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Handhelds Hardware

SimCity for PalmOS Platform 100

Posted by Hemos from the i-love-my-palm-v dept.
JohnnyZed wrote to us with the link to Atelier a company that's released the original SimCity (SimCity Classic) for the PalmPilot. I don't usually like product plugs, but I had way too much fun with this game when it came out - now I can play it on the plane! Or the bathroom!
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SimCity for PalmOS Platform More

SimCity for PalmOS Platform

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  • Acturlly Atelier did that one too. But Purplesoft is selling it in Europe (it seems)
  • I wander if the original Civilization could be ported? Now that would rock. I tried to find it on microprose.com, but couldn't.
    Jón
  • yes it ran on the C=64, but it was a stipped down version. almost no color, no choice in power plants. no graphics to speak of. It pretty much sucked compare to the PC version.
  • I suppose you could make a multiplayer only version, but the idea of people having to gether round and keep their IR ports aligned while playing beggars belief!

    Wow, you just reminded me of one of my first handheld multiplayer electronic games, Head to Head Football, from about 1980.

    It was one of the red LED games simulating football on a field 5 LEDs high and 12 long, with nintendo like controls.

    The very cool part was that you played live against someone, the LEDs were in the middle, with controls on each side. As the offensive player you controlled the quarterback/running back or receiver, as the defensive player you controller a linebacker. It was a neat game, but I think the strong homophobia of early teen boys made it a poor seller.

    Apologies to any non North Americans if my terms are unclear, I'm talking about American Football.

    George
  • doom may not be on the Palm, but it's on the psion (just - no picking up objects, gun graphic, or map... however they're only at v0.2) www.palmtop.nl [palmtop.nl]

  • "what the palm needs is. . ."

    Nothing. Come on.

    The only thing I could want from my palm is wireless synch and internet access, well, the Palm VII has that covered, don't it.
    In that case, the only thing the Palm needs is; a more reasonable price-tag.
    (if they could synch with that Apple AirPort thing, then THAT would be cookin' with gas!)

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • now, Elite would be TITS!

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • k,?


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  • but $30 bucks for it? Common, transfer that to canadian funds and it'll cost atleast $20,000. I can pick up the original simcity and 2000 at eb here for under 20, not used.
  • TReeeeeeee


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  • All in all it's prolly worth the $30. I played the heck out of SimCity Classic on my kickass PC-XT with 640k of ram and a totally pimp EGA graphics setup. 8Mhz, dude!

    *cough* anyway, yeah, it's pretty slick. Takes a few seconds to render a map when you start a new city. Eats up about 300k of memory.

    Game play is very similar to the real thing, though i haven't figured out the heuristic for how it places zones (industrial, commercial, etc). So far i have most of them landing way off their mark. This is confusing, because i have no problem bullseyeing things like roads and power lines.

    All in all recommended. Great time waster.
  • Treeeeeeeee Treeeeee


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  • One thing people do forget when talking about the original amigas - the cpu didn't do a lot of the work on the system, the PAD (custom chips called Paula, Agnus, Denise) did.

    You had:

    paula doing sound,

    the blitter doing all the fancy hi-speed (at the time) graphics movement (which AFAIK would have to be done on the CPU on the Palm),

    The copper (a really cool (at the time) amiga display-synchronised graphics co-processor with 3-instructions (move to, wait for, skip if)) handling the bitmap display. It was the copper that enabled the amiga to do the fancy screen-dragging tricks enlightenment now does in software ( Rasterman was once an amiga hacker, AFAIK) Again this frees up the cpu.

    The floppy disk io was also done by the custom chips.

    The amiga had 256KByte to 2Mbyte of "chip" memory, depending on the model. "chip" mem was shared between the custom chips and the cpu. There was also "fast" memory, which was for the cpu only.

    Since the "chip" memory was shared between the CPU and the custom chips, and the copper and blitter could trigger cpu interrupts, and the copper could be set to program the blitter, and all three could work on the same area of memory, including eachother's program code, you could do some _very_ weird stuff with the amiga display. That's why all those old Amiga (Euro)Demos tended to be so cool compared to the PC and ST crowd of the time.







