This 'SimCity 4' Region With 107 Million People Took Eight Months of Planning

Jason Koebler writes: Peter Richie spent eight months planning and building a megacity in vanilla SimCity 4, and the end result is mind-boggling: 107.7 million people living in one massive, sprawling region (video). "Traffic is a nightmare, both above ground and under," Richie said. "The massive amount of subway lines and subway stations are still congested during all times of the day in all neighborhoods of each and every mega-city in the region. The roadways are clogged at all times, but people still persist in trying to use them."

And, worst of alll..

[Anonymous Coward]

The rent's too damn high. He built the city, but some of us are forced to live in it.

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[Em Adespoton]

He built that city on rock and roll [youtube.com].

I truly doubt there's a Golden Gate Bridge in it, but there might be a starship....

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[mrbester]

Complete with troopers. You don't want to fall in love with one of them...

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[aix tom]

The rent's too high, the air's unclean,
The beaches are dirty and the people are mean,
And the women are big and the men are dumb,
And the children are loopy cuz they live in a slum!
The water is polluted and their mayor's a dork,
They dress real bad and they think they're New York ......

Mega City One

[Majestix]

All we need now are Street Judges!

I'm recreating Detroit in my SimCity

[NotDrWho]

Just need more corruption and less jobs.

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[RabidTimmy]

I thought SimCity was about building cities, not demolishing them.

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[RabidTimmy]

Or is urban blight now a natural disaster in the game? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05... [nytimes.com]

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[SrLnclt]

I thought SimCity was about building cities, then demolishing them.

FTFY

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[tompaulco]

I never used disasters in my cities if I could turn it off. Fires and whatnot are disaster enough. I never had any urge to destroy what I had made. I especially hate the unrealistic disasters. Come on, giant monster? Alien attack?

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[Keyboard Rage]

Clearly the giant monster and alien attack are merely stand-ins for the damage done by corrupt politicians and idiot bosses (like those at Electronic Arts), respectively. How I wish the first had a single monstrous eye and clawed arms and an omnimuous black finishing in real life, it would make recognising them much easier. However, representing idiot bosses using UFOs was not required - you usually notice right away they are not of this world.

Re: I'm recreating Detroit in my SimCity

[jd2112]

Then why do they include earthquakes, tornadoes, and Godzilla?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Until you realize that the money being taken OUT of Detroit wasn't done by Democrats.

All the city's productivity and investment? Gone, because private companies decided they could just pack their bags and walk away.

Leaving all the costs behind.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-detroit/2013/07/26/132c2932-f478-11e2-9434-60440856fadf_story.html

But hey, I'm sure Grover Norquist really is out for the common man.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You need to read my post again, which was addressing the subject of blame.

Do you disagree that blaming the wrong causes for a problem is a bad thing? I get the feeling you might, since you seem to prefer to create a fantasy to joust against rather than discuss what I said.

If you wanted a suggestion, you should have asked for it, rather than creating your own strawman idea. We could have discussed possible mechanisms for addressing the problem.

But no, you didn't choose to do that, did you? You must get a

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[kwbauer]

No, he was wondering why you are suggesting that people stick around to get slowly bled to death instead of taking their stuff to a more welcoming environment and doing more with it.

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[kwbauer]

No, the mess in Detroit was created by the corrupt government and they were always Democrats.

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[lgw]

Detroit failed because of those policies that drove the tax base away. Yes, that is entirely the city's fault. No one has any moral obligation whatsoever to live in any given place. Quite the reverse: it's the city leadership's job to make the city inviting. But Detroit chose a different path.

Tax laws are a big part of what makes both people and businesses want to come or go, balanced by the degree to which those tax dollars actually make the city a better place (the absence of corruption). A city seek

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[kwbauer]

Really, imagine the nerve of someone packing up their property and finding a more welcoming place.

We should have a federal law in the US that makes it illegal for a business to ever relocate or close its doors.

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[khallow]

All the city's productivity and investment? Gone, because private companies decided they could just pack their bags and walk away.

