Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac 1993 September/September 93.iso/Archives/Games/Cheats⁄hacks⁄hints/Sim Utilities/Sim Cities/Sim City Notes

Text File | 1993-01-01 | 16.8 KB | 314 lines | [TEXT/ttxt]

This is a transcript of a conferences held on 19 May 1989 in the
conferencing area of MACFUN, with special guest Will Wright, author of the
fabulous simulation/game, SIM City. This is an edited transcript (form, not
content), but your transcriber regrets that a few lines are dropped here
and there, sorry, it should be fairly sensible anyway.

(Will Wright) Thanks
(Will Wright) I don't exactly know just what to say,
(Will Wright) Sims make great taste treats?
(Will Wright) Maybe I should bring everyone up
(Will Wright) to date on the different versions...
(Will Wright) 1.1 just started shipping a couple of ddays
(Will Wright) ago. I'm debugging the color version right now
(Will Wright) and with any luck should be shipping by Monday.
(Will Wright) The color version will be MultiFinder compatable
(Will Wright) I must give credit to a certain Jim Nitchals
(Will Wright) and also Ken ??? here on CIS for
(Will Wright) pointing me in the right dirrection for MF compat.

(JAMES MAY) when are you going to have another update?
(Will Wright) in about a  month.
(Will Wright) We could of held the 1.1 another month
(Will Wright) but I didn't want the Mac+
(Will Wright) people out there crashing any longer.
(Will Wright) We will prob. do an expanded version
(Will Wright) in the next 6 months or so. It will be
(Will Wright) aimed at the Higher Educational Market
(Will Wright) I think, though we are getting a lot
(Will Wright) of interest from planning departments.

(JAMES MAY) when are you going to include tings like allowing bonding to
(JAMES MAY) finance infrastructure costs?
(Will Wright) We would prob. add that sort of stuff
(Will Wright) for the Proffesional version
(Will Wright) or Educationa;l version.
(Will Wright) It is unclear at this point
(Will Wright) just which way we are going
(Will Wright) to approach, Vertical Marketing.

(Anne Lyndon) [Yes.  i had a very large city going...
(Anne Lyndon) and I was using rails only, no roads, to cut down
(Anne Lyndon) on pollution.  I also used nuclear power...
(Anne Lyndon) plants.  I then had a number of meltdowns....
(Anne Lyndon) so I reverted to a pre- meltdown saved city..
(Anne Lyndon) and changed to all coal.  Everyone moved away.
(Anne Lyndon) what should Ihave done?
(Will Wright) The funny thing about cities is that they evolve over time
(Will Wright) instead of just getting ploped down all at once. One of
(Will Wright) the things that makes this simulation rather hard to predict
(Will Wright) is that so many things are interrelated. If you make a mojor
(Will Wright) change in the structure of your city, it will shock the
(Will Wright) system's balance.
(Will Wright) And these effects will sort of ripple through the system,
(Will Wright) So if you make a major change, frequently the system(City)
(Will Wright) will deterirate for a while afterwards. I'm not
(Will Wright) sure if this answers your question exactly, But I do get a
(Will Wright) lot of q's that seem to center around this issue.

(JAMES MAY) how about adding water and sewer , it's hard to plan cities
(JAMES MAY) without these things
(Will Wright) I have a rather large stack of letters here with about
(Will Wright) 5 zillion suggestions. Water and sewer are at the very
(Will Wright) top of the list, Water is actually in the C64 version.
(Will Wright) The Budgeting is the next thing that needs expansion.
(Will Wright) As you said, Federal loans disaster relief funds
(Will Wright) and Municipal bonds would
(Will Wright) make the economic side much more interesting.
(Will Wright) As for me I'm not sure if we should spend
(Will Wright) lots of resources to enhance SimCity or work on new projects
(Will Wright) that might turn out better.

(Dennis J. Piermatte) Can you tell us more about Professional/Educational
(Dennis J. Piermatte) Versions.....and your next system simulation plans ?
(Will Wright) I can't tell you
(Will Wright) too much about the "Enhanced versions"
(Will Wright) because we have not decided for sure how to approach it.
(Will Wright) I'm researching right now for the next system simulation,
(Will Wright) I can't be too specific about it just yet, as it could take
(Will Wright) many tangents from where it
(Will Wright) Biological in nature.