  • I originally played SimCity on the C64 (1Mhz, 64Kb RAM) and loved it, in spite of the fact that it was slow and ugly. The Palm should be able to handle it...
  • Well, let's see. I when I played SimCity originally, it was on a 16MHz MC68030 [mot-sps.com] . The Palms use a 16MHz MC68328. Should be just like old times! [mot-sps.com]

  • Great... (Score:1)

    by BJH ( 11355 )

    ...but how do you type in FUND?

  • ...how would I go about using the infamous shift-FUND cheat in SC for Palm? Would I have to write it with my right hand, or something?
    ;)

  • Thanks, Matt. This game rules. I remember wasting days on this crap on a DOS machine. It's nice to be able to waste away billable hours anywhere I go.

    My strategy, buy Coke. Can you ever go wrong?

  • Excellent play, but... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've played SimCity for the Commodore 64, then to PC Classic, 2000, and 3000. This is a great port that stays true to the "spirit" of SimCity. A little slow when loading maps, obviously the small screen takes a little getting used to, and zone placement is a little tricky, but these are all minor nags.

    My big nag is that there are no shortcuts, except for a few things that you really don't need them for. Everything should have a shortcut so you aren't forever going to one big drop down menu. A great part about the PC version is the shortcuts - once you get proficient at it you can really throw things down in a hurry. There is no reason the Palm version can't have this also. I would say it is a necessity. It's hard enough navigating the small screen without having to go to the menu constantly.

    My other nag isn't the fault of the game creators. When I run low on funds in the PC version, I can just let the simulation run for awhile. This isn't as practical on the Palm.

    Those two factors greatly affect playability, IMO. I still think it's a great game, but probably not worth $30.

  • My point exactly...

    I had the 512K Amiga version, which kicked ass in all of its 16 colours. I have also run the CPC version, which kicks something in 4 colours at 320x200, but the colour choice was bad and it obviously was cut down to fit in 64K (of which 16K is screen and another large area is also used). Sure, it seems the BBC 32k version was even more impressive (was anything left out?).

    So a game running a monochrome 160x160 screen (around 3200 bytes) on a 16MHz processor should easily be able to outperform any of the original computers Sim City was originally released on.

    It is also quite nice to have a square playing area for the game (19x19 blocks from the screenshots), but some of the info screens looked a bit tatty - maybe something to enhance for a greyscale or future colour version (although a 160x160 8-bit screen uses 25600 bytes of memory - a real hardship I am sure - the original Amiga version used a 320x200 screen (32000 bytes) so that should still be very fast and nippy).

    Now.... if they were to release Sim City 2000 on the Palm Pilot or Psion 7 or whatever, then I would be impressed.

    I think the current Psion version looks better then the Palm version at the moment, but obviously the Palm isn't the first choice as a gaming platform :-).

  • I'm in agreement here. Although I probably will end up buying it for the geek factor, I think it's too much money. I remember buying the original SimCity for my old Mac, 10 years ago, for $19. Maybe I should just start lugging my Mac Portable around and save $30...

  • Great.. more batteries (Score:3)

    by bjb ( 3050 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @04:13AM (#1578487) Homepage Journal
    When I used to play SimCity on my Amiga many moons ago, I used to leave my machine on for days on end so that my city would thrive.

    ...that Amiga was plugged into an AC outlet...

    Now I'm going to start tinkering with SimCity on my PalmIII. I'll probably set up a city again, spend many hours developing my town when I probably should be reading a good book or magazine (isn't that what YOU do on the throne?). I'll probably leave my Pilot chugging away for hours to let my city thrive.

    ...that Pilot is running on AAA batteries...

    All this expense going to Mr. Duracell because I had to let my petri dish past-time city tell me that I have a traffic jam.. Jeez.. Why don't you just put a Tamagotchi on my pilot instead?

    (Scary side note: a tamagotchi program DOES exist and it DOES wake up your pilot about 30 times an hour telling you to press the calculator button so it can :FEH: eat!)

