Here’s a few. Yes, a FEW.

Currently In Development

Hi Mayors – This week we deployed Update 2.0, our first major upgrade addressing a number of fixes and improvements to SimCity. While the update made many significant upgrades and fixes, we know that players are eager for more. We are reviewing feedback and bugs that are reported and are working on additional fixes and upgrades. Below you will find some of the areas we are focused on improving over the next several weeks. In addition to the specific issues below, we are continuing to improve the traffic simulation and decrease the need for rollbacks.

Once we have locked dates for releasing these fixes, we’ll update this thread. You can help by giving your feedback and/or report additional issues on our Answers HQ forums: http://answers.ea.com/t5/SimCity/ct-p/SimCity

Thanks, Mayors!

Future Fixes

Issue: Some players experiencing higher than expected regional air pollution.

• Status: Working on a fix.

Issue: Demolish issue that occurred when players demolished buildings that had service vehicles, delivery vehicles, or agents out in the city or region. Previously, the agents would be in a state of limbo and would not recover when new buildings of that type were placed.

• Status: Fix works in newly created cities. Working on a fix for pre-existing cities.

Issue: High School buses stuck in neighboring cities.

• Status: Working on a fix.

Issue: Reports of Game Crashes.

• Status: Working on fixes.

Continue

One of the major factors about SimCity that is giving mayors headaches is how it handles different wealth classes and density of buildings. The way it’s laid out seems organic to me, but  Balance Designer Ross Treyz posted a blog about the differences and making them work for you just in case I am in fact the only one in the world that likes it

Hey everyone – I’m Ross Treyz and I’m a Balance Designer on SimCity. In this blog post we’re going to go over the difference between wealth and density.

There are three wealth levels of Sims in SimCity (low §, medium §§, and high §§§). There are also three levels of density a building can reach (low, medium, and high). These two things (wealth and density) are not linked, meaning you can have high wealth/low density buildings, low wealth/high density buildings, or various other combinations.

To make it easy, let’s look at all the different wealth/density types:

Low Wealth / Low Density

Low Wealth / Medium Density

Low Wealth / High Density

Medium Wealth / Low Density

Medium Wealth / Medium Density

Medium Wealth / High Density

High Wealth / Low Density

High Wealth / Medium Density

High Wealth / High Density

Got it? Good! Now let’s go over how both density and wealth work:

Density – Buildings will go up in density when they collect happiness. This happens when your Sims are able to successfully complete their life cycle. Residential buildings must send out their workers and shoppers who need jobs and places to shop. Commercial buildings need workers to keep them running and shoppers to buy their goods. Industrial buildings need workers to keep running and places to ship their freight to.

Wealth – There are actually two different levels of land value: medium and high. Medium and high wealth residential and commercial buildings will move into areas of medium and high wealth land value respectively. Industry has its own “wealth” level, but we call it Tech Level and it is not related to land value (in fact, industry always lowers both medium and high wealth land value nearby for residential and commercial).

Continue

Monday! Monday! Monday! The biggest and most anticipated update for SimCity will go live this Monday! BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!

Update 2.0 is going live Monday, April 22 at 1pm PST.

What’s New

• Mayors Mansion: Mayors will now drive their fancy cars to work. Mayors will take their helicopter, limo, or sports car if the modules are present.
• HUD: Now color-corrects when in a colorblind mode.
• Data map: Data maps show the filtered color when a color filter is enabled (unless in a colorblind mode)

