I love this game so much. One of the reasons I started to make a city builder* is because I don't like where the genre is going.
The focus on photorealism in modern city builders took away the apophenia, or "food for imagination" that was a core element since the first SimCity. As a matter of fact, Will Wright used to say that the real simulation runs in the player's minds (or something like that).
Sure, there's something great about Cities Skylines that (at least with very powerful hardware) can look and feel like reality. But at the same time the game engine, in order to make this photorealism of terrain elevations with infinite possible shapes of infrastructure, is so complex that the actual simulation is sloppy, and feels to me like a big downgrade from SC3000.
Traffic, economics, zoning, crime, pollution. are so much practical to simulate (both in the computer, and in our mind models) in this classic isometric style.
edit: spelling
This was one of my favourite games. City simulators took up an enormous amount of my childhood and I still dream about arcologies. When I see a modern development like Brentwood in Canada's BC or some older ones like along the river in Chicago it reminds me of the wonders we can build.
As an aside since it's in the article, what are other cultures' irreverent targets? e.g. Anglo-cultures seem to casually joke about disasters like he does here about 9/11. Somewhat diminished by the fact that he's British, not American, but Americans do it too, and the American-British interaction involves this and Irish Car Bombs taken rather lightly. I find that curious. Do the Quebecois joke about Opération Satanique and the French have likewise a thing they make fun of the Quebecois for? Or is this an Anglo-culture thing? Obviously, I principally read in English so this might be specific to my language.
> and I still dream about arcologies
even after 9/11 and London's Greenfeel Tower fire? The vertical living seems very strained to me after events like that. Sure, they are not common issues, but there's always that thought in the back of my mind of what if.
Apartments are safer than single family houses regarding fires.
In 2023, the annual fire fatality rates for single-family homes and older multifamily homes were roughly equivalent at 7.6 and 7.7 deaths per million, respectively. In contrast, according to Pew researchers, the annual fire fatality rate for newer multifamily residences was 1.2 deaths per million.
https://www.multifamilyexecutive.com/apartment-trends/modern...
A single family home built to today's standards will be safer than an apartment built 50 years ago. Of course newer built anything complying with modernized fire safety regulations will be safer than older anything. I feel like your point is missing the mark
I feel like at the scale of an arcology, there isn't really much of a meaningful difference between there being a fire blocking your escape in the massive structure vs, say, fire blocking you escape in a mall. You're either completely surrounded by fire or you're not.
The Grenfell fire was caused by petty corruption. Someone involved in its construction used a cheaper flammable cladding material instead of the (slightly!!) more expensive fire resistant version.
It’s very on-brand for places like Russia and China but clearly western countries are not immune to this kind of thing either.
After the fire there were investigations into towers constructed here in Australia. Many used the cheaper flammable cladding material also. Just like with Grenfell, nothing much was done and nobody went to prison.
What does that have to do with the actual idea that being in a tall building could make it difficult to escape. It doesn't matter if the cause of the disaster is cheap building materials or an external force acting on a properly built building.
SC3K had a masterfully executed advisor system that felt both classy and warm. Ditto its music and art.
Unfortunately for SC4, they proceeded to make all the advisors 3D-rendered Sims. For SC2K, well:
https://www.somethingawful.com/news/simcity-advisors/4/
(that was the least offensive page to link; for the canonical experience start at page 1)
These are all amazing. Thank you.
What a strange person, from the same author: https://www.thran.uk/writ/yarn/2025/03/road-rage-maxxing-or-... I don't understand how you can feel morally superior by blocking the overtaking lane and letting people through if they're respectful enough.
> his is allegedly for better compatibility for streaming, but since I'm not an egotist who needs every second of his life broadcast to an audience, we will switch it to true fullscreen.
Ahh of course, every streamer streams every second and is egotistical. What a moron
Not only that this is so dangerous. Back off, and let the idiots idiot.
That said, probably don't want to discuss other weird posts for each HN submission!
Real people are complex and hold a wide palette of skills, opinions, habits, biases, etc. Just enjoy the good and disregard the bad.
There is a huge difference between "people are complex" and actively advertising your antisocial and frankly dangerous actions online, and being proud of them.
If he wants me to disregard them, he shouldn't be writing blog posts about them.
I think it's some type of personality disorder.
Tailgating in a massive SUV is not disrespectful, it's dangerous to other person. Why encourage this behavior by immediately letting them through?
