upFM was killed when they were fired. You basically nail Arthur's persona.

I genuinely try to give most people some slack, but Arthur is the guy who acts so cocksure most of the time that it is honestly enjoyable to see him taken down a peg or two. If you act all tough and abrassive that just gives people more reason to want to see you be torn down. His faux "I'm your leather daddy" shit is annoying as hell.

By comparison, for example, if Anthony Gallegos or Phil Kollar was wrong about something, I would not at all feel the same kind of schadenfreude. Then again, they are not the kind of guys that double down on abrasive stupidity when someone calls them out.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Now, he has to be fishing the thread and seeing who bites. I'm convinced of it.

Yep. Dude has to be trolling.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

From now on, I'm refering to him by "Vinny's Evil Twin" for this final straw. They look the same, dress the same, but Vinny takes games and gives us stuff like this. The Evil Twin takes games and gives us stuff like this.

 

[Mengy]

You know that path-finding in SimCity 4 is almost exactly the same as in SimCity 5? Its using A* algorithm, when in SimCity 5 is using D*.
http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:Understanding_the_Traffic_Simulator
What is different, is traffic wage system for roads and global statistic.

Pathfinding in Simcity 4 is most certainly not the same as in Simcity 5.

Here is a quick and dirty traffic test city I just whipped up in Simcity 4:

Now, I have a street and an avenue connecting the residential to the industry. The shortest and most direct route is the street, while the avenue is longer distance wise but faster to travel time wise. Now in Simcity 5 all of the traffic would ignore the avenue completely. Lets see what happens in Simcity 4:

Now I ask you, which game's traffic model is more realistic? And are they both the same?

 

[VibratingDonkey]

Now, he has to be fishing the thread and seeing who bites. I'm convinced of it.

Well, "now"... Timestamps don't update on screencaps you know.
Why it's scribbled over I imagine.

Twitter is terrible at timelines and archiving, you literally have to scroll through every single tweet to go back in time, or am I missing something? He didn't post that tweet after March 8th at least, unless he deleted it.

 

[Jac_Solar]

Huh? Your video is making my point. In Simcity 4, you don't ever see cars go home. All you ever see is a bunch of arrows indicated by the route query tool. All the "cars" you see on the roads are just placeholder animated objects that aren't going anywhere.

But that didn't bother anyone. We all just assumed that they went home as usual. It's our mind filling in the blanks, and because of that, we assume that our mind fills in the blanks correctly and attribute that to the game accordingly.

FYI, the sims in SimCity 4 got jobs the same way as the sims in SimCity 5 do. SimCity4 sims never had permanent employment either. Everytime the work commute pathfinding tool would make a new calculation, each residential area was reanalyzed and new routes to work were generated for each building lot. The sims in SC4 got new jobs every cycle too.

They would get new homes each cycle too, if morning and evening commute weren't part of the same calculation.

But like I said, no one really gives a shit because it all plays out in a way that makes sense in our heads. There is nobody going nowhere in actuality. It's all values on a spreadsheet. With SimCity 5, the more complex engine has to generate sims going places. We can't just imagine it anymore, and inevitably, the software is going to make the sims do things that to our own mind seem stupid. The only reason we notice it more is because we are taking less things on assumption and seeing the game play them out in front of our eyes, rather than us doing it in our own heads.

I understand that storing every single Sim's job information would cause extreme lag, but would it be possible to have a system where every house is assigned a value that corresponds to a workplace as it's built?

Like, house;1=workplace;1, and so on. A complex with many sims would be like house;1-25=workplace;1. A massive building with thousands of sims would work like thousands of homes, as in it would be assigned a range of value and given several different jobs. Perhaps the large buildings could work on a different range of values, and the buildings themselves could be told to either host large groups of people, or split them off into smaller groups to support a wide range of workplaces.

If the house is destroyed, the values would automatically correct themselves, and if you built a new house, it'd start at the bottom and push the values up.

When a sim leaves his home, he is assigned the value of his home. In the case of complexes, they would be assigned a random range of values as they leave.

