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Games Entertainment

Loki Releases Sim City 3000 Demo For Linux 77

Posted by Hemos from the will-wright-leads-the-way dept.
YuppieScum writes "Voodoo Extreme has word that Loki have released a playable demo (x86 anyway) of Sim City 3000. It's a hefty beast at 175Mb for only 10 years play, but worth the download all the same." The word from Loki is that the actual game will roll off the presses sometime last week, and start shipping around then.
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Loki Releases Sim City 3000 Demo For Linux More

Loki Releases Sim City 3000 Demo For Linux

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  • WOOOOHAAAA!!!!!!

    I got post #69 without even trying!

    Beause I'm the one with the phat madd skillz, and I won't choke like the Buffalo Bills.

    I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my sponsors: Micron for building this wonderful PC, Microsoft for their excellent operating system and browser, the local Einstein's for the coffee that woke me up this morning, all of the hardworking men and women at the local power company, there are just too many to name.

  • Re:coffee? (Score:4)

    by netfunk ( 32040 ) <icculus@icculPARISus.org minus city> on Saturday September 02, 2000 @05:18AM (#809420) Homepage
    We have indeed mastered time travel here at Loki. We'll be releasing specs to our ChronoSkimmer (which we reverse-engineered from an old copy of Where in Time is Carmen Sandiago on an Apple IIe) under the GPL sometime soon. Hopefully this will empower more of our customers to achieve the coveted First Post.

    Thanks for your interest, and remember to share!

    --ryan. (icculus@lokigames.com)

  • A decent proxy should be able to tell you the actual URL being downloaded. Alternatively, most download managers work 'through' the cgi.

    I can do this under Windows at least. Dunno about under Linux, but it must be possible - Linux r0x.


    <O O&gt
    ( \/ )
    X X

  • Re:don't like it (Score:3)

    by netfunk ( 32040 ) <icculus@icculPARISus.org minus city> on Saturday September 02, 2000 @05:23AM (#809422) Homepage
    Try support@lokigames.com if you have sound trouble. 9 times out of ten, these turn out to be configuration problems. SimCity 3K is using OpenAL, so it's a newer subsystem than SDL sound, and hey, you never know: it might be our bug.

    That being said, if your hardware is really exposing a bug in SimCity, and/or support can't help you, submit the bug to

    http://fenris.lokigames.com/

    ...and we'll fix it.

    --ryan. (icculus@lokigames.com)

  • I downloaded a copy from the gameaholic site and got a checksum error while running the installation script. I think some of the copies on mirror sites are bad.
  • Interesting story about Cassette BASIC on the IBM XTs.


    One of the reasons that no one could make clone PCs at first was that IBM wouldn't license the ROMs to anyone, and all the OSes available for the PC (DOS, CPM and something else...) refused to boot without the ROM.


    Eventually, Microsoft got tired of this kink in their revenue stream and produced a version of DOS that worked without the real IBM ROMs.


    Hrm. That wasn't actually about the embedded BASIC at all, was it? Okay, how about this:


    The version of BASIC on those ROMS was really shitty, and to get any decent features (like saving programs) you had to pay for the advanced BASIC version, which was called BASICA.


    In one of their first embrace-extend-extinguish moves, MS produced a version of BASICA called GW-BASIC (Gee-Whiz BASIC) and included it with DOS.


    Damn, I'm telling MS stories again. Oh well, if any of these stories are factually inaccurate, blame John Dvorak, because I read them all in a column of his long long ago.
    --

  • Mirror available (Score:3)

    by generic-man ( 33649 ) on Saturday September 02, 2000 @07:20AM (#809425) Homepage Journal
    I've mirrored the file on my spunky little dorm box at this location [cmu.edu]. Enjoy, but please be gentle.
  • Only ten years of play? That's more than enough, I rarely play one game for more than two years straight.
  • Personally, I would consider this lag to be an advantage -- when the game comes out, it has already been reviewed in the original version many times, so you can see if the gamed is at all worthwhile, plus the lag means that there is a greater chance that you own a machine capable of running a game that often required a cutting edge machine when it originally came out.