Or how about you get the heck out of the fast lane when someone is approaching you going faster? Tailgating is an acceptable and common way to tell someone to gtfo of the way. That is common courtesy in most states in the U.S.
The graveyards are filled with people who had the right-of-way, who died knowing they were in the right.
And even if it's a slow speed accident, who cares about being right if you get a disability in the process? It is safer to let them through so they don't plow into you when you have to suddenly stop.
The only reason to LARP as a highway cop is just ego.
I suppose the middle ground is to just continue what you were doing with a slight negative factor of idk 0.8x speed.
Don't let the people win, but also do not suddenly assume powers you do not actually have.
Essentially, plausible deniability but on the road. You might really just be a slow passing slow lane changing driver.
___
The goal is to reintroduce friction into everyday life to nudge people into being less antisocial and/or make them slightly suffer for being that.
The goal is not to become a vigilante.
One brings a stable society, the other just a different flavor of the same chaos that came before.
something else dangerous: purposefully trying to incite a road rage incident.
in the wise words of reddit: ESH (everyone sucks here)
You don't know why they are tailgating or in a rush. For all anyone knows, they could have a passenger in a medical emergency.
Off topic rage bait harassment has top comment? Why?
Well, I can
SC3K’s art was not “crafted pixel by pixel.” It was rendered from 3DS Max. Maxis released a version of G-Max called the Building Architect Tool that included a template with the same lighting rig that they used for the in-game assets. This tool rendered and exported the various zoom levels and orientations.
My favorite SimCity game by far. The aesthetics are flawless.
I was so happy to score the physical “Music From SimCity 3000” soundtrack CD at the Alemany Flea Market fifteen or so years ago: https://www.discogs.com/release/794952-Jerry-Martin-Music-Fr...
> Some of the music from the original release is missing from an .ini file, even though it is present in Unlimited.
Article neglects to mention that the tracks which are included in Unlimited are lower-bitrate and monophonic compared to the same songs in stereo from the 1.0 release. Copy the same-name files from the original CD instead :)
Unlimited is sad because data-mining shows that it was almost multiplayer à la SC2k Network Edition: https://tcrf.net/SimCity_3000_Unlimited/Unused_Multiplayer_T...
> SimCity 3000 is the best SimCity
I disagree! SimCity 2K FTW. :)
Best balance of complexity IMO and ran pretty well on my old Mac. I'd love a retro-futuristic reboot.
Not sure to what extent you're looking for a reboot to be representative of the original, but I've been following the development of this indie spiritual successor for some time: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
I was replaying SC2K(dos) recently and it is much harder than I expected. Usually these city games are fairly easy chill affairs. On a 1900 hard(max bond) start the only way I found to succeed(marked when I payed off all bonds) was to pause(to avoid early bond repayment losses), use all your money to setup the perfect layout for the next 40 years. Then wait in debt(can't build anything) for 40 years while hopefully your city profit grows past the bond interest amount and you are able to slowly claw yourself out of the red. Then immediately start saving for the replacement power plant as your original one will explode soon. I was not making a comfortable profit until about 1960. And this was after many failed cities, can't fix anything when you can't build anything.
i first played 2000 when it was bundled with my family's windows 95 pc, and was sad to learn that gog/steam sell the inferior dos variant. but, yes, 2000 was just right.
Sim City 3k is my least played Sim City game, but this is inspiring me to take another look. I really like the sweaty micromanagement and bigger scope of 4, but maybe I will prefer 3k's simplicity in my old age.
The picture caption with a 9/11 joke is a little off-putting, but it's at least proof that this isn't AI generated content...
> The picture caption with a 9/11 joke is a little off-putting
9/11 seems to be an important milestone in his life. In the about section of his web page it says this:
Q:/> How old are you?
A:/> I can't remember the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can remember 9/11.
I always thought of 9/11 as the major event for older millennials. I used to think it was all millennials, but many weren't even in kindergarten when it happened.
Honestly my personal millennial generation cut-off is the "remember before 9/11 world" vs "don't before remember 9/11 world" group of kids.
Some of us use 9/11 as a milestone event in our lexicon of world changing events.
I must also admit to preferring Sim City 3000 over 4. I don't know if I can handle a 4K user interface without a magnifier, however.
Same.. I'd rather have it 2x scaling at half-resolution. Vision issues.
