Regarding SimCity, I'm a bit of a fan of classic and 2k, I did some reverse engineering of the PC-DOS binary to extract the graphics tilesets, perhaps the first to do this, once "cracked" I was able to extract graphics an add-on, "Ancient Asia", "Future Europe", etc, interesting, never knew those existed. It took even longer to extract the audio and music, the version of SimCity I played as a kid definitely did not have music..

The original SimCity engine was ported to NeWs, a Sun Microsystems operating system that never really saw the light of day, and the porter, Don Hopkins, famous for inventing the "pie menu" used in "The Sims", was able to open source it as part of OLPC project (remember that? lol) and port to X11 as "Micropolis" -- so long as air disasters are disabled (this was soon after 9/11, having airplanes randomly crash into buildings was frowned on).

And anwyay, he ported that to javascript, and I was able to fix many bugs there and integrate it into an article I wrote about careful analysis of the source code.. . I have a lot to say about what I learned re-reviewing Jay Forrester's books and Donella Meadows lectures on YT, I think I spent 5 weeks in total this summer doing reverse engineering and source code analysis of SimCity, and wrote something like a "test harness" for algorithmically generating a "perfect city" (by SimCity's own scoring system). I found two "exploits" or perhaps unintentional game mechanics in classic SimCity. I have still yet to upstream my fixes to Micropolis (like making the "Monster" disaster work again), it's on my list todo, but Unicode 18 releases today and I've got other things to do..

Anyway, please enjoy this article, it took over a month to make, press the "Music" button, try out the VGA, EGA, and Mono graphics, and go ahead and pick a disaster like old times :) I intentionally did not make it "playable", I'm on dangerous territory with Electronics Arts here, aren't they owned by Saudi princes so they will probably sue me because that's how ultra-wealthy have fun these days.

https://www.jeffquast.com/post/a-perfect-simcity/


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On Wednesday, September 2nd Nightfox was heard saying...

A SimCity reboot sounds interesting.

There is one, a very good one, it uses an "Actor" model of simulation, SimCity does not. There are actual people, with names and jobs and homes and destinations that they drive to in their cars and have to find parking for.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/

I'll say also that Don Hopkins, the owner of "Micropolis" (SimCity classic open sourced) is going through some AI Psychosis, he appears to be a friend of Will Wright and trying to revive a SimCity reboot. I don't mind use of AI, I use it, but these models are just so verbose and full of word salad, if you ever wanted to write hundreds of pages of code and documentation that essentially boils down to nothing and makes no particular point, then AI is your friend, and well that's what 90% of business documents are so maybe there is a market for AI :) Anyway, here is Don Hopkin's project, I can't say I understand what the hell it is, it's a *lot* to talk about a SimCity reboot of sorts, something something AI something something SimCity something something :)

https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood


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On Wednesday, September 16th dingo muttered...

was frowned on). And anwyay, he ported that to javascript, and I was able

Oh just to correct myself, he didn't port it to javascript really, it's just C++ code with WASM and a javascript wrapper that lets it run in the browser.

--- ENiGMA 1/2 v0.5.1-beta (linux; x64; 22.22.2)
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Regarding SimCity, I'm a bit of a fan of classic and 2k, I did some reverse engineering of the PC-DOS binary to extract the graphics tilesets, perhaps the first to do this, once "cracked" I was able to extract graphics an add-on, "Ancient Asia", "Future Europe", etc, interesting, never knew those existed. It took even longer to extract the audio and music, the version of SimCity I played as a kid definitely did not have music..

Interesting. Not too long ago, I found a website that lets you play SimCity Classic, a/k/a Micropolis. I don't have the site address handy. It had a version that started in, IIRC, 1300 or 1400s Europe. In place of Industrial tiles, it had Farming tiles. It also had something in place of the Power Plant tile, and whatever that was took up more space on the board (i.e. its square was bigger) than the other zones. I think it was some kind of Mill.

