SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago • Hacker News Board

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#181

Post by speeder » Tue, May 23, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

scrlk wrote: post #145

speeder wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game actually does support decent threading, but it relies on old RDTSC behavior and will crash on modern CPUs if you allow all the threading to run. I nagged EA a lot to Open Source SC4 or allow fans to fix bugs on Windows version, but they are stubborn :( The Mac version is published by Aspyr that has rights to the source and to release updates. For example the Mac version is 64bit now. Windows version is 32bit…

I'm hoping someone will consider starting an "OpenSC4" project, in the same tradition as OpenTTD or OpenRCT2.

There is such a project, but sadly I am not involved with it right now because I am spending all my time trying to get a new job.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#182

Post by badpun » Tue, May 23, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #159

bleep_bloop wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum requirements for Civ 6 are far below the capability of the M1 series macbooks so I don't know why you'd think so.

Because that's not how games work - they don't run "at minimum capabilities" and they run their game loop constantly, rendering graphics. This means that it will almost certanly saturate at least M1s GPU and probably at least one of P cores. At that stage, even the M1 starts drawing a lot of power which needs disspiation. Also Civ 6s target GPU is much faster than any of the M1s (which, despite the marketing, are sti…

> Because that's not how games work - they don't run "at minimum capabilities" and they run their game loop constantly,

Unless you VSync?

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#183

Post by jordemort » Tue, May 23, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #135

jordemort wrote: post #31

My only complaint about this game is that even the largest region size feels too dang small. I'd pay full retail price for a SimCity 5 that was just SimCity 4 with larger regions.

Basically that was what the entire community wanted + deeper gameplay, but instead EA chose to go the complete opposite direction, screwing the entire community and letting Cities: Skylines be the spiritual successor instead. Let's hope Cities 2 don't repeat the same mistake.

Cities: Skylines seems like the kind of game I should love, but I bounce off of it every time I try it. I'm not sure what it's missing for me but I just can't get into it.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#184

Post by aeonik » Tue, May 23, 2023, 4:16 PM UTC

harha wrote: post #169

izacus wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's not how games work - they don't run "at minimum capabilities" and they run their game loop constantly, rendering graphics. This means that it will almost certanly saturate at least M1s GPU and probably at least one of P cores. At that stage, even the M1 starts drawing a lot of power which needs disspiation. Also Civ 6s target GPU is much faster than any of the M1s (which, despite the marketing, are sti…

Curious to learn more here: everyone was praising the M1 so much, but here’s a case that based on this wouldn’t fit the bill. also how high do you think the penalty for running an intel binary is?

Not the GP, but Civ is CPU bottlenecked. I don't know how their code is written under the hood, but games slow down as you get farther in the game. If you play too many turns the game can take minutes to process a single turn.

I can saturate all my 16 cores, on my workstation, the only result is that the turns are processed faster. When you play multiplayer, everyone is going to be pinned to the slowest person in the lobby.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#185

Post by afavour » Tue, May 23, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #159

bleep_bloop wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum requirements for Civ 6 are far below the capability of the M1 series macbooks so I don't know why you'd think so.

Because that's not how games work - they don't run "at minimum capabilities" and they run their game loop constantly, rendering graphics. This means that it will almost certanly saturate at least M1s GPU and probably at least one of P cores. At that stage, even the M1 starts drawing a lot of power which needs disspiation. Also Civ 6s target GPU is much faster than any of the M1s (which, despite the marketing, are sti…

> they run their game loop constantly, rendering graphics

Eh? Civ 6 is a turn-based game with really very little in the way of animation. It's not a first person shooter rendering whole screens at 30fps.

Even leaving M1 aside, on my PC with a capable graphics card Civ 6 always thrashed the CPU a ton. I know there's a lot going on under the hood but I always suspected it was nowhere near as efficient as it could be.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#186

Post by jeffbee » Tue, May 23, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

clhodapp wrote: post #91

csomar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an age-based bias. These games couldn't expand on graphics, so they expanded on the logic of the game. That made them interesting. Very few games do that today (EU4, a favorite of mine, for example) but the trend now is to confuse the user with graphics while giving really little in term of content.

> ... These games couldn't expand on graphics, so they expanded on the logic of the game. That made them interesting. > > Very few games do that today ... The big new Zelda that just came out does exactly this. They took the shell of the last game and spent six years just making things to flesh out the game much further.

They spent 6 years making a game that is exactly the same at a high level with only slight changes to the details.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#187

Post by dehrmann » Tue, May 23, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #56

xixixao wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age of Empires 2, Sim City 3000, Diablo2 and Red Alert 2. Released in the span of 3 years. What an incredible era. Can’t shake off the feeling that 3D took away as much as it gave gaming. Also can’t believe it’s just my age-based selection bias.

When I talk to people older than me they think some of the NES games were the best ever released. But I look at the graphics and I just can’t get over it.

The graphics were bad, but what really makes the games unapproachable now is a lot of the games were impossibly hard.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#188

Post by philistine » Tue, May 23, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

kcb wrote: post #158

FinnKuhn wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this would be more realistic the majority of players would stop playing the game. I would argue this is just like you not having to build each street in a 3d game by yourself you also don't need to fill out every form, etc. by yourself. I just image you have a lot of employees doing that for you.

Big disagree, I think that sounds super fun. Remember there's a significant enough number of people that play long haul truck simulators.

Yeah. I think people saying more realistic interactions would not be fun or popular are lacking in imagination. The real problem with those games is the divorce from reality of bulldozing.

Imagine bulldozing is as expensive, complicated, and despised as in real life.

Then imagine having to fight against infrastructure cost overruns. You play a city building game, and you don't have access to roads (cars haven't been invented) so you want to put rails everywhere. You do that, but then you realise later how expensive and complicated it is to remove some rails to put down roads.

Imagine the game stopping, and telling you that the cost of roads will double when you unpause the game. You'd have to manage putting down more road than you need and the consequences of overreach.

It could be super fun.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#189

Post by guhcampos » Tue, May 23, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

There's so much consensus in the community that Cities Skylines is the actual greatest, that I'm inclined to believe this is an intentional clickbait from RPS.

They grabbed this thing which isn't even a thing and turned into some buzz.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#190

Post by titzer » Tue, May 23, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

genocidicbunny wrote: post #11

chongli wrote: post #5

I prefer SimCity 2000. I feel like it hit a pretty good sweet spot between simulation and fun (which is to say, not even a vague gesturing at anything remotely realistic). Realistic simulation in games is almost universally less fun than simple, predictable game logic. Probably the most extreme example of this is chess: way more enjoyable than real warfare. Back on topic though. My beef with SimCity 4 is that it adde…

I thought 3000 was the best showing, though perhaps that's looking at it back later when performance is not as much of a concern. It felt like an upgraded SimCity 2000, rather than a big change in game mechanics that 4 was.

Bought but almost never played 4. Simcity 2000 was pretty clunky and 3000 was the right amount of updated graphics and mechanics while maintaining the original fun. It seems impossible to get my original Simcity 3000 CD working on modern hardware...