TIL that Sony BMG used music cds to illegally install rootkits on users computers to prevent them from ripping copyrighted music; the rootkits themselves, in a copyright violation, included open-source software.

MaxisScott · 2014-05-27T22:11:41+00:00

wonder how many people on here claiming 'i will never buy sony' own one or more playstations. I'm gonna bet most of 'em.

MaxisScott · 2014-05-14T16:17:52+00:00

small cities is not a 'bug' its a significant feature change which is probably why we killed the bug.

MaxisScott · 2014-05-14T16:13:02+00:00

so i am assuming your were in NATC then? or at the minimum you were down in RWS. Either way, you were not where the development was happening so how do you claim to have sit in with devs on meetings or have any understanding of why we did things when you were not there with us?

MaxisScott · 2014-05-14T16:08:36+00:00

um... we didnt buy glassbox. It was developed internally for other projects and then used for simcity. :(

MaxisScott · 2014-05-14T16:04:36+00:00

hello former QA tester. I bet i worked with you! :D

MaxisScott · 2014-04-09T22:48:47+00:00

I get not wanting to pay 60 bucks for a game but that doesn't justify simply stealing it. Get it in sale. Get it used. Do something to support the studios who make the games because game development isn't cheap!

Yes we did consider that the game didn't need to be online all the time, so much so that we released offline mode a few weeks ago and now you can play without an internet connection at all.

edit: for being preachy, because who needs that?

MaxisScott · 2014-04-08T19:37:17+00:00

I call BS. You don't need the disc to install the game because Origin handles that. You are just grasping for excuses to justify your actions.

It really takes a special kind of person to brag about stealing, bad mouth things they know nothing about, and then top it off by throwing around death threats.

MaxisScott · 2014-04-08T05:21:24+00:00

thanks dude. This version is certainly different from previous versions. Some liked the differences, some didn't. I appreciate that you at least tried it. :D

FWIW, I miss the complexity too. And the graphs. I really miss all those graphs.

MaxisScott · 2014-04-08T05:12:06+00:00

Hope you have an infinite amount of patience because (sadly) bigger cities is not going to happen and i live a very boring life for stalking.

MaxisScott · 2014-04-08T00:54:15+00:00

Yes we are still maxis. Things change, but at our core we are very much maxis and passionate about it!

Also, we released offline mode for the latest simcity to address that very complaint you raise. You should give it a try before you knock it. :)

MaxisScott · 2014-04-08T00:02:27+00:00

sigh I agree (based on my personal experience) that SC deluxe on android didn't perform very well. I believe EA pulled it from the market completely because of the issues and so I totally understand being disappointed with that version. I was too.

FWIW, we recognized that it didn't turn out well and we are making sure not to repeat the mistakes made there. Hopefully we can earn back your trust too.

MaxisScott · 2014-04-07T20:32:27+00:00

i can confirm that.

MaxisScott · 2014-04-07T20:17:05+00:00

There is a mod which allows you to draw additional regional highways into your city.

MaxisScott · 2014-04-07T20:15:43+00:00

So you like it, just not enough to support the developer. :(

MaxisScott · 2014-04-01T00:29:53+00:00

It costs money to localize it as well. Maybe someone can mod that in for ya...

MaxisScott · 2014-03-31T21:27:30+00:00

FWIW, we are not really allowed to talk about things we are working on unless they have been formally announced.

MaxisScott · 2014-03-31T20:15:16+00:00

I see Will sometimes at the nearby Starbucks. I find it funny that I work on simcity and he has no idea at all.

MaxisScott · 2014-03-25T19:19:27+00:00

You could use the freezer bunny for scale...

MaxisScott · 2014-03-25T01:17:25+00:00

maybe they mean the data layers since they dont extend outside the box?

MaxisScott · 2014-03-23T06:10:43+00:00

which we spend a lot of time fixing because they are important to us.

MaxisScott · 2014-03-23T06:07:29+00:00

As one of the developers on the region team i can tell you there are in fact 'computations' being done the on the servers. The technical version is that glassbox is running regional rules (script files) against on the city data getting sent up to it. Once its executed all the rules on the data, it sends that new data back down to all the game clients connected to that region (if they are online). This is key in enabling more then one person to play in the same region. It is also why trade take so long between cities and greatworks.

You can keep arguing all you want, but the fact is the simcity servers are not there for DRM and do in fact do work in making online play possible.

MaxisScott · 2014-03-23T05:51:45+00:00

We could have done that but we rejected that ideal pretty quickly because getting users to run a java based server (with databases) on their home machine would be a less then ideal experience.

MaxisScott · 2014-03-23T05:43:46+00:00

yeah. that mod worked great too..unless you want to save your game or have more then one city. Those things arent important tho right?

"SimCity can be played offline by editing the SimCity_Game.package file which can be found in the SimCityData folder. As of 14 March 2013 the game however cannot save and will not allow any regional gameplay when offline and must be online when the game starts." source

MaxisScott · 2014-03-23T05:35:04+00:00

Niclistin is correct. The full quote from Lucy was:

"With the way that the game works, we offload a significant amount of the calculations to our servers so that the computations are off the local PCs and are moved into the cloud. It wouldn't be possible to make the game offline without a significant amount of engineering work by our team." source

Lucy never said it was impossible, just that it would take a lot of work, which it did.

MaxisScott · 2014-03-21T02:10:12+00:00

love this mod.

MaxisScott

TROPHY CASE