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SimCity 2000 CD-ROM COLLECTION (TM) Last Minute Info v1.0 (12/16/94) Congratulations and thank you for purchasing the SimCity 2000 CD-ROM Collection. This README file should answer any questions or problems that you are experiencing with SimCity 2000 and the SimCity Urban Renewal Kit (SCURK). This document is pretty long (about 24 pages or so), so it's worthwhile to print it out if you can. If you are experiencing problems and this file does not help fix them, please call the friendly folks in our Technical Support group. The number for Technical Support is located on the Maxis Maxims card in your SimCity 2000 box. There's also a list of different ways to contact Tech Support at the end of this file. Here's a list of topics covered by this README file: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. INSTALLATION Express Install Custom Install Video Selection Sound Selection ------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. TROUBLESHOOTING SimCity 2000 Locks Up If SCURK Locks Up SimCity 2000 Install Program Crashes The Text In The Installer Looks Weird I Have A Diamond Stealth/Viper And Get Funny Lines On My Display I Get An "Error 35" Message I Get a "Microsoft Compatible Mouse Not Found" Message Other Important Mouse Information I Get A "Professional Error (2001)" Message I Get A "Stack Overflow" Message I Get Random Crashes I Tried Turning Off Sound And It Still Crashes SimCity 2000, SCURK and Windows ------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. VIDEO CARDS What Is A VESA Driver And How Do I Use It? ATI Ultra Pro or Mach 32 Video Cards Diamond Viper Trident Video Cards Packard Bell (Headland Technologies) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. SOUND CARDS What Are Miles Design Drivers And How Do I Use Them? Sound Blaster Installation Pro Audio Spectrum Gravis Ultrasound Aria Compatible Sound Cards ------------------------------------------------------------------------- V. MISCELLANEOUS SCURK, Memory and Virtual Memory Memory Issues Running with QEMM, EMM386 And Other Memory Managers Running SimCity 2000 Under OS/2 Creating A Boot Disk With Stacker/DoubleSpace Bootdisk Utility ------------------------------------------------------------------------- VI. GAME PLAY ISSUES FOR SIMCITY 2000 Saved Cities Micro-Simulators Terrain Editing Airports Newspapers Importing Cities From SimCity Classic and SimCity 2000 Mac Hot Keys ------------------------------------------------------------------------- VII. GAME PLAY ISSUES FOR SCURK ------------------------------------------------------------------------- VIII. CONTACTING MAXIS TECHNICAL SUPPORT Handy Ways To Talk to Helpful People ------------------------------------------------------------------------- IX. CD-ROM CONTRIBUTORS Handy Ways To Talk to Helpful People ========================================================================= I. INSTALLATION ----------------------------- There are two types of installation: Express and Custom. ----------------------------- Express Install Express Install will install SimCity 2000 and SCURK into the directory of your choice (we recommend the default directory of c:\sc2000), and configure it to work with a VESA compatible SVGA video card and Sound Blaster (or compatible) sound card. If there is a SET BLASTER line in your CONFIG.SYS file, the parameters will be used for the configuration. If you selected Express Install and do not have a Sound Blaster compatible or VESA SVGA card, you'll get a warning message about this. Go ahead and continue with installation. When you're done, you can run the program called INSTALL.EXE in your SimCity 2000 subdirectory. This will let you change sound and video selections. For more information on VESA and SVGA, see the sections below. Express Install will perform a Full installation if you have 4 MB RAM (since you won't have enough RAM for both SimCity 2000 and your CD-ROM drivers, and won't be able to access files on the CD-ROM), or a Partial installation if you have more than 4 MB RAM (which saves some hard drive space). ----------------------------- Custom Install Custom Install still lets you choose the directory SimCity 2000 and SCURK will install to (and we still recommend the default directory of c:\sc2000). It will also let you pick the sound card you want for music and the sound card you want for sound. You can also select either Full or Partial installation. Remember, if you have 4 MB RAM, you will not have enough RAM for both SimCity 2000 and your CD-ROM drivers, so you might as well install the whole nine yards while you're at it. ----------------------------- Video Selection The SimCity 2000 installer will try to figure out what kind of video card you have in your machine. 