Fixes and Updates

• Cities not Processing: Mitigates some of the issues that were causing cities not to process. We are continuing to work on and improve this issue.
• Region Filters: Now sorts regions with available cities to the top
• Invitations: Invitations to join a region should be sent and received more quickly.
• Tourism: Fixes for unexplained fluctuation of tourists. Tourists more smartly counted on transit.
- Cruise ships are now more effective at bringing medium and high wealth tourists in coastal cities.
- New tourists will now decide to come into a city once leaving tourists reach train stations, bus depots, or cruise ship docs instead of waiting for those tourists to go out to the region first.
- This change will reduce the downtime of tourist buildings.
• Casinos: Casinos tuned so that Gambling will be a more profitable specialty. Players can bulldoze and replace existing casinos to see effects of tuning.
- The larger casinos now invite more tourists into the city which helps keep them full.
- Note that existing casinos will need to be replaced to take advantage of this change.
• More Casinos: Raised module limit on Sci-Fi and Sleek Casinos to 6 modules.
• Region Play: Cash gifts can now be received in a bankrupt city.
• Education: Fixed school buses getting stuck at the high school. Existing Schools will fix themselves.
• Education: Fixed school buses picking up students at neighboring cities that didn’t have school bus stops.
• Education: Fix to more accurately track regional student population.
• Education: Fix where kids leaving the school bus stop would teleport to the nearest pedestrian path instead of walking directly into the school.
• Education: University wings now give the proper bonus.
• Recycling: Fix for the Recycling Center where it would sometimes stop working, recycling services will visit other cities.
• Air pollution: Fixed issue where air pollution would appear to come from nowhere. Fix issues where your regional air pollution would be reflected back into your box for a double penalty.
• Fire Service: Fire Trucks don’t clump, dispatch to fires more efficiently.
• Water: Water pumps are now capable of pumping water from rivers at a larger radius so they can take better advantage of the water table in a city.
• Disasters: Cooldown for random disasters: Some players were getting hit too frequently with random disasters, this introduces a cooldown where no random disasters will occur.
• Trade: Fix for trade ports that suddenly stop shipping.
• Transit: Street Cars and Buses go to high volume stops first.
• Transit: A city with residents and public transit will now provide the accurate amount of workers and shoppers to its neighbors.
• Transit: A transit vehicle stuck in a pick-up or drop off loop will now go back to a garage instead of trying to pick up more people.
- Transit vehicles should recover automatically after the update. If players want to force the recovery, turn off the stops that are having looping issues, wait a few game hours, then turn them back on.
• Transit: Neighbors buses will now come in lower numbers into the city and do a better job at picking up local passengers first.
• Residential Tuning: Residential-only cities have failure state.
- Buildings are prevented from going up in density when they don’t have power or water.
- The amount of happiness gained from low taxes, police, fire, and health outreach has been lowered.
- Fixed some cases where buildings would not go abandoned when they should have.
- Higher density residential buildings are no longer blocked from going abandoned due to not having enough money.
- Happiness from low taxes does not double up every time it is given.
- Losing happiness due to not having a job is more impactful.
• Budgets: Fixed bug that prevented systems like fire, abandonment, garbage, and sewage from turning on when they were supposed to.
• Audio: Fixes issue where audio will stop working after creating a large city or where phantom audio sounds play in a city.
• Demolish: Fixes issue that occurred when players demolished buildings that had service vehicles, delivery vehicles, or agents out in the city or region. Previously, the agents would be in a state of limbo and would not recover when new buildings of that type were placed. This will no longer happen.

Continue

Hi Mayors, Game Designer Brian Bartram here, and I’m back for another blog post. This time I’d like to give you a tour of some of the parts of the game that you might have missed at first glance. I wanted to do a blog that would benefit both the players who are just getting acquainted with SimCity and those who are experienced veterans. Hopefully, you’ll find a few tips here that you might want to keep in mind the next time you’re playing.

Help when you’re having trouble

The “Blue I’s” Help System

See the blue circle with the “i” in it below most advisors? If you put your mouse over it, some helpful information will pop up. These are some of the most important “facts” to know about the system that they refer to. You’ll find these in each of the different system panels in the City View, City Specializations, and in Region View. You’ll also find a blue “i” in the Mayor Rating panel.

Mayor Rating for Finding the Top Issues

Speaking of the Mayor Rating panel, it can be really useful if you’re asking yourself the question, “What problem should I address to improve my city the most?” Start by clicking the face next to your bank balance.