  • Re:Responsibility! (Score:3)

    by marlowe23 ( 54624 ) on Saturday September 02, 2000 @11:45AM (#809428)
    I agree, it's important to smash and destroy children's imagination as soon as possible. The sooner they realize that anything absurd, imaginary, or even mildly out of the ordinary is to be shunned and feared -- and probably made illegal -- the better off we'll all be.

    Of course, this means confiscating your children's copies of Candyland (there is no Candyland; it's imaginary), Monopoly (buying land of any kind is going to cost more than $65, that's absurd), and Chutes and Ladders (such a place doesn't exist. Burn the designers at the stake).

    Also up for extermination is Barney (talking purple dinosaur, 'nuff said), Sesame Street (hand puppets are only cloth and don't really talk - absurd and probably a form of idolatry), and, well, pretty much anything else.

    Perhaps someone can commission a game designer to make healthy, realistic, non-imaginative Christian games -- the Doing the Dishes Game (in which you wash real dishes, not imaginary ones), for example, or Mind Your Pa! Or, better yet, go back to reading the Bible, with its stories of walking on water, talking columns of fire, plagues, locusts, angels of death, and putting tribes to the sword -- and leave all those absurd, violent images behind forever.

  • Has anyone tried this with freebsd linux emulation yet? Im downloading it but its pretty big , and if it dont work i wanna stop it
  • 10 years in the game. Which isn't very long at all.

  • Delays in games? (Score:3)

    by chialea ( 8009 ) <chialea&gmail,com> on Saturday September 02, 2000 @08:15AM (#809431) Homepage
    Now, I love the work Loki does, don't get me wrong (and I own quite a lot of it, even stuff I don't have and don't know when I'll have it -- more on that later), but if any of em are reading, I think I have to point out something slightly illegal they're doing, though I'm sure it's not on purpose.

    when you "pre-order" a game from them (well, it goes through digital river, which is probably why this whole thing happens) your credit card is charged immediately. when you "pre-order" a game AND order another game, your credit card is charged immediately and nothing is shipped until the pre-order game is out. (I found this out by ordering games, which is not really the way I would have preferred). The problem is, that at least in the US, a company is not allowed to let 30 days elapse between charging a credit card and shipping a product.

    While digital river is not the same company as loki, they're clearly simply powering loki's system, it's still under the juristiction of loki (and under the lokigames.com domain as well). I'm being charged immediately for something that I'm pretty sure won't be shipped within 30 days of the charge. (this would be waiting on SMAC, which I've been unable to find a ship/release date for. anyone else?)

    Now, since it's loki, and I really like having them around (subliminal message: port worms II, port worms II!), I'm not planning on disputing the charges, but I have seen court cases brought by the government (I don't remember if it was federal or state, but my guess would be federal under the interstate commerce bit of the constitution) where companies who did this on a regular basis were charged with nasty things.

    I'd hate to see this happen, loki. please fix this up.

    Lea
  • No silly, his article was posted with his additional +1 due to high karma, making his original score 2.

    Want to see if I'm new? Compare our User Ids- yours is nearly three times mine ;)

  • The lag issue is in no way an advantage. Next time try better while rationalizing the massive delay (I got Sim City 3000 for my birthday 2 years ago, and it was already out for a while then!) and Linux's shortcomings.

    You can find out if a game is worthwhile a week after its release, usually even before. And Sim City 3000 didn't exactly need a powerhouse computer - I played it on my Pentium 200 with 32 megs of ram and a 4 meg ATI video card fine.
  • I will personally ejaculate the day slashdot posts a story with no blinding errors.
  • real brave. posting anonymously. I really respect you now... asshole. (get it?)
  • Someone moderate this guy up, it's a well-reasoned reply to my pretty heated point (some would say flame). Cold reality is that you're in the minority, and that while game makers may appreciate your loyalty, games need to recoup their cost with volume. Probably 90% of all copies of SC3K that will ever be sold have been sold. To make things worse for Loki, possibly half or more of the target market has already bought it for windows.