Have you played SC4 with NAM?
Probably moves sc4 further away from what he would like. If you're into NAM might as well just play cities skylines with transit mods
Back when SimCity 2000 was released, younger me somehow found a phone number for Maxis and actually called them to rave about it. At some point in the message, I very confidently told them to make “SimCity 3000.”
When SimCity 3000 came out, I couldn't help but wonder if I inspired them. "Remember that kid was really stoked about 3000."
I'm pretty sure the phone number was just printed on the manual back then... Many games back then had a phone number printed in the manual.
I was surprised to see SC3k described as isometric like 2k. I recall versions after 2k being "look anywhere" 3D, but I guess I missed some versions. So many games, like Railroad Tycoon post RRT2 and Worms went full 3D and gameplay was never the same.
I actually keep a Basilisk II System 7.5 Mac environment just so that I can play SC2k from time to time ...
A small frustration I have with playing old games is that the GOG/Steam version is always the PC original and the Mac versions almost always had far better sound and music and sometimes graphics.
I feel like that's true for early/mid-90s games where the PC version targeted DOS (+ the varied universe of PC video/sound hardware), and the Mac version could just target the much more uniform Mac platform.
But SimCity 3000 is from 1999, and the PC version was a normal Win9x game. I own (still have the CD) the SimCity 3000 Mac port, and it is not very good. Maxis didn't port it themselves, it was done by Software MacKiev. System requirements were quite high for the time, it was sluggish, often unstable, and the file open/save dialogs reused the Windows-style dialogs which was very awkward.
The soundtrack is great though.
You can run the Windows 95 version of the game (similar to the Mac version) on modern computers with this patch: https://sc2kfix.net/ . It's definitely disappointing that GOG doesn't distribute that version. Stuff like this is why I have to keep a CD drive around.
And when you say “PC original”, you really mean “DOS version wrapped in DOXBox”, because it's easier to ship that on both Windows and Mac than patching the Windows version for Windows, and shipping a Wine wrapper for Mac. (Have they ever shipped a Wine wrapper for anything? I don't think so.) What a shame.
I do really wish an application-level classic Mac OS emulator existed. There are lots of great full-system emulators for classic Macs (Basilisk II, SheepShaver, DingusPPC), but no Rosetta-style “make the old application run in the context of a new machine” execution environments. I'll grouse to whoever will listen that all of the best edutainment software of the '90s and early '00s is trapped on PPC Mac OS.
Probably the closest thing I remember existing to this was (in its "modern"-ish form) https://github.com/autc04/executor
Not quite what you're looking for I think but it was a Wine-style reimplementation of MacOS.
I think that is basically exactly what I've been looking for. Thank you!
Marathon Trilogy. Ambrosia SW games. Spectre VR. My childhood was so flavourful. The one downside is that nobody on the playground were talking about the games I had access to.
Maybe you can play using an emulator. I use VMware to emulate Windows XP to play The Sims and it works great.
> I was surprised to see SC3k described as isometric like 2k. I recall versions after 2k being "look anywhere" 3D
You recall wrong.
The only 3D SimCity game was the one released in 2013 that was simply titled "SimCity" but is frequently called "SimCity 2013" to differentiate it from the original classic.
2K, 3K, and SimCity 4 were all 2D games.
I believe 3k and 4 used 3D assets "in the editors" but the actual created tiles were 2D.
You're thinking of simcopter maybe, which follwed 2K and was full 3D.
Signs that you are old: I saw "in 4k" and thought that it was in 4 kilobytes, not 4k resolution
Or a demoscener.
Loved SimCity growing up.
Would it be possible to automate porting the windows version into a mac or web version? Like giving a long-running agent the task and some tools to check/play the game on both platforms?
SimCity 4 has a native Mac build, it's on Steam. Most of the modding community uses Windows now though since the .dll hacks became feasible.
SimCity 4 not only has a native Mac build, but it has an applesilicon one (I believe you have to enable a beta flag somewhere).
Pretty impressive for a game released in 2003.
Oh my goodness SC4 is 23 years old. I'll go be old in the corner.
At this point you can probably just run it with proton or wine. Why bother porting the whole thing?
Can confirm it runs on Debian with Wine just fine.
> I will not pay for the same game twice.
