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Loki Releases Sim City 3000 Demo For Linux
YuppieScum writes "Voodoo Extreme has word that Loki have released a playable demo (x86 anyway) of Sim City 3000. It's a hefty beast at 175Mb for only 10 years play, but worth the download all the same." The word from Loki is that the actual game will roll off the presses sometime last week, and start shipping around then.
We have indeed mastered time travel here at Loki. We'll be releasing specs to our ChronoSkimmer (which we reverse-engineered from an old copy of Where in Time is Carmen Sandiago on an Apple IIe) under the GPL sometime soon. Hopefully this will empower more of our customers to achieve the coveted First Post.
Thanks for your interest, and remember to share!
--ryan. (icculus@lokigames.com)
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
Try support@lokigames.com if you have sound trouble. 9 times out of ten, these turn out to be configuration problems. SimCity 3K is using OpenAL, so it's a newer subsystem than SDL sound, and hey, you never know: it might be our bug.
That being said, if your hardware is really exposing a bug in SimCity, and/or support can't help you, submit the bug to
http://fenris.lokigames.com/
...and we'll fix it.
--ryan. (icculus@lokigames.com)
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
I've mirrored the file on my spunky little dorm box at this location. Enjoy, but please be gentle.
For more information, click here.
Of course, this means confiscating your children's copies of Candyland (there is no Candyland; it's imaginary), Monopoly (buying land of any kind is going to cost more than $65, that's absurd), and Chutes and Ladders (such a place doesn't exist. Burn the designers at the stake).
Also up for extermination is Barney (talking purple dinosaur, 'nuff said), Sesame Street (hand puppets are only cloth and don't really talk - absurd and probably a form of idolatry), and, well, pretty much anything else.
Perhaps someone can commission a game designer to make healthy, realistic, non-imaginative Christian games -- the Doing the Dishes Game (in which you wash real dishes, not imaginary ones), for example, or Mind Your Pa! Or, better yet, go back to reading the Bible, with its stories of walking on water, talking columns of fire, plagues, locusts, angels of death, and putting tribes to the sword -- and leave all those absurd, violent images behind forever.
Now, I love the work Loki does, don't get me wrong (and I own quite a lot of it, even stuff I don't have and don't know when I'll have it -- more on that later), but if any of em are reading, I think I have to point out something slightly illegal they're doing, though I'm sure it's not on purpose.
when you "pre-order" a game from them (well, it goes through digital river, which is probably why this whole thing happens) your credit card is charged immediately. when you "pre-order" a game AND order another game, your credit card is charged immediately and nothing is shipped until the pre-order game is out. (I found this out by ordering games, which is not really the way I would have preferred). The problem is, that at least in the US, a company is not allowed to let 30 days elapse between charging a credit card and shipping a product.
While digital river is not the same company as loki, they're clearly simply powering loki's system, it's still under the juristiction of loki (and under the lokigames.com domain as well). I'm being charged immediately for something that I'm pretty sure won't be shipped within 30 days of the charge. (this would be waiting on SMAC, which I've been unable to find a ship/release date for. anyone else?)
Now, since it's loki, and I really like having them around (subliminal message: port worms II, port worms II!), I'm not planning on disputing the charges, but I have seen court cases brought by the government (I don't remember if it was federal or state, but my guess would be federal under the interstate commerce bit of the constitution) where companies who did this on a regular basis were charged with nasty things.
I'd hate to see this happen, loki. please fix this up.
Lea
There goes my productivity.
And my eyesight.
And my posture.
I don't have anything against 'em, but Quake et al. just don't appeal to me. However I can't stop playing those Sim games. Finally I had to throw the damned things out. Every so often I'll see one of these games in the bargain bin and think "Oooh! Only $9.95 for Sim City!" Yeah, and $10,000 in lost productivity.
Sim City is the tool of the devil.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The word from Loki is that the actual game will roll off the presses sometime last week, and start shipping around then.
Uhm... What?
http://www.lokigames.com/products/ sc3k/demo.php3
You'd think Loki, of all companies, would understand the need to provide direct links for large download files, instead trying to stuff the whole thing down the throat of my browser with a cgi script. It's no fun to have the download quit on the 160th of 170 megs, and be unable to resume. Please understand this: I do not want you to get fancy when I'm trying to download a file. Just give me a direct URL to the file, please, and I'll download it with the transfer program of my choice.
--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I hope Loki did a much better job porting it to Linux than MacKiev did bringing it to the Mac.
I hope no one at Maxis wonders why the game didn't sell well, I don't think you have to look further than the (in my opinion) absolute shit job done on it. It was the slowest, most crappily ported game since the days of ultra quick DOS conversions, done by people who seemed to have no idea what a mouse was, or the menu bar for that matter.
Wanna save a game? Hit save and wait....and wait......and wait.....
Wanna compare the speed between your G3 233 and G4 500? Don't bother! There is no improvement whatsoever!
Should I mention the little annoyances.like the 300MB or so install, the mandatory 300MB dedicated swap file, the extra 100MB of OS level VM it needed. And of course, the CD requirement on top of it all.
All I can say is, thank God Maxis came to their senses and didn't forgo porting the Sims because of this incident and that they didn't go for the lowest bidder this time 'round. Westlake Interactive did a fabulous job on The Sims, I only wish they had a chance to work their magic on SC3000 as well.
I think it was the Maxis,sense of humor...maybe they lost it when EA bought them out?
When you compare SC3000 with 2000, not only do you have more features, like additional disasters, the newspapers, arcos, etc. You also have more personality. Nice touches like the inane llama obession popping up everywhere (and no, broccoli doesn't come close in 3000).
My feeling after playing the game was that something happened between 1993/1994 and 1998/1999. I am not quite sure what it was. Perhaps the connection to the users was lost, maybe The Powers That Be insisted on a toned down and....hemoginized Sim City to appeal to the new Win95 drone/soccar-mom demographic. Dedicated Gamers vs. Blind Consumers.
Anyway, call me crazy, but SC2000 felt like a personal work of art. A game made by a small, tight-knit team of dedicated artists. With all its humor and innuendo, it seemed like there was a secret we all shared.
3000 on the other hand, looks and feels like a product. Games By Comittee. Harsh. Sterile. Bland. All the humor and fun seemes forced.