    Old games tend to be viewed through rose-colored glasses anyway -- you don't remember the ones that stunk.
  • Heh :)

    I just don't understand why people have to bring morality into the imaginary. What would the world be like without the imaginations of great thinkers? Leave the parents to decide if they want children to play violent games. I like the idea of being able to build a half a million person city in less than a hundred years using like 100 thousand dollars.

  • They don't let their children read Harry Potter either, but that dosen't stop a large number of them from trying to make sure no one else's children can read them.
  • any word on a ppc version?

    cristiana
  • This has shades of Mac gaming everywhere. Games that come a year to 18 months after the release of the original PC title, don't perform as well (in benchmarks and in sales) and ultimately the platform flounders as a gaming machine.

    Been going on the Mac for the past 10 years...

  • Well, if you wait a little bit more, you'll be able to play Sim City 3000 on Your Mac with Linux PPC.

    I don't remember which company (I think terra soft) has signed an agreement to port all Loki game ports to LinuxPPC.

    So, you will be able to compare Sim City 3000 on Native Mac OS against the LinuxPPC version.
  • Or you could just reinstall MacOS and get the thing up and running in minutes. Or spend a few hundred on an Intel machine and use Windows 98 to get it up in seconds.
  • Unfortunately is a bit (a lot actually) lagging behind in terms of release dates. Sim City 3000 is out for ages now on the M$ platform and hardcore gamers wont wait. Period.

    Remember John Carmack complaining/stating that Linux sales were a bit disappointing? Of course
    they were, who's going to wait 6 months to get
    your game just to play it on the platform you
    want.

    I know I don't.

    Surely I play games on Linux, such as Quake. I play it mainly on Linux because of my lower
    ping times. Actually that is why I started using
    *nix in the first place. But I got them for
    Windows first

    So if they want me to buy Linux games (and
    that's why there in business for, aren't they?)
    They should come out at the same time, as well
    as they should have some European department,
    because I won't buy a game which shipping costs
    are higher than the game price itself.

  • Re:Delays in games? (Score:3)

    by Nathaniel ( 2984 ) on Saturday September 02, 2000 @08:44AM (#809444)
    "when you "pre-order" a game from them (well, it goes through digital river, which is probably why this whole thing happens) your credit card is charged immediately. "

    That's not what I experienced.

    I preordered SMACX on 2000-08-01.
    My 2000-08-22 statement doesn't show a charge for the game.
    On 2000-08-01 I recieved a confermation of my order.
    On 2000-08-02 I received another email from service@digitalriver.com which included this text: We're Sorry! The product(s) you've ordered is currently out of stock and could not be shipped. The product(s) has been placed on back-order and will be shipped as soon as possible when the stock becomes available. You will receive another e-mail notification when your order has actually shipped. Your credit card has been pre-authorized, but you will NOT be charged until the product ships. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

    Instead of saying "When you...." try saying "When I...." This will help differentiate the general and the specific. ;-}

  • How long has Loki been porting games for Linux?

    2 years or so?

    And during this time they have built an infrastructure for porting games from Windows,
    even Direct X based games. Linux wasn't exactly a game friendly OS to begin with,
    but Loki has overcome those problems and made a lot of progress.

    I don't know that Loki is targeting the hard core gamer.
    I think they are targeting people who have chosen to use Linux (or FreeBSD)
    as their desktop operating system and want to play games
    without having to boot another operating system. In that case,
    I can't see that the delay is a problem.

    If your primary goal is game playing, use Windows.
    If your primary goal is using Linux, and you would like to
    play some games as well, then Loki is there to fill that need.
  • Are you a newbie to the /. community?

    The +1 is for posting while logged in. Zeros are for the Anonymous morons. The better responses you get over time (forever it seemes like to me) you get a +2 appended to your posts, and on and on.

