CITIES XL DEMO AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

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[City Builder]

I know this isn't supposed to be available until Sep 8, 2009 but apparently it is now.

Available here: http://www.bigdownload.com/games/cities-xl/pc/cities-xl-demo-eu/

Once I've downloaded it, and played it, I can then comment on the content that is in the demo as it is exempt from the NDA that I've agreed to with the beta, and we can begin discussing that which is in the demo thus far.

Have at it boys and girls,
CB

[City Builder]

Okay, I had at it for about 30 minutes at most, and unfortunately the game started to LAG heavily.  Just trying to open some menus were terribly long to wait for them to open.

Even being allowed to type into the chat window,  (which seems is the only real part of an MMO this title will have) was terribly laggy after about 15 minutes to 20 minutes of playtime.  Now in that amount of time in SimCity 4 I might have a city of several tens of thousands, however in CXL my city was only 3,000 people.

The thing I hate the most, it's this whole Plop N' Stop bulding technique.  Plopping buildings is for the birds when it comes to a modern era city building games.  And the total lack of life in my city, I had hoped that my city would evolve from where I layed out the zones for the workers but it seems just so terribly static.

I think the thing I always liked the best in SimCity 4 was the way I could zone the ground and the city would evolve depending on what was done right in the game, it would appear they've tried to give us a form of zoning, where we zone for "unqualified, qualified or elite inhabitants" however the city doesn't seem to evolve any, it's all too static.  Once a building is placed, it's there for good.

Trade is a nuisance if nothing else, and you'll have to trade else buy your supplies from omnicorp (the in game AI seller/buyer that will rip you off if at all possible).  It's a game that isn't based on any reality that I know of.

Things like "YOUR PEOPLE NEED LEISURE ACTIVITIES", So I have to build them a basketball playground and then it costs me 1100c per month.  Or build a bowling alley and pay 5,000c a month for it to be there.  It's seriously whacked.  I understand paying some health care fees for a hospital, however for a bowling alley?

Honestly the demo isn't ready for primetime (but please try it yourself to decide) as theres some thing you mouse over and the tool tip is something like "&Instant&*%_for_goto" or some other gibberish.  They shot themselves in the foot putting out the demo in this condition in my opinion. 

And it looks terrible on low or medium and doesn't look much better on high graphics settings.

But the worst of the worst.... Every building is a 1" square footprint.  There are no smaller or larger buildings other than monuments which I gather is disabled in the demo, but seen in screenshots elsewhere.  There is little worse that looking at your city and all buildings have the same 1" square footprint in my opinion.

Nope, sorry to say, dead duck game.

Again, please try it yourself and if you see the polish on the turd, please let everybody know about it.

[pad11]

sad...very sad...had a feeling when MC switched gears mid-development and tried to pawn this off as an MMO that this thing was going to be an unmitigated disaster....

Bummer...

thanks for the notes CB!

pat!

[Khalan]

Sounds disappointing.  Thanks for the updates.

It seems like some of these issues can still be addressed, such as the performance and monthly costs balancing.  Whether they will or not is another story.

[CoconutKid]

... The thing I hate the most, it's this whole Plop N' Stop building technique.  Plopping buildings is for the birds when it comes to a modern era city building games. ...

I really did try to seach for this. I guess I don't have the mojo on the advanced search engine here.

This "Plopping Buildings" seems to be a term-of-art which has missed smacking me up-side the head. I became suspicious when someone asked about "plopping" a specific building in Tropico (on another board), but I thought it was just the poster and not a generally accepted term with a specific meaning.

I hope someone will take pity on the mentally poverty stricken, and explain for me.

[City Builder]

Well, let me see if I can.

There are games like SimCity 4 where you zone out large areas and the buildings grow into those zones, some buildings will take up one little square, others will grow into 4 squares or 8 squares depending on the building that is going to 'grow' into that zoned area.

Then there are games (like Tropico, all of Haemimonts games, simcity societies, caesar IV and many many more) that are plop games.  This means placing one building at a time, nothing more really.

The thing is that it works really well in games like Tropico and it couldn't be any other way so that we the gamers can keep control of the island, however in games such as SimCity 4 it would be nothing more than a headache having to place all those buildings one by one.  It was a serious let down to see Simcity Societies be a plop game instead of a zoning game like SimCity 4 is.  A serious let down.

So plopping a building is just another term for placing one building at a time.

In a interview with the CEO of MonteCristo the CEO stated that they had the funds and were now attempting to take the place of that cornerstone of city builders (SimCity 4), unfortunately they missed the mark tremendously.  They've been given suggestions by the players to the point where MC must be up to their necks in suggestions, however either those suggestions don't jive with MC's picture for the game, or they just couldn't be bothered to listen to them.

I'm actually a bit suprised that they put out the demo in this condition, it surely is not going to help the game to sell any.  Perhaps they know that and put it out early so that they can try to get an extension from their publishers to fix the game properly.  As it is now (*to me*), it's a very dull, dry, and boring game.  I don't honestly think there is anything they can do with it to take away the cornerstone of SimCity 4 at this point, it's way too far in the other direction.

Anyway, plopping buildings is just a term for placing them one by one which as mentioned works in games like Tropico, and even in Caesar IV, but fails misreably in games like Cities XL in my opinion.  You see we have a huge landscape to build on (although the terraforming tools are too basic so that leaves a lot of land that can't be built on since we can't terraform *some* of the areas) and plopping each building in this game is just a chore, it's not fun.

Now in all fairness there is a psuedo type of zoning.  Basically you pick the type of worker (unqualified, qualified or elite) and you draw out a zone type of area and it fills in with that type of worker.  Sadly it doesn't work very well at all.  And that is due to each building having that 1" square footprint.  If they could make them smaller or larger then it could properly fill in an area.  But MC has stated that they can't make buildings multiple sizes they all have to be this 1" square footprint for performance issues.  My guess on that is really that it's not a matter of performance, but rather a matter of how much more work it would be at this point to change it, I imagine it would take them a lot of time to reprogram the whole engine to accomodate multiple sized buildings.

So even trying to zone in a rectangular area may not be allowed due to where other streets are, or zoning odd type of areas may find that the houses only fill around the edges of the zone and the rest of the space is unused.  For thsoe that want to build a huge city, by placing one building next to the other, plop n plop they may like the way their cities turn out in CXL, for those that like a more natural looking city and one that evolves before their eyes, they are going to be severely disapointed.

And so, I had such high hopes for this title, but to me unless it changes drastically, it will only be worth picking up when I see it down at the local big lots  (pic n save) store for $6.00 Nothing more (*to me*).

[RhiannOn]

Installed the demo, but it won't be staying on my hard drive too much longer.  Just the fact that I have to go online to play a city sucked.  The tutorial was sort of okay, but I need to play about with it more, but even so It didn't give me the wow factor or any great anticipation.  So disappointing.  The demo does ran fine tho for what i have played about with. 
Bah, I'm sticking with rollercoaster tycoon 3, simcity4,pharaoh and all the others that I enjoy 

[CoconutKid]

... So plopping a building is just another term for placing one building at a time. ...

   

The additional information you supplied makes it crystal clear how that works for some games, but wrecks others.

Thank you !!