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 SUPER VGA driver. You can click the arrow on the right of the VESA SUPER VGA entry for a list of cards that the installer thinks you might have. If your card is on this list, you can select it instead of the default VESA driver. If the installer cannot figure out what kind of card you have and cannot detect a VESA driver, you'll get a warning message. If you wish to continue and try to run SimCity 2000 or SCURK anyway, you MUST load some type of VESA driver for your video card. See the section on VIDEO CARDS a little later in this file for some really helpful information about how to do this. ----------------------------- Sound Selection The SimCity 2000 installer cannot automatically detect what kind of sound card you have in your machine. You will need to pick your sound card(s) from the lists provided. The installer will then try to verify the presence of that sound card in your machine. Certain hardware settings on your card may be different from what SimCity 2000 or SCURK is expecting. To change these settings, select the Change Settings option from the sound card verification window (where it says "OK" or "Failed!"). Generally, you should use the following settings: PORT = 220, DMA = 1, and IRQ = 7 or 5. For more information on these hardware settings, see the manual that came with your sound card. If your sound card is not shown and is 100 percent Sound Blaster compatible, you should be able to install for Sound Blaster and hear sounds and music. See the section on Miles Design Drivers below for information on what to do if your sound card is not supported. ========================================================================= II. TROUBLESHOOTING ----------------------------- SimCity 2000 Locks Up This is almost always the result of a conflict between SimCity 2000 and a memory-resident program (TSR) that is being loaded by your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS files. The best solution for this is to run the boot disk utility by typing BOOTDISK at the game directory. (Remember that the boot disk MUST go into Drive A:.) This utility will create a disk which loads your sound and video drivers, but it will NOT load your CD-ROM drivers. If this does not help, try running the INSTALL program in the SimCity 2000 directory and selecting No Sound Effects. If you're still locking up, call Maxis Technical Support at the numbers listed on the Maxis Maxims card included in your SimCity 2000 box and at the end of this document. ----------------------------- If SCURK Locks Up or Crashes SCURK uses free space on your hard drive to store information. You need at least 5 MB or so of free hard drive space AFTER INSTALLATION, especially if you plan to create new graphics sets or cities. If SCURK crashes, it may leave undeleted swap files. These files always have the extension .SWP, and should be deleted if found. ----------------------------- SimCity 2000 Install Program Crashes This is also probably a conflict with a loaded memory resident program. Try making a boot disk using the boot disk utility. To do this go to the game directory and type BOOTDISK. Ignore the "Bad Command or Filename" message that appears when using the boot disk for installation. Also try running the INSTALL program with no mouse driver loaded. See your mouse manual for information on disabling the mouse. ----------------------------- The Text In The Installer Looks Weird Some graphics cards (specifically, ones that use the Cirrus Logic GD543x chipset like the Spider Black Widow 64 and the Orchid Kelvin family) need to load TSR fonts so the installer program can display text correctly. In this case, you need to run the TSRFONT.COM program, which should have been included with the card. SimCity 2000 and SCURK do not require these TSR fonts, only the install program does. See your video card documentation for more information. ----------------------------- I Have A Diamond Stealth/Viper And Get Funny Lines On My Display Some early versions of the Diamond drivers create a problem with SimCity 2000. Fortunately, there are software patches available for both the Stealth and Viper to fix this problem. The Stealth patch is available as a software program called STLBIOS.EXE or as a hardware upgrade. The Diamond Viper patch is a software upgrade called VPRM202.EXE. All of these are available from Diamond. A few Diamond Viper PCI cards with 2 MB show a completely black screen when SimCity 2000 starts. This is due to defective cards, and you'll need to contact Diamond or your dealer for a replacement. ----------------------------- I Get An "Error 35" Message This message usually shows up if you have certain ATI cards and have not loaded the ATISET.EXE program. See the ATI entry in Section III below for more information. ----------------------------- I Get A "Microsoft Compatible Mouse Not Found" Message This message is usually the result of one of two problems. 