========= F R E Q U E N T L Y A S K E D Q U E S T I O N S ========= SimCity 2000 FAQ APPENDIX - Part 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have access to the World-Wide Web, see the latest HTML Translation and Update of this document by Michael Hanson: URL = http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~hanson/simcity_2000.faq.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix 1 (Solving Problems) Growth Lower taxes Improve roads/transportation system Improve water system Intersperse zones Improve land values Build airports (Commercial) Build seaports (Industrial) Build connections Lower pollution/crime/traffic Improve education/health Pass Legalized Gambling ordinance (Commercial) Pass Tourist Advertising ordinance (Commercial) Pass Business Advertising ordinance (Industrial) Pass City Beautification ordinance (Tourism) Pass Annual Carnival ordinance (Tourism, Commercial) Pass Nuclear Free Zone ordinance (Residential) Remove Nuclear Free Zone ordinance (Industrial) Remove Parking Fines ordinance (Residential) Remove 1% Income Tax ordinance (Residential) Remove 1% Sales Tax ordinance (Commercial) Land Value Build parks, trees, water Build recreational zones Build educational zones Build police, fire, hospitals Pass Pass City Beautification ordinance Pass Homeless Shelter ordinance Pollution Pass Pollution Control ordinance Increase tax rate on polluting industries Build a water treatment plant Lower traffic Use light industrial instead of heavy industrial Use solar, hydro, wind, microwave, fusion power Move poluting buildings to edges of map Traffic Build more roads and highways Build mass transit Pass Parking Fines ordinance Intersperse different zones (build R close to I, C) Crime Build police stations Pass Anti-Drug Campaign ordinance Pass Neighborhood Watch Campaign Use more light zoning Build prisons Unemployment Zone more industry and commercial zones Remove Pollution Control ordinance, if in place Lower industrial and commercial tax rates Education Build Schools, Colleges Build Libraries, Museums Pass Pro-Reading Campaign ordinance Give tax breaks to high-EQ industries Health Build hospitals Pass Public Smoking Ban ordinance Pass Free Clinic ordinance Pass Junior Sports ordinance Pass CPR Training ordinance Appendix 2 (Adjusting Difficulty) Money cheats Using one of the previously mentioned methods for getting more money is the simplest way to make things easier. You don't have to worry about balancing the budget and you can lower taxes to zero. No disasters Disasters can be quite, well, disasterous, for a young city. It's not a good a to leave a city running overnight without turning the disasters off. For one thing, even if you had good fire coverage, you'd probably lose a lot of your city to fire. In addition, most power plants need to be replaced every 50 years, so, soon, everyone would be out of power. Starting Level Changing the starting difficulty level changes the amount of money you start with, the frequency of disasters, and the level of external demand for your manufactured products. Starting Time Later starting times are easier because of the increased availability of inventions and the increase in external demand. Terrain Editing It's much easier to build a city on flat ground - and you can do all the flattening you want, at no cost, in the terrain editor. You can also add waterfalls for use with hydro power. Riverless hydro plants This source of power is not very realistic, however, it does not pollute, is fairly efficient, and does not need to be replaced every 50 years. Just place a drop of water on any slope, and build a hydro plant there. Artifically watered pumps Water pump efficiency can be artificially improved by placing drops of water next to them. Disconnected roads - roadless city By not building full road systems, it is possible to keep traffic down, however, it's not very realisitic. Heavy/Light Density Zoning If you're interested in building a city with a large population, you need to use mostly heavy zoning. A more realistic city (N.Y. and Hong Kong excepted) would have heavy to light zoning in a ratio of from 25/75 to 50/50. Appendix 3 (Mac Technical Problems) from 1.1 Updater Section not included in this Windows document. Appendix 4 (IBM Technical Problems) from the Maxis BBS *****THE MAXIS EMERGENCY TOP TEN LIST FOR SIM CITY 2000***** Technical Support is totally overwhelmed at the moment answering Sim City 2000 questions. Here are the top ten questions we are getting and the fixes for each one. Hope these help to get you up and running! Q. I loaded the program but when I go to run it (by typing SC2000) it gives me a message that I don't have enough memory even though I've got 4 megabytes of RAM on my system. A. The problem happens because out of 4 megabytes of memory, there isn't enough available to load the program. When your computer starts up, it loads other programs into that memory. The easiest way to get around this is to make a bootdisk and start your computer with it instead. See your SIMCITY 2000 ADDENDUM & QUICK START GUIDE pg. 6 and the "HOW TO MAKE A BOOTDISK" section at the bottom of this