    --

  • A friend beamed this program to my Palm, and it hasn't been the same since. My other apps go unused, while I travel from city to city, waiting for there to be a cocaine bust so I can make out like a bandit.

    I've been through 4 AAAs in two weeks.

    You will lose all productivity with this game. Do not download.

    (Personal best in 2 weeks: $5,424,941)

    --
  • <<The only thing I could want from my palm is wireless synch and internet access, well, the Palm VII has that covered, don't it.
    In that case, the only thing the Palm needs is; a more reasonable price-tag.
    (if they could synch with that Apple AirPort thing, then THAT would be cookin' with gas!)>>

    For an individual, the needs will be unique, but what I meant was to build broad consumer confidence. The Pilot is still something that the vast majority of people feel they "don't need", or "just isn't useful enough".

    Now, you tell them "you use Quicken right? the Pilot works with Quicken!" or "You play SimCity right? You can play it on the Pilot!" and it starts looking just a tad more useful or worthwhile.

    If you had a hundreds apps that people *recognize* then it starts to look much more compelling. Most consumers don't realize the potential of the Pilot...

    -JF

    Jon Frisby, Senior Internet Software Engineer,
    Personal Site (MrJoy.com) [mrjoy.com]
  • Robosport is a great game. Great idea.
  • I think Lemmings would be an even better classic game to bring to the Palm Pilot. It doesn't really need a high screen resolution, and is small and portable. I know this would keep me entertained for hours on long trips. :-)
  • I'm liking it so far. It's a pain to see very much of your city at once, but with the sound turned down, I can't think of a better way to screw off at those boring meetings.
  • image the tip of your stylus as the top left of the 'box' where the zone falls

    XOO
    OOO
    OOO

    X=where your stylus is when you press,
    O=where the zone falls

    hope this helps.
  • Ah, I can remember playing simcity years ago. Although I wasn't part of the team, there was one here who competed in a national contest, and they were division leaders for a while.

    Definitely something to get for my Pilot...

    -- trust me, I'm a Viking
  • Hi People

    Does anyone know how good the game really is? I mean, I know SIMCity, but how good does it work on the Palm after all?

    Thanks
    al
  • I'm off to buy it now... I'm only concerned with performance... Is it going to be slow as a dog, or stay at the pace of the original? Their animated screenshots would seem to indicate the latter but that doesn't say much.

    I think this is a really good thing for the Palm. What the Palm needs are some "brand name" recognizable apps... It has very few recognizable brands or programs avilable for it.

    That isn't to say there aren't any *good* apps, I mean, of course there are, but it lends yet more credibility to the system to have this on it. Quicken is the only other example of a recognizable brand/product on the Palm...

    And let's not forget that this will demonstrate the Palm's true potential as a portable gaming platform... Even if the controls are unsuitable for MegaMan... :)

    That's an idea! An attachment that provides GameBoy style controls which map to the basic buttons... Perhaps calc/menu can be the mappings for start/select? Add a gameboy emulator, or some game ports, and there ya go! :)

    -JF

    Jon Frisby, Senior Internet Software Engineer,
    Personal Site (MrJoy.com) [mrjoy.com]
  • Simcity was already ported to Psion 5 many months ago... :-)

    See: Purplesoft's simcity page [purplesoft.com]

  • Shameless Plug (Score:3)

    by Matt Lee ( 2725 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @01:26AM (#1578502) Homepage

    Well, this SimCity game looks nice... but if you're in the mood for something a bit more... free, then check out:

    dopewars.cjb.net [cjb.net]

  • Naturally the online ordering system has been SlashDotted, or is otherwise unavailable... *sigh*...

    -JF

    Jon Frisby, Senior Internet Software Engineer,
    Personal Site (MrJoy.com) [mrjoy.com]
  • I remember many lost days playing classic on my Mac Plus. I can't wait to install this on my Palm IIIx. Wonder if I can import my old scenarios...