    The problem I have is that moderators can simply apply negative points and such to posts that they don't particularly like (ie. tag posts as TROLL when they aren't trolling)

    Joe
    --
    Do not I repeat DO NOT bend over to pick up the soap in this
    newsgroup! -- oberon on alt.satanism

  • I mean if your going to have a dl around 160mg. Why not slip it into 5 or so voluems so ppl who dont have cable can play it.

    What difference does it make? You're still downloading the same amount of data.

    Download wget. Read its man page, especially the part about -c. Get the URL of the file you want to download, and feed it to wget with the -c option. When your modem disconnects, reconnect and type the command again.

    Fscking common sense huh

    Indeed.

  • hmm, well for just a pre-order, I was taking someone else's word who is perhaps mistaken. for my order, however, SMAC and Myth II (which I hope is worth it, since I don't know much about it) shows up on my confirmation page as "Your credit card has been charged (a large amount of money)", with no mention of backordering.

    When I look up my order on customer service (this link should be in your confirmation email, or lokigames.com or directly here [lokigames.com], my order shows as being "completed", though I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.

    All in all, it seems a funny system, at least to me. and I would REALLY like my copy of SMAC to materialize right now :)

    Lea

  • Judging by YOUR user number it's clear you're the newbie while bugg is the seasoned veteran.

  • I can understand why you'd hate fags. I hate them too. They're full of noxious chemicals and they cause health problems in innocent bystanders. And they reek -- horribly so.

    Yet, if you believe in a creator-deity, it seems kinda silly to say "god hates fags", since according to your own beliefs, it was this same god who created the tobacco plant in the first place. Why would god create something and then hate it? If god hates it, why doesn't god just remove it from creation?

    (You were talking about the kind of fags that are smoked to satisfy a physical drug dependency, right?)

  • "The notion that a game is no longer fun (hey, that's what a game is supposed to be) just because it's been out for more than a week is just assinine."

    No, but paying full price and acting like you are buying a new game IS asinine.

    "I would still pay for a SimCity 2000 Linux port if someone bothered." Can't disagree with you there. I still play it to this day. But i'm not going to pay for it again after recieving the DOS version for my birthday years and years ago.
  • I fully agree about the shipping costs.... I would have been willing to pay the $49.95 for q3a which is 15% more than what the windows version costs here, but the extra $36.95 for shipping is hilarious.
    Unfortunately there's no chance of finding Loki games in shops here :(
  • A game is new if it it is new to a platform you use, just like a book is new if it is new to a language you can read. For example, Umberto Eco's novels are available in their original Italian nearly a year before English translations are available. But that is only relevant if you can read Italian. I don't read Italian, nor do I play games on DOS or Windows. So when Loki ports a DOS/Windows game to Linux or William Weaver "ports" an Italian novel to English, they are new to me.
  • Ahh, the days of being able to leap into basic within 2 seconds of turning on my ZX spectrum. Of course, it took 5 minues to load from a tape (and who can forget the M1 LOADING on disks?)
  • then curl is your best friend.

  • From what I have read, most of sc2k was written by one man, will wright. I used to be obsessed with sc2k but I have to say 3000 is so much better. I'll admit, I liked the superfluous nature of sc2k, but it drove most users to frustration. Besides, it was a game filled with bugs. 3000 on the otherhand is a much more refined version without all of the rough edges of sc2k. Perhaps you just miss Wright's humor and his obsession with llamas, who knows. I do recommend everyone try The Sims though, if you havn't played this game, it rocks.
  • Hey Gomer, Nice try. God can't hate fags. You know why? Because God doesn't exist. Fags do. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I hear the Easter Bunny hates Bus Drivers. OOOOoooohhhhh Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh I hope your life goes better than it has so far.
  • Yeah, but books don't generally go out of date. Games do. People mostly only play brand-new games and really old ones. No onbe wants to play a game that's 3 years old, or at least not pay fifty bucks for it.
  • Isn't that a bit TOOOOOOOOO long? My hampster would be dead before that thing expires.
  • They are talking about 10 years in the game, which is not much really but should be enough to build a small city and try out things. Haven't tried SC3000 yet, but the former versions rocked so I'm looking forward to play it in 3 days when it's done downloading;)

  • Oh, Crud! (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday September 02, 2000 @03:57AM (#809461) Homepage Journal
    There goes my productivity.

