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OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

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Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#121

Post by squeaky-clean »

mixedmath wrote: post #76

I'm sort of stunned at just how few lines of code are necessary for this remake to work. It's just a couple thousand.

It's not a complete remake yet, right now it can just load and display cities.

> Currently a lot remains to be implemented but the basic framework is there for importing and viewing cities. Lots of stuff remains completely unimplemented such as the actual simulation, rendering of many special case tiles and buildings, support for zoom levels and anything else that exists outside of importing and viewing.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#122

Post by TapamN »

samwestdev wrote: post #101
TapamN wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also actually working on an unreleased to-be-open-source SimCity 2000 clone in C++ (which I am planning to call 21st Century Micropolis, after the existing, official open-source SimCity Classic release called Micropolis), so I've looked into how SC2K renders the screen. I'll describe it for drawing the whole map, since it's simpler, but you'd want to modify it to draw only the visible parts in an actual game. Dir…

Thanks! How do you handle different terrain heights?

Terrain height just changes the Y position when where you draw. Draw order is still the same. The formula for tile map space to screen space is:

scrx = mapy16 - mapx16;

scry = mapx8 + mapy8 - GetSurfaceHeight(mapx,mapy)*12;

IIRC, this assumes origin is in top most tile, with increasing Y going down. So each step the terrain increases, you move the tile you draw up 12 pixels higher from the lowest point.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#123

Post by Crespyl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #108
Crespyl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a low-fi "turn based" game like SC, it'd be pretty tolerable as long as the cursor still moves at a normal speed. Anything with more animation or especially real-time input like in a first person game, if run at Additionally, in the past I didn't think 24FPS movies were jerky, but now that I've started looking, there are lots of scenes that definitely look stuttery to me. In particular, watch for "smooth" panning…

> In a low-fi "turn based" game like SC SimCity is real-time, not turn-based.

This is true, thank you. I seem to conflate SimCity and the Civ games, for some reason, they seem to occupy a lot of the same spaces in my head.

That said, the fact that you can always pause at any time and there's never much time pressure to respond quickly to events does mean that the low framerate doesn't have much impact on the gameplay.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#124

Post by thephyber »

cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #96
epicide wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant more trying to reduce/remove lobbying.

I agree. I think we should hang all lobbyists and then shoot them while they're hanging just to be sure. It is absolutely anti-republican that entrenched special interests and corporations get more say and have larger influence in politics than the constituents of the state/district. Hang all the lobbyists, close the flow of donations from anyone other than individuals, and cut off the hands (metaphorically) of any r…

> If powerful corporations or special interests want to influence legislation, make them convince the people that something is a good idea and have the people contact their representatives.

(1) A "special interest" is any strict subset of the population. There is no necessity that it be nefarious, as you imply.

(2) A republic, by definition, doesn't require the constant approval of the population for each action. That would be a democracy, which we in the USA don't have and never did. In fact, our founding fathers explicitly ruled out the idea of governance by "the mob".

(3) The problem with "powerful corporations and special interests" is that they have receive concentrated benefits with diffuse costs. The solution is for every elected representative to always vote "no" to every change to the status quo unless it meets a very high bar for diffuse benefits. That kind of government would get even less accomplished than the "Do Nothing Congress".

(4) It's simply unwieldily for elected representatives to talk to their entire constituency on any regular basis. The only time this does happen is when we have some sort of panic. Those with means figured this out and hired people that specialized in getting the attention of legislators, executives, and regulators.

(5) I'm all for rooting out corruption and eliminating it. I'm not for hanging people for doing something that is perfectly legal under current US law.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#125

Post by qwerty456127 »

kodablah wrote: post #120
qwerty456127 wrote: post #94

Would be great if it could use SQLite and Electron already installed in the system instead of downloading/building them from the Internet sources unless that's really necessary (I actually find it strange node/electron still don't take care of this by integrating SQLite int their standard APIs anyway). The window just shows an empty brown field and nothing else, I could find no "start new scenario" or anything like t…

> Would be great if it could use SQLite and Electron already installed I don't understand what this means. These are usually application building components, not installable libs/applications. What do you mean be use the ones already installed? How do you install either of those "in the system" for use by multiple apps? Or do you mean the NPM cache which I figured it did leverage? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your stat…

I mean I already have sqlite3 executable in /usr/bin and the libraries wherever they are meant to be located. AFAIK Windows 10 comes with SQLite within $PATH too. I don't really code JavaSctipt so I am not sure but I think it probably is not really hard and probably is a more "right way" to detect SQLite binaries already available this way and use them than download/compile it for every new application using it. Of course it doesn't really matter but it would feel good for "unix way" perfectionists at least :-)

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#126

Post by ryandrake »

Feniks wrote: post #49
chungy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EA is actively selling SimCity 2000 at least on GOG.com. With that in mind, I think there can be no real gesture of goodfaith on the author's part. It's lazy, maybe just the "easy way" to do it in the beginning, but when the game is being actively sold, it's also slimy.

Yeah there's still copyright on Simcity 2000 for 50 years and Simcity itself is trademarked.

Doesn’t it seem ridiculous to anyone else that the copyright on most software will outlast the existence of any computer the software was designed to run on? Part of the intellectual property “bargain” is that the right will one day return to the public, who can finally benefit. The extreme length of time appears to circumvent that end of the bargain.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#127

Post by door2 »

arcticfox wrote: post #84
door2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who cares? intellectual property law in the united states is irrational and immoral. i strongly support evading the law or fully exploiting gray areas / unenforced copyrights.

Which part of a law against for giving away someone else's art for free immoral?

simcity's IP is owned by EA, which is a multibillion-dollar publicly-traded company. this isn't just "someone's art". the only ones who benefit from strict enforcement of 25-year-old IP are EA's shareholders, not the artist, and certainly not the public.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#128

Post by SXX »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #95
SXX wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly bad practice. If developers want automation it's better to suggested to download assets (or even do it automatically) from Web Archive. They're exempt from DMCA and it's trustworthy source. https://archive.org/details/SimCity2000_Special_Edition_Maxi...

Frankly, I'm somewhat amazed that this is on archive.org. They may have a DMCA exception, but it's a bad look considering the game is still actively being sold on GoG and under copyright.

I wouldn't argue about this exact file since it's might be a bit more recent, but that game is about 25 years old. Do you seriously think keeping it on archive.org is bad?

It's very likely to not work on modern systems anyway (dosbox will work of course) and version from GOG likely wouldn't be installable on let's say DOS or Windows 95. And there is plenty of people who might want to run old games on some ancient PC for personal fun or for museum-like purposes.

Another option for open source projects it's to just use demo version which is 100% legit way to get assets. Though it's not always possible because some demo versions don't contain whole assets that fully-featured engine would depend on.

Re: OpenSC2K – An Open Source Remake of SimCity 2000

#129

Post by mixedmath »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #121
mixedmath wrote: post #76

I'm sort of stunned at just how few lines of code are necessary for this remake to work. It's just a couple thousand.

It's not a complete remake yet, right now it can just load and display cities. > Currently a lot remains to be implemented but the basic framework is there for importing and viewing cities. Lots of stuff remains completely unimplemented such as the actual simulation, rendering of many special case tiles and buildings, support for zoom levels and anything else that exists outside of importing and viewing.

Ah, I see. Indeed, I didn't read closely and missed that. Thank you.
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