The focus on photorealism in modern city builders took away the apophenia, or "food for imagination" that was a core element since the first SimCity. As a matter of fact, Will Wright used to say that the real simulation runs in the player's minds (or something like that).
Sure, there's something great about Cities Skylines that (at least with very powerful hardware) can look and feel like reality. But at the same time the game engine, in order to make this photorealism of terrain elevations with infinite possible shapes of infrastructure, is so complex that the actual simulation is sloppy, and feels to me like a big downgrade from SC3000.
Traffic, economics, zoning, crime, pollution. are so much practical to simulate (both in the computer, and in our mind models) in this classic isometric style.
edit: spelling
One thing I particularly loved was printing out very large maps of my city to go on the wall :)
Edit: I like the music a lot, and the little tutorial guy is endearing. One question, how do I move the viewport around? I tried scroll click drag, mouse button drag, arrow keys.
Maybe we manage to make something that doesn't need blender (though it probably won't look as cool) or we just stop dev-gatekeeping the function that exports the 3d file. Consider it done for the next point release :)
How big can cities get, though? One of the things I love about Cities Skylines is how massive the land plots are, and the tiny plots of SimCity 2013 was a bigger turnoff than anything else in its disastrous launch.
That would be a real challenge to achieve simply because most of us are constantly surrounded by cities, but it is something that we should strive for.
For instance, game designer Fumito Ueda (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Last Guardian) said that I never wants to visit any old castles or ruins for fear that it would ruin his imagination on how game worlds should be built. It is a fair point, none of his games have had any focus on reality in terms of scale and that is what makes them so special.
Also looking at your game... can I get a copy of Microslop Excellence? ;)
thanks for sharing that. i'm a big city builder fan, but this one slipped by me. looks cool, and i'll be picking it up!
They were less-realistic, yes, but is so pleasant how everything ties together and you can neatly fill out the whole map.
Meanwhile, while I like Cities Skylines or Planet Zoo, it is always incredibly awkward to build roads and paths to the point where I find it frustrating.
Got an opinion on Timberborn? I think it's a great city builder, plus a fluid dynamics simulator where if you guess wrong everyone dies.
I think Cities Skylines scratched that itch for a lot of people.
As an aside since it's in the article, what are other cultures' irreverent targets? e.g. Anglo-cultures seem to casually joke about disasters like he does here about 9/11. Somewhat diminished by the fact that he's British, not American, but Americans do it too, and the American-British interaction involves this and Irish Car Bombs taken rather lightly. I find that curious. Do the Quebecois joke about Opération Satanique and the French have likewise a thing they make fun of the Quebecois for? Or is this an Anglo-culture thing? Obviously, I principally read in English so this might be specific to my language.
even after 9/11 and London's Greenfeel Tower fire? The vertical living seems very strained to me after events like that. Sure, they are not common issues, but there's always that thought in the back of my mind of what if.
In 2023, the annual fire fatality rates for single-family homes and older multifamily homes were roughly equivalent at 7.6 and 7.7 deaths per million, respectively. In contrast, according to Pew researchers, the annual fire fatality rate for newer multifamily residences was 1.2 deaths per million.
https://www.multifamilyexecutive.com/apartment-trends/modern...
It’s very on-brand for places like Russia and China but clearly western countries are not immune to this kind of thing either.
After the fire there were investigations into towers constructed here in Australia. Many used the cheaper flammable cladding material also. Just like with Grenfell, nothing much was done and nobody went to prison.
When SimCity 3000 came out, I couldn't help but wonder if I inspired them. "Remember that kid was really stoked about 3000."
Unfortunately for SC4, they proceeded to make all the advisors 3D-rendered Sims. For SC2K, well:
https://www.somethingawful.com/news/simcity-advisors/4/
(that was the least offensive page to link; for the canonical experience start at page 1)
I was so happy to score the physical “Music From SimCity 3000” soundtrack CD at the Alemany Flea Market fifteen or so years ago: https://www.discogs.com/release/794952-Jerry-Martin-Music-Fr...
> Some of the music from the original release is missing from an .ini file, even though it is present in Unlimited.
Article neglects to mention that the tracks which are included in Unlimited are lower-bitrate and monophonic compared to the same songs in stereo from the 1.0 release. Copy the same-name files from the original CD instead :)
Unlimited is sad because data-mining shows that it was almost multiplayer à la SC2k Network Edition: https://tcrf.net/SimCity_3000_Unlimited/Unused_Multiplayer_T...
I disagree! SimCity 2K FTW. :)
Best balance of complexity IMO and ran pretty well on my old Mac. I'd love a retro-futuristic reboot.
The picture caption with a 9/11 joke is a little off-putting, but it's at least proof that this isn't AI generated content...
9/11 seems to be an important milestone in his life. In the about section of his web page it says this:
Q:/> How old are you?
A:/> I can't remember the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can remember 9/11.
I actually keep a Basilisk II System 7.5 Mac environment just so that I can play SC2k from time to time ...
But SimCity 3000 is from 1999, and the PC version was a normal Win9x game. I own (still have the CD) the SimCity 3000 Mac port, and it is not very good. Maxis didn't port it themselves, it was done by Software MacKiev. System requirements were quite high for the time, it was sluggish, often unstable, and the file open/save dialogs reused the Windows-style dialogs which was very awkward.
The soundtrack is great though.
I do really wish an application-level classic Mac OS emulator existed. There are lots of great full-system emulators for classic Macs (Basilisk II, SheepShaver, DingusPPC), but no Rosetta-style “make the old application run in the context of a new machine” execution environments. I'll grouse to whoever will listen that all of the best edutainment software of the '90s and early '00s is trapped on PPC Mac OS.
Not quite what you're looking for I think but it was a Wine-style reimplementation of MacOS.
You recall wrong.
The only 3D SimCity game was the one released in 2013 that was simply titled "SimCity" but is frequently called "SimCity 2013" to differentiate it from the original classic.
2K, 3K, and SimCity 4 were all 2D games.
Would it be possible to automate porting the windows version into a mac or web version? Like giving a long-running agent the task and some tools to check/play the game on both platforms?
We played SimCity in my shop class at school on olds macs and i like picking it back up every now and then. It still holds up better than most new games.
A SimCity 3000 tile edge was equivalent to 64m, whereas in SimCity 4 it was 16m. The scale of the city in SimCity 3000 was bigger as a result.
Hoping to test this principle of largest possible map sizes out soon.
Ahh of course, every streamer streams every second and is egotistical. What a moron
That said, probably don't want to discuss other weird posts for each HN submission!
And even if it's a slow speed accident, who cares about being right if you get a disability in the process? It is safer to let them through so they don't plow into you when you have to suddenly stop.
The only reason to LARP as a highway cop is just ego.
in the wise words of reddit: ESH (everyone sucks here)
Don't let the people win, but also do not suddenly assume powers you do not actually have.
Essentially, plausible deniability but on the road. You might really just be a slow passing slow lane changing driver.
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The goal is to reintroduce friction into everyday life to nudge people into being less antisocial and/or make them slightly suffer for being that.
The goal is not to become a vigilante.
One brings a stable society, the other just a different flavor of the same chaos that came before.