    And my eyesight.

    And my posture.

    I don't have anything against 'em, but Quake et al. just don't appeal to me. However I can't stop playing those Sim games. Finally I had to throw the damned things out. Every so often I'll see one of these games in the bargain bin and think "Oooh! Only $9.95 for Sim City!" Yeah, and $10,000 in lost productivity.

    Sim City is the tool of the devil.

  • Hooray for timemachines! (Score:3)

    by EvilDonut ( 164879 ) on Saturday September 02, 2000 @03:44AM (#809462)

    The word from Loki is that the actual game will roll off the presses sometime last week, and start shipping around then.

    Uhm... What?

  • We have ms "anouncing" products years before they even start work, Intel "demoing" chips that are as stable as a drunk walking on bowling balls, and stories here on /. to discuss how they handled their pre-anouncement anouncement.

    I'de welcome a company telling us what they've actually done instead of what the VP of marketing dreamed about last night while sleeping off his saki buzz at a japaneese trade show.

  • Remember the days of 2MB demos? Remember the days of 360k games?

    I was sorting out the attic the other day when I came accross the tapes (yes compact cassettes, not disks) of games programs for my 1K 8-bit Sinclair ZX81: 'Breakout', 'Space Invaders' and a music program from Macronics of Knowle, UK and Artic Computing's 'ZXChess.'
    Yes, that's right, a functional chess program in 1024 bytes of memory. I wonder if the programmer is still coding now - can he|she cope with having to write all the extra lines of poorly written code expected for bloating todays app.s?
    - Derwen

  • and Hemos spoke and he said: The word from Loki is that the actual game will roll off the presses sometime last week, and start shipping around then. at 7:27 a.m. on a Saturday. And lo, it became painfully obvious that he needed some more caffeine before he posted again :) (unless, of course, loki has mastered time travel.)
  • It's a worrying fact that demo's are getting nearly game sized now. Remember the days of 2MB demos? Remember the days of 360k games?

    More and more people are getting broadband, but a lot of people are still on modems. Take some time to download that much - and it wont fit on a 100MB zip disk!
  • Now you can control your OS and city with linux that is freedom
  • 175mb for 10 minutes gameplay???? and Microsoft DOESN'T make this???
  • oops, 10 years (which takes about 10 minutes), but still, 175mb??
  • The word from Loki is that the actual game will roll off the presses sometime last week, and start shipping around then.

    By that account I should already be able to buy it. Wow! Once again, development on an Open Source OS blows away development times on Windows systems. Now the final releases of software come out *before* the demoes!!! :)

  • The powers that be should consider stopping the +1 from being automatic, and make the user actually request it when they think they are saying something insightful. Look, this comment is acceptable and all I guess, but it certainly isn't worthy to start out at 2.
  • There are aggressive SimCity Classic players who can build the city fast enough to get 500,000 residents in 5 years; is SC3000 that different?
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • > Personally, I would consider this lag to be an advantage

    Utilizing only the twisted logic that a Mac Evangalist can use. The game is over a year old. Most people have already uninstalled it from Windows. It's a bargain bin game and will sell like ice cubes in antarctica. Face reality, Mac and Linux is still a second-class game platform.
  • The ROM BIOS of early systems included a simple machine-level debugger with an assembler and disassembler. It also generally included a Microsoft BASIC interpreter (such as Apple II BASIC or something similar).
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Usually, when faced with this type of situation, I just copy the URL and paste it to a wget command line. wget tends to not crap out, and generally has no problems with cgi scripts.

    Of course, you have to make sure that you give it the URL that will actually end up transferring you a file, and not a URL that takes you to a fileplanet page or some other such bullshit.

