ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) (05/29/89)
Ok, so you have a whole 3 day weekend with a million things you can be doing and you can't decide between them. Solution? Go get SimCity. My wife and I innocently picked up SimCity yesterday (Saturday) morning at a local dealer. Our intentions were to look around and not buy anything, but they had SimCity, it was inexpensive ($31), and we remembered reading something about it in Newsweek, so we said "oh let's just get it," mostly out of curiousity. Well, we've been at it all last night and all today. Is it fun! It's similar to Empire in that it's a highly addictive game of strategy. In Empire you try to conquer an alien planet, in SimCity you try to build and maintain a city. You can either choose a prebuilt scenario (some sort of disaster in an existing city) or try to build your own city from ground up. We've mostly tried the latter; boy is it addictive. You decide where to put different types of zones (residential, commercial, industrial), how to most efficiently lay out power lines and roads, how to take best advantage of existing landscape, and so on. Sims (the people) move in and out, and parts of the city become slums while other parts prosper. You build beautiful bridges and roads and surround them with parks and houses just to find that five years later the traffic is intolerable and you have to tear stuff down. When the city is large enough you can build airports, seaports, and stadiums; each has disadvantages and advantages. Airplanes come crashing down in the middle of the city, stadiums cause massive traffic jams, etc. But without them your city will never grow beyond a certain point. You have to watch out for the polls; the Sims are constantly evaluating you. You also have to find the delicate balance in the budget and keep the taxes tolerable while trying to maintain your roads and police and fire departments, all necessary. Pollution is another problem that can quickly turn into a difficult-to-reverse nightmare; you have to make sure to avoid concentrating too much industry in one location... Anyway, you get the point. It suffices to say we played eight hours straight today and had to tear ourselves from the program just to eat. I imagine most people will find similar enjoyment in the program. The program crashed twice; both in the first half hour of play. You can save/restore cities, so we started doing that often, and for some reason it hasn't crashed since. The program also gets confused sometimes; but it seems to recover after a few seconds and it happens rarely enough such that it hasn't been a problem. The graphics are great --- They look real nice, and, best of all, they animate --- you see little cars moving along the roads, planes take off/land, buildings appear/disappear, and so on. The program is also fast, even when the city gets large. We have the Amiga version; but it's supposed to be out for the Macintosh as well, and I imagine it's equally fun. Highly recommended. I imagine it easily rivals Indiana Jones in fun factor. Ali Ozer
nop@cup.portal.com (Randy G Jouett) (06/01/89)
In article <9534@polya.Stanford.EDU>, ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) says: > >Ok, so you have a whole 3 day weekend with a million things you can be >doing and you can't decide between them. Solution? Go get SimCity. > Coevolution Quarterly (oh, ok, Whole Earth Review) also gave SimCity a very good review. I guess I'll hafta buy one. Hey, Ali. When's the NeXT version of SimCity coming out?? 8-)
nop@cup.portal.com (Randy G Jouett) (06/01/89)
> Hey, Ali. When's the NeXT version of SimCity coming out?? 8-)
Well, the original programme author and concept was done by Will Wright.
Will is a *MASSIVE* Mac fan, so who knows if we will ever see a NeXT
version. Will originally wrote SimCity on....drum roll.....the C= 64, but
he never finished it :(. On the 64 version you could send Godzilla, huricanes,
and other nasty stuff on a rampage through the city -- really great to watch
Godzilla smashing about :).
Will is also so the author of "Raid on Bungling Bay" for the C= 64.
I asked a friend of mine (Justin McCormick) to ask Will if he was ever going
to port it over to the Mac/Amiga/ST/PC/etc and he said that Will "doesn't
ever want to see another piece of that code again." This is a Mega- :-(
situation in my book.....nuff' with the trivia....later!