If a sim is somehow prevented from going to his assigned workplace, like the road that leads to his workplace is destroyed, he would return to his home and stay there til the next morning. If the road is still destroyed, he would return to his home, and so forth, until it's fixed.

 

[solarus]

Polygon stands as a steaming turd shrine representing gaming journalism today. Gies please shut up.

 

[Haunted]

Gies pushing hard for that EA community manager job? Or maybe he has family working at Maxis? Or maybe he just prefers to double down hard instead of backing off.

I mean there has to be some sort of explanation for this.

 

[Zemm]

Yep. Dude has to be trolling.

No idea why the person that posted that erased the date, Gies doesn't need help to look like an idiot, but that was posted when they first lowered the review score to an 8.

 

[MarkusRJR]

Damn, I don't even know how I should react to Arthur. He's either trolling hardcore or he's just...

 

[avaya]

Gies isn't trolling, after the Durango special sauce intifada he is definitely a bit of a prize cretin.

No doubt most of the gaming media are not objective, they act like classic shills. Tech media in general but this is an acknowledged issue amongst marketing professionals. Firms are paying for reviews and press one way or another.

 

[Kill Your Masters]

Gies isn't trolling, after the Durango special sauce intifada he is definitely a bit of a prize cretin.

No doubt most of the gaming media are not objective, they act like classic shills. Tech media in general but this is an acknowledged issue amongst marketing professionals. Firms are paying for reviews and press one way or another.

Seems to me that most people become gaming journalists so they get connections in the industry plus free games and goodies.

 

[Huw_Dawson]

Polygon is now on my blacklist, alongside Kotaku. Just ignore hacks. The fact that this moron called out RPS for making stuff up, who are a thousand leagues superior in quality, is sad.

 

[inky]

No idea why the person that posted that erased the date, Gies doesn't need help to look like an idiot, but that was posted when they first lowered the review score to an 8.

I erased the date because I didn't want to give the impression it was posted recently (you can still tell it says 8 mins, as in 8 minutes ago). But yes, it was posted back then, the screen was just taken 8 minutes after that by someone else. I took the image from the other Polygon thread. Should've added a disclaimer or something I guess.

That doesn't make what he said any less true, he wants the score back up.

 

[MarkusRJR]

Polygon is now on my blacklist, alongside Kotaku. Just ignore hacks. The fact that this moron called out RPS for making stuff up, who are a thousand leagues superior in quality, is sad.

Yup. I honestly feel this deserves a new thread for how insanely stupid this whole Polygon situation is.

 

[enzo_gt]

When (unless they have already, but it doesn't seem so) hackers crack this game open for offline play with saving, it's going to be all over. I mean the writing has been on the wall forever, and EAs sudden silence on being proven hypocrites is enough of an indication, but I don't expect EA to do what they need to do to salvage this game, or more importantly, the franchise.

 

[Jomjom]

Gies is such a douchebag. Is it really that hard to just apologize his readers (YOU KNOW THE PEOPLE WHO ARE THE ONLY REASON YOU EVEN HAVE A JOB!) because he essentially called them idiots for questioning if SimCity could be played offline.

I mean something along a short and sweet tweet of "Sorry for my initial tweet, turns out I was the one who didn't know anything" would probably do a lot to make things right with everyone who's mad at him.

I honestly don't know why I still subscribe to RebelFM. It's probably because I like hearing what Anthony has to say, but Arthur is just horrible on the podcast. Matt just parrots everything Arthur says as he doesn't really seem to know much about games (but does seem to know a lot about video editing).

 

[Wickerbasket]

Yup. I honestly feel this deserves a new thread for how insanely stupid this whole Polygon situation is.

New thread for new news. I think this qualifies.

 

[Black Door]

What is it about EA that makes game journalists stupid? First the ME 3 "entitlement" crap last year, giving DA2 perfect scores the year before that, and now this.

 

[enzo_gt]

What is it about EA that makes game journalists stupid? First the ME 3 "entitlement" crap last year, giving DA2 perfect scores the year before that, and now this.

