The lead designer for SimCity, Stone Librande, has posted a new blog explaining how the game's pathing system works, and how the studio is working to fix the issues.
Lebrande explained that, "At the surface level, GlassBox is designed around the premise that 'Agents' are created to carry data to various 'Sinks' around the city. In SimCity, you can think of the 'Agents' as Sims and vehicles. The 'Sinks' are the buildings that receive money, happiness and other resources from these Agents."
He stressed that Maxis was aware of the pathfinding problems that these "agents" were running into, and they are actively working to improve the system.
"Our main focus right now is updating the pathing system that the Agents use to get to their Sinks," Librande said. Running a successful city means keeping the traffic flowing and we are actively working to make this system better. One of the main bugs being highlighted at the moment is in the game's traffic system insisting on taking the shortest possible route to each location, causing massive traffic jams even when other roads are available."
Librande also addressed the numerous YouTube videos that have been popping up, showcasing the irregularities in SimCity's simulation mechanics. He confirmed that the game takes some shortcuts in simulating individual lives. For example, the city's Sims move to the nearest job every morning, and head towards the closest vacant house in the evening. This could mean that a particular Sim goes to a different job and returns to a different home every day.
"Ultimately we didn't feel that the cost of adding in that extra layer of micro detail made the macro game play richer," Librande explained. "Game design is filled with tradeoffs and compromises like this and we are constantly evaluating these (and many other) decisions."
In a bit of good news, Librande also confirmed that Maxis is gradually re-enabling the features that were shut off to help with the server load. Regional achievements are back up on some servers, while leaderboards are functional on the game's Test server. One can hope that the rest of the features, such as the game's "Cheetah" speed, will come online in the next few days.
According to the official SimCity server status page, all US servers are currently green and showing no issues.
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