We are the SimCity dev team from Maxis. AMAA!

Will there be splines needing reticulation?

Always!

Seriously though, being the first 3D SimCity (and the first with curvy roads) means there's some serious spline tech under the hood. We've got a few old, grizzled engineers (including some from the SC4 days) making sure your splines are reticulated to perfection.

If the SC4 devs are old and grizzled, what are the SC2k devs? :0

Older and grizzleder.

Here in the Denver metro area we have a pretty nice trail and commuter system for bikes. Any chance bicycling will find it's way into SimCity? Maybe being able to draw bike paths or multi use trails?

That's a very cool idea, but not something we have planned at the moment.

Do you have an intern busy writing silly headlines?

Actually, we have a very talented Designer/Writer named Shawn Stone who does all our wordsmithing. He is Master of All Things Text and makes sure that our headlines (and any other information or storytelling that we handle with text) is up to the quality bar of humor and wit that we've all come to expect from Maxis games, and SimCity in particular. I sit near him, we have a blast coming up with ways to document and portray all the crazy experiences that occur when you zoom in and check out the world. Sometimes I'm playing the game and something he's written catches me by surprise, and I find I'm laughing out loud. By now he just glances over at me and I give him that knowing look and a nod of approval, and point to the screen.

I kept myself amused for days writing silly business names.

The tricky thing was the names need to tell you something about what's actually going on in the building, so they couldn't be arbitrary.

Are there wall-to-wall buildings? As we've seen in the movies so far it's mostly the 'open' American-style architecture, no European or American urban (eg. brownstones) style buildings. Have you incorporated other styles in the game as well?

Figuring out the best way to place buildings close together in a given space (read: city block) is one of the more daunting engineering challenges on the project. We have a dedicated programmer who's sole job is driving how buildings spawn in zones; it's a full-time job. And it's looking good! I was building a university town last night and even my curvy suburban roads were getting backed to the brim with homes.

But even with all of that tech, our tallest skyscrapers still need breathing room for certain features. Garbage is piled in the alleys between buildings until garbage trucks can come pick it up, for example.

Will we be able to fill in the "Grass" areas between buildings with other things, such as concrete or stones?

For example, in the Casino City gameplay videos there was a lot of grassy areas between the large buildings. I'd like to fill these in with ally's or concrete so it looks much more like an actual inner city environment.

We're still working on infilling between buildings with appropriate stuff. Asphalt, concrete, storage yards, etc, depending on what sort of buildings are nearby.

Buildings come in at different densities - low density buildings (like standalone houses) have space between them. By the time you get to middle density, buildings are packed much more tightly. High density buildings are mixed. Some have plazas or other spaces around them, some are tightly packed.

Hey Devs, thanks for taking the time to do this AMA and best of luck on your release! The agent engine looks really impressive. Can't wait to play around with it.

I've got a few questions.

1) What new feature in this Simcity that wasn't in the previous iterations are you most excited for (besides the paint-brush like roads)?

2) Is there a feature that was in the previous Simcitys but isn't in this one that you miss?

3) Can you go in depth at all about modding? How you will support it? What you're doing to make it accessible.

4) What is, in theory, the maximum population a city could hold in Simcity?

5) Simcity 4 had a great balance between macro (early game zoning, highway building, roads/mass transit) to micro (school/health/police funding, budget balancing, mass transit perfecting). How would you say your game tackles this balance? Do you feel that it sways to more micro than macro, or the other way around? Can you give some examples of early, mid, and late game macro/micro?

Bonus Question: What films do you watch to get you pumped up to work on/play Simcity? Towering Inferno?

Again, thank you very much! I look forward to playing the beta.

1) What new feature in this Simcity that wasn't in the previous iterations are you most excited for (besides the paint-brush like roads)?

For me, it's not so much a specific new feature, but all of the things that follow from a fundamental reworking of the simulation (basing it on roads, agents and units, rather than grid-cells). For example, having sims walking about and seeing what they need, where they came from and where they're going. Also, looking at a specific buildings and seeing what it's doing at that moment. Creating systems that work together.

I'm also really happy with the visuals, and the way that the visuals represent what's going on with the simulation.

2) Is there a feature that was in the previous Simcitys but isn't in this one that you miss?

Sure, terraforming is the big one (and I'm the guy who designed SimCity 4's terraforming!). But, we put all of our chips down on the city simulation and on city regional play. That's the heart of the game. We're a fairly small team, so we can't do everything we want.

Also, building tools for free-form city creation turned out to be much harder than I thought! In retrospect, having everything on a nice, neat gridded landscape would have been much easier to program.

