Coded blue.

Tuesday 6 February 2007

Small screenshot City Life Deluxe

Pic of the day: I took many pretty screenshots in the game, but unfortunately the screenshot function does not work, or works differently from what English-thinking people would expect. (It is made by French, though the English in the manual and game text is excellent.)

City Life Deluxe

OK, I guess I can just as well get this over with. I've played around with the game a bit. I guess it is OK. It has many of the features of the recent Sim City releases, and is generally more complex due to the culture factions. It also has a nice "walk the streets" feature.

I did not install the game on my monster machine, since that one is currently running on the very old video card until I get the replacement. So I installed it on the second newest desktop, which is a couple years old. It takes its sweet time loading, but at least you get a load screen, although it looks like it is frozen for the first few minutes. After that, however, slowness is not a problem for quite a while, if ever. Your hardware may vary.

Next I had to make an account. I think the idea is that several people may share the same machine with the game. The game is French, and I suppose the norm there is to have more people than computers, unlike here. It is rather a nice idea, unlike the American paranoia of "oh noes two people may be using the same program or perhaps the same person uses it on two machines we are being cheated of our money kill the pirates plz!!!!11" (Yes I'm looking at you in particular, Electronic Arts.)

Next you can go through a tutorial, which is not actually a tutorial game but just a series of screens explaining the game. Boo points for that. The screens are pretty informative though and actually do the trick. You can also move directly to the game (if you for instance have read the manual, or if you are just very self-assured). There is a scenario mode and a free form mode. I assume the second is a kind of sandbox where you make your dream city, but I only tried the scenario mode. You then get to choose from different regions, some of which are more difficult than others. The easiest scenario is one of those in the Temperate region.

The social class aspect starts as soon as you begin to build. The basic game starts with two social classes, the Blue collars (whose code color is blue, of course... the color is seen on the streets) and the Fringe which have a reddish color. When you choose to build business buildings, you have to choose which of the social groups it is for. The housing nearby will then attract that type of people and they will create a neighborhood of that class. If you mix the different types of businesses randomly, the workers will also be mixed and this will cause tension. In a small society this will not have much effect, despite the frequent reminders from the game, but in a large city this could lead to gang wars at the least, possibly full-scale riots and city fires.

The six social classes are organized along two axes: Wealth and values. The two starting classes are the conservative workers on the blue side, and the liberal fringe folks on the other. Their values are different enough that they prefer to live apart, but they are both low-income groups so they tolerate each other. Both of them sympathize with the have-nots, the hopefully small and temporary group of jobless people. On the other end of the wealth axis you have the elite, the have-it-alls. They and the have-nots are arch-enemies, and should be kept apart at all costs. Likewise the poor blue-collar workers hate the guts of the rich and educated Radical Chics, and the fringe folks hate the Suits, the well-to-do conservative managers. Neither of these pairs should get within sight of each other or bad things will happen.

That's not much of a problem for the first few days at least. To get the upper classes you need certain buildings, like large factories to employ managers, but these buildings are not unlocked until your city reaches a certain size. And you cannot borrow money, you have to run a healthy surplus for a while to afford building up your population. First you build a sprawling little patchwork of houses and small businesses. Energy production and waste treatments also improve the economy and employ people. Over time, more and more buildings are unlocked, and the depth of strategy starts to become challenging. Hospitals, supermarkets and fire stations have a limited radius. Should you build more of them, or pay to bulldoze some of the small townhouses and build large apartment complexes with room for a lot more people within the same circle? ("Urban condensation" anyone?)

Actually, I could not be bothered. Instead, I zoomed in on the map, and while I did, it gradually changed into The Sims. Well, not exactly, but fairly similar. When I had zoomed in all the way, I was walking the streets of my new town. I could see people walking on the pavement, cheap cars on the street, I could recognize the various buildings I had built but now seen from ground level. You can do this while the game keeps running (ideally it should run a surplus...) and there is a small window to the lower left which will keep you updated of anything important happening in the city. It is quite charming actually, but people don't do many interesting things. They just walk around, sometimes stopping to greet someone. Still, it is a nice change of pace from the strategic map view.

That's it, really. I never bothered to play the game long enough to get to the higher-income classes and the more advanced buildings like colleges and such. If you are bored, by all means try it. I wasn't bored, really, just curious, and the game was quite affordable by Norwegian standards of income.


Yesterday <-- This month --> Tomorrow?
One year ago: Religious caricatures
Two years ago: Genetics of seventh sons
Three years ago: Essenza di Zegna
Four years ago: Circling the sun
Five years ago: Axis or allies
Six years ago: Platonically cute day
Seven years ago: Referrals
Eight years ago: Dreams & pacifist snipers

Visit the archive page for the older diaries I've put out to pasture.


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