Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reverse Engineering SimTower

phulin.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 82 posts

Re: Reverse Engineering SimTower

#61

Post by lesuorac »

ashdnazg wrote: post #42
dsl wrote: post #38

It is missing the most important function. If the first tile you build is a lobby in the bottom left corner, it is supposed to double your starting money. :)

The real question is how many other things it's missing. Reading the process in TFA, it's very much dependent on the comprehensiveness of the testing framework. And apparently, the tests never built a lobby in the bottom left corner... Anything else it didn't try, is probably also not documented and not implemented. With the growing use of AI in reverse engineering, we might need to shift our goals to more strongly v…

I would bet a lot.

My memory is that you could make multi-level lobbies on the first floor and you'd end up with like a grand staircase.

Edit: Apparently just pillars no staircase - https://old.reddit.com/r/SimTower/comments/1q63yvc/a_nice_to...

Re: Reverse Engineering SimTower

#62

Post by alfiedotwtf »

jlev1 wrote: post #8

Wow! There was a little-known sequel to SimTower called Yoot Tower (named after Yoot Saito). It was a commercial flop, but I played it in the 2000s and again in the 2010s and very much enjoyed it! It had a lot of added customizability (more choices of restaurants and shops, for one thing). I would love to see that game recreated.

Yoot Saito almost looks like a pseudonym for Noob Saibot

Re: Reverse Engineering SimTower

#63

Post by alfiedotwtf »

manwe150 wrote: post #33
grogenaut wrote: post #28

I played when I was a kid. I figured out you could just build condos like crazy and make money pause build more, and repeat, get tons of money, build all the way up. But I couldn't figure out how to get people to the top level for that achievement. I'm gonna Google that and see what I got wrong

I see to recall it being an express elevator to floor 90 (multiple of 15), then a short regular elevator for the rest of the way to the cathedral. I beat the game several times, usually with the 100% lowest-cost office build.

I spent many many hours on SimTower. I think the end was when the Pope stayed in your penthouse

Re: Reverse Engineering SimTower

#64

Post by alfiedotwtf »

DonHopkins wrote: post #55
patrickhulin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes! I've been thinking about how to do it, but it will take some work!

That would be wonderful! There are a lot of different versions with all kinds of extensions. A cool thing about The Tower II (a later version of Yoot Tower only released in Japan) is the ability to plug in new content, using "Tower Kit"! So it should be possible to reverse engineer its plug-in system, and plug new stuff into it, or even create a plugin adaptor so you can easily create plugins in JavaScript / HTML / e…

Your Wikipedia page and resume are incredible, and then to see you on HN with so much enthusiasm. If only I even had a tenth of your experience and energy!

Re: Reverse Engineering SimTower

#65

Post by AshamedCaptain »

realusername wrote: post #49
charcircuit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not proof. It is a clear derived work infringing on the copyright of Nintendo.

Depends of the country, a lot of countries have exceptions for interoperability (at least the whole EU) and since these projects are mainly used to make ports to other systems, it may be covered.

This is an absolutely ridiculous interpretation. There is no interoperability here at all, you are literally just copying the work in question.

It is like claiming that compiling Samba to run in $NEW_PLATFORM suddenly strips Samba of the GPLv3.

Re: Reverse Engineering SimTower

#66

Post by realusername »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #65
realusername wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends of the country, a lot of countries have exceptions for interoperability (at least the whole EU) and since these projects are mainly used to make ports to other systems, it may be covered.

This is an absolutely ridiculous interpretation. There is no interoperability here at all, you are literally just copying the work in question. It is like claiming that compiling Samba to run in $NEW_PLATFORM suddenly strips Samba of the GPLv3.

You absolutely aren't copying the work, recompilation projects are intensive work and a re-imagining of what the source code could look like. Compilation is still a one way process.

And then for the legal part, that's why it's called an exception.

Re: Reverse Engineering SimTower

#67

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

DonHopkins wrote: post #40
MrPowerGamerBR wrote: post #21

Just a fyi for anyone that doesn't know: A few years back Don Hopkins got the permission from Yoot Saito to open source Yoot Tower, SimTower's sequel: https://github.com/YootTowerManagement/YootTower ...however I don't think that the source was ever published anywhere, considering that the repository still doesn't have the source code yet. ("Please check out the YootTower repo, where I'll publish the source code once…

I spoke with Yoot about it recently. There are some issues with Nintendo and licensing that may take some time to work through. My fingers are crossed, but it might take a while and require patience. We all want it to happen though! Meanwhile I'm working on Micropolis (based on the original SimCity Classic code, cleaned up, and compiled with Emscripten into WASM), and also reimplementing The Sims character animation…

> I spoke with Yoot about it recently

(I said "Wow!" in my head, if that means anything; I'm just used to games-designers of mid-1990s all being virtual recluses by now - or long into retirement).

May I ask a few things about SimTower that have been stuck with me since I was 9 years old (and my apologies if these questions have been asked already):

* What's stopping the source-code to the Win95/MacOS SimTower being released? I assumed Yoot retained core IP rights because Maxis was largely a re-packager and distributor... but if Maxis did buy the copyright to the source then it would sit with EA now - and EA themselves have been surprisingly cool with open-sourcing lately (Command & Conquer, etc) so could we see something happen on this front?

* Why did SimTower's ground lobbies and sky-lobbies get completely different artwork - but only for the first few hundred pixels - if you build offset from the left-edge of the map? And what are the different objects in the lobby artwork meant to be? I'm not sure if I'm looking at a row of green cash-registers or payphones - or something else.

* What inspired the endgame victory condition? (...do any towers in real-life have a consecrated cathedral on their summits? it just seemed an odd thing overall, even moreso given that Japan and Japanese urban (and urban-planning) culture doesn't make me suddenly think of Christianity.

(I now feel embarrassed for getting all fanboyish around you, lol; sorry!)

Re: Reverse Engineering SimTower

#69

Post by petercooper »

I did something similar, though at a much smaller scale, with Windows 3.1 Solitaire a few weeks ago, both to see how possible it is (with LLMs) and also to learn about Ghidra for myself. Sadly, I discovered nothing new that wasn't already surfaced through previous reverse engineering, but did turn it into a behavior-equivalent (almost, Draw One by default, and I got lazy with Vegas scoring) Web port: https://peterc.org/solitaire/ (you can press W to trigger the win animation without winning, just for laughs)

I can certainly believe a much larger app like SimTower could overwhelm an LLM-based process without a lot of handholding as even Solitaire required a fair bit of that from me. I'm hoping to take on 1991's A-Train next (the game that inpired SimCity 2000's interface).

Re: Reverse Engineering SimTower

#70

Post by AshamedCaptain »

realusername wrote: post #66
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absolutely ridiculous interpretation. There is no interoperability here at all, you are literally just copying the work in question. It is like claiming that compiling Samba to run in $NEW_PLATFORM suddenly strips Samba of the GPLv3.

You absolutely aren't copying the work, recompilation projects are intensive work and a re-imagining of what the source code could look like. Compilation is still a one way process. And then for the legal part, that's why it's called an exception.

There is little to no creative work whatsoever if you end up with exactly the same game; and often they end up with exactly the same binary as well. Source translations are derivative works almost by definition. It doesn't matter what magic you use to generate it.

And again, where is the interoperability here? Interoperability exception would apply if there was whitebox cryptography, Nintendo logo-style things or anything else where the only method for the work to run would be to violate copyright of _exactly that_. Under no circumstances you can simply copy & distribute the entire work (or derivates) while claiming "interoperability exception!". It makes utterly no sense.

Post reply on HN