I firmly disagree with that point. If the game is well-made and enjoyable, the developer probably deserves some extra cash thrown their way. Games remain one of the best bang-for-your-buck when it comes to entertainment anyways. ($50 can get you DAYS of enjoyment, compared to going to a movie theater, theme park, or other paid attractions)
So yes, go ahead and purchase an enjoyable game multiple times if it's a good game. I certainly have!
The copies of Stardew Valley are not free but you can just buy them on every device you have I have 436 copies of Stardew Valley.
Diablo 1 in 4k - https://i.imgur.com/4ResbPc.jpeg
Great, and how does that translate if we want to run it 4k in Linux?
I run Arch. I purchased it on Steam last week after the dos.zone site was shared here and dropped the GOG executable in the steamapps directory, and it worked flawlessly with proton.
Nice! I'm going to have to try that now.
Sweeet well done, especially with the audio. I like this patch method much more than the HD Patch I've been using the last few years.
We played SimCity in my shop class at school on olds macs and i like picking it back up every now and then. It still holds up better than most new games.
I'm surprised a bunch of tech professionals are totally fine with downloading random .dll's and patching executables. How do you know this is safe?
What A View! Sims Thrilled As Local Landscaping Artist Hosts DIY Expo
4K screen resolution, not a 4KB intro.
I'd love to see to see this game remade and released. I'd buy it in a second.
Another factor was that although both SimCity 3k and SimCity 4 both had a maximum of 256x256 tiles for their cities, the scale was different.
A SimCity 3000 tile edge was equivalent to 64m, whereas in SimCity 4 it was 16m. The scale of the city in SimCity 3000 was bigger as a result.
Hoping to test this principle of largest possible map sizes out soon.
Genius!
I hope GOG makes this all an easy to install mod/patch.
Replace the executable, even on a Steam copy.
There's more than just the widescreen patch. It would be really nice if they automated configuring and installing the other tweaks to make it really playable.
claude --dangerously-skip-permissions -p "get this all installed https://www.thran.uk/writ/hdid/2025/12/simcity-3k-in-4k.html"
what would be really cool is a first person world generated from simcity maps and you can walk around and go inside buildings etc
It would be nice if they remade Simcopter or Streets of SimCity yeah
Uhh... in 4k glory. This is one of my top games ever. Just bought the book "BUILDING SIMCITY" from MIT Press and I have it next to me to keep me company.
Call to Vinnie and build the mythical SIM Castle...
Man, I played the fuck out of this game in my teens, it's in my top 5 best games ever made.
Obnoxious author. Refusing to 'pay twice' for a game they care enough about to go through all this trouble + deeply obnoxious bit about Windows 11 at the end of of the post.
> The focus on photorealism in modern city builders took away the apophenia
That would be a real challenge to achieve simply because most of us are constantly surrounded by cities, but it is something that we should strive for.
For instance, game designer Fumito Ueda (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Last Guardian) said that I never wants to visit any old castles or ruins for fear that it would ruin his imagination on how game worlds should be built. It is a fair point, none of his games have had any focus on reality in terms of scale and that is what makes them so special.
Also looking at your game... can I get a copy of Microslop Excellence? ;)
This looks great, I just bought a copy. While it's downloading I'm perusing the listing, and I'm curious if this supports generating a large image/print of your finished city, like you could in SCURK (SimCity Urban Renewal Kit, which shipped with SC2K).
One thing I particularly loved was printing out very large maps of my city to go on the wall :)
Edit: I like the music a lot, and the little tutorial guy is endearing. One question, how do I move the viewport around? I tried scroll click drag, mouse button drag, arrow keys.
That's a super cool idea. Actually we have an internal thingy to export your city to blender, then we can have nice images like this one: https://microlandia.city/assets/press/keyart/t21.jpeg
Maybe we manage to make something that doesn't need blender (though it probably won't look as cool) or we just stop dev-gatekeeping the function that exports the 3d file. Consider it done for the next point release :)
Spent a bit of time with it.
Biggest peeve so far: It's very easy to build the 'premium' version of a building (eg police HQ instead of police station) and utterly annihilate your city budget - with no ability to cancel / undo.
"Click on the correct-looking-but-actually-wrong button functionally ends your game" is... not great.
Other than that, I'm really enjoying it.
Beautiful, yes, that's what I am looking for. One question, how do I move the viewport around? I've tried various click drags and arrow keys. Pan/zoom/tilt works great.
