The epic-bearded Ocean Quigley speaks again – this time to Joystiq about the individuality of a Sim in SimCity:
Every car on the road is owned by a Sim and lives in a Sim’s driveway. If a building is on fire and there’s a traffic jam there, the fire trucks won’t be able to get to the fire and the building will burn down. If an ambulance is going down a road and there’s enough room, cars will pull over to the shoulder — if it’s a tiny road, then a Sim could die. So each Sim has a bearing on the city they’re living in.
“Because it’s SimCity, we have to be able to simulate thousands of Sims,” Quigley noted as he showed off how the GlassBox engine simulates each Sim’s life. “It’s not SimHamlet — it’s SimCity. So we built this simulation engine to support many, many thousands, tens of thousands of Sims and vehicles in flight simultaneously. So each one of those Sims is a real Sim.”
Love the bit on how a Sim wakes up and pays their rent – $1. Why can’t real life be like that!? I’m loving how they are paying attention to the finer details and giving Sims a little more life. Getting ran off the road, going bankrupt and becoming homeless, even dealing with arsonist and other special Sims. It’s sounds like it is shaping up to be incredibly fun.