  • How about Civilization? (Score:3)

    by acb ( 2797 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @01:04AM (#1578505) Homepage
    Now all we need is Civilization for the PalmPilot; then productivity can go completely down the drain.
  • The same people did the Psion5 port ages ago. It enjoys a much bigger screen. Nothing shifts that constipation as rapidly as a marly light, a can of coke, a big smelly lavatory, and Godzilla approaching Tokyo in your hands.

    Quick! Flip the lid shut before it crushes the industrial sector!
  • Heh, maybe 3Com should spend some time builing and attaching a mini toilet-paper dispenser to their next Palm model. It could prove lifesaving to Hemos and many others if they run out of TP while playing SimCity on the can :)

  • Re:"They said it couldn't be done" (Score:3)

    by EnglishTim ( 9662 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @01:33AM (#1578508)
    They even did a version for the BBC Micro -

    it had 32K of memory, 10 of which had to be used by the screen (when you were in 4 colour, 160x256 screen mode)... I read an interview with the guy who did the port (He was porting from the ST version) - he said that the array in the ST version that held which buildings were connected to electricity took 32K up by itself...

  • > ...I had way too much fun with this game
    > when it came out - now I can play it on the
    > plane! Or the bathroom!

    Hmmm. I wonder how much I'd enjoy this... I mean, there are two things I can say about all the games I've loved and played to death in my life (starting with Manic Miner!):

    1. I played them slavishly, hour after hour, day after day, until finally I reached the time when I'd "had enough", and the game was put to the side.

    2. I've returned to them later (much later), wistfully remembering my many happy hours, and wondering if I can resurrect my old enthusiasm - only to find the game, well, flat. Not exactly *disappointing*, but nowhere near as enjoyable as once they had been.

    I guess this is natural, especially if you play the game "to death" as it were. It always makes me feel a little sad, though - like I've lost something. Sigh... Blubber... ;-)

    Shrug,

    Andy

  • "They said it couldn't be done" (Score:3)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Friday October 29, 1999 @01:18AM (#1578510) Journal

    Now, forgive me if I am incorrect here, but a Palm organiser is not that underspecced compared with the original computers Sim City came out on? For example, apart from the 386s that it ran on, it ran on the Amiga 500 (7.2MHz 68000), Atari ST, Amstrad CPC (64K, Z80) and probably the Sinclair Spectrum and C64. So saying that it wasn't possible on the Palm is a bit silly! They only had to overcome the low-res screen, which can't have been that brain-straining...

    I wonder if they will do an updated version for the colour Palm machines coming out soon? That would be worth it.

    Is there a version for the Psion, because it would really kick ass on that, as it is more powerful and has a higher resolution screen.

    Sim City does kick ass though, even the original all othose years ago. A great way to waste time instead of doing something useful. I am afraid this could set a lot of projects back in many companies :-)

  • If this game supports color when the color palm comes out, I will have to get one. That's really what 3Com needs...a killer app that makes everyone want the color feature.
    --
    This comment is (©) Copyright Deepak Saxena

  • Neato (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hee! It looks just like it used to on our old 8086 with the monochrome green screen. That is just so cute!
  • How about the original elite for the PalmOS?

    It originally ran on a spectrum and a C64 so there should be ample processing power, the Pilot can handle some wireframe vector graphics can't it?
  • Sortta relevant, you can place simcity onlike (even save games) at simcity.com :D

    I think it's ActiveX only tho ..
  • You might wanner check out Raygin [palmgear.com]... Not quite Quake, but hey for under 20Mhz it is quite impressive!

    Best regards,
  • Ah I remember building SimCities on my C64 back when the game came out...and when they had grown, I'd reduce them to rubble with all those cool catastrophes. I can't wait to get this, but first I'd like to know if anybody's bought the thing...
    does it run well...? etc? Care to give a review?

  • Actually the hardware Palm Computing intend to use is buildin into a new version of the Dragon ball processor.

    All they need now is a low power color display!

    Best regards,

  • Are they planning to port SimCity to the Gameboy? (color?)
    ---

  • Electronic Arts actually happens to be mentioned at the bottom of the press release, and they also reference the game as SimCity&#153, emphasis on &#153. This suggests that there was actually some cooperation going on between the two companies -- I wonder how much of the $29.95 goes to EA instead of Atelier?

