The hiatus is over, welcome to version 2.0 of the SIMphoni Podcast! We’re a bit rusty, because it has been nearly four months since the last episode, but overall, the show went very well despite a little “technical” glitch half-way through the episode. This week we talk about the new format for the podcast, community events, the SIMphoni Mid-Term Awards, new Cities XL screenshots, Spore concept art, the SimCity Box and much more!

Use the player at the bottom of this post to listen to the episode (35.5 MB, 38:45, mp3).

New to the SIMphoni Podcast? Click here to listen to the promo and some clips from previous episodes of the podcast (4.1 MB, 4:26, mp3).

If anyone has questions or comments, please feel free to post them here or send us an email to podcast@simphoni.net. This episode was produced, recorded and edited by me. It features Trixin as host and Rexer as co-host. Enjoy and stay tuned for episode six, airing June 1st!

 

 Simphoni Podcast Episode 5 [38:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (26)

A Dutch guy called Nique made a modern version of a classic SimCity 2000 song. It sounds very good. Brings back a couple of memories from the SC2000 era. Use the youtube video below to listen to it, or download the mp3s!

A lot of thanks to Nique for providing the mp3’s!

 

 Nique- Simcity 2008 [3:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (67)

 

 Nique- Simcity 200(8) [1:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (52)

This is a quick reminder that there are less than six days remaining to vote for us in the CU Planet Awards. So go over to cuplanet.com and vote! You have until March the 31th.

With all the excitement about The Sims 3 going on for some time now already, we almost forgot that EA hadn’t officially announced the game yet. With the launch of the new Sims 3 website, they have also issued a press release saying that indeed, there will be The Sims 3. The press release comes with screenshots as well!

Official Statement below cut:

Read more »

As we announced a little over a week ago, CU Planet currently having its first Cities Unlimited awards. Our very own edcaze2k3 has been nominated twice (under his tr0ub1e-nick): as the most actively participating member, and as the most helpful member. Simphoni.net has been nominated in the Best CU Supporter Website category. Head on over and cast your votes!

Our host has informed us that they will be moving a large part of their server park to a new location. This move will begin Friday, March 21st, at 9PM PST/12PM EDT, March 22nd 0400 GMT/0500 CET. It is expected to last up to 12 hours, until Saturday, March 22nd, 9AM PST/12AM PDT/1600 GMT/1700CET. So don’t worry if somehow during that time you cannot reach the site. Our host says:

We realize this is a very large move and we will have a dozen techs onhand to supervise

After weeks of silence, the SIMphoni podcast now returns! I’ve compiled a new podcast promo, which we will use to promote the podcast at other websites and hopefully attract more members to SIMphoni forums. The promo consists of several clips from some of the best segments of our previous episodes. Also, look for a new episode of the podcast to air within the next week or so, along with a few pretty significant changes to the show.

Click here to listen to the new podcast promo (4.1 MB, 4:26, mp3) or use the player at bottom of this post to listen to it directly.

If anyone has questions or comments, please feel free to post them here or send us an email to podcast@simphoni.net. The promo was produced, recorded and edited by me and it features Trixin and Rexer. Enjoy and stay tuned for episode five!

 

 Simphoni podcast promo [4:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (45)

On the Cities Unlimited homepage a new blog by developer David has been published, which focuses on the controversy encountered on the official forum surrounding zoning and plopping. Monte Cristo is now showing us a bit of the ideas they have in that area. They are currently working on a Mass Placement Tool.

What will the mass placement tool allow? It will enable players to select a zone and the set of building tags they want to see appear in that zone. The result should be that the buildings which appear in the selected zone correspond to the functions and other characteristics expressed by the tags. The tags will be used as a kind of sorting system: by selecting a set of tags you will actually be selecting a set of buildings.

If you want a particular building to appear in a specific place, rest assured:

Nevertheless for the plopping fans we will allow selection of specific buildings to precisely place any single one of them in any given spot.

The ultracool thing is that a Monte Cristoan by the name of Mathieu created a Java applet to demonstrate the concept David is talking about. Go on over to cuplanet to check it out, and discuss it in the forums!

Over the last two months there has been a tremendous revival of interest in the game Civilization IV and its expansion packs Warlords and Beyond the Sword (BtS for short) here at SIMphoni. This has prompted us to create a new forum, where discussion is not constricted to just Civilization, but which is also a home to other Empire Building Games such as Age of Empires and the Total War series. Some of our members have started writing exciting game journals, along the lines of the well-known City journals: i.e. lots of eye candy and lots of storytelling.

Toroca led the pack by creating the fist Empire Journal. His currently active Civ Game is about the English Empire, where he’s currently engaged in a war of attrition with the Mongols. He is keeping his readers in suspense about how this will end though, as the Empire Journal is currently on hold while Toroca is engaged with another game called the Battle for Middle Earth. A journal about his exploits there can be found in the Empire Building Games forum as well.

djVanDrake is currently playing a Noble level game as Viking VanDrakar. This game is called Rise of the Norsemen, and it appears that beautiful Isabella is indeed getting a rise out of the scruffy Viking.

Douwe is willing to give his Kingdom for a Horse. He is a fresh convert to Civilization, and doing quite well as Syberen of the Greek. Read the journal to see whether he finds what he is looking for.

If you like a good story, lots of humour and the occasional war, be sure to check out these Civ Journals, and perhaps start one of your own!

Some of you who have tried to reach the site this morning (European time) or late last night (American time) may have noticed that the site was extremely slow to load, or even totally unresponsive (giving you time-out errors). This was not due to anything being wrong with the SIMphoni software, nor with SIMphoni staff tinkering with the site, nor with you yourself tinkering with your computer. It had to do with our host experiencing a number of issues. These issues appear to be resolved now.

If you ever experience issues with the site being unreachable for you, check out our host’s status page (a link you might want to bookmark). We apologise for the inconvenience.