1. Most likely, a mouse driver has not been loaded. SimCity 2000 needs a DOS mouse driver to run (as opposed to a Microsoft Windows mouse driver). This driver, along with instructions on how to load it should have come with your mouse. Our boot disk utility will scan your hard drive for a proper mouse driver. If one is found it will be put on the boot disk. 2. The other likely problem is that the mouse driver is being loaded correctly but is an older version that is not supported. You should be using the equivalent of Microsoft mouse driver version 8.2 or higher. This means that the mouse driver you're using should have been issued around August, 1993 or later. If your driver is older than that, you should contact the manufacturer (or dealer) of your mouse to get a more up-to-date mouse driver. ----------------------------- Other Important Mouse Information SimCity 2000 requires a Microsoft-compatible mouse to run. Most mice today (including Logitech, Mouse Systems, and Kensington) are Microsoft-compatible. In order for the mouse to work properly in SimCity 2000, a mouse driver must be loaded before running SimCity 2000. The mouse driver must also be fairly current and VESA compatible. Contact the manufacturer of your mouse or the dealer who sold the mouse to you to see if your driver is the most current available. Again, the INFO program is a good way to sort out what's going on. The SC2000 INFO program in the SC2000 directory can usually identify your mouse driver (just type INFO [enter] at the directory where you installed SimCity 2000). About halfway down the screen is your mouse driver information. If there is no message and you see the SC2000 directory prompt, your mouse driver is REALLY old and probably should have been upgraded a long time ago. Time to do it now. ----------------------------- I Get A "Professional Error 2001" Message This error occurs in one of two ways. The first will occur just as you start the program, and the second will occur at random locations during gameplay. To correct this error, disable the sound effects from the install screen (as outlined below). Then run the game without any sound effects. ----------------------------- I Get A "Stack Overflow" Message This error will be displayed as soon as the game begins. To correct this error, you will need to disable the sound effects in the install screen. Then run the game without any sound effects. In either of the above cases, type INSTALL at the SC2000 prompt and choose the Change Music and Change Sound Effects options. Select No Music and No Sound. Then use the command SC2000 NOSOUND to start the game. ----------------------------- I Get Random Crashes If you are experiencing random crashes during gameplay, first disable the sound effects for the game. If this does not work disable the music and sound effects, and if both of those options do not seem to help, try deleting and reinstalling SC2000. This can also happens on machines with the SmartDrive disk cache running with write cache enabled. (SmartDrive is one of those nasty TSRs we mentioned earlier). You should disable the SmartDrive (the boot disk utility will do this) or contact your dealer or Maxis for information on disabling this feature. ----------------------------- I Tried Turning Off Sound And It Still Crashes If you tried re-installing without sound and still crash, try running SimCity 2000 by typing NOSOUND instead of SC2000. ----------------------------- SimCity 2000, SCURK and Windows The DOS versions of SimCity 2000 and SCURK have their own particular requirements as to how drive cards should be configured and used. Therefore, we recommend that you reboot your machine after playing either if you plan to run Microsoft Windows. ========================================================================= III. VIDEO CARDS ----------------------------- What Is A VESA Driver And How Do I Use It? VESA stands for Video Electronics Standards Association. This standard allows software companies (like Maxis) to write programs that work with many video cards without having to know how each card works. The programs we write talk to the VESA driver, and the VESA driver talks to its specific video card. Almost every video card available today has its own unique VESA driver. These drivers may be stored in a chip on the video card, or they may be a program that the user must has to load by hand (or with a batch file). Some cards (such as the Diamond Viper) have the driver on the video card, but need the user to run a special program to activate the driver. Go figure. During installation of SimCity 2000, the installer looks for a VESA driver in memory or on the card. If it finds one, it will list VESA SUPER VGA as the default. You might also be able to select specific video support for your card if it is supported (we recommend using specific video support if possible, for fastest operation). If the VESA driver is an external program, it will 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 lots of popular cards. These drivers are in a directory called VESA on the CD-ROM. To find the particular driver for your system, look in the VESA directory for the subdirectory that is closest to your brand of video card. In that subdirectory should be the VESA driver. Using most 'external' (programs that you must run) VESA drivers is as easy as typing the name of the driver at the directory prompt where you find the driver. For instance, if the driver were called VVESA.COM, you would type: VVESA.COM [enter] There is also a generic VESA driver called UNIVBE.EXE. This driver is installed on your hard drive when you install SimCity 2000. It also sits in its own sub-directory (called UNIVBE) on the CD-ROM. This driver works for many of the cards on the market. You use it the same way you would use any other VESA driver: be at the directory prompt where UNIVBE is and