pff@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Pablo Fernicola) (07/10/89)
My personal opinions regarding SIMCITY and COLONY SIMCITY: good but slow (SE using internal 20Meg drive). Even on the Fast setting, the money dries up too quickly and you are left waiting for the next year. COLONY: excellent. Even on the SE it is fast and very amusing (should I say addictive?). Another good program (not a game) that I bought recently is MacMoney. It is good to keep your expenses and see where your money is going (75% into software :-) ). It takes about 1-1:30 to set up and you do have to read the manual, after that you don't waste any time. -- pff@beach.cis.ufl.edu Pablo Fernicola - Machine Intelligence Laboratory - UF "That has nothing to do with computers; it is software." Standard disclaimer with System 7.0 extensions and inheritance elements applies.
dce@Solbourne.COM (David Elliott) (07/10/89)
In article <20573@bikini.cis.ufl.EDU> pff@beach.cis.ufl.edu () writes: >My personal opinions regarding SIMCITY and COLONY > >SIMCITY: good but slow (SE using internal 20Meg drive). Even on the Fast >setting, the money dries up too quickly and you are left waiting for the >next year. On a Mac II, it's much faster, but the money still dries up too quickly. The solution is to learn to cheat (Maxis sends you the info after to register your copy). I've seen the color upgrade, and my opinion is that it's almost not worth bothering with. On the plus side, it's in color, not copy-protected (I may buy it for this reason), and works with MultiFinder. On the minus side, it requires you to be in 16-color mode. So, it may be useful for viewing existing cities, but having to switch your monitor sucks, Switch-a-Roo notwithstanding. -- David Elliott dce@Solbourne.COM ...!{boulder,nbires,sun}!stan!dce
han@Apple.COM (Byron Han) (07/12/89)
In article <20573@bikini.cis.ufl.EDU> pff@beach.cis.ufl.edu () writes: >My personal opinions regarding SIMCITY and COLONY > >SIMCITY: good but slow (SE using internal 20Meg drive). Even on the Fast >setting, the money dries up too quickly and you are left waiting for the >next year. don't expand so fast and the money will not dry up. or you can embezzle. or you can do banzai taxation... +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Disclaimer: Apple has no connection with my postings. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Byron Han, Communications Scapegoat At Apple, we change the world everyday. Apple Computer, Inc. ----------------------------------------- 20525 Mariani Ave, MS27Y Internet: han@apple.COM Cupertino, CA 95014 UUCP:{sun,voder,nsc,decwrl}!apple!han ------------------------------------ GENIE:BYRONHAN CompuServe:72167,1664 ATTnet: 408-974-6450 Applelink:HAN1 HAN1@applelink.apple.COM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
timk@zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu (07/13/89)
If your money dries up in SIMCITY, you aren't playing it right -- you are losing. The speed is fine on my Mac II. I can't afford to play often - eats up 3 hour blocks like nothing. Tim Krauskopf NCSA
mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney) (07/14/89)
In article <1573@marvin.Solbourne.COM> dce@Solbourne.com (David Elliott) writes: >I've seen the color upgrade, and my opinion is that it's almost not >worth bothering with. On the plus side, it's in color, not >copy-protected (I may buy it for this reason), and works with >MultiFinder. On the minus side, it requires you to be in 16-color >mode. So, it may be useful for viewing existing cities, but >having to switch your monitor sucks, Switch-a-Roo notwithstanding. There are some major problems with this (according to Maxis) "nearly bug free" 1.1c version: The user interface is slow. VERY slow. Unbelievable slow. On a Mac II with 5Mb! I imagine this is why they insist on 16 color mode (rather than fixing a real design problem). Mouse down events ignore the cursor position. Instead, when the event is finally handled, they use the *present* mouse position. A real *obvious* problem for a slow program. The 1.1 version does the same thing, but it's so much faster you don't notice. "Drawing" (roads, etc) too fast will skip areas. A related, and frustrating, design flaw. Drawing with the shift key held down does constrain to horizontal and vertical, but it will only draw underneath the cursor! This means you *still* have to very carefully draw on the horizontal or vertical line. Colors are not managed correctly. If you are silly enough to run another color program in 16 color mode (yuck), when you switch back to SimCity all your colors are wrong. It is apparent that they didn't bother using the Palette Manager, which is strange as it greatly simplifies using color. But that's not so important because, although the program may "work" under MultiFinder, don't try to switch out too often. I've crashed three times when switching back in to SimCity. There are many other minor bugs (such as the "go away" box: it highlights as per the user interface spec, but nothing happens!). The game itself is amazing and addictive. They do know how to write an entertaining city simulator. They don't know how to write Macintosh software (as I understand it they are "really" Amiga programmers; still I can't believe how bad 1.1c is; surely the Amiga handles mouse events correctly). It is nice to have color (the industrial areas are particularly good), but the only reason I use the 1.1c version is because I don't have to &%$#@ reboot under UniFinder like I did for 1.1. Luckily, you can only buy 1.1c as an upgrade. Brian McElhinney mce@tc.fluke.com
gford@nunki.usc.edu (Gregory Ford) (07/15/89)
A little trick I used to employ was to hike up the tax to 20% in December of the year, and then lower it the following January. Yeah, the people complained, but they didn't move out either, and I got the money I needed. (Then I learned how to embezzle funds!) ******************************************************************************* * Greg Ford GEnie: G.FORD3 * * University of Southern California Internet: gford%nunki.usc.edu@usc.edu * *******************************************************************************
ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer) (07/15/89)
In article <9609@fluke.COM> mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney) writes: >The game [SimCity] itself is amazing and addictive. They do know how to >write an entertaining city simulator. They don't know how to write Macintosh >software (as I understand it they are "really" Amiga programmers; still I >can't believe how bad 1.1c is; surely the Amiga handles mouse events >correctly). The Amiga version suffers from a similar set of problems, especially with the mouse & user interface. It's nearly impossible to drag out roads and power lines, for instance. The right mouse is always used for menus on the Amiga; but they took the liberty of making it bulldoze if you're not on the menu bar, which sometimes means you inadvertently bulldoze. They use two screens (one for detailed map, other for graphs) that slide up and down and can be pushed back to front, however the menu is available only on one of the screens. The program also have some memory problems; it has trouble starting up on machines with 512K chip memory if you have more than 2 floppies, for instance. They did some things right --- the Amiga version uses 64 colors, and correctly goes down to 32 on the earlier versions of A1000s. It multitasks correctly, as well, and except for the road/power line dragging, is reasonably fast even on my 68000 Amiga. Let's just hope the upgrade fixes the other problems... I hear there are some differences in the game play between the Amiga & Mac versions --- almost as if the development was done in parallel but separately --- for instance, a PD costs $1000 on the Amiga but only $500 on the Mac? If you're playing the "easy" level on the Amiga you never get disasters (except plane & ship crashes), while you apparently get floods & such on the easy level of the Mac version? Strange... Ali
Bob_LaserMan_Murrow@cup.portal.com (07/18/89)
SimCity, the MacII color version fails/crashes on anything but an Apple monitor. They must have hard coded for it. I need to return my copy, I love the game and really wanted color but it wont work on my SuperMac 19" driven by a SM 8 bit card. Bob