It is one of the most cherished games in the history of gaming. But now, a remake is on the horizon.

MailOnline talked to Ocean Quigley, Senior Art Director at EA's Maxi Studios in California, about what we can expect in the new SimCity.

What made you want to remake SimCity?

Ocean: 'SimCity is the game I love the most. It’s the game that brought me into game development in the first place.



'With this new SimCity, I had the opportunity to realise ambitions that I’ve been harboring since I was art director and creative director on SimCity 4 – specifically, I wanted to make a fantastically detailed world full of activity, with its own internal life and dynamic, that you can push on and that pushes back.

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'I wanted to give you the means to create a city that’s visually spectacular, that you can explore and experience from any perspective, and that surprises you with the things that it does. '



Being such a classic, how have you managed to evolve the game without annoying the hardcore fans?

Ocean: 'We needed to reinvent SimCity. Nobody was excited about rehashing SimCity 4, so we changed some core assumptions and worked out the consequences of them.



'The first and most fundamental change was to completely change our simulation approach – rather than doing a checkerboard style, grid-based statistical simulation we built a new agent & object based simulation engine.



'That let us deepen the simulation tremendously, and it lets us build out all of the relationships between the different components of a city with much more fidelity.



'Then we decided to make it multiplayer, so that cities could differentiate, and take on specialised roles in the context of the region.



'Then we decided we’d allow players to build road networks that weren’t constrained to a grid.

'This changed the experience from “filling in squares” to something much more realistic – laying out roads and networks as the organizing structure of a city.

'And of course, we switched from sprite-based graphics engine to a fully 3D one, so everything about the look of the game had to change.



'Of course, we kept the heart of the game in place – you’re still laying out roads, zoning, plopping down buildings to meet your population needs, you’re growing your city and managing its problems. It’s still very much SimCity, but it’s a SimCity that’s evolved from its earlier incarnations. '



The destructive weather was a key feature in the original. What can we expect weather-wise in this game? Any surprises?



Ocean: 'Yeah, we have disasters like tornadoes and earthquakes. There is a natural variability to the weather – some days are clear, others are hazy, and we even have droughts.

'If your city is down by the water, you’ll get more haze and moisture in the air than if it’s up on a highland plateau. '

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There was a huge focus on building in the original, without, say, zooming in on the intricacies of what makes a city 'tick'. Can we expect to see a more human component - dealing with politics /crime etc?

Ocean: 'Buildings, roads and infrastructure are still hugely important, but we’ve added much more specificity to the human aspect.



'Previously, things like crime, homelessness, employment, sickness and the like were modelled abstractly and statistically. Now they’re handled on an individual by individual basis.



'You’ll see individual Sims walk from home to work, or go and rob businesses, or lose their house and go live in the park. And that’s what’s actually happening – it’s not just a visualisation of what’s going on, the simulation is built out of all of those individual activities.'



Where is the game based - and environment-wise, what can we expect?

Ocean: 'It’s based in a temperate, Mediterranean climate. There are seasons, but they’re mild – trees change color and lose their leaves in winter, summers are dry and winters are wet. Rainclouds will drift by and water the landscape.



'You have to keep an eye on your water sources; they might dry up in the summer. And don’t place sewage outflows or industrial areas near them, or you’ll sicken your population.'



What engine does the game use, and why did you use it?



Ocean: 'There are two engines at work in the new SimCity. Andrew Willmott, who was a lead engineer on SimCity 4, built our custom simulation engine.



'It’s called GlassBox, and it’s what brings the city to life. It’s what drives the behavior of the game. With GlassBox, we’re embedding behavior into each building and vehicle, and letting the large scale activity of the city emerge out of their interactions.



'SimCity, by contrast, has tens of thousands of things that are active in the scene, if you add up all of the cars, buildings, Sims, trees, dynamic lights, etc. If you tried to render those in a generic engine, your machine would come to a smoking halt.



'We’ve had to make a graphics engine that’s geared to those requirements, rather than one that’s geared to delivering a FPS experience.

Blown away: Like the original, tornadoes will do some serious damage



Are there other views available other than the traditional birds-eye view?



Ocean: 'Yeah! Now that it’s a full 3D city, with a user-controlled camera, you can fly down to street level and explore.

'We’ve built enough detail into things that when you zoom in, there’s stuff for you to look at too.



'One of my favorite things to do is to build a city, then go down to street level and look around. When you’re zoomed in, the background defocuses, and you have the sense of being in a fabulously detailed model world. '



What hazards are there in the game?



Ocean: 'Oh, the usual! Bankruptcy and abandonment, sickness and injury, ground pollution and air pollution, plague and giant lizards, traffic congestion and unemployment and homelessness are just a few of the hazards players will face.



'There is also the risk of burning up in a fire or being tossed up in the air by a tornado. Earthquake, meteor strikes, etc. It’s a dangerous world in there! '

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