SimCity 3k in 4k (2025)

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.

* https://microlandia.city

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.

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)

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.

> 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.

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.

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...

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.

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...

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 ...

I also love this game. I was so hoping someone had managed to port this to WASM.

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."

Signs that you are old: I saw "in 4k" and thought that it was in 4 kilobytes, not 4k resolution

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?

Great, and how does that translate if we want to run it 4k in Linux?

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 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!

> Risky biscuits: building 1WTC and 2WTC but no hospitals or fire stations. I like to tease fate.

Too soon, too soon..

So many hours, this was my SimCity experience and I still can hear the jazz.

This and Rollercoaster Tycoon and Doom II was my jam.

Will Wright handed the original Maxis SimCity 3000 team a great design for the next SimCity (which I think they should have called SimCity 2001 instead of SimCity 3000, to more realistically set expectations).

But they ignored him, and went off on a tangent trying to design their own ultimate totally general purpose virtual reality (and we know how well Second Life has done ;), without much thought to what was actually possible, playable, or fun on current computers.

They gave some demos of the 3D prototype to reporters, then Maxis ran out of money because it was nowhere near shipping, then EA bought us, then fired the people who were out of control, and Luc Barthelet announced to the reporters that SimCity 3000 wouldn't be 3D, but it would be 2D and beautiful.

Here is a little nugget I saved from that time: Guru's infamous SimCity 3000 design document, from when the 3D design was really going off the rails:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rnvzKdJp9tyEJwEGxsIjoHnT...

Ocean Quigley says that Guru was really sincere and believed what he said (and was not just on mushrooms).

I have to admit, that if that's true, then that Guru dude was 15 years ahead of his time, and not just a crackpot! But he should have mentioned something about the fact that it would take 15 years to develop those ideas into a shipping product!

- Peak hubris / scope explosion:

“It is possible to bridge the chasm of expectations and technology in the forthcoming year in a realistic and economical manner.”

“The Real Time Render mode shall define a visual paradigm hitherto unseen in any game or product.”

“Hence attempting to assault the cliff of expectations of the visual paradigm by means of the linear ladder fails.”

“There is a whole think tank of concepts and ideas which shall be explored and implemented…”

- Hardware reality fighting back:

“Needless to even state this is impossible performance for a delivery Pentium 75 within one year.”

“Terrifying thought. Cut the flexibility we say ! Let’s govern the flexibility I say.”

“That’s a tall order, admittedly, but then, this is an ambitious project !”

- Glorious jargon poetry:

“The semi-digested spatial data is nothing more than just that.”

“This data simultaneously suffers further transformation…”

“The motion window is always stabilized and will ‘fly’.”

“The Snapshot Port — a.k.a. The Portrait of Reality”

“causation of an event singularity for the common reference of the simulator and the visual computing system”

- The “there / that / do this” interface:

“Once ‘that’ has been identified to be able to ‘do’ ‘this’ to ‘that’…”

“The user can merely point ‘there’: and place a building. The user can point to ‘that’ building and delete it.”

“A single pencil beam shot back into the scene from the point of the mouse…”

- Biology metaphor goes full Spore:

“The species of the virtual world… shall be encoded for spatial representation as chromosomes…”

“The species itself shall be represented in its completeness as a self descriptive cell.”

“Needless to add… if transfer RNA were metaphorically the lifts of the building…”

“The other facet… is the ability to create more species by crossbreeding and mutation of species.”

- Buildings become existential -- this is the crown jewel:

  “The behavioral transformation over time has a standard pattern

   Now I’m a cylinder and Now I’m an egg
   Now I’m smooth & shiny and Now I’m not
   Now I am mottled and Now I’m not
   Now I feel mottled and Now I do not
   Now I’m here and Now I’m over there
   something or the other blah blah”

- Las Vegas shark tent cinematic universe:

“Once the Simulator and the VC shell agree that there is a building called Big Joe’s Shark Tent…”

“yes I have neon lights, I have thirty bulbs all having high level scripts…”

“aaah OK ! you got it ! the script is queued, bye”

- Voxel fever dreams:

“This throws up the possibilities of bulldozers actually bulldozing soil. And Mining community towns actually mining inside a silver mine !!!!”

“Voxel space animation methods can actually cause earthquakes.”

“The display of a building or a city block being engulfed by splitting seams of the earth is not an impossible target…”

- Favorite one-liner:

“Modelessness is messy.”

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.

4K screen resolution, not a 4KB intro.

What A View! Sims Thrilled As Local Landscaping Artist Hosts DIY Expo

I'd love to see to see this game remade and released. I'd buy it in a second.