(John Endres) Will - I have a question about the dullsville scenario.
(John Endres) The instructions say we have 100 years(?) to complete
(John Endres) Dullsville. The game seems to only allow me a little under
(John Endres) 30 years playing time.  Is it possible to go past this?
(Will Wright) It could be
(Will Wright) That you are being scored after 30 years. Are you sure
(Will Wright) it says you have 100 years, I dont remember.
(John Endres) It says I have until the end of the century, I think
(Will Wright) If you dont grow Dullsville to a Metropolis(I think)
(Will Wright) It sounds like I have the scoring conditions matching
(Will Wright) what the message says. Another bug in the wall.

(Anne Lyndon) I have a question that is somewhat related...
(Anne Lyndon) to my previous question.  What are the chances of a nuclear
(Anne Lyndon) meltdown? I had three in ten years.
(Will Wright) Anne, if you have just one Nuclear plant the chances
(Will Wright) are around once evry 100 years I think.
(Will Wright) But If you have, let's say 5 Nplants then I think it should
(Will Wright) jump to about 1 every 20 years, I've had many
(Will Wright) people complain that they happened too
(Will Wright) often so I think I might adjust that soon.

(Donald Brown) Also, may I suggest that if you DO have a meltdown,...
(Donald Brown) the remains of the plant should all be radioactive?  It...
(Donald Brown) seems that the safest place to put a replacement plant...
(Donald Brown) is right on the site of the last one, and that doesn't...
(Donald Brown) make sense to me.
(Will Wright) At the time we decided to place fire on the Plant for
(Will Wright) the effect. Just Radioactivity seemed
(Will Wright) a little boring. That is a good
(Will Wright) place to put the next plant because if it meltdowns
(Will Wright) then the radioactivity is confine to that sphere.

(Tom Fought) I'm interested in what the differences are between easy,
(Tom Fought) medium and hard city simulations.
(Will Wright) Good question,  The differences have to do with Disaster
(Will Wright) frequency, starting funds, tax tolerance
(Will Wright) and maintenance costs. A section of road costs more to
(Will Wright) maintain on hard than on easy and the people
(Will Wright) get more upset about taxes on hard.

(Dennis J. Piermatte) [Lost question!]
(Will Wright) Dennis, that would be rather easy (If I had the time), I
(Will Wright) always  wanted a Zoom mode so you can zoom down to the
(Will Wright) City Streets and see the people on the sidewalk and
(Will Wright) maybe even stop them and ask them how they liked their city.
(Will Wright) But again it's a matter of whether to pursue this as an
(Will Wright) entertainment  product or move on to new fields to simulate.

(JEFF SILER) how long does it take to get back the update once
(JEFF SILER) you send it in?
(Will Wright) Jeff, It should only take about a week
(Will Wright) now that he have the disks back from
(Will Wright) the duplicators (just got them 2 days ago).

(Anne Lyndon) One involves a command key "embezzling"....
(Anne Lyndon) and the other involves increasing the taxes every
(Anne Lyndon) December....
(Anne Lyndon) What are your thoughts about these "cheating" methods?
(Will Wright) There were two schools of thought on all this.
(Will Wright) Either we make it very challenging for the hard core gamer,
(Will Wright) or  make it easier for the people who might not normally
(Will Wright) play computer games. I decided that the main objective
(Will Wright) was to get people interested in city form, as I did, and just
(Will Wright) let them cheat if it seemed too hard to play. The "banzai"
(Will Wright) taxation trick of raising in dec. was removed in 1.1,
(Will Wright) but the fix for that opened
(Will Wright) another possibility, which someone will discover I'm sure.

(JAMES MAY) [I'd like to encourage Will to keep on improving an
(JAMES MAY)excellent game.
(Will Wright) James, thanks but maybe you would rather play something
(Will Wright) totally new, opening a whole world of behavioral systems that
(Will Wright) you never experienced before.
(Will Wright) (Includeds a Ginzu knife set too.)

