Win a free copy of Simcity 4 at Simcity-4.net

[rybolton]

We've been hard at work creating a new online community for fans of the upcoming Simcity 4. We've got news, polls, articles, screenshots, movies, forums, and much more to come.
Come and see us at:
SIMTROPOLIS (http://www.simtropolis.com)

[rybolton]

New gameplay interview at Simtropolis (http://www.simcity-4.net). Come check it out!

[rybolton]

Maxis held a live chat event on 12/19/02 where Simtropolis and other members of the community were able to chat with Art/Creative Director, Ocean Quigley. The chat is about the art and vision that went into the development of SimCity 4:

simtropolis_dot_com: What hurdles, if any, did the team have to overcome during the development of the art?

maxisocean: We have a pretty awesome art team, so the aesthetics were there, but we needed to create lofts of tools hat would automate the really painfully repetitive aspects of building creation and export. So first we needed to figure out what was going to be done manually and what could be done algorithmically..."

...Then we needed to get our engineers to build our tools, so that we could work quickly and worry only about the detail and belieavability of the buildings, and not the mechanics of getting them into the game. That was big… And also, once we got into full on production, we hired outside art houses from all over the world and had them make buildings for us. We needed to coordinate that through our website and give them feedback and direction, even though they were in totally different time zones... So I’d say that it was tools and organizations, mostly."

Come to Simtropolis (http://www.simcity-4.net/articles.asp?id=10) for the rest.

[FaeLuna]

Thanks for telling us about the transcript rybolton. :D Looks like it was a good chat.

[rybolton]

It was a lot of fun FaeLuna, we were glad to be able to participate. The hardest part, was getting the transcript from screen captures to usable print.

[rybolton]

We've revamped our site, and our forums are jumping. Come see our exclusive interview with Joseph Knight, and check out the new forum.