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Simsville Canceled
Ant wrote to us with the story that Maxis announced today that Simsville has been canceled. It was originally supposed to be out in 2002 - but Maxis decided that "it wasn't up to the standards of Maxis" - but did also say the team did a good job, and was being reassigned to other products like the upcoming Sims Online. The original intent was to be a cross between The Sims and SimCity. Having had to play through some real stinkers of games before, I applaud Maxis decision to kill the product, rather then try to release it on an unsuspecting public CT Cry!
the Maxis team will be throwing a party around the bubble machine.
Word is that the project's failure is being blamed on damage caused by too many purple potions.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
I think it is really good news that someone has the nerve to pull the emergency break in this way.
I really don't understad the idea of pushing out unfinised games. I would guess it only hurts the company itself, and the poor people that buys the product. I mean: if you bought a full-price game that really felt "unfinished" I guess you'll *never* buy a game from that company again.
As an example: I picked up 'Global domination' from the low-price bin one day; thinking that it looked like a simplistic strategy game somewhat like 'risk'. Gee -- guess if I was fooled? The gameplay is basically to click as fast as you can (that sends missiles...) on other countries. It's just *that more fun* than to senslessly move around icons on the desktop! I will *never* buy a game from thoose people again...
Well; back to the point; this is a good move from maxis, and I hope other companies will follow their example.
Open Materials Database
When you insult SimAnt, you insult my family... now prepare to die!
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
This just shows, I think, what we all thought when we bought the Sims. That cities are much more entertaining. The reasons for this are straightforward: I have friends, relatives, even some enemies! I DON'T have my own city.
;-)
I'd love my own city. It'd be great fun! Why emulate something we can all do more effectively anyway. Just walk out the door and meet people and you'll have WAY more fun than the Sims can ever provide. But if your in the mood for a bit of planning, zoning, police budget squeezing and tax raising play Sim City.
Well done Maxis - get back to the Cities. Lets see some new ideas, lets network Sim City, lets have REAL neighbours to compete and negotiate with, that'd be enough to get me spending another £40 on Sim City 5Million - nothing else - just other Mayors to clash with. Oh - and Nukes
I had huge problems *reading* those codes, so I had to find a way to make them readable. Luckily my scanman32 had a finely adjustable contrast and, by scanning in line-art mode, I was able to convert them to back and white, which I then just printed.
Thank god the days of code sheets are gone.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
About the only maxis games that got me were the first simcity and afterwards, the sims. the later simcity games really didnt do it for me, but thats all a matter of oppinion, i'm quite positive there would have been some players who would have loved this game if it didnt get killed. but oh well...
While some people hated the sims, i loved it. Almost our whole family got addicted to playing it far too many hours a day. to the point that it made itself into our real lives. I still lmao when i think of the time i had supper at my sister's house one night, and then after i was finished i stood up, put my plate on the floor, said "blah blah, bla bla bla!" and walked away... lol.. we all practically cried with laughter, while my parents looked at us like we were idiots, not getting the joke.. ah well.. now my mother playes it like mad..
You can choose to manage a country (think dictator) or become a bigshot CEO of a multi-national (sorry to say but microsoft is already active in the world, maybe AOL Time Warner is free?)
It is still under development, so be aware that things might look strange from time to time. It is activly developed by 4 people at this time
Currently they have 3 worlds active and around 6000 players. And they did not do a lot of advertising.
If you are realy good at the game they even reward you with cash via PayPal.
You can ready an interview with the creator of this game, Jossi Gil at Brassknuckles
One of the things I love about the Sim line was the interoperability between some of their titles. For SimCity2000 I also bought SimCopter and Streets of SimCity. These games allowed you to fly and drive around your city. I'd love to be able to drive and fly in my SimCity3000 cities.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Wait until the amount of money left was some unusual number.
Then press the debugger switch and search for that number in memory. I think it was the "F" command. Here are some macsbug tips.
Likely that number will be found in several places in memory (so keep pressing F to find them all). Now press "g" to continue and play a little while until the money changes.
Now search again. Notice what locations are the same between each of the two values you searched for. Use SL or SW or something to set the money to a high number.
Once I showed my housemates this I never had any peace anymore. They always wanted me to cheat for them. Once I'd done it a couple times myself I never cheated on my own games, it took all the fun out.
I'm not claiming this is an original cheat but I thought I was pretty clever.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
What happened to SimMars? Maxis released a trailer for the game over a year ago, and then redirected the web site to http://simsville.ea.com/, which is now defunct. Many members of the Mars Society were hoping to play the game, and hoping that others who played the game would become interested in supporting a real-life mission to send humans to Mars.
The shareholder is always right.
It still claims a lot of my time; I have the Palm version. 'tis a hell of a way to survive long meetings. :)
What's so cool about it is the fact the game has translated across so many platforms (there was even a unix version out somewhere) and it retains the full character and interest of the game. A kudo to non-massively-graphic games that make you think.
-'fester
I'm almost glad they canned Simsville. Yet Another Micromanagement City Simulation was not needed (at least to this gamer, YMMV), but the plans they have in place for The Sims Online are intriguing. They're unlike anything the Sim series has done before as they shift emphasis from management to social interaction.
The whole game is a vast experiment in community, economics and social interaction... you're competing for visitors and popularity by having a superior house design and/or a home business. No wrangling with the AI and trying to get your Sims to brush their teeth every morning, no constant patrolling of their mood meters. I'm looking forward to playing it; call it a more constructive and pacifistic version of EverQuest, perhaps.
But I have to wonder, will adding the Simsville team onto The Sims Online push up the release date a bit? Or is that not really dependent on how many people you throw at a project?
My wife was really looking forward to this game. I can just see the red double-minus over her head and the little breaking heart icon as she kicks my ass out to the couch tonight.
"Don't kill the messenger" is not how she operates, especially when it comes to computer games.
Maybe I'm just a retro-grouch, but Maxis' Sim products seem to be getting more and more specialized and complicated at the expense of the original primitive, creative joy that old Sim City can still provide. A similar trend has been happening in Lego also. Hmmm. Coincidence? I think not.
First, the Warcraft role-playing game, then Sid Meier's dinosaur game, and now Simsville.
Companies are cancelling projects that don't meet their standards. They seem to think the loss of big money already thrown into the project is less important than the loss of reputation due to a shoddy product.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
How many more helpless gamers will we allow to be bullied by the fascist Game Enforcement Agency? Well I remember that midnight knock at my door, and the trenchcoated goons who swarmed into my home and forced me at gunpoint to play Eleventh Hour. I screamed "But it's a stinker!", hoping for mercy, but it was no use. They made me play through the entire thing, twice. I was left a broken man.
Fight the GEA!
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Do the math: profit made by producing a completely new title, versus continuing product sales on one of the more successful mass media games in history? EA makes a ton of money off of each expansion sale, because the assumption (and the requirement is) the person already owns "The Sims". Buy the original game for $40-50, each update for $20-30 each... it adds up.
It's really too bad, because SimsVille looked innovative on a number of fronts (I like the new "cartoony" graphics -- kind of reminds me of the innovation behind Sega's Jet Grind Radio). Profits have won out, though (this and "The Sims Online" -- two proven moneymakers).
Sorry -- had to say it.
If they're abandoning the game, they should open source the code. (At least as much of it as they can.) While I'm sure some of the code is useful in their other games, the majority of it will have been for naught. Why not allow others to make some use of the code? It would create a lot of good will for the company. And if the game isn't that great, it shouldn't create any competition that Maxis would need to worry about.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.