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Maxis Games & The Flu Thursday, January 31, 2008

#1 User is offline   Chefelf Icon

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Posted 31 January 2008 - 06:28 PM

Maxis Games & The Flu

I have the flu. My body temperature, which which is normally around 96-97 degrees (for some reason), is up over 100 degrees and I am forced to remain at home lounging around. That's not so bad. The only way I can tell the difference between this and a normal day at home is by the dizziness, body aches, coughing and uncontrollable runny nose. I went to the hospital yesterday morning where they confirmed what I already knew: I have a temperature and need to rest. That was only after making me wait around in a noisy waiting room where some kids were loudly singing The Itsy-Bitsy Spider and then giving me two throat cultures. Why two throat cultures? Why gag on one giant Q-tip when you can gag on two giant Q-tips?

When I got home from the hospital I was forced to figure out what to do with my day. Even when sick I'm not very good at just lying around watching TV. This brought me back to the summer of 2000. That summer I got the worst flu of my life which left me in a state of near death for two straight weeks. During that time I was giving myself liberal doses of DayQuil and cough medicine and actually started to hallucinate at one point. Whether the hallucinations were from the illness or the combination of medications I an not sure.

The only thing that got me through that rough time in 2000 was the recently released Maxis game, The Sims. The Sims was an amazing game that was not only a lot of fun to play but it also seemed to make time move at an incredible rate of speed. I played The Sims for 12 hours a day while pausing every few minutes to hack my brains out or take another swig of cough medicine.

Recalling these happy memories I decided to brush off my old disc of SimCity 3000 yesterday and give another Maxis classic a sickly play through. There's something therapeutic about micro-managing the development of an entire city that just seems to make those hours of coughing and sneezing just fly by. My city, Letharotix, is developing quite nicely and just about to hit the 100,000 mark in population. I've pretty delicately balanced the needs of all my various advisers while making a tidy profit each fiscal year. I eventually had to scrap the toxic waste dump that was bringing in 400 simoleons a month due to repeated rioting.

The only things I haven't been able to work out are: how to build a bridge (it shouldn't be hard, right?); how to keep a water deal with a neighboring city (I'm convinced it's impossible); and how to get my sims to stop complaining about there not being adequate transportation between residential, commercial and industrial zones. Apparently 27 bus stops, a subway system, roads and above ground trains are not enough ways for my citizens to get travel from their idyllic residential communities to the landfills, toxic waste dumps and nuclear power plants where they work.

Will my crappy city get better? My guess is that as long as this virus thrives in my system, so too shall Letharotix, City of Sickness.

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#2 User is offline   Jordan Icon

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Posted 31 January 2008 - 07:41 PM

Great stuff!

I love sim games, been playing them since I was 9. Simcity 3000 suffers from a few bugs, like never making people happy. Bridgies depend on how deep the water is your crossing!

If you want a more improved version of simcity, one that will CURE your fly, then Simcity 4 is for you.

This game is the best simcity todate and the best part is the STEX.

www.simtropolis.com

There You are able to get access to the Simtropolis Exchange. 1000's of regular joes submit their building designs. Everything from commercial, bustops, powerplants, roads, bridges, foilage, etc.. The game is open ended and allows artisitic users to replace the generic, yet still nice, buildings in simcity with their own.


Oh SMEG. What the smeggity smegs has smeggins done? He smeggin killed me. - Lister of Smeg, space bum
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Posted 31 January 2008 - 08:15 PM

I've been dying to try out SimCity 4. I've also wanted to give SimCity Societies a try. I'm just wondering if my computer will be able to handle either of them as it's pushing the 5 year mark.
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Posted 31 January 2008 - 08:45 PM

QUOTE (Chefelf @ Jan 31 2008, 06:28 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
how to get my sims to stop complaining about there not being adequate transportation between residential, commercial and industrial zones. Apparently 27 bus stops, a subway system, roads and above ground trains are not enough ways for my citizens to get travel from their idyllic residential communities to the landfills, toxic waste dumps and nuclear power plants where they work.

Wow...citizens complaining endlessly about public transit? It's just like real life!
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Posted 31 January 2008 - 09:55 PM

I'd recommend getting a flu shot. Of course, knowing New York (which I don't), you'd probably have to wait 2 hours and pay $200 for one.
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#6 User is offline   Jordan Icon

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Posted 01 February 2008 - 01:40 PM

QUOTE
I've been dying to try out SimCity 4. I've also wanted to give SimCity Societies a try. I'm just wondering if my computer will be able to handle either of them as it's pushing the 5 year mark.


Ug, thats the one flaw of simcity 4. It relies on your processing power more than your video card!

The minimum requirements for the game are totally inaccurate. My comp gets laggy when my city gets really big but my cpu is a shit peice.

You'll need a decent rig to run it. Unlike simcity 3000, Simcity 4 allows you to build up not just one city, but an entire state or province. You can design a vast peice of land then break it out into mulitple working squares. On these squares you can build small farming towns or big cities, then you can connect them up with airports, trains, highways etc...

In my province, I have a small farming area, a suburb type area, and a big city. And I've only covered 5% of my total working map! The big city has been WIP for 5 years. I built the small farming town up in a few months. This is one thing I love about simcity, it's like a giant canvas that you can keep touching up whenever you feel like it. I still have a city saved on a floppy disk from Simcity, Simcity 2000, and on a CD I have a back up of my Simcity 3000 metropolis. I love looking at my city on SC4 and remembering that I built up the small university town, nestled near the ocean, 4 years ago! I just recently added a disease center to it's already abundent HIGH TECH quarter.

http://www.stage6.co...sales-promotion

That link gives you an ok feel for how the game looks. But the ability to import customized buildings that people have created is what makes this game kick ass. There are a few really good artists into W2W or wall to wall european architecture, on the STEX. My city builds medium residential to look like old new york and the dense residential bulits up awesome skyscrapers that look very modern.

Also, it's kind of a stupid gimmick, but you can import your sims to live in certain areas of your city and they tell you how their life is IE commute time, job market, polution, crime etc.. Rush Hour is a good expansion pack to SC4 since it boosts up your ability to make highways and other transportation centers, but it too comes with a stupid gimmick.. You can select a car or plane, currently in your city, and drive around. It's pretty weak

This post has been edited by Jordan: 01 February 2008 - 01:48 PM

Oh SMEG. What the smeggity smegs has smeggins done? He smeggin killed me. - Lister of Smeg, space bum
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Posted 05 February 2008 - 05:20 AM

QUOTE (Chefelf @ Jan 31 2008, 11:28 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Maxis Games & The Flu
The only things I haven't been able to work out are: how to build a bridge (it shouldn't be hard, right?); how to keep a water deal with a neighboring city (I'm convinced it's impossible); and how to get my sims to stop complaining about there not being adequate transportation between residential, commercial and industrial zones. Apparently 27 bus stops, a subway system, roads and above ground trains are not enough ways for my citizens to get travel from their idyllic residential communities to the landfills, toxic waste dumps and nuclear power plants where they work.


I think I tried a demo of SC3K a couple of years ago, and in my current spirit of Downloading Games I Played Years ago, I downloaded it and gave it a whirl. Now here's me pretending to be helpful.

- Just drag a length of road, highway, rail, whatever, across the water, and wiggle it a bit until it turns blue. I think that both sideds have to be the same height, and possibly the same shape coatline, but its a bit hit and miss.
- Every deal I make, they always demand more than I can provide. Normally, accepting garbage deals turns half my city into a landfill site, or requires 20 incinerators. Its very annoying.
- Build more roads, naturally. biggrin.gif
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