SimCity 4

SimCity 4
File:Sc4box.jpg
Developer(s)	Maxis
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts (Windows) Aspyr Media (Mac)
Designer(s)	Will Wright
Series	SimCity
Engine	Custom
Platform(s)	Windows Mac OS X
Release	January 10, 2003 (PC)
Genre(s)	Simulation, City-building game
Mode(s)	Single player

SimCity 4 (SC4) is a 2003 city-building simulation computer game and the fourth installment in the SimCity series. It was published by Electronic Arts (EA) and developed by series creator Maxis, a wholly owned subsidiary of EA.

Gameplay changes

Regional gameplay

As with previous SimCity titles, SimCity 4 places players in the role of a mayor (or several mayors), tasked with populating and developing tracts of lands into cities, while fulfilling the needs of fellow Sims that live in the cities. There are many differences between this game and previous versions, the largest difference being that cities are now located in regions that are divided into segments, each of which can be developed. The regional play concept adds a whole new dimension to this sequel of SimCity. The player also has the option of starting the city in a segment of any of three area sizes, the largest being 256 by 256 tiles, approximately 4 by 4 kilometers in real measurement, making a large city 16 km²; for comparison, the New York borough of Manhattan measures about 90 km². The standard size of a region is 16 by 16 kilometers (1024 by 1024 tiles). The size of a region and its layout of segments can be changed in a tiny bitmap file provided for each region.

A collection of cities, as seen in the game's regional view.

A screenshot of the game's standard entire view of a densely populated city, completed with famous landmarks that are not originally shipped with the game and certain 3rd party modifications and plugins obtained from Simtropolis.

Neighbor cities play a larger role than in the previous version of the game, SimCity 3000. For example, neighbor deals can be established, where a city can exchange resources such as water, electricity, or garbage disposal for money. In this version, however, the player builds all the cities himself/herself and thus cities must be developed manually. However, this also means that the player may develop several dependent cities at the same time, eventually populating the entire region. Because of the new region feature, focus of the game shifted from building the largest city possible on its map to creating a functioning, varied, and aesthetically pleasing region, making small towns a practical possibility for the first time.

Game modes

Upon selecting a specific segment in a region, gameplay is divided into three "modes":

The first is the God Mode, which allows players to design or terraform a selected tract of land where the city will be built. God Mode also allows players to trigger disasters, including tornados and earthquakes among several others. An addition in this feature is the ability for the player to select an area where the disasters will occur and even control the direction of certain disasters, as opposed to the three previous SimCity games where the computer selects a random location for each disaster. Terraforming tools are disabled after the city is named and founded. However the player still has some terraforming tools (although they are very limited and expensive) and can trigger disasters at will.

The second of the modes is the Mayor Mode, the fundamental mode of the game where the actual city building is conducted. This mode allows players to insert necessary structures and facilities-such as roads, civic buildings, zoning and power stations-for the city to attract its intended tenants and grow. In this mode, players can zone their residential, commercial or industrial areas. Players can also build transportation networks, which include roads, streets, highways, subway lines, bus stations, etc. Other things that players can do in Mayor Mode are build civic buildings such as schools, hospitals, parks, police and fire stations, etc.

The final mode is the My Sim mode which enables players to create user-defined Sims, which can be used to closely assess citizens' needs through the Sims giving them feedback. Players can choose a selection of characters or import them from save files from The Sims. The mode primarily involves the deployment of Sims into the present city, where they will reside and provide feedback on the areas surrounding their home, commute and workplace.

Civic and utility structures

The functions of civic buildings have been overhauled in SC4. Facilities that had previously provided citywide coverage (educational facilities and hospitals) have now been modified to provide a more limited coverage, as it has been with police stations and fire stations in previous SimCity titles. This would require players to plan the best locations to provide sufficient civic services to Sims effectively (e.g. placing schools in or around residential areas). SC4 has also introduced a feature to adjust funding for individual buildings, allowing users to specify how much money should be spent to supply services in accordance to the population. There are two sizes each of police stations, fire stations and hospitals. This variety was later expanded in the Rush Hour expansion pack to include two extra varieties of police buildings, one new firefighting facility and a larger version for both the elementary school and high school.

Maintenance expenses for public utility facilities (power plants, water plants and garbage disposal services) are also introduced in SC4. In addition, the cost of maintaining those facilities will increase as they age (very slowly at first, then rapidly towards the end of their life). The maximum output of facilities also decreases as they get older (which also speeds up gradually as they age). The rate at which facilities age is dependent on the percentage of its power generation capacity being used and the level of funding being given to it.

Zoning and building occupancy

File:AbernethyFarmingVillageSC4.png

A small town in SimCity 4, surrounded by farmland.