--page%swap@Sun.COM (Bob Page) (06/10/89)
Thad P Floryan: >SimCity doesn't function on an '020 Amiga Has nothing to do with the '020. I'm not sure what the problem is. A clue: SimCity stomps on low memory when it starts up. It won't run on either of my A1000s; I have to boot the Amiga from the SimCity disk, which kinds throws "multitasking" out the window. But THEN it runs fine. It's a bit of a drag, but once you're playing you won't care. >Well, this turkey goes out the window and over the fence unless someone wants Try it again by booting directly from the disk. If it works, enjoy the game and send in your registration card with a note attached. ..bob
dwl10@uts.amdahl.com (Dave Lowrey) (06/10/89)
In article <109193@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> page@sun.UUCP (Bob Page) writes: >Thad P Floryan: >>SimCity doesn't function on an '020 Amiga > >Has nothing to do with the '020. I'm not sure what the problem is. A >clue: SimCity stomps on low memory when it starts up. It won't run on >either of my A1000s; I have to boot the Amiga from the SimCity disk, >which kinds throws "multitasking" out the window. But THEN it runs >fine. It's a bit of a drag, but once you're playing you won't care. > >>Well, this turkey goes out the window and over the fence unless someone wants > >Try it again by booting directly from the disk. If it works, enjoy >the game and send in your registration card with a note attached. > >..bob I purchased SimCity last nite, and it runs like a champ on my amiga 2500. It works in both 68020 & 68000 modes. I can boot either from my harddisk or from the original game disk, and it works just as well. The only problem with '020 mode is that the game runs very fast. When I set the game speed to FAST, a month lasts about 3 seconds! It also works fine from my harddisk. It requires the original disk in the drive to start up, but once it starts, it doesn't reference it anymore. FYI - The game is V1.0. This is the "list" data for the executable: SimCity 137304 ----rwed 01-May-89 12:35:37 Also, has anyone received the "SimCity Tip #1" that is promised when you send in your registration? I'm sending mine in today, but I would like to know what it is. Dave -- "What is another word | Dave Lowrey | [The opinions expressed MAY be for 'Thesaurus'?" | Amdahl Corp. | those of the author and are not | Houston, Texas | necessarily those of his Steven Wright | amdahl!dwl10 | employer] (`nuff said!)
kelso@mimsy.UUCP (Stephen Kelley) (06/13/89)
In reply to the original posting about SimCity "locking up" an Amiga i experienced the same thing on my A2000. I copied it to my hard disk clicked on the icon, then clicked on the "fabricate your own" & ... Nothing... Nada... Zippo... My mouse wouldn't even move... I then tried it from the CLI (w/ the key disk) & it worked fine. To get more strange, I tried the icon approach later (after removing all extraneous windows) and it worked fine, too. One last observation, in my city planning frenzy, "You Sims want what??? Or, you'll do what???", I double clicked the left mouse button when going from "map" to "edit" modes & got locked up again!!! It's a *good* simulation & the Amigatizing (at least externally/visually) was done OK and I'd *highly* recommend it to anyone but this puppy has a few bugs. I intend to document the few I've found and send 'em in w/ my registration. If enough do so, maybe it'll be fixed or even enhanced (wishing, of course) soon. -- Real: Stephen Kelley, Welch Library, Johns Hopkins Univ. Internet: stevek@welch.jhu.edu
dennya@pnet02.cts.com (Denny Atkin) (06/13/89)
Why SimCity is not working on many of your systems: I talked to Brian Conrad, the programmer, and he said the current version requires a contiguous CHIP memoryhunk of almost 400K. He said they are going to address the chip memory hoging in an update. +-----------------------------------------------------+---------------------+ | Denny Atkin, Writer at Large //Amiga |"It's all the | | PeopleLink: DENNY \X/ 1000! | truth--except the | | UUCP:{ames!elroy, <backbone>}!gryphon!pnet02!dennya | bits that are lies."| | INET:dennya@pnet02.cts.com | -- Douglas Adams | +-----------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (06/13/89)
Re: Dave Lowrey's comments about SimCity working ... True. As stated elsewhere, the problem has been isolated to the presence of "more than the usual" number of floppy drives on one's system. Number of drives. NOT lack of CHIP RAM. This has been checked and verified on 7 different systems today (Monday). So I decided to keep it awaiting the bug-fixed replacement copy. After actually seeing it (and it wouldn't work on the dealer's systems which also had >1 floppy), it IS a nice simulation.