type UNIVBE.EXE [enter]. If you can't find a driver specifically for your card (either on your disks or on the CD-ROM), check out UNIVBE. It just might be the answer to all your VESA driver problems, and you could become a SimMayor in no time. ----------------------------- ATI Ultra Pro or Mach 32 Video Cards If you have an ATI Ultra Pro or some other card based on the Mach 32 chip, you must run the included utility ATISET.EXE before playing SimCity. This program is on your CD-ROM in the ATI sub-directory of the VESA directory. To use your ATI card with SimCity 2000, get to the ATI sub-directory on your CD-ROM. Then type: ATISET [enter]. You'll be able to start SimCity 2000 as your normally would. If the ATISET.EXE program is not run, you may get an "ERROR 35" type message when trying to run SimCity 2000 or SCURK. ----------------------------- Diamond Viper The Diamond Viper has its VESA driver on the card, but you need to run an external program to activate it. This program is called VPRMODE.EXE. To use VPRMODE to activate the VESA driver, get to the VIPER sub directory of the VESA directory on the CD-ROM. Then type: VPRMODE VESA [enter] The VPRMODE program is installed by the software that came with the Diamond Viper card. ----------------------------- Trident Video Cards Some older Trident video cards require a little tweaking to get them to work. If you are using a Trident video card and are having video problems, try running the INSTALL.EXE program in the SimCity 2000 directory and selecting the VESA video driver, then install the proper VESA driver for the card before running SimCity 2000 or SCURK. ----------------------------- Packard Bell (Headland Technologies) Some Packard Bell machines have a video chip pre-installed on the motherboard. This chip is called the Headland Technologies onboard video chip. You may notice your mouse leaving a trail of dots on the screen while playing SimCity 2000. This is due to a timing problem on the 512K Headland Technology (HT) video chipset. Please call Packard Bell Technical Support for assistance with this problem. ========================================================================= IV. SOUND CARDS ----------------------------- What Are Miles Design Drivers And How Do I Use Them? SimCity 2000 sound support is accomplished through the use of the John Miles Design AIL audio driver libraries. Like VESA drivers, these help software companies support many different sound cards without having to know how each card works. The Miles Design Drivers are automatically installed when you select which sound card you wish to use for sound and music in SimCity 2000. 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. As a matter of reference, SimCity 2000 requires "32-bit flat mode" Miles Design drivers. Non-32-bit drivers will not work. ----------------------------- Sound Blaster Installation The SimCity 2000 Installer expects to find the Sound Blaster at IRQ 7. However, some Sound Blasters are shipped with the default IRQ set to 5. If you have a Sound Blaster and the installer says "Sound Card Detection: FAILED!", click on the Change Settings button and enter 5 in the IRQ entry. The DMA setting of 1 and ADDR (or port) setting of 220 should be fine. ----------------------------- Pro Audio Spectrum MUSIC: The Music Driver for the Pro Audio Spectrum requires the Media Vision driver MVSOUND.SYS to be loaded into memory by 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 user's 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, 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 You will want to contact Gravis for details on their driver package for the GUS. You will need to obtain from them the file GAIL3214.ZIP (The numbers 3214 refer to the most recent driver version number and are subject to change.) and use those drivers in place of one of those included with SimCity 2000. Instructions are included with the file. Gravis' BBS can be reached at (604) 431-5927. ----------------------------- ARIA Compatible 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... ========================================================================= V. MISCELLANEOUS ----------------------------- SCURK, Memory and Virtual Memory SCURK has been built with the Rational Systems Virtual Memory Manager enabled. This allows SCURK to run on machines with 4 MB of RAM (or even a little less!) despite the fact SCURK often works with potentially large amounts of graphics in memory. Virtual Memory accomplishes this by "swapping" sections of RAM which are not being used at the moment, writing them to the hard drive whenever SCURK needs that memory. These "swapped" sections can later be brought when needed. These operations will be slower than if everything could be kept in RAM, because disk access is slower than RAM access. How much swapping actually happens and the size of the file created on your hard drive depends on how much RAM you have, how your DOS memory manager is configured, and what you are doing with SCURK. On machines with 4 MB RAM or less, a swap file will almost certainly be required. Machines with 8 MB RAM could have some EMS memory manager configurations which will not allow SCURK to