  • What's interesting about games, is that 11 years ago there was a perfect rpg game called Fantasy II that ran on the Apple IIg (in the Final Fantasy line, but.. way back in the past). And, I would trade any just about any of today's games to have it work on my current computer.

    It doesn't have fancy graphics, doesn't have cool surround sound, doesn't have any of today's fully rendered - movie style - intro. But, what it does have is an excellent interface, entertaining adventures, and it all fit on just a couple of floppy disks.

    The main thing though, is that Fantasy II played like you play a real RPG game such as Palladium or AD&D.

    The point is, even if a game is old (from time of release) it doesn't automatically mean that the game is simply not worth having. And, if you find a game that is in the bargain bin, you've found a great deal for your money.

    Now, personal preferences on games is the most important aspect. So, my question is this.... Would you rather spend upward of $50 to get the newest and most craved about game (that may not be your 'thing'), or $5 on a game which you know you'd like? The decision is easy. Just think of how long you'll be playing it, if you say you'd play a game usually for about 10 hours, then steadily come off... you just spent 50 cents an hour for entertainment on that $5 game, or just spent $5 an hour for entertainment on that $50 game.

    The key is to find a game that you truly like, and purchase it. Whether it be a $5 game or a $50 game.

    Regards, cde_mk

  • Myth II (which I hope is worth it, since I don't know much about it)

    Myth II rules. The game is absolutely sweet. And if you're starting to get bored with it, go look around for plugins (I especially recommend the Civil War, WWII, and Marathon 2 plugins).
    --
  • Get the URL of the file you want to download, and feed it to wget with the -c option. When your modem disconnects, reconnect and type the command again.

    You might read the manual yourself.
    From the wget manpage:
    -c --continue-ftp
    [...]
    Note that you do not need to specify this option if the only thing you want is wget to continue retrieving where it left off when the connection is lost - wget does this by default. You need this option when you want to continue retrieval of a file already halfway retrieved, saved by other FTP software, or left by wget being killed.

  • anti-christian? Hmmm...some of us aren't Christian. Some of the children growing up around here aren't christian or Jewish or islamic. The fact is, religion shouldn't be a factor when designing a game unless it's a christian oriented game. Books, games, television and music spark the imagination, not believing one thing and letting your views spoil the love "pagan gods and working magic".
  • Even back when most western nations were seriously Christian, fairy tales and the like were told to children. It seems that today's fundies don't understand the need for a bit of nonsense and fun in their childrens' lives (at least not consciously ;-))
  • Oh I see now, I thought he didn't understand why it was posted as a 2.

    Your right 'bugg', the +1 addition to posts would be cool if we could add it when we think we're saying something informative instead of it being automatic.

    And, AntiBasic, I know he isn't newbie. I was trying to be witty by adding a bit of sarcasm.

    Guess I failed,
    Joe
    --
    I have friends who are very New Agey. Always clutching their
    crystals: "My crystal help me, and protect me, and guide me..."
    Look, you live in your van. I don't think it's working for you.
    Maybe a shower would help, followed by work of some sort. --
    Matt Weinhold

  • MIRRORS (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02, 2000 @04:27AM (#809482)
    http://www.lokigames.com/products/ sc3k/demo.php3 [lokigames.com]

  • For those with a high speed connection... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Try gameaholic [gameaholic.com]. I'm getting 150kB/s across my cablemodem...
  • They were scheduled for delivery in May -- it's September. Frankly, I think it's pretty lame that the /. community thinks it's cool enough to warrant front page coverage of a Linux game, previously released for Windows over a year ago. Yes, my copy is on order, but I'm frustrated by these delays. On the plus side (for Loki), I own 10 Loki games, so as a "loyal" customer I think I have a right to bitch. :-)

  • don't like it (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    for a 25 minute download I expected something better...

