SIMCITY 2000 (TM) Last Minute Info 12/27/93 ----------------- Please read _ALL_ of this document! This stuff is important! It covers a lot about memory, installation, various graphics cards and sound cards, gameplay issues, importing cities from other versions of SimCity 2000 and hot keys. ** MOST IMPORTANT STUFF--ABOUT MEMORY SimCity 2000 requires a lot of memory to run--4 MB total, but also a lot of free memory in the conventional 640K range. On some machines, even if you have the required 4 MB, SimCity 2000 may report that you do not have enough free extended or conventional memory. If this is the case, your best alternative is to create a boot disk as outlined on page 6 of the SimCity 2000 DOS Addendum/Quick Start Guide. Another solution that may help is to install SimCity 2000 with No Sound and No Music selected. If you have already installed SimCity 2000, you can change your current sound, music, and video settings by running the INSTALL.EXE program in the SimCity 2000 directory. We recommend that you not load any memory managers or disk cache utilities while running SimCity 2000. Especially if you are using DOS 6 on a machine with only 4 MB RAM. If you are using a memory manager, you MUST NOT have it set in auto mode--this will cause a conflict with SimCity 2000. If you are using MS-DOS 6 and absolutely must load EMM386.EXE, you will need to either have the EMS size set to 'noems' or larger than 4096. See your DOS manual for information on how to do this. ** INSTALLING STUFF Video Selection --------------- The SimCity 2000 installer will attempt to figure out what kind of video card you have in your machine. If it can, it will list that card in the video selection window. If it is not sure what kind of video card you have, or the installer detects a VESA driver in memory (or in BIOS), it will default to the VESA VIDEO DRIVER. You can click on the arrow to the right of the VESA VIDEO DRIVER entry for a list of other cards that the installer thinks you might have. If your card is on this list, you can select it instead of the defaulted VESA driver. Sound Selection --------------- SimCity 2000 cannot automatically detect what kind of sound card you have in your machine. You will need to pick your sound card(s) out of the lists provided. The installer will then try to verify the presence of that sound card in your machine. If the installer is unable to detect the sound card you have specified, certain hardware settings on your card may be different than what SimCity 2000 is expecting. To change these settings, select the Change Settings option from the sound card verification window (Where it says "OK" or "Failed!"). For more information on these hardware settings, see the manual that came with your sound card. ** VIDEO CARD SUPPORT VESA Drivers ------------ SimCity 2000 supports a variety of different video cards and VESA mode 101 (640x480x256 colors). VESA stands for Video Electronics Standards Association. If you do not find your video card listed by name in the installer, we recommend that you pick VESA VIDEO DRIVER and run a VESA driver supported by your video card before booting SimCity 2000. Some video cards have built-in VESA drivers so you won't need to manually load a driver. Other video cards have an external file that needs to be run from the DOS command line before running SimCity 2000. Others, like the Diamond Viper VLB, have the VESA driver built into the video card BIOS, but you still need to tell the card to load the driver before running SimCity 2000. In the case of the Diamond Viper VLB, you would need to type 'VPRMODE VESA' [Enter} at the command line to load the driver. If the VESA driver is an external program, it would probably be found on the disks that came with your video card. If you don't have a VESA driver you should contact your video card manufacturer. We have included VESA drivers for most popular cards on your SimCity 2000 disk 1. ATI Ultra Pro or Mach 32 Video Cards ------------------------------------ If you have an ATI Ultra Pro or other card based on the Mach 32 chip, you must run the included utility MW_ATIUP.EXE before playing SimCity, for complete compatibility. Simply type: MW_ATIUP [Enter] then type: SC2000 [Enter] to use your ATI card with SimCity 2000. Trident Video Cards ------------------- Some older Trident video cards may not be compatible with the Trident driver installed by SimCity 2000. If you installed a Trident video card and are experiencing video problems, try running the INSTALL.EXE program in the SimCity 2000 directory and selecting the VESA video driver. ** SOUND CARD SUPPORT Miles Design Drivers -------------------- SimCity 2000 sound support is accomplished through the use of the John Miles Design AIL audio driver libraries. These drivers are available for many different sound cards, most of which are included and installed by the SimCity 2000 installer. If your sound card is not mentioned specifically in the installer, you may be able to get drivers from the manufacturer for full SimCity 2000 sound. SimCity 2000 requires "32-bit flat mode" Miles Design drivers. Non-32-bit drivers will not work. Pro Audio Spectrum ------------------ MUSIC: The Music Driver for the Pro Audio Spectrum requires the Media Vision Driver MVSOUND.SYS to be loaded in memory as a driver in your CONFIG.SYS file. If this driver is not loaded, you will receive a verification failure during installation, and you will NOT hear music during the game. For more information about MVSOUND.SYS, please refer to your Pro Audio Spectrum users manual, or call Media Vision Technical Support. SOUND EFFECTS: If you choose Pro Audio Spectrum as your Sound Effects sound card, you may experience some sound