And they were right. Once again, the victims get blamed because the city drove them away. All these companies, all those workers, and all that productivity and investment would have stayed if the environment were far less toxic.

I also find it odd how irrelevant the "myths" of your story are to the original poster's assertion. For example, "Detroit will be saved by bankruptcy" is just so totally on topic.

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[khallow]

More blaming the victim garbage (though bonus points for pretending the victims were the perpetrators). There are plenty of other cities out there that would and, as it turned out, did treat the people or businesses formerly of Detroit well.

You can spin these ridiculous fantasies about "con artists" and "fixing their mess" (said mess not actually being theirs), but the bottom line is that in a free world, other people aren't forced to deal with your shit. When you treat them like crap, they leave.

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[khallow]

As an aside, there's been a number of complaints in recent years about work and how there's too much of it. The basic idea there seems to be that people are forced to do it so everyone needs more freedom in being able to reject choices that cause them to endure more work drudgery.

Well, this is one of those choices. And as a result, somewhere around half the population of Detroit decided they'd rather be somewhere else than suffer through Detroit and its many problems. So you have to decide what is more i

Impressive

[fxsoap]

I haven't played Simcity since the original...but if you can still create and cause disasters....I would LOVE to see that.

simcity 4 is best simcity

[steak]

too bad it is over 10 years old at this point.

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[Daniel Hoffmann]

Really? I found sim city 4 to be quite bad compared to sim city 3 it is overly complex in some departments and the UI could be a lot better. But what really grinds my gears in sim city 4 are all the The Sims advisors and people running around, the advisors in Sim City 3 had a lot of character and were quite funny as well.

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[Sowelu]

Really? I had a lot of trouble taking the "mood" of SimCity 3 seriously, and the difficulty was ridiculously low. For those main reasons I enjoyed it the least of the series (haven't played 5...)

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[Anonymous Coward]

SC4 was the last "real" SimCity before EA started completely raping the franchise. (They only raped SC4 a little.)

The region mechanic was a completely game-able loophole. It needed quite a bit of work, TBH.

Go to small city area, fill with landfills and a road. Go to neighboring large city area, build a beautiful, trash-free city. Never re-load the original or even think about it again lest it update its region stats and go bankrupt while poisoning the entire universe. Repeat with anything that is undesirabl

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[ericloewe]

SC4 works reasonably well on Windows 7 x64

Even back in the day it crashed quite a bit, but I do think it's worse on Windows 7.

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[ultranova]

The region mechanic was a completely game-able loophole. It needed quite a bit of work, TBH.

The region mechanic was always an attempt to limit the size of the simulation. The individual citizes in SC4 are too small, presumably because the machines of the day couldn't handle bigger ones. So a real improvement would be redoing the game as a 64-bit only version and discarding the region system.

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[fafalone]

It's not just a computer hardware limitation; the simulator gets very inefficient at certain things. I running a reasonably modern system with 12GB RAM, and a large amount of custom content (20-40,000 files totalling 8-12GB, common among everyone still playing) on a large city still brings my system to its knees. Switching to underground view for subways, for instance, takes at least 20 seconds.

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[fafalone]

God, SC4 was so much fun. I wonder if I can get it working on my 64-bit Win7 box. Last I checked, it had some problems with that.

There's no problems at all running it on Win7 x64. And you should see the amazing custom content that's still being developed. Not just the thousands upon thousands of buildings; but an entirely new highway system with 2-10 lanes and completely custom ramps, tile-by-tile canal systems, or the incredibly detailed modular airports- can cover an entire large city tile with just an expansive airport; I released an entire plugin that's just tiles to make lines on the taxiways. Other modular sets let you construc

Re:

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Well I was a lot younger when I used to play sim city 3, but as far as complexity goes, it is way more complex than sim city 2. Yet it was not as frustrating because you don't need to electrify and provide water for every single block by hand like in sim city 2, that was annoying as hell.