access the full amount of RAM. In this case swapping will occur and SCURK performance will suffer a bit. The swap file is created be default in the SimCity 2000 main directory an ends with the extension ".SWP" The size of the swap file itself will probably not exceed 4-5 MB on the hard drive. However, SCURK often uses its own temp files, which may get fairly large. To avoid potential problems, you should ensure that you have about 4-6 MB of free disk space available when running SCURK. If you have 8 MB RAM or more and SCURK seems to be running very slowly with a lot of disk access, it is likely that your EMS memory manager is not allowing SCURK to use all your RAM. Check out your CONFIG.SYS file to see if your EMS manager line has a number for amount of memory devoted to EMS. For example, your line for the EMM386 memory manager might look something like this: DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.SYS 2048 This means that SCURK will only be able to use 2 MB RAM, even if your computer has 16 MB! You'll get lots of swapping. If all else fails, try making a boot disk or disable your EMS manager. SCURK runs best without any other memory managers running anyway. If you're feeling ambitious, you can configure the DOS4GW Virtual Memory Manager with the environment variable: DOS4GVM. You shouldn't need to make any adjustments with this environment variable, but in case you want to, the format is as follows: set DOS4GVM = [ option[#value] ] [ option[#value] ] .... (a "#" is used with options that take values since the DOS command doesn't accept "=") The options you can use are: MINMEM Minimum RAM managed by Virtual Memory. MAXMEM Maximum RAM managed by Virtual Memory. SWAPMIN Minimum initial swap file size. SWAPINC The size by which the swap file will grow. SWAPNAME Swap file name. DELETESWAP or NODELETESWAP. Swap file deletion after program exits. VIRTUALSIZE Size of virtual memory space. Perhaps the most useful setting would be to put your swap file on a drive which has more free disk space. For example, if you wanted to put the swap file in a directory called TMP on your E: drive, you could do this by setting your environment: set DOS4GVM = SWAPNAME#E:\TMP\SCURK.SWP This will put the swapfile on drive E:, in a directory named TMP and the swap file will be called SCURK.SWP. ----------------------------- Memory Issues SimCity 2000 is very picky about its operating environment, and requires a lot of memory to run--4 MB total. We aren't kidding! What's more, even if you have the required 4 MB, SimCity 2000 may report that you do not have enough free extended or conventional memory, especially if you are using some of your RAM for TSRs. If this is the case, your best alternative is to create a boot disk as outlined in 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. ----------------------------- Running With QEMM, EMM386, 386MAX And Other Memory Managers 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. The section on Virtual Memory in this document may also provide some helpful information. If you are running QEMM in Stealth mode, SimCity 2000 may fail to recognize the VESA drivers that are built into the video card BIOS. You will need to run QEMM in Frame Mode as opposed to Page Mode. To do this, change the "ST:M" parameter in your QEMM statement to "ST:F". See your QEMM manual for more information on how to do this. ----------------------------- Running SimCity 2000 and SCURK Under OS/2 We have successfully run SimCity 2000 under a DOS full-screen session in OS/2. However, we have not been able to run it as a migrated application. Installation must ALWAYS be in the foreground until installation is complete. You MUST NOT swap the installer to the background. If you have OS/2 and are able to run SimCity 2000 under MS-DOS but not under OS/2, please call IBM Technical Support. Use the command SC2000 NOMEM to start the game. SCURK was mostly developed under OS/2 and runs quite nicely in a full-screen DOS session. You should make sure that your DOS session settings has DPMI ENABLED, HW_TIMER ON, RETRACE_EMULATION OFF. Give it between 8 - 16 MB of DPMI memory. The DOS4GW Virtual Memory manager does not operate in OS/2, but OS/2 handles all that for you as long as you configure the DOS setting with plenty of DPMI memory. Use the "NO_MEM_CHK" command line option when starting SCURK since OS/2 doesn't report the correct amount of memory available when SCURK checks at startup. ---------------------------- Creating A Boot Disk With Stacker/DoubleSpace Stacker version 3.0 and earlier require certain drivers to be loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file in order to mount the compressed hard drive. When creating a boot disk with Stacker 3.0 or earlier, you must include two lines in the CONFIG.SYS file. The two lines you need to add (assuming you used the default installation of Stacker) are: DEVICE=C:\STACKER\STACKER.