effects "dropouts," or even no sound at all. This will only happen on some Pro Audio Spectrum sound cards. If this does happen, you can re-run the INSTALL program and choose Sound Blaster for the Sound Effects Card, instead of Pro Audio Spectrum. CAUTION: This may or may not work depending on your Pro Audio Spectrum. Please call Media Vision Technical Support if you have more problems. Gravis Ultrasound ----------------- SimCity 2000 is compatible with the SBOS Sound Blaster Emulation TSR for the GUS. However, it is NOT compatible with both SBOS and most memory managers (such as EMM386) loaded the same time. DO NOT attempt to run or even install SimCity 2000 with both SBOS and a memory manager present. Bad things may happen. Aria Sound Cards ---------------- We now have Miles Design Drivers for all sound cards based on the ARIA Sound Synth by Sierra Semiconductor. These include: Viva Maestro 16 VR Alpha Systems Cyber Audio Add Tech Sound 2000 Sound Tower Cardinal Technologies Sound Pilot Diamond Computer Systems Sonic Sound Sonic Sound Pro Genoa Systems AudioBahn AudioBahn Listener Kingston Technologies Omnivox Zoltrix TESS and Others... ** GAME PLAY ISSUES Saved Cities ------------ For your simulating pleasure, we have included several saved cities created by various Maxis employees. They are located in your SimCity 2000 directory. Micro-Simulators ---------------- When querying some structures, you get local statistics about that structure. For instance, querying on a Police Station will tell you how many crimes and arrests were handled by that station, querying on a school will tell how many teachers and students are attending as well as the average grade of the students. Most placeable structures have these microsimulators (police, fire, schools, colleges, power plants, the Mayor's House, arcologies, etc). Some structures share one microsimulator for all the structures placed. Things like the bus system, railroad depots, marinas, libraries, windmills, and hydroelectric power plants among others have 1 microsimulator for each category (one microsimulator for all the bus stations, one for all the railroad depots, etc). Where is this all headed, you ask? Well, each city can only have 150 microsimulators in it. If you go beyond that, the structure you place will still affect the simulator globally (police stations will still stop crime, bus stations will still carry passengers, arcologies will still hold people), but you just won't be able to see any local information on those structures. This isn't going to harm your city in any way. We're telling you this because it's pretty easy to run out of microsimulators in a large city and we don't want you thinking something's wrong. Terrain Editing --------------- If you are building a city and go into the terrain edit mode, your city will disappear, but any trees or water that you have placed in the city will show up in edit terrain mode. Also, if you have placed a bridge or other structure that automatically builds landfill, the landfill will also show up in edit terrain mode. These can be removed with the lower terrain tool. Airports -------- Keep in mind when building an airport that it needs space for a runway, or it will not build. The minimum useable airport space is 2 x 6 tiles. Your best bet is to build the airport in 4 x 6 tile increments. And make sure no tall buildings are nearby, SimCity 2000 pilots are not known for their building-avoidance skills! In addition, make sure that your airport is blanketed with power lines. Airports may not initially build unless they are receiving power to certain tiles. ** IMPORTING OTHER CITIES Importing Cities From SimCity Classic and SimCity 2000 Mac ---------------------------------------------------------- You can load saved cities from both SimCity Classic and SimCity 2000 Mac into SimCity 2000 DOS. To import SimCity Classic DOS and SimCity 2000 Mac saved games, rename the file so that the extension is ".SC2". If the file is from SimCity Classic DOS, SimCity 2000 will ask you if you wish to convert the file to SimCity 2000 format. The conversion will not change the original file until you save it. To convert SimCity 2000 DOS files for use in SimCity 2000 Mac you will need to give the file a Filetype and Creator for the Macintosh. This can be done with ResEdit, Access PC, or one of several other PC->Mac conversion utilities. **NEWSPAPER If you are running low on hard drive space, you may experience a problem where multiple newspaper stories are open at one time. You will need at least 300KB free hard drive space (on the drive that SimCity 2000 is installed to) before starting the game, and this will fix the problem. If you do get multiple stories, you can clear them by pressing 'ENTER'. If you are running into low memory situations, the Newspaper menu item may gray out. Don't be alarmed, it won't hurt anything. ** HOT KEYS SHIFT KEY- 1. While placing items, press the shift key before releasing the mouse button will cancel placement of the item. 2. Holding down the shift key while clicking on an item in the edit window will open the Query window on that specific item. 3. Holding down the shift key while clicking on a button or entry in a window will open a help description on that item. CTRL - temporarily turns the current cursor into the Bulldoze Tool. HOME - zooms in one level on your city END - zooms out one level on your city DEL - rotates your city view left 90 degrees PAGE DOWN - rotates your city right 90 degrees Cursors Keys - scrolls around city Thanks for buying SimCity 2000 We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed creating it! [EOF] -------------------------------------------------------------------------