HawaiiBill

If you'll trouble yourself to read back in this string you will see -- if you can see! -- that it isn't that easy. What's easy is for you to go online and buy a new copy. What you ask can't be done by the volunteer corps here. As I understand it, this is not the company and they would not have done what you ask if they were still here. SimCity is an orphan game, alone, twisting in the wind.

Has any person or group discussed buying all rights to SimCity from Maxis or EA or whoever/whichever owns it? Perhaps this has been suggested somewhere in these forums but I can't find it. It seems to me there is a lot of money being left on the table by the founding company and the program shouldn't be allowed to die. Neither should it be a "game" in the usual context of that definition. Given the subject, there is no reason SimCity couldn't use realworld sensibilities -- farming is not blight, for example, and getting revenue for the city from all projects, businesses and utilities is how the world works. Point is that -- at least -- there could be a very big market for a planning program that is already possible with base code used in SimCity and it could work interactively online for many players. You have a mayor, a 'council,' a planning director, etc. Maybe come contractors. Each of those would have access to city changes that would require approval by the mayor -- on whose machine the program runs, I would guess. Part of the dynamic of SimCity is damaged by its silliness on some policy matters such as all agriculture is a 'bad' use for land. We do have to eat, right? A program true to life would have a much higher value in both youth and adult education. It could function with a simplified, online, set of laws and rules adopted from existing codes. Most people -- with the death of civics in school! -- have no idea how government works and this could be an enjoyable way to learn, at least as much fun as the present program but with lots more added in if desired. So who is putting together a proposal to buy this program before it's base totally evaporates?

Pixelrage is right. If there is any way to find the person who registered your program, do that. Otherwise not much chance of breaking through. I would never buy an EA product because of this experience with SimCity.

It is painful to see EA pulling the plug on SimCity. It's hard to imagine them treating customers in this fashion if there were any intention of an update. They seem to be letting it die on the vine.

Horus_Kol, from your computer to God's eyes but I'll believe it when I see it. While there is a hard core of SimCity folks the 'new' Sims needed to make a SC5 successful are drifting away for lack of response from Maxis/EA and no direct indication of any interest in them as customers. Hope you are correct!

It's pretty clear to this old cowboy that the only hope we have for the enjoyment that SimCity promises is that another company either buy the game or -- and this would probably be better -- just rebuild a better urban planning game from scratch. SimCityX was a great start but it has/had a lot of naive concepts that prevent it from living up to reasonable expectations. One of those would be support but when you get tired of this world you can just turn around and ignore your customers. That's what happened.

I've been invited to Hawai`i 2050, a conference in Honolulu about the future of this island state. They are meeting in the 'old' Dole cannery. Pineapple is no longer grown on that island so lots of room in old food plants. I live on the Big Island of Hawai`i which is larger than all the other islands combined. Higher, also, with two of the largest mountains in the world -- measuring from the ocean floor -- so we can last through all the ocean level rising anybody cares to order to mark global warming. Not sure about flooding the location of that meeting next week, however, as it's at a fairly low elevation. Looking that far ahead is a very good and worthwhile task. Our nation prospered when urban and rural planning started looking further into the future -- particularly after World War II. Then we got fat and lazy and planning became a joke. Good planning was usually ignored and, too often, corruption took over. That's the story with the Mississippi River's Corps of Engineers straightening that removed hundreds -- thousands? -- of square miles of protective marshland between New Orleans and the Gulf. That was the main reason for the extent of distruction by Katrina. To this day they haven't committed to repairing the river and replacing that marshland so anything else they do to pretend to care about the city is a cruel hoax. How's your city? SC is a wonderful way for young to old folks to get a sense of planning. It seems to be loaded with enough 'gotchas' that no matter what is tried the city is flamed. Rats. But a harsh version of reality may be the only teacher we have in the cruel world that many think is just around the corner.

Sky Guy brings us down to earth. HawaiiBill -- taking the hint -- will concentrate on SC4. Better the game we have than that pie in the sky that may get lost with everything else in our community future! So it's back to learning how to do SC4 better. Which are the best forum sections for that, the ones I might miss? Thank you or, as we say in the middle of the Pacific ocean, Mahalo.

Good post, Safrani, and that concept of historic eras is exciting. SimCity was brought to my attention because of it's potential in urban planning. That should be urban/rural but the fact is the profession doesn't do enough with rural thinking though there are exceptions such as Montgomery County in Maryland. My only problem with SC stems from the planning connection because many of the fundamental concepts are just wrong. Making water available and clean, for example, is not revenue negative. Same with power but it costs for these and other facilities in ways that I haven't found producing positive revenue either downstream with better development or short-term. The monthly costs keep on but perhaps there is something I'm missing. SC is hard to "win" with good planning objectives and that change would not be a burden on system memory, etc. SC5, if it happens, could be made closer to how it is 'out here' -- and more fun -- with some professional planning consultation...or just read some books. Yours and other's notes that many are too demanding is well put because the game must run smoothly on modest equipment. Frankly, the Sim City series is a wonder to me, that it is so good, the graphics so clear and full of variety, etc. Like it a lot.