riley@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Daniel S. Riley) (06/14/89)
In article <19432@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: >True. As stated elsewhere, the problem has been isolated to the presence >of "more than the usual" number of floppy drives on one's system. > >Number of drives. > >NOT lack of CHIP RAM. Each floppy takes up chip ram for buffers (both AmigaDOS and trackdisk, I believe). Sorry Thad, you haven't eliminated chip ram (mis-)management as a possible culprit. -Dan Riley (riley@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu, cornell!batcomputer!riley) -Wilson Lab, Cornell U.
dmr@csli.Stanford.EDU (Daniel M. Rosenberg) (06/14/89)
In article <19432@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: >Re: Dave Lowrey's comments about SimCity working ... >Number of drives. >NOT lack of CHIP RAM. >So I decided to keep it awaiting the bug-fixed replacement copy. After >actually seeing it (and it wouldn't work on the dealer's systems which also >had >1 floppy), it IS a nice simulation. Me too, but I have a fairly normal 1.5 (CLtd memory) setup with but one floppy drive. Plenty of memory, healthy A1000 with no extra halfbrite chip (where can I get one of those anyway?) but the first three times I tried using SimCity, fresh from the shrink-wrap, it would not finish loading. Sometimes it would just give up as if I had never double-clicked on the icon, sometimes it would freeze and blacken the screen, other times I'd hear funny clicking noises. Smelled a little like copy protection blues. Anyway, after some mild incantations the game works, but crashes fairly often; I have never completed a game, as it always dies. (Though it can take a fairly long time to.) My memory board seems healthy enough, and I can load in huge cities and make them run for a while before the Guru comes. Trying to load a city when there already exists one almost always messes the game up, leading quickly to a freeze-up, necessitating reboot. It's frustrating. Great game, though. -- # Daniel M. Rosenberg // Stanford CSLI // Opinions are my own only. # dmr@csli.stanford.edu // decwrl!csli!dmr // dmr%csli@stanford.bitnet
mab@druwy.ATT.COM (Alan Bland) (06/14/89)
In article <16723@gryphon.COM> dennya@pnet02.cts.com (Denny Atkin) writes: >Why SimCity is not working on many of your systems: I talked to Brian Conrad, >the programmer, and he said the current version requires a contiguous CHIP >memoryhunk of almost 400K. He said they are going to address the chip memory >hoging in an update. I have the SimCity *demo* disk, and if you run it from CLI and you don't have enough CHIP memory, it will display a message to that effect. So all you folks who are having trouble with SimCity, try starting it from CLI and see if you get an error message. -- -- Alan Bland -- att!druwy!mab or mab@druwy.ATT.COM -- AT&T Bell Laboratories, Denver CO -- (303)538-3510
poirier@dg-rtp.dg.com (Charles Poirier) (06/15/89)
Has anyone had any luck running SimCity from hard disk? I copy SimCity and the scenarios directory to a HD directory, leave the floppy in df0:. Then run SimCity. It checks df0:, brings up the initial screen, I click on either new game or load game, and then it promptly exits, devouring 170K of chip mem in the process. Same result if I click the icon. The game works fine if I just boot the floppy. Config: B2000, 1.2 ROM, + df1: + ASDG 8Mi/2 + A2090 + Quantum Q280. V1.3 printer device, mostly V1.2 other stuff, WShell. Whine whine, Charles Poirier
scot@amigash.UUCP (Scot L. Harris) (06/16/89)
I have been following the discussion of problems with SimCity fairly
closely and finally decided to add my 2 cents worth.
First I want to say that SimCity is very good and has cost me many many
hours of time when I should have been programming. <grin> That aside
the discussion of possible problems on starting up SimCity being either
number of drives or chip ram. I believe the problem to be a shortage
of chip ram. On amigash if I run it from my harddrive I have to shut
down just about all of my "standard environment". This includes dcron,
tapestry, etc. I have noticed by watching MachII that all but about 90K
of chip ram is appropriated by SimCity. If I do not shut down most of
my environment then SimCity has a nasty habit of not starting up but it
does not release memory that it apparently has allocated.
