Sim City 5: Latest Trailer Shows off its Robust Glass Box Engine
Dan Moskowitz, the game design lead for Maxis’ upcoming SimCity game. The game is powered by the Glass Box game engine and the trailer highlights its key features. Don’t get freaked out by the slightly boxy or unfinished graphics shown in the trailer. The trailer makes it clear that the graphics is still a work in process and the stuff you see is by no means the final graphics of the game.
Back to the game engine, the video examines a power generation unit that converts coal to electricity. The game’s units have their own rules-unit-based rules. So in this case, when the plant burns coal to generate power, the pollution and resource rules kick in. Pollution goes up and power is generated. Each action triggers a rule and the consequences are shown in the game’s stats and animations. Another interesting feature showed by the video is mutliple functional units within one large unit. For example, you can elect to build a firehouse. After you’ve flopped it down, you can then opt to build extensions of the building. Another cool feature of the game is the resource distribution functionality of the map. Resources determine the terrain. Even the trees’ distribution are determined the same way.
The engine shows a lot of processing above and beyond the animations and the graphics you see. Rules, graphics, and animation make SimCity quite a tight package-at least judging form this video about its Glassbox Engine. we’d definitely love to learn more about this upcoming game.
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