3) Can you go in depth at all about modding? How you will support it? What you're doing to make it accessible.

It's still too early -we need to get the game out first. Our simulation engine (GlassBox) is modular, our data format is the same one we've been using for years (SimCity 4, Sims2, etc.), so we've laid the groundwork. But it's going to be tricky! Buildings in SimCity 4 were sprites, projected onto low-poly cards, so it was easy to make new ones. Our new buildings are pretty complicated - they're rigged, animated, LOD'd Maya models, with complex material assignments. They're more like animated characters than like SC4 buildings. Remember, modding didn't get off the ground on SC4 until a year or so after the Rush Hour expansion - this stuff is hard, and can take a while.

4) What is, in theory, the maximum population a city could hold in Simcity?

Oh, I don't know. Hundreds of thousands, in any case. Depends on how well you do it, and if your city is focused solely on residential (so you're packing nothing but apartment blocks in and doing everything else in other cities)

5) Simcity 4 had a great balance between macro (early game zoning, highway building, roads/mass transit) to micro (school/health/police funding, budget balancing, mass transit perfecting). How would you say your game tackles this balance? Do you feel that it sways to more micro than macro, or the other way around? Can you give some examples of early, mid, and late game macro/micro?

There's still that micro to macro balance. Like you say, you're doing macro things like laying out roads & zones, you're building utilities and services. At the micro level you're querying buildings and sims and seeing what their needs are, and you're customizing your buildings to satisfy those needs. With various big-businesses, you're optimizing your city for tourism, or mining or manufacturing, and setting up the systems to grow.

Ok - more specifically. Early game macro: roads, zoning, utilities. Early game micro: Seeing who moves in and what they want. Mid game macro: expanding, developing services, connecting with neighboring cities. Mid game micro: tweaking & tuning transit options, capabilities of services & utilities. Late game macro: City specialization, large scale regional projects. Late Game micro: Optimizing big businesses, taxes, transit.

It's really an incredible experience switching between SimCity 4 and SimCity. The game has evolved in soooo many ways. Agent-driven, easier to use, better tools, more and deeper systems, modern design and graphics, multiplayer. It's night and day for me. I honestly find it hard to go back now.

From the SimMars Team, and as a fellow Simcity music lover (from 2k, 3k, 4, and hopefully 5), hello!

• Does the music consist of several tracks playing simultaneously, so that when you switch layers or views, different music is playing but all at the same tempo and key signature?

• I'd like to make a SimCity music album that is compatible with the new Simcity. Can I replace the ingame music with my own, and with the same synchronization features? (I would have different tracks for different layers and views of course).

• Any update on the plans to add mod support?

Finally, congrats on Simcity 5 2013!

Edit: If you were wondering, I made several songs in SimMars, such as Untouched, Sandbox, and Maglev, and made the SimMars Launcher, and am the (only) mod for /r/SimCityMusic! (shamelessplug)

Edit 2: Changed Simcity 5 to Simcity 2013

Hello SimMars Team! I'm a huge fan. How's the project going?

Some answers...

1. Yes! Our music is dynamic, so it changes based on many factors. If your City is running fine, you'll hear a beat that carries through the entire game. You'll actually see your sims, the cars, and smoke, everything timed to this beat. If things start to go sour, you'll hear the music change. It could get quite intense if the situation is serious enough, if you begin to go bankrupt for example. The music will change based on where you are at in the game. If you open a data layer, enter a building editor, or pop up to the region, the music will change. It's incredibly well integrated into the experience.
   

Swapping the music out is on our wishlist, something we've talked about doing. We won't have it at launch, but we haven't engineered ourselves in a corner. ;)

We know modding is important to our fans. We've always engineered our games with modding in mind. I can't confirm anythig today, but we have started talks with some of our key community members. We've shown them the game and asked them what tools they are looking for. Conversations started!

Thanks.

What are some other public transit options other than the already announced train, bus, and light rail?

We've got planes and cruise ships to bring in tourists into your city, and then ferries to shuttle Sims on the water ways between cities.

What's your favorite easter egg you've added to the game?

Can I be an easter egg?

If you look closely at a building like the City Hall or the Mining Headquarters, there's a clock on them that shows the in-game time. They even play a sound at the top of the hour and at 12am/12pm.

What kind of learning curve can newcomers to the series expect?

Like SimCity games in the past, it can be somewhat of a steep learning curve at first. Without some reasonable fear of failure, the success of building a thriving city would be muted.

That said, getting a humble town up and running is pretty straight-forward after going through the tutorial once. And from there learning how to manage big cities and specialized industries ramps the difficulty.