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Eduardboon

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 17, 2012
269
39
Dear all,

I played the simcity beta for a while on my retina macbook pro and found that the game would run great on 1920x1200. However, when I set the lightning setting on anything beyond minimum I'd get a LOT of stutters in the game.

Is there anyone with this machine that can agree on this? Game doesn't look nearly as good with the setting on minimum (draw distance is impacted as well)
 

smoge

macrumors regular
Jun 14, 2011
217
1
I have the beta on my windows laptop, runs like crap. its only the beta though.
 

Eduardboon

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 17, 2012
269
39
I have the beta on my windows laptop, runs like crap. its only the beta though.

On my desktop PC the game runs just fine.

Could just be the rMBP though.. In Chivalry you have to turn off the lightning as well for FPS
 

anshuvorty

macrumors 68040
Sep 1, 2010
3,379
4,855
California, USA
with a decent video card, this game looks AMAZING for a city-building, rts-style game. it really seems like a realistic simulation albeit with a cartoon-esque drawing style. I like it! Sim City 2000 with the realistic art style wasn't too color and thus seemed very bland to me. I am really excited for this game to come out!
 

iKwick7

macrumors 65816
Dec 29, 2004
1,084
32
The Wood of Spots, NJ
SimCity addict since the original. 2000 is my favorite so far....


Been playing the beta all weekend. Liking it a lot but I have 2 MAJOR complaints:

1- City sizes are far too small.

2- No terrain editing. Maybe beta only but I don't think so. Seriously bad- might as well just play Simcity on iOS.
 

Cougarcat

macrumors 604
Sep 19, 2003
7,766
2,553
SimCity addict since the original. 2000 is my favorite so far....


Been playing the beta all weekend. Liking it a lot but I have 2 MAJOR complaints:

1- City sizes are far too small.

2- No terrain editing. Maybe beta only but I don't think so. Seriously bad- might as well just play Simcity on iOS.

The city sizes are small because of the region gameplay. You're meant to specialize your cities. So you might have one that's a residential suburb which is connected to an urban center. You could think of it as one big city across several maps. It's not really that much different than before. They probably had to do this in order to not kill everyone's computers.

I agree with you about the terrain editing, though. Not sure why they decided to take that out.
 

ScottishCaptain

macrumors 6502a
Oct 4, 2008
871
474
The city sizes are small because of the region gameplay. You're meant to specialize your cities. So you might have one that's a residential suburb which is connected to an urban center. You could think of it as one big city across several maps. It's not really that much different than before. They probably had to do this in order to not kill everyone's computers.

The simulations are ran server-side.

They did this to alleviate the stress of running the game on EA's servers, because EA has to pay for bandwidth and power to keep those systems alive.

Had they made a proper SimCity sequel instead, where everything was ran locally- your typical modern day computer would have been able to handle a city approximately 2x larger then the largest region in SimCity 4.

Oh, and you'd have terrain editing too. The reason why they dropped that was because it's easier, again, on EA's servers- to keep a common set of terrain templates and vend those out to the players.

In other words, any limitations you are encountering are specifically because of the way they opted to tie the game into an online service.

-SC
 
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