New Strategic Mode Discussion

Download game today
Die prematurely tonight!

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[pad11]

Okay, initial thoughts from me, everyone chime in as you get around to checking out the new features, including whether the game crashes less/more, etc.  I've never had a crash, so someone else will have to update us on that part.

First initial observations after 1 hour of play.  The strategic mode seems to keep track of medals and trophys for each userprofiles SEPERATELY from the Normal mode, which is nice, now you have two paths to follow for each user profile.

I have always turned off every display in normal mode but now in this mode, I have SEVEN on to follow what's going on, to utilize some new features and to keep better tabs on the happiness of my sims and where I may have societal problems brewing, because at its core, that is the biggest thing to worry about.  Now I just have to turn off seven different things to take nice screenies!!!

Since I've just started, I've not experienced any GUI change, but we'll see...I'm not even sure they put in a new GUI skin for EVERY environment or not...something I read makes me believe they didn't, but I'm hopeful!

Well, that's it for now....more later.

pat!!!!!

[City Builder]

Initial thought...

The roads don't lay down properly like they use to (see screenshot).  Will have to come back for more later, am waiting on my Friday work to arrive any moment.

Note how the roads are all buckled and there are a few places on the tarmac where you can actually see through the road to the ground below.

A positive thing however is that one of my games that would cause the game to crash upon loading, loaded up okay now.  Before it would crash the game everytime.  So maybe that's a good sign of crash fixing.

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[Sandra]

I've played for about an hour on the basic strategic mode, I got to 2650 Sims and NO FREEZES not yet anyway, but I didn't notice any improvement in gameplay, IE: smoother and faster like they said, I quite like the basic one, it gives me a little more challenge but doesn't make me tear my hair out, I went in the red a couple of times but soon got back in the green, I haven't noticed a right lot of difference in the UI as yet, but maybe I won't, I don't play the hard modes, I did have a GRRRRRR moment when, after I installed the patch and started the game it threw up errors and wouldn't start, thoughts of uninstalling and reinstalling were sundenly interupted by thoughts of "Maybe if I reboot"  worked like a charm
I used the country lane roads CB and I didn't notice anything amiss with them, tomorrow I'll use the City road and see if it buckles, it's something they'll have to see to, people won't like it.

[City Builder]

I've sent off the saved game to Mike at TM as per his request, and now he's asked me to play a couple more random maps and see if I can duplicate it.  He says that they have evidence that it exists with my saved game but can't seem to duplicate it, so I'll have to try when I get done with my work today which is actually (very unfortunately) a very slow and low workload day today.  So much for buying nice gifts for the family this year.   Anyway, it will be interesting to see if I can duplicate it again for them.  Im sure someone else will run into this eventually, I mean really, Im not that unusual of a fellow and and quite ordinary in my gaming, so chances are good that even if I can't duplicate it again, someone else will.

I think it has to do with an adjustment they might have made to allow building roads on areas that couldn't be built before because they were too steep or too rough, where as now we can.  Then again, I may just be high as a kite and only making up that I read that.  I've read so much data on multiple games the past 3 nights that I havn't been able to sleep that I may be just wishing I read that stuff

[Sandra]

I spoke too soon, the game froze at 4.460 Sims 
Dammit, I thought it was fixed.
I tried with the city roads CB but mine were ok, no buckling at all.
 

[City Builder]

Yeah, turns out that the map that I was playing is bad with the update 2, so I'm going to have to rebuild my custom height maps once I figure out (ummm, someone else figures out) what needs to be done to correct them to work with update 2.

I wonder if the freezing is the game sucking up all the memory in the computer... How much RAM do you have again Sandra?  I'm pretty sure that there is a memory leak in the game with update 1, because I've seen it consume far too much memory for the size of the city I was trying to play when the game was first released.

Do make sure that you post in the tech support forum over at TM's forum so that they are aware of the problem.

I just had to reinstall Windows XP *again* tonight as I caught a virus a few days ago and have been trying to get rid of it and just when I think it's gone it spreads even further.  It finally got to where it got into windows really bad and was telling me that it was shutting down windows in 60 seconds, knowing the way that I am, I felt the ONLY real way to be certain that it was completely gone was to delete the windows partition on the hard drive, create a new one, format it, and reinstall windows xp again, so i took a couple hours tonight to do it.  My point was only that with fighting the virus the past few days I've only gotten my largest city up to about 3800 peeps, so I've not hit the same pop that you have Sandra and I guess now I'll be starting all over again.

[Sandra]

Ah, you were using a custom map, that probably explains it,(I was using a pre-made map), I have 1 gig of memory CB, I need another PC, I'm still with the same one I was complaining about last year I know it's not powerful enough, but I thought  the patch would stop it freezing, it actually plays pretty good for a PC as old as mine (4years) or 5 I can't remember now
Urggg reinstalling windows is a pain, I hope you've got rid of the virus now CB.
 

[City Builder]

Oh yeah, nice and clean now.  Running fast like a only a fresh install of the operating system can do.

[Unitedcat]

Oh yeah, nice and clean now.  Running fast like a only a fresh install of the operating system can do.

That's one of the best Feelings Windows can deliver:

A Fresh Install : Great Respons from the Windows OS 

  <--- Who is this  When will the presents arrive 

[MaxBeta]

   Yeah... Who dat?... kind of an energetic gift giver ..IMHO of course.

Clean Windows.. My religiously followed routines involving PC maintenance would drive a priest to drink.  If I went into detail.. I'd be definitely labeled a fanatic.. I know you all suspect it already.  I regularly check the performance of my PC.. it rarely varies in a 3-5% range of acceptable thresholds.  One thing I strive for is maxed performance, no fluff is ever installed.. my graphics demand is only to what my expect..and since my aging eyes force me to magnify my monitor so I can read "tiny" bubble text.. I never over task a GPU.  Thus when a game like SC:S starts to bog down.. I immediately notice it.. I'm not sure that adding more Modes is the answer.. but anything that assists the game to make it more interesting.. and divert the attention from "other" issues players are receiving ..helps the overall cause I guess.