Looking for some lost SimCity 2000 utilites

[ReshiramLover 48]

I am looking for some lost from the web SimCity 2000 utilities.

 

One utility made it possible to change a city name and mayor name of a saved .sc2 file.

Another utility allowed you to edit the neighbors of your city.

Another allowed you to create your own scenarios.

And there were some tools that allowed you to do some modifications to the cities.

 

I tried looking for these utilities but all I am getting is 404 not found on every single one.

 

Where can I find a working link to these utilities?

 

 

[catty-cb 4,388]

I checked my SC2000 folders and I don't have utilities .... the only two sites that I know are still working are;

http://www.angelfire.com/games2/zealgames/simcity2000/index.html

and

http://www.cnwcentral.com/SimCity-2000/

[ReshiramLover 48]

Neither of those two have the ones I am looking for

[kotcity 110]

Not a tool, per se, but you can hex edit the data files: http://www.pixcom.dk/cheats/Sc2000.htm

This may enable you to do what you want.

[Gernot66 186]

ReshiramLover,

in advance i never saw such utilities, but i even would like some, and that doesn't means they haven't existed.

however, to change the cities or majors name weill be no problem.

for a permanent change of the majors name:

 

if you like to edit them for a certain city:

open city with hex editor (sorry i said i own no tools but i can give you a guide how to hack it)

how to add cash you can see in several examples in kotcity's link

how to change the city name, if you like to alter the city name you will have to learn a little about the structing of such a data file, that's no magic and easy as a,b,c if you keep certain things in mind.

let's take a look at the first few lines (the header) and the city name

ok, in my first attempt i failed, because i was assuming the width for the citynames datafield must be stored somewhere, it is in fact but the length is fixed 32 glyphs else the game won't load the city. so you can't have a name longer as 32 characters even if you change the byte for the width.

46 4F 52 4D 00 01 91 FA 53 43 44 48 43 4E 41 4D
00 00 00 20 1F 48 69 6D 61 6C 61 79 61 00 00 00
00 A8 05 9F 01 00 00 00 00 00 02 8E 01 38 17 4D
00 00 00 00 4D 49 53 43

readable is something like:

FORM . . . . SCDHCNAM

. . . . . Himalaya . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . MISC

0x1F in front of "Himalaya" (48 69 6D 61 6C 61 79 61) would be the width of the names datafield, often it contains garbled data after the name but you don't have to care for this, it doesn't influences anything, this field is reserved for the max of 32 characters for the name (means you could set all to 0x00 after the name up to "MISC" without any effect).

So to change the name we neither have to change the files total count of bytes or the width of the datafield because it's a given 0'x1F (32 characters), that's fine

you could, theoretically and i tried but with the effect that an empty city will be loaded while it's displayed proper at start, but as soon as you unpause the game it vanishes (because of the to long name).

best is also to use overwrite mode in your hex editor and simply overwrite the existing name but don't use more as 32 characters and presto you get a "new" city.

(besides the date isn't cheated, i stopped this "starter town" right at my birthday, in a good case such a starter town is fully grown in 30 years).

 

NEXT TASK

neighbourhood names, that won't be so easy to find out how to hack this, obviousely the names aren't generated or something like, they are out of a table of given names, which will vary even for the various releases and platforms, neither a winSC2K running in wine on a mac will show the same names as it will in real windows even if it's the same release which runs.

so this seems to me quite difficult and apart from that useless, because of this varying appearance. (in SCURK it's simply north, south, west, east, which in fact is as good as "Flint" or whatever)

it will be called like 1 or 2 or 3 from the table of city names, why it varies i'm not sure but it points to that it's a variable which will be interpreted different, so i won't investigate how this works, it's imho useless and useless complicated to find out.

what would be easier possible is to change the table in SC2K itself, but this will be a permanent change, and again i find that a little useless, i find already to change the city name useless.

Besides you can alter the cities name in a much easier way, just load your city in DOS SC2K and save it under a new name and - presto.

same for winsc2k, a new savegame results in a new name, but i was curious myself if and how it works, for the neighbours i'm sorry, this is really shit to find out (try to find a single byte, good luck)

 

MONEY

is described well already, it seems to be of most interest but it's the worst cheat it kills the game. not even my copter/streets cities are cheated that heavy even if the task is only to have "some" city. but i experienced SCURK'ed cities are boring, you will never place the buildings like it would be a grown city, that's why my copter/streets cities are usually played cities.

 

MAJORS NAME

pardon me - this isn't stored in the city file, the only way is to change the registries entry like i showed already.

 

SCENARIOS

man i would give something for to know how they are structed, but neither i investigated much in this direction, i still hack my streets scenarios and still didn't know a shit about. i can't make promises but will have a look at them because i planned this already (the reason i will tell later).