    the interface is cheesy, I would have appreciated something more industrial looking and the colors of the playing field are too washed out, I like the original 16 color simcity better

    the music is dull, I'd better like A-Train and Transport Tycoon type energetic music

    it doesn't really offer anything interesting compared to the original, seems like a rehash

    of course Loki did a great job, but there are better games they could have ported like Transport Tycoon Deluxe
  • Yeah, try to at least read the post before you put up a comment. I know its a lot to ask and you don't have much mental bandwidth to just give away like that but we've already accepted the fact that you won't follow any links to articles.
  • I think it is disrespectful to write things like that about Taco and Hemos on their own damn web site. I doubt they will end up vending fries just because they are gay, VA gave them a big pile of cash.
  • Learn how to post goat sex link right you moron. It doesn't need a 'www' in front of it. It takes away from the impact.

  • Give me direct file links, please. (Score:3)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Saturday September 02, 2000 @06:35AM (#809489)
    You'd think Loki, of all companies, would understand the need to provide direct links for large download files, instead trying to stuff the whole thing down the throat of my browser with a cgi script. It's no fun to have the download quit on the 160th of 170 megs, and be unable to resume. Please understand this: I do not want you to get fancy when I'm trying to download a file. Just give me a direct URL to the file, please, and I'll download it with the transfer program of my choice.
    --
  • So are you.
  • Yeah, I bet. No one can get a half million residents in 5 years.
  • I'm getting a nice 300k/sec with my cable... thanks.

    btw, your link was wrong... here is a working one [gameaholic.com].

  • Hopefully Better Than The Mac Port..... (Score:3)

    by Bill Daras ( 102772 ) on Saturday September 02, 2000 @04:57AM (#809493) Homepage
    I hope Loki did a much better job porting it to Linux than MacKiev did bringing it to the Mac.

    I hope no one at Maxis wonders why the game didn't sell well, I don't think you have to look further than the (in my opinion) absolute shit job done on it. It was the slowest, most crappily ported game since the days of ultra quick DOS conversions, done by people who seemed to have no idea what a mouse was, or the menu bar for that matter.

    Wanna save a game? Hit save and wait....and wait......and wait.....

    Wanna compare the speed between your G3 233 and G4 500? Don't bother! There is no improvement whatsoever!

    Should I mention the little annoyances.like the 300MB or so install, the mandatory 300MB dedicated swap file, the extra 100MB of OS level VM it needed. And of course, the CD requirement on top of it all.

    All I can say is, thank God Maxis came to their senses and didn't forgo porting the Sims because of this incident and that they didn't go for the lowest bidder this time 'round. Westlake Interactive did a fabulous job on The Sims, I only wish they had a chance to work their magic on SC3000 as well.
  • This poster mentioned audio -- my demo version didn't seem to have any audio. Hopefully when my pre-order copy arrives it doesn't have sound problems. Incidentally, I also own the Win32 version of this product and am actually pleased that the Linux enhanced version maintains a consistent interface.

    Eric W. Sarjeant
    ericsarjeant[@]mediaone.net

  • Sim City 3000 Seemed To Be Lacking Something..... (Score:5)

    by Bill Daras ( 102772 ) on Saturday September 02, 2000 @05:13AM (#809495) Homepage
    I think it was the Maxis,sense of humor...maybe they lost it when EA bought them out?

    When you compare SC3000 with 2000, not only do you have more features, like additional disasters, the newspapers, arcos, etc. You also have more personality. Nice touches like the inane llama obession popping up everywhere (and no, broccoli doesn't come close in 3000).

    My feeling after playing the game was that something happened between 1993/1994 and 1998/1999. I am not quite sure what it was. Perhaps the connection to the users was lost, maybe The Powers That Be insisted on a toned down and....hemoginized Sim City to appeal to the new Win95 drone/soccar-mom demographic. Dedicated Gamers vs. Blind Consumers.

    Anyway, call me crazy, but SC2000 felt like a personal work of art. A game made by a small, tight-knit team of dedicated artists. With all its humor and innuendo, it seemed like there was a secret we all shared.

    3000 on the other hand, looks and feels like a product. Games By Comittee. Harsh. Sterile. Bland. All the humor and fun seemes forced.

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