My only other real complaint with SimCity is having to insert the original
all the time. Have not made a real effort at making a copy of the disk
yet but will have to try that real soon. I would have much prefered a
look up in the manual type protection scheme.
Currently have 85,000 or so citizens in a fairly stable city, now if
I can only rebuild the airport which burned down after the plane crash.....
--
_
/// /_\ Scot L. Harris !hoptoad!peora!rtmvax!amigash!scot
\XX/ / \ M I G A
[If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, perhaps
you have misunderstood the situation.]fgd3@jc3b21.UUCP (Fabbian G. Dufoe) (06/17/89)
From article <4115@druwy.ATT.COM>, by mab@druwy.ATT.COM (Alan Bland): > In article <16723@gryphon.COM> dennya@pnet02.cts.com (Denny Atkin) writes: >>Why SimCity is not working on many of your systems: I talked to Brian Conrad, >>the programmer, and he said the current version requires a contiguous CHIP >>memoryhunk of almost 400K. He said they are going to address the chip memory >>hoging in an update. > > I have the SimCity *demo* disk, and if you run it from CLI and you don't have > enough CHIP memory, it will display a message to that effect. So all you folks That's strange, since loading Workbench (LoadWB) consumes about 40K, much of it CHIP RAM. Of course, if you LoadWB, then try to run a program from the CLI you'll use more memory than if you launched it directly from the Workbench. But if you are tight on memory you can conserve by not loading the Workbench at all. You'll get a default CLI window from which you can run your program. --Fabbian Dufoe 350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South St. Petersburg, Florida 33705 813-823-2350 UUCP: ...uunet!pdn!jc3b21!fgd3
tsouth@pro-pac.cts.com (System Administrator) (06/30/89)
Can someone provide a synopsis of some of the capabilities of this
program I keep hearing about, called SimCity? I understand that it
is basically a city emulator, but what kind of cities can one make
with it? Can you do time jumps back to the days of Normans and
Saxons? Comments please!
Todd South
--
UUCP: {nosc, uunet!cacilj, sdcsvax, hplabs!hp-sdd, sun.COM}
...!crash!pnet01!pro-nsfmat!pro-pac!tsouth
ARPA: crash!pnet01!pro-nsfmat!pro-pac!tsouth@nosc.MIL
INET: tsouth@pro-pac.CTS.COM - BITNET: pro-pac.UUCP!tsouth@PSUVAX1UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) (07/06/89)
SimCity won't let you make pre-industrial cities. Really, mostly
post-industrial yuppie ones, but it's still fun.
Basically, you start with terrain such as rivers, lakes, woods, hills,
and so on. You are a sort of all powerful city planner on a
budget. You decide to clear some land and zone it residential, and then
the simulation starts creating citizens who build houses and move in.
You clear some more land and zone it industrial and they will build
factories there (if it has power). You build roads connecting the
industrial and residential zones, and the citizenry start commuting to
work, and might eventually complain about the traffic and move away.
Oops! You lose. Maybe build light rail next time.
It requires 1MB.
leewizard@sosaria.UUCP (Chris Brand) (08/10/89)
In article <d2kT02Qy47hF01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> Steven Wright writes: >SimCity works fine on my harddisk. The copy from floppy to harddisk does >have problems with one file. But this is probably something to do with the >copy protection. You DO need the otiginal disk in df0:, but once the game >verifies that you have an original disk, all I/O is to the hard disk. The copy protection SimCity uses is called Long Track. The problem with this kind of protection is that if your drives are used a lot and not exactly adjusted, they *may* have problems with the long track, a track in which more information is stored than normally (this is done by lowering the drive rotation speed, thus to copy it, you need to change your hardware). Now if your drives have problems reading it, the software thinks this is a copy and does not start (or produces a guru). I strongly suggest that software companies should no longer use this kind of protection. It caused me problems already several times now. Chris -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Brand Berne, Switzerland Wizard BANG: ...!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!impch!accsys!sosaria!wizard OR: ...!uunet!acad!acadch!impch!accsys!sosaria!wizard SHORT: wizard@sosaria.ccs.imp.com "Justice is the possession and doing of what one is entitled to" - Platon ---------------------------------------------------------------------------