The panel that opens up will show you the happiness of your Residential, Commercial, and Industrial buildings. Click any of these three bars to expand that group then put your mouse over any of the bars you see there, and you’ll get a list of the top positive and negative things affecting this segment of your population:

You can see from the screenshot above that my Low Wealth Commercial buildings have problems with crime and health and they aren’t getting enough shoppers. You can quickly go to a Data Layer to see the problem in question if you click on the arrow to the right of the issue you’re concerned with.

“Zoom to Event” buttons

If there’s a critical problem with one of your city’s systems, you’ll receive a yellow or red alert on the button for that system.

Open that panel and the Advisor will give you a notification about what the problem is.

Once this notification goes away you’ll see a red triangle near the advisor. If you put your mouse over this red triangle, it will expand and will show you icons. These icons are buttons that you can click to zoom the camera to the location of the issue.

One place this is particularly helpful is in the Bulldoze panel. You can click on these buttons to zoom to the rubble and abandoned buildings in your city to quickly demolish them. Keep clicking the same button to cycle through all the issues of that type.

Having a Bit of Fun

Every once in a while you should take a break from city building and smell the roses. There’s a lot of interesting stuff happening when you get down close to street level. When you’re ready to look at all the wonderful things you’ve created, be sure to keep these tips in mind.

Thought Bubbles

Thought Bubbles appear over buildings and give you an idea of what the Sims inside are thinking. You can see this by putting your mouse over them.

You’ve probably seen them before. Something to keep in mind is that, when your camera is fully zoomed out, we only show you the thought bubbles about critical issues. If you want to see more of the positive thoughts and “slice of life” thoughts, you’ll get more of them when you’re zoomed in closer. This is to prevent thought bubbles from getting in the way when you’re at full zoom and doing your city planning.

Filters!

Filters are fun; they can really change the look of your city. You might have seen some of Ocean Quigley’s beautiful screenshots using filters. For those of you who haven’t tried them yet, you can find them by going to the options menu using the “…” in the upper right of the screen.

Next, click the “Settings” button which opens to the Graphics tab by default. At the bottom of this list is the “Filter” category, which starts out turned off. Click the word “Off” and you’ll see a list of all the filters available in the game. You’ll find twenty filters in all, including three that are designed to help our color blind players by making the colors of R, C, and I zoning more distinct.

So that concludes this blog post. I hope you’ve found at least one tip that you’re looking forward to trying out the next time you play. If you have any feedback on how we can make the game better, as always we’d love to hear from you. Post your suggestions in the comments, on the forums, or in Answer HQ. We read them all and will do our best to address them.

SimCity

Remember a week or two ago we told you guys and gals about those leaked images of some new parks. Anyway, turns out they’re actually a set that’s linked to a new promotion between EA and Proctor and Gamble’s Crest/Oral-B brands of products. Via a code found inside of specially marked Crest and Oral-B products.

How refreshing! Get it? lol Note that this promo is a US Exclusive. Check out the FAQ below

SimCity Attractions Set FAQ

Make your Sims smile with the Attractions Set–five fun tourist hot spots that will not only make your Sims happy, but bring in more tourists. If you want to plop these playful attractions in your city, you need to be located in the United States and you’ll also need to purchase a specially marked Crest or Oral-B product to receive a code good for all five attractions.

What is included in the Attractions Set?
There are five attractions: Giant Garden Gnome, Dolly the Dinosaur, Llarry the Llama, MaxisMan Statue and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. Each attraction adds happiness and will also act as a tourist destination in your city. You will have a choice of redeeming the Attractions Set, The Sims Social SimCash, or a $5-off coupon for Origin.

How much does it cost?
There is no in-game charge for the Attractions Set; however, you will need to purchase a specially marked Crest or Oral-B product in order to redeem the code. Look for the orange sticker on pack.  Please visit crest.ea.com to learn more about this promotion.