Thank you, WASD is what I was looking for. I just want to take a moment and say I find the music very nostalgic, it's great. Can you tell me more about the soundtrack? Is this tracker music?
In other news, I was on track to win re-election and lost. I lost while having the selector for building a structure enabled, and that was stuck on the placing-a-tile, even though I'd lost and the game ended. Very fun game nonetheless!
Awesome! I am going to try this when I have some time next week. Fantasizing about how to make a better SimCity 25 years ago is what inspired me to pursue a computer science degree. I got sidetracked by a PhD and never returned to making games. Maybe your version is the one I always wanted!
Your simulation sounds incredible!
How big can cities get, though? One of the things I love about Cities Skylines is how massive the land plots are, and the tiny plots of SimCity 2013 was a bigger turnoff than anything else in its disastrous launch.
The real key will be to discover how to run a city simulation such that it doesn't all have to be "active" at the same time (e.g, the opposite of the Factorio simulation).
At this moment, not so big but lately I've done some interesting technical breakthroughs that will enable large maps :D ... or at least a lot larger than SimCity 2013
>https://microlandia.city
thanks for sharing that. i'm a big city builder fan, but this one slipped by me. looks cool, and i'll be picking it up!
> I don't like where the genre is going.
Got an opinion on Timberborn? I think it's a great city builder, plus a fluid dynamics simulator where if you guess wrong everyone dies.
Not the same genre (at least for me). Timberborn is more like a colony builder (think Rimworld) than a city builder (SimCity/Cities Skylines). Its the micromanaging vs macromanaging, in a colony builder you are micromanaging what each creature does (such as timberborn or rimworld) while on a city builder you manage the city itself and invididual pawns are alot less important! Plus the survival aspect in that sense doesnt really add up when I'd like to play with the simulation aspects - education, traffic, crime, etc..!
100% agree here. City builders for me eschew individual citizens in favor of group statistics, to oversimplify it.
timberborn doesnt have the beavers figuring out for themselves what to do, and operate with agents pulling jobs you the player put on a queue rather than statistics.
its a lot more like dwarf fortress than sim city
To me it got boring quite quickly. But maybe so would Sim City at my current age, I can't know.
This is fabulous and I'm going to buy a copy to play on my SteamDeck. Will be sure to leave a review after I've put some hours into it!
I think the simulation in Cities Skylines is also quite advanced, or not? The simulation is much more the reason why it requires powerful hardware to run on, much less the graphics.
Cities Skylines has pretty decent simulation and it uses quite a bit of raw CPU horsepower, but it only really shines with tonnes of mods (just like SimCity 4 before it).
Realistic traffic is always the bane of these simulators.
Can't speak on how demanding the simulation is/was. But on launch Cities Skylines 2 was extremely demanding in respect of its graphics due to very poor optimisation. This PC Gamer article summarises a more technical analysis, which is linked through
https://www.pcgamer.com/a-tech-analysis-of-cities-skylines-2...
I've commented this many times, but I definitely want to see more isometric grid games like SC3k, RC2 or TTD.
They were less-realistic, yes, but is so pleasant how everything ties together and you can neatly fill out the whole map.
Meanwhile, while I like Cities Skylines or Planet Zoo, it is always incredibly awkward to build roads and paths to the point where I find it frustrating.
it's so frustrating in Cities Skylines without mods, that it's so common difference in height causing so much placement issues
On Steam Deck, I am having a rough time with the road that the paperclip wants me to place. Holding down the physical A button (of the ABXY group) and wiggling around the left joystick (as well as every other control I can think of), both pressed and not pressed. Sometimes I'll see the green highlight appear, and I can stretch it out into a road path, but when I release A, it just vanishes.
I’m taking a look at that right now. Thanks for flagging this
You got me , enjoy your 8,99 €
The thing is, I’d actually rather play a game that is basically a virtual modeling hobby than a deep city simulation.
I think Cities Skylines scratched that itch for a lot of people.
whoa that game looks very cool— love it. also loved SC3k… the soundtrack was amazing. game was kinda lowkey hard, though. or maybe it was because i was just a kid haha.
Do you have water and ports on the roadmap. I'd love some boats :)
There's plans for: river map, island map, peninsula map, port zone, (with docks and containers), industrial fishing.
All in different stages of development. Can't say for sure when it's gonna be live but it's locked in.
you had me at apophenia
Do I have the option to execute the landlords when they try to inflate rent?