Zoning and building size have also changed. Rather than have a large area zoned and have roads ringing it, zones are automatically aligned towards roads to avoid the aesthetic frustration in earlier SimCity games, such as buildings and garages constructed facing the wrong way from the road. Also, streets are automatically created when zoning on large tracts of land. Buildings are now classified into several wealth levels, zone types and "stages" (building size and density), which are affected by the region's population and the city's condition; commercial buildings, for example, may be divided into services and offices, with the former typically in higher demand and better suited for less educated Sims. The game also evaluates the cost of rezoning zones of different densities; the higher the density of the zone, the higher the cost to rezone it. In addition, the game better simulates urban decay and gentrification; buildings darken accordingly and no longer change shape when they are abandoned (as it has with SimCity 2000 and 3000). Also, buildings originally constructed for occupation by higher-wealth tenants can now support lower wealth tenants in the event surrounding factors forces the current tenants to vacate the building; this allows certain buildings to remain in use despite lacking its initial occupants. Another improvement is the ability for buildings and lots to be constructed on slopes.

Compatibility with The Sims and The Sims 2

SimCity 4 can be used in conjunction with Maxis' popular game The Sims. Sims can be imported into the city where they will report what they think of the area they are living in. SC4 comes with 21 default Sims for those without a copy of the game. Moreover, SC4 has a control interface very similar to The Sims.

In addition, city layouts created in SimCity 4 can be used as neighborhood templates in The Sims 2. The location of roads, trees, bridges, and map features such as rivers and hills are preserved in the importation.

Graphics and music

File:SC4 Graphics.png

The graphics for SimCity 4 are far more advanced than those of its predecessors, as can be seen with this large, mature city from the game.

Unlike its predecessors, which used an engine based on 2D dimetric projection and sprites, SimCity 4 primarily uses a 3D engine to render its graphics. The landscape and moving props such as vehicles are modeled as fully polygonal 3D objects. Small buildings and props are drawn as flat images, which are pasted onto billboards - polygons with their surface normal facing into the camera. Larger buildings are modeled using a hybrid approach - a simple polygonal model defines the shape of the building, then textures are added to create detail such as doors, windows and rooftop clutter.

Although a 3D engine is used, the camera in SimCity 4 is restricted to a fixed trimetric orthographic projection, giving a similar feel to older SimCity games. This is for performance reasons. Additionally, the simulated city can now be seen at nighttime as well as during daytime.

The game includes over three hours of background music (mostly library pieces) in MP3 format, ranging from four to seven minutes in length. The music is divided between that used in Region Mode and God Mode, and that used in the city view in Mayor Mode (see below). In addition, the game has a facility for players to use their own music in the game, also divided between the two views.

Building designs

File:Adlerstadt.png

SimCity 4:Rush Hour is the first SimCity game to include a variety of architectural styles, most notably modern and contemporary architecture.

Repeating the limited design principle practiced during SimCity 3000, commercial and residential buildings in SimCity 4 borrow heavily from early 20th century architectural styles, particularly Art Deco and Romanesque Revival, while most houses appear in a traditional American Craftsman bungalow style, and modern architecture is sprinkled throughout this mix. However, in Rush Hour, buildings vary between four styles including modern and "Euro-contemporary" style architecture.

There are a number of buildings based on those found in San Francisco, including the Shell Building (appearing as "Wren Insurance"), 450 Sutter (appearing as "Vu Financial"), and the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Building (as "The Galvin Corp"). Most of the buildings are named after the game's production staff. Three of the game's bridges are also based on real-life versions, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge. The Rush Hour expansion pack also includes a bridge modeled to the likeness of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and several Europe-designed buildings based on real-life counterparts in Europe, mostly from Frankfurt, Germany, such as the Commerzbank Tower (as "Hurt Enterprises HQ").

Easter eggs

Several easter eggs can be found in the game, they include:

• A reference to Larry Walters can be seen in a graphic of a man floating from a balloon-suspended lawnchair, alluding to his famous feat.
• Two high-tech industrial buildings in the game are called "Kane Tiberium" and "Havoc Bioenhancements", which are both references to Command & Conquer; another of EA's properties obtained by a buyout of a smaller developer called Westwood Studios.
• A stylized, cartoonish depiction of the creator of SimCity, Will Wright, can be seen on a blimp.
• Gnomes will sometimes appear on buildings.
• When a computer running SimCity 4 has its system clock set to December 25, snow will appear in cities.
• Ice cream trucks will sometimes play background music from Simcity 2000.
• The UFO section of the SimCity 3000 game intro can be seen on the screen of the drive-in cinema.
• The name of mission character "Dr. Vu" may be inspired by Vivendi Universal, whose subsidiary, Vivendi Games, is one of EA's main competitors in the video game industry.

Add-ons and modifications

Official add-ons

File:Sim City 4 with plugins.png

Zoom in of a dense urban city with additional plug-ins installed, including new buildings and textures.