I haven't played sim city 4 as much as I have 3 and 2, but I will give it a try. I haven't played 5 either, I don't mind so much about the always online bullshit, but when I saw you needed to make several smaller cities lik

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[tompaulco]

Ok, have to give SOME credit to SC5 for this. You don't have to micromanage getting utilities to everyone. The distribution system appears random and thus can be sucky if your building is out of water or power and is off on a long branch with a bunch of buildings in between. It will take forever to get the utility watering or powering them again.
Upgradable buildings is another plus, though I have hosed myself several times by not leaving space to upgrade around the building itself. Come on people, build UP

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[tompaulco]

SC4 was the best graphically and simulation wise to date. The awful part of SC$ was the stupid side missions which must be accomplished to unlock this or that thing, most of which involved trying to control a vehicle on a diagonal roadway with a keyboard. Total setup for the BS which is Simcity5 Online Version.

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[azcoyote]

I myself miss Sim City 2000 the most, especially for the wacky newspapers.

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[newcastlejon]

Virtual Rome wasn't built in a day, you now.

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[maliqua]

incorrect, best was simcity 2000

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[UnknownSoldier]

Have to agree.

But then again I had more fun removing the copy protection from SimCity 1 then playing the game, so *shrug*.

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[r_pattonII]

SimCity2000 I would also agree was the best. Playing that game on My AST Adventure Advantage! 6066d (MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11) was so much fun. I put alot of time and effort in building those cities. Putting all those water pipes was a chore! It was a great game and it sure brings back alot of memories. Remember, if you will, we also had Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.1 on floppy disks that also came out! Great times and great games!

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[dywolf]

Specifically the DOS version, not the windows one.
As I recall, the DOS version allowed you to speed up the game, while windows would not.
I used this feature to make tons of money and let changes stabilize overnight while I slept.

Did it...

[Arkh89]

Did it also crashed 107 million times while simulating this city?

Los Angeles

[sycodon]

So, it's Los Angeles?

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[weav]

So, it's Los Angeles?

Kinda sounds more like Tokyo. You are in a maze of twisty little subway lines, all different.

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[Smidge204]

You are in a maze of twisty little subway lines, all different.

What happens if you try shouting "xyzzy" ? Or I suppose you'd need to translate it into Japanese first...
=Smidge=

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[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

priscilla

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[Em Adespoton]

What happens if a grue shouts "xyzzy"?

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[mark-t]

It becomes pitch black. He is liable to eat himself.

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[mysidia]

What happens if you try shouting "xyzzy" ?

A hollow voice says "PLUGH".

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[GiganticLyingMouth]

If only, Los Angeles has a vanishingly small subway system. One subway line that goes from downtown LA to North Hollywood, and an aborted line that was meant to go to Santa Monica but only made it to Wilshire.

Tetsuoooo !!!!

[alexhs]

Tetsuoooo !!!!

(Couldn't he have credited the music ?)

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[Nrrqshrr]

Kanedaaaaaa!!!

(It sounds like the SimCity4 OST soo much too)

Magnasanti

[Ambitwistor]

Another cool effort [vice.com], in SimCity 3000.

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[TFlan91]

Until tech can support the "greater metropolis area" of each city INSIDE of the actual city limits... no.

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[rasmusbr]

Cars wouldn't be much of a problem. Within hours of all cars breaking down there would be small businesses offering to transport goods from stores to your door with makeshift bicycle drawn carriages. The distances are also small enough that a lot of people could go get supplies on foot.

Highway trucks and freight trains on the other hand. Yeah, that would be bad. If someone hacked all highway trucks and freight train locomotives, starvation would set in within a couple of days, since there is no other way to

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[plopez]

I've lived in cold snow blasted parts of the US where roads can shut down for days due to winter storms. After a couple of days the super markets and liquor store shelves start looking a bit... bare. I have no doubt a few days of interruptions would cause problems. My solution is camping gear; including water purification kit; and a pantry which includes canned good and dried food such as lentils and dried fruit. A few days,,, meh. A month, then I will be taking notice.