    How legal are all of these game clones coming out for the Palm, Handspring, Psion, etc.?

  • I'd have to come up with the cash for a Palm if it played Civ too.

    I haven't played Civ or SimCity in months, and I'm getting anxious (maybe I better finish installing FreeCiv).

    George
  • According to a friend of mine, he doesn't think it would work as the screenshots use greyscale, which PalmOS 2.x apparently doesn't have.... :-( (Yes, I've still got a PalmPilot, too)

    Does anyone remember where to find upgrade information? There used to be a site that had upgrade info to replace the card in a PalmPilot with that from a PalmIII, but I can't find it anymore. It might be worth it just to play this game....
  • Yup, loaded it onto my Visor a couple of days ago.

    I don't remember the original in detail, but I think this might be more acurately described as based on the original SIM City. Fun, though I'm not sure it's quite worth the price they're charging.

    I haven't noticed any speed problems yet, but I haven't gotten a very big city yet, either.

  • Now, of course we can't have something this cool without making it useful in the most obscene manner.

    Doom gave us the process manager from hell. (Literally.) Come to think of it, SimCity *could* make an interesting process manager, with change in logsize over time representing trash, and erroring processes on fire.

    What else could we do to make SimCity a useful environment? Accurate maps of cities merged into SimCity might be a fun toy, particularly with a HandSpring Visor supplied w/ GPS functionality.

    That'd be interesting--walking around a SimRealCity...

    All we need is a module interface.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com

  • Probably because PalmOS 3 has far better memory management... there were issues about PalmOS 1 and 2 not being terribly efficient in allocating large chunks of memory, and there were also memory fragmentation problems. 230K is a fair bit...

    --bdj

  • The games on my Nokia are a livesaver. I always have my phone on me, so I always have something to do if the train is late, friend is late, etc.

    I mean, heaven forbid that I should actually sit and think for five minutes without electronic stimulation.

  • I used to run it on a Mac Plus (quite decently I might add). The pilot has as much or more power as that.

    Tom
  • My apologies - I'm not a player, so I merely looked up their website and they didn't mention any single-player mode (which would require some form of AI) so I assumed there was none.

    Sorry...

    Greg
  • Works just fine on my PalmPro.. Of course the fact that it has the 2MB upgrade/IR card in it (flashed to OS 3.3) might have something to do with it. (:

    --

  • (Score:1)

    by Kajakske ( 59577 )



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  • k


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  • Wonderful idea, and it looks like it is loyal to the original; I just can't wait for the first idiot call concerning this one:

    "How can I help you?"

    "Dude, the monster just nailed my police station and started fires in my commercial zone!"

    "What?!? Have you tried a soft reset?"

    I hate doing tech support. :/

    Deosyne

  • It works pretty cool (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I just decided to shell out the $30 and got the game. Works pretty good. I'm impressed by the speed. The scrolling is very responsive. My city has a population of 2500 so I don't know (yet!) how well it'll perform with a huge metropolis yet. Great game!
  • It definitly ran on the C64. Hmmm, I guess it's time to search my cellar for my old 64 again. Time to play some Sim City and Last Ninja 3
  • If you click on their future release you'll see this:

    SimLaptop

    Want to play tons of games with speed and resolution - BUY a laptop.

    Personally, I'm waiting for the PalmPilot PalmReader. "Yes, I see a long lifeline, a marriage in your future, and your SimCity is in desperate need of a capital gains tax."

  • see this reply:

    #22 [slashdot.org]

    seems okay for now...

  • I tried to download this package, but the e-comerce site barfs when I try to make the order. I have tried with both IE5 and NE4.7

    Never have any problems with Amazon over a secure link.... and going through a firewall though.

    Any ideas?
  • Could you have hit the nail on the head, albeit inadvertently? I mean, FreeCiv is GPL and, while it's multiplayer only, would it be truly impossible to build an AI module to allow computer players? Might get to the point where it needed an otherwise empty Vx to play it on, but... :)

    I suppose you could make a multiplayer only version, but the idea of people having to gether round and keep their IR ports aligned while playing beggars belief!