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK DEVICE=C:\STACKER\SSWAP.COM C:\STACVOL.DSK The exact path statement could be different if you did not perform a default installation of Stacker and put it somewhere else on your hard drive. These lines will load Stacker and mount your compressed drive when booting from the boot disk. DoubleSpace/DriveSpace and Stacker 3.1 and higher do not require that lines be added in the CONFIG.SYS file as they copy hidden files to the boot disk when using the "SYS A:" or "FORMAT A: /S" command. Make a boot disk according to the normal instructions regarding creating a boot disk in your SimCity 2000 addendum. If you do not feel comfortable creating a boot disk under Stacker or DoubleSpace, contact STAC Electronics or Microsoft for technical support. ---------------------------- Bootdisk Utility Version 1.10 of SimCity 2000 includes a utility which will create a boot disk for you, with the correct VESA and sound drivers needed to run SimCity 2000. To run the Boot disk utility, go to the game directory (e.g., C:\SC2000) and type BOOTDISK. This will run an executable that will set up the boot disk for your particular system. Remember, this disk MUST be in Drive A: when you boot your machine. Follow the on-screen prompts and let the program walk you through the process. Once the boot disk has been made, the game should run without any memory problems. NOTE - Some sound cards require that a device driver be loaded and certain environment variables be present in order to run properly . The BOOTDISK utility cannot accurately re-create those values in the files for the boot disk, so you will have to enter them by hand. For more information on these device drivers and environment variables, see the manual that came with your sound card. ========================================================================= VI. GAME PLAY ISSUES FOR SIMCITY 2000 ----------------------------- Saved Cities For your simulating pleasure, we have included several saved cities created by various Maxis employees and other Maxoids, as well as M. Brent Sleeper and Kevin Endo. They are located in your SimCity 2000 directory (after full installation) or on the CD-ROM (after partial installation). ----------------------------- Micro-Simulators When querying some structures, you'll get local statistics, or "micro-simulators" 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 you how many teachers and students are attending that school as well as the average grade of the students. Most structures that you can place (such as police, fire, schools, colleges, power plants, the Mayor's House, arcologies, etc.) have these micro-simulators. Some structures have their own micro-simulator. Others, like the bus system, railroad depots and libraries among others have one micro-simulator for each category (one micro-simulator for all the bus stations, one for all the railroad depots, etc.). What's the big deal with all this, you ask? Well, each city can only have 150 micro simulators in it. Any more than that and you won't be able to see any local information about those structures. Don't worry though. The structures you place will still have an effect on your city. Additional police stations will still stop crime, more bus stations will carry more passengers, arcologies will still hold people, and so on. The information you get about these structures will be for the entire city, not an individual building. Your Sims will go on about their business without missing a beat. We're telling you this because it's easy to run out of micro-simulators 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 terrain edit mode. Also, if you have placed a bridge or other structure that automatically builds landfill, the landfill will also show up in terrain edit mode. These can be removed with the Lower Terrain tool. ----------------------------- Airports An airport needs space for a runway, or it can not develop. The minimum usable 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. As with the rest of the city, each tile must have power or be touching one that has power on it. ----------------------------- Newspapers 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. ----------------------------- Importing Cities From SimCity Classic and SimCity 2000 Macintosh You can load saved cities from both SimCity Classic and SimCity 2000 Macintosh into SimCity 2000 DOS. For importing purposes, SimCity Windows and SimCity DOS files are identical. To import cities from SimCity Classic DOS and SimCity 2000 Macintosh, 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 unless you save it over the original file. To convert SimCity 2000 DOS files for use in SimCity 2000 Macintosh you must give the file a Filetype and Creator for the Macintosh. The Filetype should be "CITY" and the Creator should be "SCDH". This can be done with ResEdit, Access PC, or one of several other PC to Mac conversion utilities. SimCity Classic Mac cities must be imported into SimCity 2000 Macintosh before they can be loaded into SimCity 2000 DOS. Not doing so will result in a "Not an IFF file" error message. ----------------------------- Hot Keys SHIFT KEY- 1. While placing items, pressing 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 city window will open the Query window for that specific item. 3. Holding down the Shift key while clicking on a button or entry in a window will open a help description for 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 