I hope GOG makes this all an easy to install mod/patch.

what would be really cool is a first person world generated from simcity maps and you can walk around and go inside buildings etc

I liked the SimCity franchise. However had, while the graphics improved a lot, the first SimCity is still my favourite, largely because the actual gameplay was quite simple and efficient to use. I always found this strange, because the graphics got better but the actual gameplay itself got worse. I also noticed this even more so with civilization; playing the first part is super-fast and super-easy; later parts required so much more computational calculations, there was more lag, and more annoying UI animations (not all were annoying, but when I want to make a move, I want to make a move, not wait until unit xyz has to do a break for smoking for the next 10 minutes).

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?

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.

I also love this game. I was so hoping someone had managed to port this to WASM.

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.

> Risky biscuits: building 1WTC and 2WTC but no hospitals or fire stations. I like to tease fate.

Too soon, too soon..

So many hours, this was my SimCity experience and I still can hear the jazz.

This and Rollercoaster Tycoon and Doom II was my jam.

Here is a little nugget I saved from that time: Guru's infamous SimCity 3000 design document, from when the 3D design was really going off the rails:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rnvzKdJp9tyEJwEGxsIjoHnT...

Ocean Quigley says that Guru was really sincere and believed what he said (and was not just on mushrooms).

- Peak hubris / scope explosion:

“It is possible to bridge the chasm of expectations and technology in the forthcoming year in a realistic and economical manner.”

“The Real Time Render mode shall define a visual paradigm hitherto unseen in any game or product.”

“Hence attempting to assault the cliff of expectations of the visual paradigm by means of the linear ladder fails.”

“There is a whole think tank of concepts and ideas which shall be explored and implemented…”

- Hardware reality fighting back:

“Needless to even state this is impossible performance for a delivery Pentium 75 within one year.”

“Terrifying thought. Cut the flexibility we say ! Let’s govern the flexibility I say.”

“That’s a tall order, admittedly, but then, this is an ambitious project !”

- Glorious jargon poetry:

“The semi-digested spatial data is nothing more than just that.”

“This data simultaneously suffers further transformation…”

“The motion window is always stabilized and will ‘fly’.”

“The Snapshot Port — a.k.a. The Portrait of Reality”

“causation of an event singularity for the common reference of the simulator and the visual computing system”

- The “there / that / do this” interface:

“Once ‘that’ has been identified to be able to ‘do’ ‘this’ to ‘that’…”

“The user can merely point ‘there’: and place a building. The user can point to ‘that’ building and delete it.”

“A single pencil beam shot back into the scene from the point of the mouse…”

- Biology metaphor goes full Spore:

“The species of the virtual world… shall be encoded for spatial representation as chromosomes…”

“The species itself shall be represented in its completeness as a self descriptive cell.”

“Needless to add… if transfer RNA were metaphorically the lifts of the building…”

“The other facet… is the ability to create more species by crossbreeding and mutation of species.”

- Buildings become existential -- this is the crown jewel:

  “The behavioral transformation over time has a standard pattern

   Now I’m a cylinder and Now I’m an egg
   Now I’m smooth & shiny and Now I’m not
   Now I am mottled and Now I’m not
   Now I feel mottled and Now I do not
   Now I’m here and Now I’m over there
   something or the other blah blah”

- Las Vegas shark tent cinematic universe:

“Once the Simulator and the VC shell agree that there is a building called Big Joe’s Shark Tent…”

“yes I have neon lights, I have thirty bulbs all having high level scripts…”

“aaah OK ! you got it ! the script is queued, bye”

- Voxel fever dreams:

“This throws up the possibilities of bulldozers actually bulldozing soil. And Mining community towns actually mining inside a silver mine !!!!”

“Voxel space animation methods can actually cause earthquakes.”

“The display of a building or a city block being engulfed by splitting seams of the earth is not an impossible target…”

- Favorite one-liner:

“Modelessness is messy.”

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.

4K screen resolution, not a 4KB intro.

What A View! Sims Thrilled As Local Landscaping Artist Hosts DIY Expo

I'd love to see to see this game remade and released. I'd buy it in a second.

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.

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.

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.

* https://microlandia.city

edit: spelling

> 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.

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)

YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!!

These aren’t actually from the game…

Wait, are those from Sim City 2000, released in 1993? One of them references Google Maps, first available under that name somewhere around 2004?

I vaguely remember 2 different releases of 3k with different advisors. I liked the cartoony ones better.

These are all amazing. Thank you.

You're describing SimCity 4, not SimCity 3000. The SC3k tool is not entirely 2D, but it does mostly behave like one (with emulated voxels instead of pixels).

And while I cannot confirm what Maxis was doing internally, I am quite sure no-one was using 3DS Max for rendering game assets in the 90s considering it had just been released and well into the 2000s it was still humongously slow.

> 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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.

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...

Good shout on grabbing from the original CD. The mono and lower bitrate is almost always install-footprint maths. Stereo CD audio is ~10MB per minute. Halve the channels, drop the bitrate, the soundtrack fits in a few MB. Worth the swap if you've still got the disc.

