De Amerikaanse Simcity site heeft een nieuw blog online gezet, dit keer over het ontwerpen van steden en wat er zoals mogelijk is, bijvoorbeeld een stad die als plattegrond een robotvorm heeft.
Zodra de nederlandse versie online staat melden we dat uiteraard zo snel als mogelijk is.
Cool Looking City: Residential Robot
Michael Donahoe, Community Manager
Stop right there — this is the city you’re looking for. Well, if you’re searching for the best representation of just how clever you can get with SimCity’s newly-added curvy road tool, that is! Audio Engineer Dave Driggers used this feature to prove that creating cities with windy roads opens up the opportunity to take your creativity to far, far away places, as evidenced by his city inspired by everyone’s favorite little companion ’bot. When Dave isn’t manipulating roads to resemble famous robots, he works on integrating the sound systems into the game as well as implementing audio-related gameplay features.
Dave’s fully functional design is just one of the many cool looking cities that the architectural artists here at Maxis have been whipping up recently thanks to weekly contests hosted by the design team. These weekly challenges encourage the team to play the game and have fun with it. Yes, folks – we do sometimes get paid to play games. We’ll be revealing more information about these contests in future blog entries, but for now, let’s learn a little more about how Dave assembled his robot-themed town.
Community Manager Michael Donahoe: What was the inspiration for building this city?
Audio Engineer Dave Driggers: I’ve always been a fan of sci-fi movies. And I’ve had this little toy robot forever, which inspired it. But it came about because one of our designers, Chris Schmidt, held a contest asking everyone in the studio to create something cool, and that’s how I ended up submitting this.
But I actually wasn’t planning to make it. I was just playing with the road tool and I was like, “I wonder if this would look cool here.” And then after a few hours I got sucked into the design and was having fun with it. It’s really easy to get distracted by just playing the game. Then I realized, “Oh, wait – I have real work to do!” [laughs]
MD: Did you have any trouble making this a fully functional city?
DD: No. There was plenty of space to put what I needed. And nothing about the shape or design of the city conflicted with functionality in any way.
MD: So are you saying that if we can find some open land somewhere, we could build a real-life representation of this city right now?
DD: Could? Yes. Should? Hell yes.
MD: We need to talk to some architects!
DD: I have a friend that’s an architect. We just need to come up with a lot of money.
MD: A lot of money. And a lot of space… We’re screwed.
DD: I’d settle for a robot house.
MD: Me too! So I noticed that you strategically placed a factory to represent the robot’s eye. Tell us about that.
DD: Definitely. So I saw that model of our oil refinery looked a lot like the panel that sits next to the robot’s eye, so it worked out really well.
MD: What’s next for you?
DD: Good question! The tools continue to progress, so I’m always looking forward to creating new things.