 

seems that covers your questions, tools aren't known to me, that would be a great help. i'm just an interested modeller but no coder, i do hack games since a long time but i'm still a bloody beginner.

 

DATE

i found that once of interest to change the year of a city and i can take this advice out of my pocket:

days since 01.01.1900
(one year = 12months/25days = 300days - sim years are quite shorter as real ones)

address for sc2k dos saved cities:
0x29 - 0x2A

address for win sc2k saved cities:
0x51 - 0x52

i.e.:
0x0000 = 01.01.1900
0x7530 = 01.01.2000

many copter cities i changed to 1900 but it's absolutely useless because you won't notice it, i just did that as a gag if someone would open them in sc2k.

 

LET'S SHOW OFF SOME MORE INTERESTING STUFF

CREATE STARTER TOWNS LIKE FOR SC3K

you know the starter towns of sc3k, they are zoned with roads and contain all needed supply to grow to a city after they are loaded. personally it was a mistake of mine which forced me to find out how i can start a unstarted city without to loose the zoning and buildings i placed in SCURK. I did the mistake to zone a unstarted city and dammit it was a lot of work to zone it so i liked to find a way how to get around the erasing when it's started as a city.

ther reason was, make a guess...

SimCopter and Streets, i liked to have fast growing planned cities for the games to create more challenging cities for both games in a reasonable shorter time but still they have to be grown and not scurked only.

i almost gave up and then i had the right idea "let's see what happens if i load this "broken" city to the amiga sc2k. hmm yes, first attempt i failed, "argh that can't be, the cities are platform interchangeable - grumble"

"aha, the file needs a icon to be recognized by amiga sc2k as city file, ok let's give it an icon"

"shit, it reported: scenario isn't to load - what scenario? i liked to load a city" - "aha, i took the icon from a scenario" - "better if i take a proper one - right it works"

and to my own surprise amiga sc2k loaded that pre scurked unstarted city like a city and started it from the editing mode right without to erase my work, "great - a starter town!"

 

SCENARIOS PART 2

what brings me to my previous mentioned investigations, amiga sc2k stores the scenario in the amiga icon, that's typically miggy, you can have active code in the icon which executes something or store variables in the icon which will be used by a proggy but are due to that easy to modify, it's just a property listing.

it seems the scenario is stored in the icon which will make it easier for me to find out how they are structed.

if i find out how i will show it off in this forum, but i can 't make any promises.

 

SOME OTHER CHEATS

Not listed as cheat but used by me for my Copter and Streets projects. If you like to have just a grown city you don't like to care about powerplants and their limited age. you can simply replace them in SCURK and they are "newborn" after a load to SC2K, with the drawback that the game doesn't recognizes this proper and will permanently show the warning in the newsletter that your powerplant is burned out. but i don't mind about newspapers for Copter cities, i just like to have grown cities because they look better as if you just place the buildings in SCURK.

Get rid of the churches in your high value zones! just use SCURK and place about 20 churches somewhere they won't disturb you (e.g. on top of a mountain). 20 will be enough for a quite big city and no church will ever appear in your residential zones. also i used this mainly for churchless Copter cities, i can easy tear them down before i use such a city.

 

 

FINALLY

i will upload my Copter and Streets cities/scenarios to simtropolis, this was my intention when i subscribed. you can have many cities - but you won't have a city like mine for these games

they are natively hard to play, but not impossible to match, for copter you won't have much water and many steep hills to climb up, crazy trains which will be hard to save ppl from, only one police, firestation, or hospital. the ways for the rescue vehicles are usually to long that they could reach the accident in a reasonable time, you have to do all by yourself mostly. i used very little arcos, only three citides contain them, they are hard if they burn and can stupidly hide ppl inside the walls yes, but i don't like the arcos to much, they don't fit well to SimCopter or Streets, imho.

pretty much the same cities i use for Streets, some cities are designed to be good for both games, the long and winding mountain roads aren't only good for copters rescue vehicles, they are a heavy treat in Streets to race.

My very first, not really planned such city was "Got-Hard", the intention was to create some small villages in deep valleys, like in good old Glarus (switzerland) where i'm from. You can find some clipsof ti on my YT channel.

