rdsesq@Jessica.stanford.edu (Rob Snevely) (03/24/89)
SimCity The Demo has been mailed to Sumex and should be appearing shortly. I would be happy to send it to binaries if some kind soul could send the address, and how small the chunks have to be. Fore those of you who don't know see this weeks issue of MacWeek page 16. Here is a small discription. SimCity is a city simulator for the Mac. You design, build, and manage your city, from zoning land, to traffic, to Disaster. (Earthquakes, floods, and Monster attacks, and more) More addicting then Crystal Quest. This is the demo version. It runs on 512 - II's. It was done by Maxis. Retail price is 49.95 but I got it from computerware for 36.00. Disclaimer: It is seriously Addicting. You have be warned. This really does not even begin to describe it. It is more addicting then crystal quest. ( at least for me ) So check on sumex and if some mails me the address for binaries I will try to post there. rob snevely rdsesq@jessica.stanford.edu
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
phil@vaxphw.dec.com (Phil Hunt) (07/17/89)
In article <4380@merlin.usc.edu>, gford@nunki.usc.edu (Gregory Ford) writes... }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!) } } Hi, I just got the terrain editor and COLOR Mac II version of SimCity. The color version is great! Alot easier to work in the city. Also, it is MF compatible! It also does auto scroll of the map if you are building Road, bulldozing, power lines etc and go off the end of the map...it scrolls and lets you keep building. OPh, BTW, the color version IS NOT COPY PROTECTED!! I called Maxis and asked for the following: One-Way streets Government institutions (Schools/Postoffice etc), Banks SUBWAYS They talked about doing some of this in the next release. It might support different layers of view to see this stuff..... PS. I just finished my first megalopolis.. PPS..I sent in my card and got terrain and color disks...but they forgot to tell me how to embezzel funds....could someone email me how to do it? ================================================================== Phil Hunt "Wherever you go, there you are!!!" Digital Equipment Corporation Phone: (508)486-2164 ENET: VAXPHW::PHIL USENET: phil@vaxphw.dec.com MOREUSENET: phil%vaxphw.dec@decwrl.dec.com EVENMORE: ....!decwrl!dec-vaxphw!phil