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

SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

rockpapershotgun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 252 posts

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#91

Post by clhodapp »

csomar wrote: post #62
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.

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.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#92

Post by alerter »

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 agree that 2000 was a cleaner overall design. Adding realism for the sake of it is a dead end.

That said, there are a lot of games where the details of the simulation compound on themselves in interesting ways (Dwarf Fortress, Dominions, DC:Barbarossa, Shadow Empire, Paradox games). I enjoy those sorts of games, more minimalism and abstraction isn't always more fun.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#93

Post by thom »

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…

Agreed. A lot of simulation/strategy games seem to increase their fidelity over time, at the cost of fun. I’ve bought every Football Manager game for almost 30 years but these days it feels too much like an actual job. I’m intrigued what the best alternative is - I personally enjoy Paradox games, which generally expand with numerous DLCs so you can opt in to additional complexity on an incremental basis.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#94

Post by speeder »

Rury wrote: post #33
crashingintoyou wrote: post #20

I was a little surprised that they actually released an Apple Silicon version for it just a few months ago ( https://support.aspyr.com/hc/en-us/articles/12168615035405-H... ) in spite of its age.

I think that's because surprisingly, it's still a marketable/profitable game. If only it weren't, then maybe it would eventually be open sourced. Only flaw I find is that due to it's age, it wasn't really designed with maximum concurrency in mind, and doesn't utilize the full capabilities of modern hardware, so the simulation slows to a crawl after a certain size.

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 thus heavily limited regarding mods.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#95

Post by SilverBirch »

CydeWeys wrote: post #4
awinter-py wrote: post #2

uhhh it has 4 fewer arcologies than simcity 2000 so it is hard to evaluate the truth of this statement

Yes, the arcologies were fun, but , they were also game-breaking, and building them completely changed the nature of the game into something unrealistic that frankly didn't really work. So not having them isn't a huge loss.

In a way they were a really neat way of ending the game. There's no natural stopping point in running a city, but once your entire city is covered in arcologies it's quite a nice way of saying "and this is done".

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#96

Post by jcpham2 »

bruce511 wrote: post #72
_Qeomash_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SimCity 2000 is definitely my favorite. I'm surprised someone hasn't made a version of it with a larger map (or infinite map).

Take that one step further. Start with a virgin earth. With sufficient, but finite, number of players, and a modelled global population, you build cities that effectively compete with each other for population. In other words an alternate history of population and human development. A multi-player Sim Earth.

This sounds danger close to metaverse speak

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#97

Post by chakernada »

xixixao wrote: post #44
genocidicbunny wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

second that!

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#98

Post by chakernada »

duckmysick wrote: post #79
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.

You're definitely onto something and it's not just an age bias. I can think of a few 2D games released in the previous decade that continued this trend: Terraria, Stardew Valley, Factorio, Rimworld, Celeste, Hades.

Yes Rimworld! was thinking exactly the same thing.

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#99

Post by troad »

sidibe wrote: post #50

I enjoyed the first couple Sim Cities but at the time I really loved those city building games like Caesar and Pharaoh, so satisfying watching the houses level up and immigrants pour in

"I've been kicked out of my home, and through no fault of my own!"

Re: SimCity 4 was released 20 years ago

#100

Post by mattmanser »

csomar wrote: post #62
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.

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.

High content, big budget, games still exist, e.g. Elden Ring + Zelda (as someone mentioned) are two recent releases.

There's also plenty of sim games in the indie market, Factorio, Banished, Frostpunk. Then things that are close to the market like They Are Billions, Kenshi, etc. to name a few I've personally had time to play. Kenshi is a bit rough around the edges, but absolutely brilliant in terms of sandbox play.

There's also the Endless series from Amplitutde studios, Endless Legend, Endless Space 1 + 2, that are of a vein of Civ games, plus they've recently brought out Humandkind (though to mixed reviews unfortunately).

The popular sim genre in recent times has been more 3rd person building mixed with exploration, there was the wave of multiplayer ones like Minecraft, Rust, Arc Evolved, etc. And then single player ones like Subnautica, etc.

So there's stuff out there if you want it, it's just not a very popular genre at the moment.

Post reply on HN