It's a good city for Copter, but it fails in Streets, the road is far to tight for this game. thus in my recent attempts i respected this from on the beginning and created already the terrain fitting to this idea of winding mountain roads (see "Himalaya" above) which are nonetheless good to drive on and i must say they are really fun to race on, after 20 minutes your brain feels like a carousel from turn left - turn right, nonetheless they are quite fast tracks, but you can't match the AI, you never can get around the turns like they do (at least not little me).

but also this is diffivcult, the cities need often to be reworked, in general using "Wine" on OSX to run Streets or Copter is save and the typical error report won't appear usually or in very very rare cases only (i'm not boasting this is true). Wine does a very good job to emulate a Win95 and it seems including the proper DX version, thus this error won't appear.

but windoze users don't have to hang their heads down, there is a solution to run both games flawless and without this annoying steady appearing error and also with the proper physics for Streets

DXWnd will take care of that, you can set the DX version (it's only emulated) and limit the framerate to exactly 30fps, both helps to avoid the error (win95 version isn't needed to set).

the 30fps are most important for windows, the DXversion 1-6 will help to display it proper (no wrong colored bright blue borders of the fog or the searchlight), Streets would run in DX8 but not in DX7 (probably).

however even in a win7 x64 i ran them without any problems, also check out my YT channel i discribed it there for the use in Win7 x64, (recently i have only an old WinXP to run, the win7 machine broke down, that is because Win7 was a cheap medion computer my winXP machine is a not to kill winchester board. well i'm a poor unemployed dude and can't afford a new machine so easy).

 

THAT'S ALL

by now, i'm sorry that i can't support you with any utility and can only give some raw advices how to hack certain things.

again i can't imagine that the city file will be altered for the neighbourhood names, it's at all easier to change them in the executable (or data file, i don't know where they reside, yet).

the "how" could be structed from anything, it could be random based on system time or generated from the city name, at least i would do it in such a way, the latter would cost not a single extra byte in the city file (but it isn't as we can see in my example). it could be generated from terrain shape even.

however the names itself won't be stored in the city file else they wouldn't appear different depending on the release or language you use. if it's just 01,02,03,04,05,06 ... to FF i can search my whole life for them (maybe, i will see, this makes me curious).

 

SPECIAL OFFER

if your not used to hack and to use a hex editor, don't be afraid to ask me if i can do the job for you, if i don't have to edit a 100 cities it will be fine (no, 99 are 100 as well ).

[Gernot66 186]

CorinaMarie,

that was the quickest like i ever had.

[CorinaMarie 29,593]

@Gernot66

I'm just sitting here chatting with another admin when I got beeped of a new post in a forum I follow so I just dashed over to read it. There's certainly a lot of detail in your post. Quite impressive for a first too, btw.

And, while I'm at it: Welcome to Simtropolis!

[LivingInThePast 364]

One easy way to make your own scenarios with your own maps is to download the Mac emulator Basilisk (SheepShaver works too) with the appropriate Mac OS and ROMs (this is fairly easy to find, Apple outright released System 7 on its website, and the ROMs can be found easily as well--better than Nintendo ROMs but due to forum rules I can't tell you exactly where). Download a copy of ResEdit, a tool Apple Computer released years ago to easily hack documents and applications.

The instructions can be found here: http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/1690/sim/simcity2/faq.htm

(go to the bottom of the page). [Also, just to be safe, better convert the original city file beforehand to a Mac-compatible format, go to Get Info -> File/Folder Info and change the type and creator to CITY and SCDH, respectively.

It's a bit of a roundabout, but it SHOULD work.

[BobertMcBob 12]

I've almost completely reverse engineered the file formats for SC2k at this point, including reading and creating scenarios and even whole cities without involving the game. I'm in the process of making the code more useful and documented so that someone other than myself can use it. Right now it's very much an exploratory architecture I created to help me reverse engineer the file formats and not something that's easy to use.

As for the utilities you're looking for, changing the actual names of the neighbours past the ones already in the game would require modifying the game. As has been stated, mayor name isn't stored in the city. Money, date, etc is easy enough to change.

I've attached images of a couple example of what you can do with this.

Mixed bridges.

 

Highways to bridges to avenues.

 

Avenues inside a city.

 

A map based on the earth (does not have the correct coastline tiles drawn).

  Edited August 4, 2018 by BobertMcBob  
Added captions to images and more info.

[BobertMcBob 12]

My bad, I didn't read my notes closely enough. Mayor name is stored in the city file, it's the first entry in the XLAB segment of the save game file.

Neighbour names aren't stored in the city file itself, still, they're stored in the game. You can edit them in memory if you'd like, but they won't persist that way. I've attached an image with a neighbour edited in memory this way.

[reble1 50]

On 16/05/2018 at 11:55 PM, Gernot66 said:

ReshiramLover,

in advance i never saw such utilities, but i even would like some, and that doesn't means they haven't existed.

however, to change the cities or majors name weill be no problem.

for a permanent change of the majors name:

 

 

Gwrnot66. When I got to the "registration" string in regedit there was nothing but the "(Default) Reg_sz (value not set)".  I had to add the company and mayor strings. I did the following:

Company Name     Reg_sz     -

Mayor name     Req_sz     Steve

It still says "Sim Mayor" and  "Sim Company". I also tried rebooting the laptop, no change so what gives?

Steve