I really love Jerry Martin's music. He did the iconic music in the Sims too, collaborating with Marc Ruso and Kirk Casey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Martin_(composer)

https://www.last.fm/music/Marc+Russo

https://soundcloud.com/kirk-casey

Here are his web sites with more:

https://boombamboom.com/

“The Streets” 70’s Car Chase Music (reminds me of the Austin Powers theme Soul Bosa Nova by Quincy Jones):

https://jerrymartinmusic.com/music-70s-car-chase-1/

“Batucada” Bossa Nova:

https://jerrymartinmusic.com/music-bossa-nova-3/

“New Beginnings” This one is definitely in the 4 million plus club for plays on youtube:

https://jerrymartinmusic.com/music-sims-1-build-1/

“Let’s Go Shopping” Happy 50’s Shopping Music:

https://jerrymartinmusic.com/music-shopping-1/

Jerry Martin – Music From SimCity 3000:

https://www.discogs.com/release/794952-Jerry-Martin-Music-Fr...

Simcity 4 Soundtrack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSv37HwwojU

SimCasino (Early Access) - Soundtrack Sessions Complete:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOm9SSXyQ_g

How The Sims Made New-Age Jazz Piano the Soundtrack of Our Lives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LpVUi9TQ8U

>The Sims soundtrack is an iconic piece of video game music, and the build mode's minimalist new age jazz piano songs are undoubtedly among it's most famous tracks. We spoke to Jerry Martin, the composer of the soundtrack, to find out how and why new age jazz piano became the sound of The Sims.

The Sims Soundtrack CHEATED. Here's how:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMds3jT7c8

The Untold Story of 'The Sims,' Your First Favorite Jazz Record:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-untold-story-of-the-sims...

Music in The Sims:

https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Music_in_The_Sims

Interview with SimCasino Composer Jerry Martin! A Master of Simulation Game Music:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1158420/view/4689895...

SimCity Micropolis Tile Sets Space Inventory Cellular Automata To Jerry Martin's Chill Resolve:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=319i7slXcbI

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.

In 3k you could rotate the camera to 3 (or 4?) different angles, but each was fixed isometric rendered. Meaning they did all assets in the game at multiple angles.

> 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.

You're thinking of simcopter maybe, which follwed 2K and was full 3D.

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.

Signs that you are old: I saw "in 4k" and thought that it was in 4 kilobytes, not 4k resolution

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.

At this point you can probably just run it with proton or wine. Why bother porting the whole thing?

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.

> I will not pay for the same game twice.

So yes, go ahead and purchase an enjoyable game multiple times if it's a good game. I certainly have!

I agree that games are excellent value, particularly compared to the 90s when they cost a LOT more than they do today. However, I think the point is a wider one: even if games were priced more 'fairly', should you be able to buy a game and then have, effectively, perpetual ownership of it?

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.

I hope GOG makes this all an easy to install mod/patch.

Replace the executable, even on a Steam copy.

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

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?

Looks pretty cool. Reminds me also of Metropolis 1998, which is also going for the isometric style - with a lot more detail, i.e. you can design individual homes and see the lives of "sims" too, something like if SimCity and The Sims were merged.

https://yesboxstudios.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZHI2bCCpl0

It has a demo on Steam now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/ It's quite playable already, and it's a very small 100Mb download.

Your game looks good. A special 'thank you' for porting it (building it?) for macOS.

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!

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.

> 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? ;)

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.

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.

>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!

This sounds super interesting, but I'd much rather buy it on GOG than on Steam or itch.io. Any chance on releasing it there?

> 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.

I think Chelsea tractors belong in Chelsea, certainly not here in the country where they are completely unsuitable given the size

However he lost me at

> I was cruising in the fast lane, minding my own business

There is no fast lane in the U.K (including NI). There are overtaking lanes. If you are in this lane it’s because you are overtaking slower moving traffic in inside lanes.

If you aren’t, then you need to be losing your license

> 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.

According to Denis Leary, he would be an "asshole". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgpZ0fUixs

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?

Off topic rage bait harassment has top comment? Why?

Funny, I'm reading this as very dry, tongue-in-cheek humour.

Your game looks good. A special 'thank you' for porting it (building it?) for macOS.

https://yesboxstudios.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZHI2bCCpl0

It has a demo on Steam now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/ It's quite playable already, and it's a very small 100Mb download.

> 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.

Also looking at your game... can I get a copy of Microslop Excellence? ;)

>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!

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.

Maybe you can play using an emulator. I use VMware to emulate Windows XP to play The Sims and it works great.

In 3k you could rotate the camera to 3 (or 4?) different angles, but each was fixed isometric rendered. Meaning they did all assets in the game at multiple angles.

