Ever since SimCity launched it has been plagued with traffic problems, vehicles blocking roads or going around the city in a manner that was simply not logical.
In update 7, Maxis are trying to address many of these issue with changes to the way in which traffic flows. Better late than never.
In a new developer blog update from software engineer Alexander Harkness, details the changes players can expect to see when update 7 goes live. Once of the outcomes of the changes is that traffic will now stop clumping which was a real problem for service vehicles such as garbage trucks.
Emergency vehicles will also now react differently with clumping of police cars at a crime scene becoming a thing of the past. Once a vehicle arrives at a scene, the first vehicle to arrive will tend to the emergency and the subsequent arrivals will then go about their business preventing a blockage.
The image below illustrates how two of the same vehicles will not take different routes preventing duplicate efforts.
Vehicle routing between RCI zones is also being improved with a more intelligent system that will take congestion into account. A series of more complex diagrams have been posted over on the official blog so if you’re suffering from traffic chaos I would check these out for the full explanation on the changes coming from Maxis.
Once update 7 arrives, SimCity could feel quite different, what with traffic improvements and the new underpass and tunnel system coming. We’ll have to wait and see how it all pans out and whether the changes will really enhance the gameplay.