document. Q. I try to start the program and get a message, "Microsoft compatible mouse not found". A. The program requires that a mouse driver be loaded in memory. If you do have a mouse driver loaded and the program still doesn't find it, make sure that it is at least version 8 or higher by the Microsoft version numbering system. If you have an older version of a mouse driver, you will need to update the driver version by contacting the manufacturer of the mouse OR by contacting the store where the computer was purchased. Q. I get a message, "The video card you've selected is not found. Please re-install and verify that your video card is supported." A. Sim City 2000 needs a SVGA video card in order to display the 640 x 480 - 256 color video resolution. The video card needs to have at least 512K of video memory. Some cards may need a VESA driver to be loaded prior to running the program and since there are many different video cards, there are many different VESA drivers for each card. If you aren't sure which video card you have, try loading the UNIVESA.EXE driver as this driver supports a wide variety of video cards. You can load this driver by typing, "C:\SC2000\VESA\UNIVESA\UNIVESA " and pressing the "Enter" key. This will load the VESA driver for the video card. If this VESA driver isn't the correct one for your video card, contact the manufacturer of the video card to determine what the correct VESA driver is. To find out whether or not you need to load a vesa driver for your video card, go to the C:\SC2000 sub-directory and type " INFO " and press enter. This will display information about your system. Press the spacebar twice to get to the third page of the info program to find out whether your card has a VESA driver loaded. If it tells you that the following VESA modes are supported then you won't to load one. If it says "Either your card does not support VESA or there is no driver loaded", this means that you have to load a vesa driver for the video card. Q. I have a SOUND BLASTER type sound card and it fails when I try to select it for sound effects. Whats going on in Dodge? A. The earlier SOUND BLASTER cards used an IRQ setting of 7. The new ones, however, now use IRQ 5. We are looking for IRQ 7 and if your card fails you probably have it set differently. Try running the install again and this time, when the sound card fails initialization, click on the CHANGE SETTINGS button and change the IRQ setting to the number 5. Then click on the CONTINUE button and this should make the program accept the sound card. Q. I try to run Sim City 2000 and when I do I get some weird UNEXPECTED INTERUPT - ERROR 35 message. I'm really confused! A. This means that you have an ATI video card. You must run a program before starting Sim City 2000. Type " MW_ATIUP " and press the "Enter" key from within the SC2000 sub-directory. Once you do this it will return you to the C:\SC2000 prompt. Now type SC2000 and the program will run fine. Q. I have a DIAMOND VIPER video card and I can't get the program to work with it. A. All you have to do is type " VPRMODE VESA " and press enter. This will load the vesa driver for your video card. If you get a "Bad command or filename" message then you need to be in your VIPER subdirectory before you run the VPRMODE VESA command. Also, make sure that Sim City 2000 is set up for VESA Super VGA graphics. (You can check this by running the INSTALL program from within the SC2000 sub-directory.) Q. I run the installation program and when it gets to the type of video card I have, the program locks up. A. The installation program is trying to figure out what kind of video card you have in your computer. Sometimes it conflicts with a program and that will cause the installer to lock up. If you have DOS version 6.X, you can do a clean boot by pressing the F5 key when the "Starting MS-DOS" message appears. This will bypass your configuration files and then run the installer again. It will work fine now. Q. I have OS/2 and I want to run Sim City under it. I tried doing all of the memory stuff but still can't get enough free. Please tell me it's possible. -Gooie A. Dear Gooie....Yes! You can run it under OS/2. All you have to do is select a DOS FULL-WINDOWS session. Once in DOS, go to the SC2000 sub-directory and type " SC2000 NO_MEM_CHK " and the program will run. You should only do this if you have at least 6 - 8 Megabytes of memory though because with four you won't have enough. Q. I play the program and during a certain point, I get a "STACK OVERFLOW" message and the system dies an ugly death. A. Ouch! This is a little problem (or bug) that has surfaced on some machines. We are currently working on a fix and believe that the new version of the DOS Extender that we are using will fix the problem. In the meantime, contact MAXIS technical support and ask to have you name added to a list. We will contact you when a solution is found. I hope it is really soon because I know you are dying to play this wonderful product! Q. I have a problem and it isn't listed in the list. A. If you have any problems that aren't addressed in this list, please post (to the Maxis BBS) a message with the type of problem you are having and we'll be sure to add it to our list! This list will be revised depending on the types of problems you are experiencing. This concludes the wonderful TOP TEN question and answer list. Thanks for reading it! Appendix 5 (How to Make a Boot Disk) also from the Maxis BBS ******************** HOW TO MAKE A BOOT DISK ******************* If you are having problems making a boot disk, take the time to browse over this stuff and see if it helps you any. 1. The BOOT DISK must be in your A: drive to work properly. A boot disk in your B: drive just won't cut the cake; it has to be in drive A:. 