Ah, I stand corrected. As we stare longingly toward a SimCity5 era, it could be the concept of varying installations be considered based on the amount of RAM and hard drive space available. What you suggest is fairly popular in this thread and deserves consideration but memory management as presently posted would have to be radically different. When you zoom out to bring in neighboring regional chunks you invite chaos or, as they say in programming circles, turbulence to a scale difficult to predict. I think that is already the source of many of the unwelcome SC4 crashes we all enjoy so much. In my view the code for SC4 is admirable for its management of so many varied tasks. There could be a good book on the techniques brought to bear but that may be as secret as Coke's menu!

Let's see if I got this right. You wrote, "It's really annoying to see a dead end to your city." I thought it was pretty clear in the instructions that you could draw any transportation line -- road, railroad, etc. -- to the edge of your city's region and have smooth connection to adjoining square. Was that not clear? You can do the same thing with water lines or power lines and probably some other techniques I haven't discovered. Then, drawing from the other square there are little nubs along the edge indicating where to connect roads, etc., between the cities across the edges of the squares. Important for the economy, too. Or did I miss something?

Perhaps, ThingFrom TheDeep, there is a group designing a program for folks with very powerful systems and an interest in massive code sufficient to meet that request. As for me, I'd like to spend that $100 to fix a problem or two on my car here so I could better drive around my beautiful Hawai`i. I'm in full accord, however, that SC4's 'drive around the park' leaves lots to be desired. In my case the wish is to delete that feature and use the code to improve zoom and pan.

As a bonafide newbie here, I disagree that Sim City 4 is "essentially unaccomodating to players that are new to the series." As it came from the box, there was a good user manual -- good but lacking details that must be very difficult to pack into a game's 'how-to' for folks who haven't tried it yet. SC's learning curve is very steep. Short of a free trip to somewhere for a weekend or more of intense personal training, what's a game management to do? Most of Barf's problems seemed to be of details that, frankly, wouldn't change the end result of the game much. In my few entries here I've sought some careful consideration of actual planning principles that are frequently ignored or worse in the way Sim City values many elements. Water doesn't 'cost revenue' for an easy example because in any jurisdiction I've ever seen made lots of revenue selling water to the residents. Digging wells, laying pipe and such is paid for with low-interest 30-year bonds, the most common instrument in any element of government design. Reason: Everybody needs water, is definitely going to have the service and drink the product plus pay their reasonable billing. Yes, recently, good water is threatening to become scarce. Sim City was an early warning system for that with the automatic need for water purification long before it became a concern commonly faced by most areas. That's a great quality in a game of this nature, far more important than using valuable memory to put fencing between poor and rich residents. I am very happy with Sim City 4 and both pleased and amazed with the level of help that has been sent my way on this and other forums and a few direct e-mails. All of that has been 'beyond the call' and evidence of a Sim community 'out here' that makes learning the details and intricities of the game possible to learn. Thank you, everyone, for that attitude...

We seem in strong accord, soldyne, and I hope my several references to 'good enough' indicate the possible dangers of too much reality. My thoughts tend to focus on places that SC seems incorrect or at odds with the function and goals of planning and the effects of growth. Everything is related, especially in an SC 'region.' Urban planning may be at a weak point in its history. SimCity was first called to my attention some twenty years ago by a brilliant academician and functional planning organizer. I only got around to getting my copy recently and he has left our world so is beyond more discussion. But I know he was seeing the program as a scaled down 'pilot' for a tool that might need a mainframe for serious planning studies. There, we could have as many real-world consequences of doing this or doing that as folks could dream up to code in. Even then, clearly, we would have to cut corners to avoid deadly computer turbulence. And it would be great fun.

It might be too complex to include in SimCity but it appears, for example, that a lot of revenue producing projects COST the mayor rather than add money to the city coffers. I'm a newbie to SC so may not have this figured out. Electricity and water are two examples of essential services that create revenue rather than increase liabilities. At worst, they are revenue neutral yet are big SC costs to install. Forest land is watershed -- the denser the better -- and while it's okay to be owned by the city it is also fine to leave it in private hands zoned as conservation. The reason is that forests do have maintenance costs and it is rare or impossible to find a government at any level that can tell the forests for the trees, so to speak. The point being that bureaucrats kill the woods so it's better to leave them in private ownership, tax free to reward maintenance. For most areas, no watershed means no water, by the way. Put another way, no trees can mean no rain. You are correct to be wondering about this and seeking some new arrangement in SM5 should one emerge. Good thinking.