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[kwbauer]

If only SF was its own country and would stop trying to force its decisions on the rest of us.

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[phantomfive]

I wonder if, in time, we will see a regression back to city-states once urban populations get big enough. Tokyo is basically its own country, and the same goes for SF, LA, and NYC.

I believe the limiting factor on country size is 1) communication ability, and 2) transportation (force projection) ability.

Roads were a major factor in the size of the Roman Empire, for example. City-states were common when there was no force regionally large enough to conquer the city. City states also needed to maintain farmland surrounding them, so they could remain fed.

Proof SimCity 5 was crap

[kolbe]

Seriously,,, If they had to default back to SC4, it shows that SC5 was not a real enough simulator and totally incapable of fielding such a project.

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[tompaulco]

I've heard tell of some people who managed to get 600k or so in SC5, but yes, it is crap. Highly visual and oooh shiny crap, but crap.
For those unaware, they finally came out with the offline version back in March, but I was so disgusted with the initial online only launch that I didn't even know this until a few weeks ago. I bought it, and am highly, highly disappointed. A HUGE step backward from Simcity4 in almost every area.
The city sizes are tiny. Basically, you can get a perhaps 10 by 10 city block

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[Nemyst]

SimCity 2013 can't scale to anywhere near such numbers because it's a more fine grained simulation. This is like saying a car is crap because it can't fit the number of people a bus can.

If you were to analyze the city you'd quickly realize that the statistical systems used in SC4 are a rather coarse approximation of reality with many downsides. They're a "top-down" approach to 2013's "bottom-up". Mind you, 2013 also had many approximations in order to reduce performance requirements so that the average pl

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[BitZtream]

Sorry dude, but before SC5 was even released to the public, the idea that it had a more complex simulation was utterly destroyed. The SC5 simulation is very very weak.

Article Thumbs Down

[jbmartin6]

This article is all about speculations on our megacity future, I was more interested in how he got the city that big.

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[gargalatas]

Obviously in a site like this that matters the most :)

Agreed

[s.petry]

Maybe, but I don't think that any real discussion could be had about our megacity future based on this type of video game. Notice there is no food growing anywhere, very little greenery (think pollution), every inch of terrain was flattened, there was no water, etc..

Don't get me wrong, I think SimCity is a cool game. I don't think it's simulation software, and therein lies the big issue.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[fafalone]

SC4 allows region play; that's the population of a region composed of large city tiles that top out at 1.6m each.

Grid city

[LoRdTAW]

Building using a grid layout never changes. Back when I first played sim city on the Super Nintendo, the strategy to build megalopolis (population 500k+) was building on a grid. You build using 3x3 clusters of R, C or I but left the center of the 3x3 open. Instead you put special buildings and police/fire buildings in the center of the 3x3. To reduce pollution you built rail instead of roads. Fun game for its time and a friend and I came close to a megalopolis on stock maps without beating the scenarios, alien invasion and getting the water free map. I think we had 480-490k people.

Re:Grid city

[tompaulco]

In SC5, the traffic algorithm is so broken that a grid layout will leave you awash in traffic jams. The most efficient layout in SC5 is a snake pattern with one end being the (single) connection to the region.

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[ProzacPatient]

It always annoyed me how in previous versions you could just build huge blocks of buildings without direct access to a road.

SimCity 4 was the first iteration that required buildings to have road access to develop or to be of benefit to the area and this brought with it a vast variety of different types of roads and this was probably the best improvement of the series IMO because it meant you really have to think about the layout of your city and balance the cost of building roads versus streets everywhere a

Underground it is...

[pubwvj]

This city sounds like an incarnation of Hell.

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[jareth-0205]

Eight months? Wouldn't it be more efficient to learn programming(if needed), understand the layout of the map file, and write a script to generate this very well structured and organized hell on earth?

Couldn't that be said of any game? Write a better AI and let it play itself? Why do any gaming when programming is more efficient?

Alien attack...meh

[VTBlue]

Man! Aliens would invade and most people wouldn't even know!