The ME3 thing was the most shocking to me, to be honest. Anyone who was a gamer and had stuck with the franchise for that long knew in how many ways what happened to ME3 was wrong. It could be objectively be argued as being bad because it contradicted so much of what they had built and stood by, yet somehow journalists found a way to spin it. That was a dark time. It's still a dark time.

 

[jyoung188]

It is true. I have been listening to Rebel FM since Phil Kollar and Nick Suttner started it after 1upFM was killed when they were fired. You basically nail Arthur's persona.

I genuinely try to give most people some slack, but Arthur is the guy who acts so cocksure most of the time that it is honestly enjoyable to see him taken down a peg or two. If you act all tough and abrassive that just gives people more reason to want to see you be torn down. His faux "I'm your leather daddy" shit is annoying as hell.

By comparison, for example, if Anthony Gallegos or Phil Kollar was wrong about something, I would not at all feel the same kind of schadenfreude. Then again, they are not the kind of guys that double down on abrasive stupidity when someone calls them out.

This. I still listen to rebel fm because I like Anthony, but Arthur really brings the podcast down. This whole debacle is so delicious.

 

[Philia]

What is it about EA that makes game journalists stupid? First the ME 3 "entitlement" crap last year, giving DA2 perfect scores the year before that, and now this.

Easy.

 

[Dali]

It is true. I have been listening to Rebel FM since Phil Kollar and Nick Suttner started it after 1upFM was killed when they were fired. You basically nail Arthur's persona.

I genuinely try to give most people some slack, but Arthur is the guy who acts so cocksure most of the time that it is honestly enjoyable to see him taken down a peg or two. If you act all tough and abrassive that just gives people more reason to want to see you be torn down. His faux "I'm your leather daddy" shit is annoying as hell.

By comparison, for example, if Anthony Gallegos or Phil Kollar was wrong about something, I would not at all feel the same kind of schadenfreude. Then again, they are not the kind of guys that double down on abrasive stupidity when someone calls them out.

Wouldnt he be your pleather daddy then?

 

[QuicheFontaine]

All these SimCity threads have been so entertaining.

I want MORE, and I know I shouldn't...

 

[KKRT00]

Pathfinding in Simcity 4 is most certainly not the same as in Simcity 5.

Here is a quick and dirty traffic test city I just whipped up in Simcity 4:



Now, I have a street and an avenue connecting the residential to the industry. The shortest and most direct route is the street, while the avenue is longer distance wise but faster to travel time wise. Now in Simcity 5 all of the traffic would ignore the avenue completely. Lets see what happens in Simcity 4:



Now I ask you, which game's traffic model is more realistic? And are they both the same?

Its the same algorithm for finding closest path, problem with SimCity 5 is that it doesnt count traffic or road wage for additional condition, which they are adding in patch after whole media coverage.

 

[Septimius]

Its the same algorithm for finding closest path, problem with SimCity 5 is that it doesnt count traffic or road wage for additional condition, which they are adding in patch after whole media coverage.

That's the same as saying it's a shortest path-finding algorithm.

 

[Dali]

Its the same algorithm for finding closest path, problem with SimCity 5 is that it doesnt count traffic or road wage for additional condition, which they are adding in patch after whole media coverage.

I parse that as "its the same except one works reasonably well and the other doesn't".

 

[Effect]

There is still the issue of being able to track the various people that travel around the city. Given the size and the number of people in a given city at any time during it's creation is it possible to fix?

Do you assign sims/people locations right from the start? Or would you only start establishing a sims home and place of work upon initially following it? I would assume the second option would cause a save file for a city to start increasing in size dramatically as you started to follow more and more people.

 

[Pociask]

There is still the issue of being able to track the various people that travel around the. Given what size and the number of people in a given city at any time during it's creation is it possible to fix?

Do you assigne sims locations right from the start? Or would you only start establishing a sims home and place of work upon initially following it? I would assume the second option would cause a save file for a city to start increasing in size dramatically as you started to follow more and more sims.