Following SimCity 4's release, several add-ons and development kits were made available in its official site. These include:

• New landmarks, including Rockefeller Center, the Brandenburg Gate, and Stonehenge. Later landmarks were no longer based on real-life buildings and were primarily used to demonstrate the capability of Gmax and the Building Architect Tool (BAT) around the time of the BAT's release.
• The Terrain Generator, which allows users to create maps based on any of the 48 contiguous United States states. The maps are based on data collected by the United States Geological Survey.
• The Lot Editor (LE), a lot builder, which allows users to edit or design lots for SC4 using available props. Because it was released several months before the BAT as a stand-alone version, users at the time were only capable of producing lots that consisted of pre-existing props from SC4. The BAT provides users with an updated version of the LE, rendering the original LE utility obsolete, although it is still made available in the official site.
• The Building Architect Tool (BAT), a suite of tools developed for producing custom buildings. The suite consists of three applications: The Building Architect game pack for Gmax, which enabled users to render Gmax models into SC4 sprites or props to be imported into the LE; an updated version of the LE; and the Plug-in Manager, which enables users to modify simulation properties for the lots. Several modified versions have been released that have, in effect, served as bug fixes for various problems that had not been discovered before the initial release. First released on February 2004, it enabled the modding community to produce custom buildings and props for SC4.
  
  SC4's Building Architect Tool is similar in function to SimCity 3000's Building Architect Tool and SimCity 2000's Urban Renewal Kit; however, previous programs of this kind were created from scratch by Maxis and used completely different interfaces. The SC4 BAT required a third party application (Gmax) to function, and was never bundled with SC4's or the Rush Hour expansion pack, as SimCity 3000 Unlimited had with its BAT.

The last official add-on was released on December 14, 2004.

Third party add-ons

In addition to official tools, third party programs were released for further accessibility in editing SimCity 4 contents, potentially allowing users to change the nature of the game itself.

Since the release of the LE and the BAT, the majority of add-ons in circulation consists of user-created content; most are buildings and lots, while others include cosmetic changes for terrains, custom vehicles and modifications in the game's behaviors. Both the skills of lot building and modding are also integrated at times, producing lots that are capable of affecting a city in a variety of ways.

Bugs

Maxis and Electronic Arts have released a total of three patches that improve or fix issues discovered in the original versions of SC4 and Rush Hour (two for the original SC4 and one for Rush Hour). Among other things, the patches contain performance improvements for larger cities and a variety of minor bug fixes. The two pre-Rush Hour patches each fixed errors in the game code that, while not impeding actual gameplay, were previously preventing nearly a third of the Maxis-designed buildings from ever appearing in the game. The first patch fixed the so-called "Houston Tileset Bug" which was leaving one of the game's three tilesets, a collection of contemporary Houston-inspired buildings, completely out of the rotation, meaning that the only buildings from that tileset ever to appear were several smaller variations shared by all three of the game's original tilesets. With the introduction of that patch, it rapidly became apparent that there was another underlying bug that was preventing approximately two dozen of the game's largest buildings from appearing. This issue was fixed in the second patch.

SimCity 4: Rush Hour and SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition

Main article: SimCity 4: Rush Hour

On September 22, 2003, Maxis released an expansion pack for SimCity 4 dubbed Rush Hour. SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, a bundle of the original SimCity 4 game and the Rush Hour expansion pack, was released on the same day. On August 25, 2004, Aspyr Media released Deluxe Edition for Mac OS. This was followed by the September 4, 2004 release of the Rush Hour expansion pack for the same operating system.

The expansion pack, among others, enhances the range of transportation facilities, as well as allowing the player to trace traffic flow, control vehicles and construct larger civic facilities, and introduces a new range of contemporary Europe-styled buildings.

Reception

Shortly after its release, SimCity 4 garnered positive reviews, with the game scoring a 8.1/10 rating at GameSpot and 9.2/10 rating at IGN. The game also receives a 85.1% overall score from Game Rankings, and a "Fresh" rating of 77% from Rotten Tomatoes.

Future updates

Many users have expected more expansion packs after Rush Hour, but none have been announced to date. Will Wright has previously stated in an interview on May 16, 2003, that there would probably be more expansion packs after Rush Hour, but none have been released, as of July 2007. In another interview on May 22, 2004, Wright stated that Maxis is currently attempting to work out a "new direction" for SimCity after new versions had become "steadily more complex". He ended his comments on SimCity with the following:

SimCity kind of worked itself into a corner, (because) we were still appealing to this core SimCity group. It had gotten a little complicated for people who had never played SimCity. We want to take it back to its roots where somebody who had never heard of SimCity can pick it up and enjoy playing it without thinking it was really, really hard.

Electronic Arts has since revealed the development of a new SimCity game in November 2006. The game will be known as SimCity Societies, and it is being developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment. It is currently scheduled for a November 2007 release.

See also

• Simtropolis
• SimCity (series)
• SimCity 4: Rush Hour

External links

Official sites

• Official SimCity web site
• Technical articles on SimCity 4
• SimCity.com fansite directory

Additional resources

• SimCity 4 at MobyGames
• SimCity 4: Rush Hour at MobyGames
• Template:GameFAQs
• Template:GameFAQs
• SimCity 4 - Games at Curlie
• SimCity 4 - Kids and Teens at Curlie