(Doug Roberts) I haven't purchased the game yet, but borrowed
(Doug Roberts) a friends for a few hours just to get an idea
(Doug Roberts) of the simulation.  I think it's terrific.
(Doug Roberts) Would you advise waiting to purchase
(Doug Roberts) Ver. 1.1, or is that going to
(Doug Roberts) take a while to get to the stores.
(Will Wright) Doug, I think most of the stores are sold
(Will Wright) out of 1.0, we just shipped 1.1 to our distributor
(Will Wright) and It should be on the shelves within a week or 2.

(Tom Fought) Hey Will, this has been great..
(Tom Fought) But I have to ask, who is the 49'ers fan???
(Tom Fought) When you "quality" the stadium during the game
(Tom Fought) you get last year's playoff score I think.
(Will Wright) It is our other Mac programmer Robert Strobel, who never gets
(Will Wright) any credit. But he's a wild hacker on the
(Will Wright) Mac (rare breed).
(Tom Fought) Nice touch.

(JEFF SILER) I TALKED TO SOMEONE AND THEY SAID IT TOOK ABOUT 3 YEARS TO
(JEFF SILER) MAVE  DID YOU EXPECT IT TO TAKE OFF SO WELL & IS THERE A
(JEFF SILER) LOT OF COMANDS LIKE THE "FUNDS" AND HOW DO
(JEFF SILER) YOU FIND THEM.
(Will Wright) Jeff,  Yes I started work on this about 4
(Will Wright) years ago (took a year off to procreate).
(Will Wright) on the C64 while working as a independant designer working
(Will Wright) with Broderbund. I always thought it was neat, but
(Will Wright) it always seemed to scare the Marketing
(Will Wright) people (the C64 market is quite different
(Will Wright) We I redesigned it for the Mac we
(Will Wright) knew it would be much more interesting,
(Will Wright) but we still thought it would be mainly
(Will Wright) appreciated by a small group.
(Will Wright) Most of the other keyboard commands are adocumented
(Will Wright) except for a few..........

(JAMES MAY) [This is great, I particularly like Will's idea of Ginzu knives
(JAMES MAY) for the pedestrians who hand around nuclear power plants.
(JAMES MAY) My question is what urban planning departments have you been
(JAMES MAY) talking to about your upgrade?
(Will Wright) James, we have been contacted by several independant planners
(Will Wright) (private industry) and also several schools which
(Will Wright) are starting to use it in classes. Stanford, Brown University
(Will Wright) and a few others. I'm not exactly sure how they are using it
(Will Wright) but as soon as things settle down a bit
(Will Wright) around here I want to find a group to work
(Will Wright) with for tailoring it more twords serious educational uses.

(Anne Lyndon) I have two rather mundane questions: ..
(Anne Lyndon) What is the upgrade path from 1.0 to 1.1?
(Anne Lyndon) And will you tell us any other hidden features..
(Anne Lyndon) that may exist in Sim City?
(Will Wright) Anne, our current policy (subject to daily change)
(Will Wright) is to send 1.1 free to people who return their original disk.
(Will Wright) Or $10 if you keep your disk. Or if you order the Terrain
(Will Wright) Editor or ColorMacII version, you will be sent 1.1 free along
(Will Wright) with your order. Or if you just want to raise hell
(Will Wright) with us we'll send you the 1.1 free.
(Will Wright) As, for hidden features... I know
(Will Wright) of many "incongruities" (bugs) that are pretty well
(Will Wright) hidden, but I doubt you'd consider them as features.

(Neil/Sysop) First, I can't believe I almost missed this but I was on a
(Neil/Sysop) voice phone call for more than an hour and could not break
(Neil/Sysop) away. I just want to thank Will
(Neil/Sysop) for having been here! And throw in an off the wall
(Neil/Sysop) question to him <grin>. I noticed in
(Neil/Sysop) a game review of SimCity, Will, that you are also the
(Neil/Sysop) author RAID ON BUNGELING BAY which was one of the world's
(Neil/Sysop) premier arcade games on the Atari (though it never made it
(Neil/Sysop) to the Apple II -- sigh). Question is: Do you see the Mac
(Neil/Sysop) as having any sort of arcade interest for you as a
(Neil/Sysop) programmer? What kind of
(Neil/Sysop) breakthroughs -- if any-- does the Mac make possible for an
(Neil/Sysop) arcade programmer? Or, will you stick solely with simulation
(Neil/Sysop) type gaming at this point in your career?
(Will Wright) Neil, I have yet to see an arcade game
(Will Wright) that looked really good on the Mac with
(Will Wright) the exception of some of the newer games for the Color Macs.
(Will Wright) Right now Im more interested in designing
(Will Wright) games that are somewhat portable across systems.
(Will Wright) Its the only way to make a living at it nowadays.
(Will Wright) I use my Amiga when I want to play arcade games, I really
(Will Wright) like the Amiga in someways, and the Mac in others.
(Will Wright) The 2 machines complement each other very nicely.