The original SimCity engine was ported to NeWs, a Sun Microsystems operating system that never really saw the light of day, and the porter, Don Hopkins, famous for inventing the "pie menu" used in "The Sims", was able to open source it as part of OLPC project (remember that? lol) and port to X11 as "Micropolis" -- so long as air disasters are disabled (this was soon after 9/11, having airplanes randomly crash into buildings was frowned on).

I do remember the OLPC project. I just looked it up and didn't realize it started so long ago.

I read somewhere that the original game was created for Commodore machines, and was then ported to x86 PCs. I tried downloading and compiling the Micropolis source on a debian linux machine but couldn't get it to compile.

And anwyay, he ported that to javascript, and I was able to fix many bugs there and integrate it into an article I wrote about careful analysis of the source code.. . I have a lot to say about what I learned re-reviewing Jay Forrester's books and Donella Meadows lectures on YT, I think I spent 5 weeks in total this summer doing reverse engineering and source code analysis of SimCity, and wrote something like a "test harness" for algorithmically generating a "perfect city" (by SimCity's own scoring system). I found two "exploits" or perhaps unintentional game mechanics in classic SimCity. I have still yet to upstream my fixes to Micropolis (like making the "Monster" disaster work again), it's on my list todo, but Unicode 18 releases today and I've got other things to do..

Anyway, please enjoy this article, it took over a month to make, press the "Music" button, try out the VGA, EGA, and Mono graphics, and go ahead and pick a disaster like old times :) I intentionally did not make it "playable", I'm on dangerous territory with Electronics Arts here, aren't they owned by Saudi princes so they will probably sue me because that's how ultra-wealthy have fun these days.

That was an interesting read! I will need to revisit the site as I did not see the buttons during my first visit.

Someone also posted a "recipe"/guide on reddit for creating an SC2000 city that will take off and do well. With some tweaking, I was able to get it to sort of work on SC3000, too. It did not work well on Classic and, now that I have read your article, I can see why!

Mike

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On Wednesday, September 2nd Nightfox was heard saying...

A SimCity reboot sounds interesting.

There is one, a very good one, it uses an "Actor" model of simulation, SimCity does not. There are actual people, with names and jobs and homes and destinations that they drive to in their cars and have to find parking for.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/

Looking at the photos, the roads look similar to the ones in SC4. As I am not 100% familiar with Steam, does one have to own a "steam machine" to play those games, or can you play them online, too?

I'll say also that Don Hopkins, the owner of "Micropolis" (SimCity classic open sourced) is going through some AI Psychosis, he appears to be a friend of Will Wright and trying to revive a SimCity reboot. I don't mind use of AI, I use it, but these models are just so verbose and full of word salad, if you ever wanted to write hundreds of pages of code and documentation that essentially boils down to nothing and makes no particular point, then AI is your friend, and well that's what 90% of business documents are so maybe there is a market for AI :) Anyway, here is Don Hopkin's project, I can't say I understand what the hell it is, it's a *lot* to talk about a SimCity reboot of sorts, something something AI something something SimCity something something :)

https://github.com/SimHacker/WillWrightShowForFood

I (tried to) read that. ;) I do wonder how much of the text was AI gibberish and how much of it might have been borrowing from the style of some of the articles in the old SC2000 newspaper feature. When you read them, some of them often go full-gibberish (and use nonsensical words) after the first few sentences or so.



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I later got into the original -- by then, renamed "Classic" -- and enjoy
it also.

I had played the original before 2000 came out. I remember one Saturday in 1993 or so, soon before 2000 came out, and I spent about 4 hours playing the original SimCity.. It was one of those things where I didn't really pay attention to the time and didn't realize 4 hours had gone by. I started at 10:00AM and then it was 2:00PM, and I decided to do something else for a while. :)

That is how I was with 2000 and, early on, with 3000. I got my first copy of 2000 (on diskettes!) not long before I got laid off. Took a couple of months to get a new job. I might start playing a game shortly after breakfast and it'd seem like it got dark in no time... and this was in the middle of Summer. :D

I have 4 but have not yet gotten into it. It has a lot of new stuff added. The graphics seem like an update from 3000 but some of the additional stuff in 3000 that people didn't like doesn't appear to be there.