I'm very confident that you could do the same in 2k.

(Looks like this screenshot confirms it, those two blue arrows rotated the view: https://pressakey.com/gamepix/101/simcity3.jpg)

> 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.

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.

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?

For fun and customization. This guy used Claude to decompile and recreate an old mac game: https://www.tiktok.com/@philsmy/video/7644482888544636180

Can confirm it runs on Debian with Wine just fine.

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.

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.

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"

It would be nice if they remade Simcopter or Streets of SimCity yeah

Windows on Hyper-V, on Proxmox, air gapped, wearing an aluminum foil cap.

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 :)

Your simulation sounds incredible!

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

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).

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.

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...

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.

its honestly only palatable with dozens of mods, which is disqualifying to me

> and I still dream about arcologies

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...

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.

This sounds super interesting, but I'd much rather buy it on GOG than on Steam or itch.io. Any chance on releasing it there?

I love GOG and I would publish there in a heartbeat but I never hear back from them :(

May I bother you to expand on why GOG over itch.io?

I also prefer to use GOG whenever I can, but I really don’t know enough about itch.io to judge it. I’m hoping you can help bridge that knowledge gap.

> 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..!

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.

Windows on Hyper-V, on Proxmox, air gapped, wearing an aluminum foil cap.

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

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).

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.

its honestly only palatable with dozens of mods, which is disqualifying to me

I love GOG and I would publish there in a heartbeat but I never hear back from them :(

YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!!

I vaguely remember 2 different releases of 3k with different advisors. I liked the cartoony ones better.

These are all amazing. Thank you.

You're describing SimCity 4, not SimCity 3000. The SC3k tool is not entirely 2D, but it does mostly behave like one (with emulated voxels instead of pixels).

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!

According to Denis Leary, he would be an "asshole". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgpZ0fUixs

Off topic rage bait harassment has top comment? Why?

Funny, I'm reading this as very dry, tongue-in-cheek humour.

Some of us use 9/11 as a milestone event in our lexicon of world changing events.

Same.. I'd rather have it 2x scaling at half-resolution. Vision issues.

I really love Jerry Martin's music. He did the iconic music in the Sims too, collaborating with Marc Ruso and Kirk Casey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Martin_(composer)

https://www.last.fm/music/Marc+Russo

https://soundcloud.com/kirk-casey

Here are his web sites with more:

https://boombamboom.com/

“The Streets” 70’s Car Chase Music (reminds me of the Austin Powers theme Soul Bosa Nova by Quincy Jones):

https://jerrymartinmusic.com/music-70s-car-chase-1/

“Batucada” Bossa Nova:

https://jerrymartinmusic.com/music-bossa-nova-3/

“New Beginnings” This one is definitely in the 4 million plus club for plays on youtube:

https://jerrymartinmusic.com/music-sims-1-build-1/

“Let’s Go Shopping” Happy 50’s Shopping Music:

https://jerrymartinmusic.com/music-shopping-1/

Jerry Martin – Music From SimCity 3000:

https://www.discogs.com/release/794952-Jerry-Martin-Music-Fr...

Simcity 4 Soundtrack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSv37HwwojU

SimCasino (Early Access) - Soundtrack Sessions Complete:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOm9SSXyQ_g

How The Sims Made New-Age Jazz Piano the Soundtrack of Our Lives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LpVUi9TQ8U

The Sims Soundtrack CHEATED. Here's how:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJMds3jT7c8

The Untold Story of 'The Sims,' Your First Favorite Jazz Record:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-untold-story-of-the-sims...

Music in The Sims:

https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Music_in_The_Sims

Interview with SimCasino Composer Jerry Martin! A Master of Simulation Game Music:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1158420/view/4689895...

SimCity Micropolis Tile Sets Space Inventory Cellular Automata To Jerry Martin's Chill Resolve:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=319i7slXcbI

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.

I'm very confident that you could do the same in 2k.

(Looks like this screenshot confirms it, those two blue arrows rotated the view: https://pressakey.com/gamepix/101/simcity3.jpg)

The soundtrack is great though.

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.

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 believe 3k and 4 used 3D assets "in the editors" but the actual created tiles were 2D.

For fun and customization. This guy used Claude to decompile and recreate an old mac game: https://www.tiktok.com/@philsmy/video/7644482888544636180

Can confirm it runs on Debian with Wine just fine.

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.

Nice! I'm going to have to try that now.

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.

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

Hacker Times

Hacker Times

SimCity 3k in 4k (2025)

Discussion

Discussion

1. GOG Patched EXE

2. Tweak the mouse acceleration

3. Install the D3D Wrapper Alternative

Configure the D3dWrapper

4. Install the 4GB patch

5. Disable the auto updater

Installation:

6. Missing Music on SimCity 3000 Unlimited

Job: Done!

Other links:

A note on Windows 11