How do I get the Attractions Set in my game?
You will need to purchase a specially marked Crest or Oral-B product. Please check crest.ea.com to find out which items are available.

Is there additional gameplay added?
Yes – the Attractions Set add happiness to low wealth Sims. They will also bring in all three wealth classes of tourists into your city.

Once I redeem the code, where do I find it?
You will find the Attractions Set in the Culture menu.

Do I need a code for each attraction?
One code will redeem all five attractions.

Is the Attractions Set available worldwide?
This is only available to players in the United States.

How long does this promotion last?
While supplies last as there are a set number of redeemable codes available on Crest and Oral-B products. Please check crest.ea.com for more information.

 

Source: Platinum SimCity

I’m super excited for these future patch fixes. w00t! via SimCity Blog

Currently In Development

We have an update for you, Mayors. We’re currently working on a number of fixes/improvements in our Development Test environment, the majority of which will be added to our next updates.

Once we’re ready to release these fixes, we’ll update this thread with more details.

In the meantime, we’re also working on improvements on our Public Test Server. You can see these changes right now, so we encourage you to try them out on the Test server. Here’s what’s on it right now:

Updates currently on our Public Test Server:

• Join Region Filter: Results will only show regions with available slots.
• Leaderboards: Leaderboards restored.

Updates currently in our Development Test environment:

What’s New

• Mayors Mansion: Mayor will now drive his fancy cars to work. Mayor will take his helicopter, limo, or sports car if the modules are present.
• Data maps: Now show in their normal color when a color filter is enabled (unless in a colorblind mode)
• HUD: Now color-corrects when in a colorblind mode.

Fixes and Updates
• Cities not Processing/rollbacks: Fix to mitigate the chance of future occurrences of cities not processing and rollbacks.
• Leaderboards: Restoring leaderboards to all servers.
• Invitations: Invitations to join a region should be sent and received more quickly.
• Region Filters: Now sorts regions with available cities to the top
• Tourism: Fixes for unexplained fluctuation of tourists. Tourists more smartly counted on transit.
• Casinos: Casinos tuned so that Gambling will be a more profitable specialty. Players can bulldoze and replace existing casinos to see effects of tuning.
• More Casinos: Raised module limit on Sci-Fi and Sleek Casinos to 6 modules.
• Region Play: Cash gifts can now be received in a bankrupt city.
• Education: Fixed school buses getting stuck at the high school. Existing Schools will fix themselves.
• Education: Fixed school buses picking up students at neighboring cities that didn’t have school bus stops.
• Education: Fix to more accurately track regional student population.
• Education: Fix where kids leaving the school bus stop would teleport to the nearest pedestrian path instead of walking directly into the school.
• Education: University wings now give the proper bonus.
• Recycling: Fix for the Recycling Center where it would sometimes stop working, recycling services will visit other cities.
• Air pollution: Fixed issue where air pollution would appear to come from nowhere. Fix issues where your regional air pollution would be reflected back into your box for a double penalty.
• Fire Service: Fire Trucks don’t clump, dispatch to fires more efficiently.
• Water: Water pumps are now capable of pumping water from rivers at a larger radius so they can take better advantage of the water table in a city.
• Disasters: Cooldown for random disasters: Some players were getting hit too frequently with random disasters, this introduces a cooldown where no random disasters will occur.
• Trade: Fix for trade ports that suddenly stop shipping.
• Transit: Street Cars and Buses go to high volume stops first.
• Transit: A city with residents and public transit will now provide the accurate amount of workers and shoppers to its neighbors.
• Transit: A transit vehicle stuck in a pick-up or drop off loop will now go back to a garage instead of trying to pick up more people.
• Transit: Neighbors buses will now come in lower numbers into the city and do a better job at picking up local passengers first.
• Tuning: Residential-only cities have failure state.
• Budgets: Fixed bug with monthly transactions being used to get around systems pushing back.

Found on Origin servers. Uh, I’m very curious how this site/page keeps finding this stuff. It’s very suspicious…

Source: SimCityBR