(JEFF SILER) about how many games have been sold so far &
(JEFF SILER) is the game on GE CALLED AIR WARROR EASY DO MAKE IF U HAVE
(JEFF SILER) SEEN IT AND THANK YOU FOR A GREAT GAME THAT MAKES
(JEFF SILER) YOU SEE REAL LIFE SIM.
(Will Wright) Jeff, You're quite welcome.
(Will Wright) We've shipped (Im not sure what the retail numbers are) to
(Will Wright) our distributer about...
(Will Wright) 5000  Mac versions
(Will Wright) 3500  Amiga versions
(Will Wright) 1500  C64 versions.
(Will Wright) As for Air Warrior, I'm not sure if you mean just the
(Will Wright) program part running on your computer or the whole system (on
(Will Wright) the minicomputer). I'm also not sure what you mean by easy to
(Will Wright) program. I imagine it was rather difficult
(Will Wright) to get all those independant programs
(Will Wright) meshed together as well as they do.

(Neil/Sysop) (What's "GE" though??)

(Donald Brown) As much as I love SIM City, I'd like to have some
(Donald Brown) options that don't cost money, so that when I've
(Donald Brown) run out of money, I don't have to just stand by doing
(Donald Brown) nothing.  Maybe passing ordinances, etc.  Comments?
(Will Wright) I'm open to suggestions. Do you want ways to raise money,
(Will Wright) or would you rather adjust the city government policies.?
(Donald Brown) Adjusting policies, primarily.  Vary tax rates by region.
(Donald Brown) Maybe transfer police from one station to another (cut...
(Donald Brown) one station's efficiency by 10%, increase the other's
(Donald Brown) by 5%). Not sure what else.
(Will Wright) It might be neat to be able to double click on Police Fire,
(Will Wright) Powerplants etc. and have a window
(Will Wright) come up allowing you to adjust them in some way.
(Will Wright) This is starting to sound like one of our new titles.

(JAMES MAY) i haveI have a question about one of the programming aspects
(JAMES MAY) of SimCity. My son the budding Mac programmer wants to know
(JAMES MAY) how you admde the graphics is the edit window come out
(JAMES MAY) looking right.

(Will Wright) James, we put most of our effort in making the Edit Window
(Will Wright) animate as fast as possible. We wrote some very fast
(Will Wright) Machine Language routines that write
(Will Wright) straight to video memory. Also
(Will Wright) the window stays aligned to word boundries so
(Will Wright) no shifting is needed. Youll notice if you drag
(Will Wright) the Edit Window and let go it will pop
(Will Wright) over to the closest word boundry.

(Doug Roberts) Will, what are some of your favorite...
(Doug Roberts) recreational games/simulations?
(Will Wright) I like to play Go (boardgame)
(Will Wright) I always liked Strategic Conquest on the Mac
(Will Wright) and Interceptor and Carrier Command on the Amiga.

(Neil/Sysop) Will, one more quick one from me anyway....
(Neil/Sysop) I saw a review mentioning SimCounty coming up....
(Neil/Sysop) Any interest when that happens in doing an online...
(Neil/Sysop) contest (judging it or whatever) to set up a MAUG County??
(Will Wright) Neil, I'll send you an answer to that later Email...
(Will Wright) I think my partner Jeff Braun might take
(Will Wright) over the development of SimCounty so that
(Will Wright) I can go play in left field for a while.

(Neil/Sysop) Thanks again for having been a CO guest here! It's always
(Neil/Sysop) exciting to meet the people that change and shape gaming
(Neil/Sysop) on the Mac and SimCity has been just a tremendous event!
(Neil/Sysop) Thanks again!! and I guess this ends the CO!!

Riots of applause and thanks to our guest followed.

--bp <transcriptionist>