2. Make sure your mouse driver is copied onto the BOOT DISK. You need to copy your mouse driver onto the boot disk and it must be named either MOUSE.COM or MOUSE.EXE to work in your AUTOEXEC.BAT FILE. If it has a different name, simply type the correct name in the autoexec.bat file in order to load the driver. i.e. If your mouse is named AMOUSE.COM, then you need to type AMOUSE on the mouse line of your autoexec.bat file. 3. From the C:\ prompt, type "SYS A:" and press the Enter key on your keyboard. This will copy the system start-up files to your floppy disk in the A: drive. 4. If you need a vesa driver for your video card, enter in the name of the vesa driver into the autoexec.bat file. This is a sample of what you need to type: IGNORE THE QUOTES! Don't type them, they just surround what you need to type in. A:>\"COPY CON AUTOEXEC.BAT" (type the line and then press the ENTER key.) Once you type this line it will drop you down to a flashing cursor that is waiting for you to type commands. Type the following commands that are in upper-case letters and press the enter key to drop to the next line: PROMPT $P$G MOUSE C:\SC2000\VESA\UNIVESA\UNIVESA C: CD\SC2000 SC2000 After typing the SC2000 line, press the F6 key on your keyboard and then press the enter key. It should say "One file(s) copied" when done. Try to restart your computer with the BOOTDISK in drive A: and it should boot up into the program. If it doesn't, see the possible errors below to help trouble shoot. 1. While booting, it gets to MOUSE and says, "Bad command or file name". This will happen if you don't have the mouse driver (MOUSE.COM or MOUSE.EXE) copied onto your bootdisk or if the mouse driver has a different name. Make sure the mouse driver is on the bootdisk AND that it is named MOUSE.COM or MOUSE.EXE. If it is named MSMOUSE.COM or something else, rename the mouse file by typing "REN MSCMOUSE.COM MOUSE.COM" at the A: prompt. This will rename the mouse from mscmouse.com to mouse.com and it should now work. 2. If you use the bootdisk and you still get the "The video card you have selected is not found. Please re-install......." message, this means that you don't have the correct video card VESA driver loaded. Please contact your video card manufacturer to inquire as to the correct VESA driver to load for your video card. 3. If you get a message "Non-system disk or disk error", remove the floppy and press any key. This means that the system (startup) files aren't on the floppy disk. Once you have booted up, go to the DOS sub-directory by typing CD\DOS . Make sure you put the boot disk back in the A: drive and then type, SYS A:. This will transfer the system to your boot-disk and correct the problem. Additional notes: You only need to have a mouse driver loaded and, in some cases, a vesa driver. You don't need any type of memory manager because we use a dos extender. If you have an IBM XGA or XGA2 video card it will switch the program into sixteen colors. We are currently looking into a solution that would prevent this from happening thus allowing the program to run in 256 colors. If you have a Texas Instruments Travel Mate 4000 and can't run the program: We have been in contact with the good folks at Texas Instruments and are currently working on a fix. If you have a Packard Bell computer and are getting "mouse trails" where the cursor moves on the screen - You need to contact Packard Bell's technical support department. They have found a solution to the problem and are also taking care of the method in which to correct it. (I just wanna say that there doing one heck of a good job too! Especially after going through that major earthquake!) Kudos to the folks at Packard Bell! The program makes some heavy demands on the system hardware. There is very little out there in terms of standards and it makes the development of a product such as this a tremendous job. Hang in there and we'll get you going! Maxis Technical Support is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. We experience HIGH call volumes on MONDAYS and during the later hours of the day. If you are having trouble reaching us by telephone, try to call earlier in the day or during the middle of the week as this is our lowest call volume time. Thanks! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have access to the World-Wide Web, see the latest HTML Translation and Update of this document by Michael Hanson: URL = http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~hanson/simcity_2000.faq.html