My opinion of it after some brief play attempts is that the over-complicated it. I would rather have seen a "2500" or "3500" that introduced playable neighbor cities but didn't introduce so many other things and changes. May play a lot better on more powerful equipment (i.e. the minimum requirements may have been seriously understated!).

Maybe I'll give one of the newer SimCity games a try some time.

I would be sure to read the reviews before trying to get into the newer versions, i.e. 4 or SimCity "2013," which is a reboot of the series.


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Re: SimCity (was: Giving Up...)
By: Dumas Walker to Nightfox on Wed Sep 02 2026 04:00 pm

1993 or so, soon before 2000 came out, and I spent about 4 hours playing the original SimCity.. It was one of those things where I didn't really

That is how I was with 2000 and, early on, with 3000. I got my first copy of 2000 (on diskettes!) not long before I got laid off. Took a couple of months to get a new job. I might start playing a game shortly after breakfast and it'd seem like it got dark in no time... and this was in the middle of Summer. :D

:)

Speaking of layoffs & finding jobs, I wish it only took a couple of months to find a new job these days.. The job market is very tough.

I would be sure to read the reviews before trying to get into the newer versions, i.e. 4 or SimCity "2013," which is a reboot of the series.

A SimCity reboot sounds interesting.

Nightfox
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1993 or so, soon before 2000 came out, and I spent about 4 hours playing
the original SimCity.. It was one of those things where I didn't really

That is how I was with 2000 and, early on, with 3000. I got my first copy
of 2000 (on diskettes!) not long before I got laid off. Took a couple of
months to get a new job. I might start playing a game shortly after breakfast and it'd seem like it got dark in no time... and this was in the
middle of Summer. :D

:)

Speaking of layoffs & finding jobs, I wish it only took a couple of months to find a new job these days.. The job market is very tough.

That was the first time, in 1994. Being young, I was willing to take a job that, while it was still IT, was not a step up the career ladder. Since the first job was with a start-up, the pay was at least similar.

The second time, in 1996, when everything economically was supposedly "the greatest ever" and I was still willing to take a job that might not be a step up (or even in IT!), it took me long enough to get rehired that my unemployment benefits ran out at the 6.5 month cut-off. Luckily I was not unemployed too much longer beyond that. It did require relocation but that worked out in the long run.

I would be sure to read the reviews before trying to get into the newer versions, i.e. 4 or SimCity "2013," which is a reboot of the series.

A SimCity reboot sounds interesting.

Yeah, it sounded interesting to me also. As Matthew pointed out, it does/did require a full-time internet connection to work, and may have had some other quirks. I would read the reviews before investing. ;)


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Re: Re: SimCity (was: Giving Up...)
By: Dumas Walker to Nightfox on Thu Sep 03 2026 03:19 pm

Speaking of layoffs & finding jobs, I wish it only took a couple of months

to find a new job these days.. The job market is very tough.

The second time, in 1996, when everything economically was supposedly "the greatest ever" and I was still willing to take a job that might not be a step up (or even in IT!), it took me long enough to get rehired that my unemployment benefits ran out at the 6.5 month cut-off. Luckily I was not unemployed too much longer beyond that.

Ouch.. It's always scary when unemployment runs out. Here, it's just 6 months rather than 6.5.

It did require relocation but
that worked out in the long run.

Good that it ended up working out. I'd be somewhat reluctant to relocate, especially now that I'm married.. But when I was single, I relocated for a job once in 2010, and overall I felt like the situation wasn't good. I struggled ramping up on the job for 6 months, without a whole lot of help from co-workers there, and then I was let go. Also I didn't know anyone in that city (no support system), and little things like my apartment having noisy neighbors & such. I thought the whole town had a sort of odd vibe too, but I couldn't really explain it. One good thing was that one of my co-workers there (who was also fairly new) was pretty friendly, and a couple times, he invited me & a few other people over to his & his wife's house for dinner. After I was let go from that job, I moved back where I was from, and after 6 months, I ended up finding a job that lasted over 8 years.

Nightfox
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