to the left by 90 degrees PAGE DOWN - rotates your city view to the right by 90 degrees Cursor Keys - scroll around your city ========================================================================= VII. GAME PLAY ISSUES FOR SCURK ----------------------------- Disclaimer The SimCity 2000 Urban Renewal Kit does many things that the designers of SimCity 2000 did not anticipate (but maybe should have). As a result, lots of changes you can make to your graphics or saved cities in SCURK may have unpredictable effects when actually loaded into SimCity 2000. We have taken every feasible precaution to protect against serious complications, such as crashing SimCity 2000 or confusing the simulator. Even so, we can't guarantee that everything you do will work perfectly or even at all. Therefore, it is up to you, the responsible SimMayor, to be gentle with your Sims. Miscellaneous Things to Think About The base size of all objects in SimCity 2000 are fixed. If the artwork you create for a specific object does not completely fill the base of the tile, the exposed area will appear brown when used in Place & Print or in SimCity 2000. SimCity 2000 "clips" the edges of moving objects to make sure they are erased properly as the object travels through the city. Artwork you design for Airplanes, Ships, Tornadoes and such may leave "trails" behind as the objects move around your city. Trial and error is the best tool for learning what will leave a mess and what won't. Some of the color cycling colors in SimCity 2000 for DOS do not cycle correctly. The colors that seem to work properly are the blue sets, the Red/Black, Yellow/Black, Green/Black, and Brown sets. The color cycles that don't work properly will show up as non-color cycling artwork when imported into SimCity 2000 for DOS. This only occurs in the SimCity 2000 for DOS version. SimCity 2000 creates airport runways in a specific manner. All runways in SimCity 2000 are 1 x 5 and do not cross. SCURK lets you to place runways in lots of different configurations. Some of these configurations may confuse SimCity 2000 enough to cause it to crash, especially if you create a really "interesting" airport in SCURK, import the city into SimCity 2000, and destroy some of the runways. We recommend sticking with the 1 x 5 configuration and not crossing runways unless absolutely necessary. There's no point in subjecting your Sims to dangerous landing conditions. If you use the eyedropper on a clear portion of the background, you are telling the paint program that you want the foreground color to be transparent background. This is perfectly "legal", although it turns your paint tool into an erase tool. Abandoned buildings and construction area used in the Place & Print utility follow these rules for what type of zone they are: If you do not place the building on an existing zone, it will place with the last zone type you had selected (High Density Residential, Low Density Commercial, etc.). If any part of the building is on and existing zone, the entire building will be placed as that zone. If you place a building not on an existing zone with no zone ever having been chosen, it will default to High Density Residential. If you are editing an object and select Save or Save as, the work you have done to that object will be saved. Normally, this work is not updated until you click on another object. When importing a PCX file, you may not cut an area of the PCX larger than 80 percent of the screen. Sorry. However, this should not be a factor, as no single object in SCURK is that large anyway. ----------------------------- Printing from SCURK Canceling print job may take a few moments after you tell it you wish to stop. Remember, there's lots of information in the print file, and it takes a while for the buffer to clear. When printing, the pages are ordered in a column (top to bottom) rather than by rows (left to right). For example, a 3 x 3 page print would be printed in this order: _____________ I 1 I 4 I 7 I I___I___I___I I 2 I 5 I 8 I I___I___I___I I 3 I 6 I 9 I I___I___I___I When printing to a file, the resulting file can be up to 16 MB. Really. To print the file to a printer, type: COPY /B <filename> LPT1 where <filename> is the name of the file you wish to print. LPT1 is the usual port a printer is plugged into. Your system may have the printer on LPT2, consult with your manual if you're not sure. This is a list of printers that should support the drivers we include in the Urban Renewal Kit. The printers that have been tested have a * next to them. Postscript Driver: PostScript (1200 dpi) *Apple Laserwriter HP LaserJetIVLM (PostScript) *HP LaserJetIVM (PostScript) PostScript, color ( 300 dpi) Tektronix Phaser III PXi Epson 9 or 24 pin Drivers Alps ASP1000/1600 Alps P2000+/2100 Apex T-1000 (by Epson) Brother M-1109/M-1209/M-1309 C Itoh C-310 XP C Tech C240/245/310/315 Canon BJ10e (Epson mode) Citizen 120D/180D Citizen 5200/5800 Citizen MSP 10/20/40 Citizen GSX140 Citizen GSX200/GSX230 Epson Action L-750 Epson Action T-1000 Epson FX 80/85/86e/850 Epson LX 80/86/90/800 Epson MX 80 Graftrax Epson RX 80 Laser 190E Mannesmann Tally 130-9 Mannesmann Tally 81 Mannesmann Tally 85/87/90 Okidata ML 180/182/+ (IBM mode) Okidata ML 320 Okidata ML 92/192 (IBM mode) *Panasonic KX-P1080/1080i/1180 Panasonic KX-P1081/1081i Panasonic KX-P1090/1090i Panasonic KX-P1091/1091i/1191i Panasonic KX-P1092/1092i Panasonic 1123/1124 Panasonic 2123/2124 Seikosha SP-2000 Star NX10/ND10/NR10/NX1001 Star XR1000 *Panasonic KXP2124 Epson LQ500 Epson LQ850 Epson LQ1000/LQ1500 Epson LQ2500 HP Laserjet: Brother HL 4/8 (300 dpi) C Tech T-6B (300 dpi) Epson EPL Series (300 dpi) Fujitsu RX7300/7400 (300 dpi) HP LaserJet w/1.5MB (300 dpi) HP LaserJet+ w/1.5MB (300 dpi) HP LaserJetII w/1.5MB (300 dpi) IBM Laser 4019 (HP mode 300 dpi) IBM Laserprinter/E (300 dpi) Mannesmann Tally 905/6 (300 dpi) Mannesmann Tally 910/11 (300 dpi) NEC Silentwriter/2 (300 dpi) Okidata Okilaser (300 dpi) Panasonic Laser Partner (300 dpi) Sharp JX-9500 (300 dpi) Star Laser 4/8 II (300 dpi) Tandy LP Series (300 dpi) TI MicroLaser (300 dpi) Toshiba PageLaser (300 dpi) HP LaserJet+ 1/2 page (300 dpi) HP LaserJetII 1/2 page (300 dpi) *HP LaserJetIII (150 dpi) HP LaserJetIIP (150 dpi) HP LaserJetIV /L (150 dpi) HP LaserJetIII w/1.5MB (300 dpi) HP LaserJetIIP w/1.5MB (300 dpi) HP LaserJetIV /L (300 dpi) HP LaserJetIII 1/2 page (300 dpi) HP LaserJetIIP 1/2 page (300 dpi) *HP LaserJetIV w/4MB (600 dpi) HP LaserJetIV 1/2 page (600 dpi) *HP LaserJet IIIsi Color HP/PCL Printers: *HP DeskJet 550c *HP DeskJet 560c HP DeskJet 1200C (300 dpi) HP DeskJet 540c (B&W only) ----------------------------- SCURK Command Line Options There are some command line options available to you when you are using SCURK. You would type them in when starting SCURK from the DOS prompt, right after you type "SCURK" as follows: SCURK <options ...> There is at least one blank space between "SCURK" and the option(s), and between options. All options can be either upper-case or lower-case. These options are: NO_MEM_CHK: disable startup memory checking by SCURK. SCURK will not start if there is not enough memory available on your system. However, some systems do not report the correct amount of memory available. This option will prevent checking completely. -Z: Disables internal "ZoomBlit" function. You can free up about 40K of memory usage with this flag. However, if you are using the VESA SVGA driver, the refresh of the Edit Window will be extremely slow and virtually unusable if this option is used. Any other SVGA driver should work just fine with this option, but will likely be just a little bit slower. -T: Title graphics option. This option will store some of the graphics on the Main Screen on disk rather than in memory. This frees up memory for other uses, but will result in slightly slower redraws of the Main Screen. -TD: Title Detail option. Reduces the amount of graphics detail on the Main Screen. Can be used to speed up redraws on slower machines. -S: Serialize Sound Option. If you are experiencing occasional hangs, using this option may help on some machines. This seems to be dependent on type of sound card and amount of memory. This has a side-effect that there may be delays after clicking buttons.(Another method to avoid these hangs is to disable sound entirely (from the SCURK Main Screen) and see if this clears up the problem.) Example Usage: C:> SCURK no_mem_check -t C:> SCURK -t -td -z ========================================================================= VIII. CONTACTING MAXIS TECHNICAL SUPPORT ----------------------------- Handy Ways to Talk to Helpful People By Telephone (Monday through Friday 8am-6pm Pacific time) 1-510-253-3755 By Fax (Anytime) 1-510-253-3736 (Be sure to indicate the Fax is for Technical Support, and make sure we can read your return number.) By Modem (Anytime. Up to 14.4k baud. A BBS filled with all kinds of groovy Maxis stuff) 1-510-254-3869 By US Mail Maxis Technical Support 2 Theater Square, Suite 230 Orinda, CA 94563-3346 By Electronic Mail/Online Service America Online - keyword "Maxis" or EMail to "Maxis" CompuServe - Go "gamepub" and select "Maxis" (section 8) Genie - Scorpia's Roundtable, Maxis Area or Email "Maxis" AppleLink - EMail "D4459" Prodigy - Email "MAXI99A" Internet - Email "support(at)maxis.com" ========================================================================= IX. CD-ROM CONTRIBUTERS ----------------------------- Not only did we have to make sure we thanked everyone who wrote SimCity 2000 and the Urban Renewal Kit, we also have a bunch more new people who worked on the CD-ROM collection. It just wouldn't be fair to not mention them. Additional Producing/Programming: Chris Weiss Additionally writing/editing: Bob Sombrio & Chris Weiss Additional Marketing: Larry Lee Additional Graphic Artwork (including the killer CD artwork!): Vera Jaye Kristine Brogno and Amy Melker Lead Testing: Scott Shicoff Additional Scenario Cities Created By M. Brent Sleeper and Kevin Endo Scenarios Created by Chris Weiss & Heather Mace Check the file README.TXT in the CITIES directory for excellent descriptions and the names of all the great people who contributed award-winning cities. ========================================================================= Thanks for buying the SimCity 2000 CD-ROM Collection. We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed creating it!