You know, I think if they did actually do a Sim-based Sim City (that is, a sim city where the player was interacting with thousands of autonomous artificial intelligences), it would be so awesome to see the kind of behavior that emerged that the population size wouldn't be as important. Call it Sim Town if you have to.

 

[Rapstah]

Do you assigne sims locations right from the start? Or would you only start establishing a sims home and place of work upon initially following it? I would assume the second option would cause a save file for a city to start increasing in size dramatically as you started to follow more and more sims.

Hey, a perfect excuse to cloud host your saves then.

 

[Acerac]

You know, I think if they did actually do a Sim-based Sim City (that is, a sim city where the player was interacting with thousands of autonomous artificial intelligences), it would be so awesome to see the kind of behavior that emerged that the population size wouldn't be as important. Call it Sim Town if you have to.

It was a rather fun game. Not nearly as cool as SimCity2000 but it seems much more in line with the goals this new SimCity seems to strive for.

 

[mavs]

Its the same algorithm for finding closest path, problem with SimCity 5 is that it doesnt count traffic or road wage for additional condition, which they are adding in patch after whole media coverage.

The algorithm is a relative of the one used in SC4, but SC2013 uses it much differently:

Path-based Routing
• Virtual Distance Field
• D*-Lite based algorithm - wavefront updates
• Calculates cost-to-nearest-sink at vertices
• Steer towards vertex with least cost
• No per-agent routing info
• Distance modified by
• Sink strength: advertises a capacity
• Modifiers such as congestion and speed limit

No agents in SC4, thus no wavefront, and per-source routing info is necessary. SC2013 would look much like SC4 if there was per-agent routing info.

 

[FieryBalrog]

Its the same algorithm for finding closest path, problem with SimCity 5 is that it doesnt count traffic or road wage for additional condition, which they are adding in patch after whole media coverage.

So, it's not the same?

 

[FieryBalrog]

Huh? Your video is making my point. In Simcity 4, you don't ever see cars go home. All you ever see is a bunch of arrows indicated by the route query tool. All the "cars" you see on the roads are just placeholder animated objects that aren't going anywhere.

His point is that this has nothing to do with Uncanny Valley. It has to do with the simulation results being a gross distortion of what happens in a real city, in ways that feel particularly stupid and inaccurate (like every fire truck rushing to a fire and then traveling in a mass herd to the next fire).

That's not Uncanny Valley.

Also, while you could argue that an in-depth simulation has to deal with more unexpected results and potential errors, it's hard to tell when that in-depth simulation is coded in such an obviously shit way. There is a degree of laziness here that doesn't even allow us to see if there are any weird emergent corner cases, because the "weird emergent corner case" is actually "the thing the game does 100% of the time because fuck it, we can't be bothered to actually iterate on our model until it resembles something people care about."

This is like the first draft you start with as a conceptual sketch or a early prototype you do as proof of concept. You don't finish your game as a system that models everything from traffic to power to people going to businesses as a very basic riff on the same simple algorithm.

 

[endresults]

How did the way firetrucks behave even make it through alpha? Woe to any city with a few fires burning at once.

 

[Revven]

There is still the issue of being able to track the various people that travel around the city. Given the size and the number of people in a given city at any time during it's creation is it possible to fix?

They wouldn't need the max amount of population (meaning every Sim you could ever have) to each have their own unique identity. No sane human being is going to follow *every* Sim.

At best, you only need about 100 or so unique Sims for players to have specific information on. What 100 Sims those are in a city would be determined by the game. I can't imagine that much being impossible to code, let alone actually construct to make their vision of following Sims a reality.

Instead, they decided to take the lazy route and not have any uniquely persisting Sims you can follow.

Oh and let's not forget that the population values on the UI are fake. I recall someone saying the UI # was 200k for them but when they changed the code to show the real pop # it was actually 15k. So, given that, 100 unique Sims to follow within a possible 15k populated city isn't that bad.