    Greg
  • The web site mentions that you need at least OS 3.0 or higher (Palm III, V, VII, etc.). Does anyone know why? I have an original 1000 that's been upgraded to Pro 2.05. I guess it's time to cave in and get one of the new models...
  • Actually, Quake has been ported to the Apple Newton which was reported here on slashdot half a year ago:

    http://slashdot.org/articles/older/98422131657.s html
    for the story and

    http://www.emeraldnet.net/~ravenous/NewtonQuake/ index.htm
    for the stuff.
  • The first computer I played SimCity on was an AMD 286/16 with 1 meg of RAM. It was plenty fast. The only complaint I had was that the landscape was too small - you could fill up the entire map in about 12 hours or so of play. Of course, then you had things like population growth and pollution and transportation, and that kinda stuff to deal with. But it was never quite as fun once the map was full.
    The 68030 equivalent in the Palm should run this game really well. I may have to get this.
  • It looks like they have some psion software on the sate as well. Probably simcity as well.

    John.
  • When will they port Doom?
  • Anyone remember Empire? That would be a great game to have on the Palm. You could play it in turn based multiplayer and beam your turns back and forth. However, the whole game was based on color coding (Red Team, Yellow Team, etc.) so I'm not sure if you could work it in BW. I actually got into Empire a lot more than Civilization.
  • SimCity is pretty good, but the Maxis game I think would be great on the pilot is Robosport. Especially with the IR, great meeting killer, and since its not real time like SimCity I'm less likely to get excited and put my stylus through the screen.



  • Build quarters, hydroponic farms for your workers. Mine material, sell it for cash. If pirates steal Diridium, prices rise; but if you dont pass along some extra money to keep the workers happy they'll revolt!

    SimCity Classic for Palm: ~240K. Miner: 48K.

    check it out at http://www.Bprojects.com [bprojects.com]
  • Correction: FreeCiv does have an AI. Check out the commands easy, normal, hard, ai from the server console. I think the palm screen would be cumbersome to play any of the Civ/SimBlah games on because it's so small.

    --Bob

  • Just remembered the Newton port was a fake :) I'm sort of old-school and generally think you can do anything if you're just really good at coding and tweaking the hardware (I mean look at recent C64-demos) so I often buy these kinds of spoofs... which is why I dont like them :)
  • OK, so if you wanted to play games on a small machine, why wouldn't you buy a gameboy? Aren't they just a bit less expensive and now come in color? Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but I just can't imagine forking out a couple hundrd bucks on a machine so I can play sim city on the airplane and then pretend I'm looking up a contact when the boss sits down next to me. Either he's going to think I'm very slow at looking things up ("you've been looking for that phone number for an hour now"), or that the palm he bought me is useless. *shrug*

    I guess games for pda's are kina cool for entertaining yourself now and again, but I feel it's as useless as the few games on my nokia phone -- why!?
    SL33ZE, MCSD
    em: joedipshit@hotmail.com
  • I am so tired of the clamoring for a color Palm. Newsflash: its a Franklin Planner with an attitude problem. Adding color would just create overhead that detracts from its primary purpose: maintaining databases. The Motorola Dragonball is a hell of a good CPU for pushing the Palm's functions, but you start sweating it with color graphics, it is going to deteriorate in its fast management of personal contact information, which is the real point. Those engineers at Palm are some really smart sumguns and very nice folks, but they are not miracle workers; they still get limited by the hardware. You want to see what I mean? Run your favorite flavor of Linux on a 486/DX 33 with 4 MB RAM. Now load up XFree86. Now find a hobby to take up while the computer tries to do anything in X. Same deal, smaller scale.

    Deosyne

  • Re:"They said it couldn't be done" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Palm is quite a bit faster than all of the above... The Dragonball CPU in the Palm is a descendant of the 680x0 series used in the Amiga and Atari ST, and running at 16MHz it should easily outperform both. Add to it that they only need to animate 160x120 (or something close?) of screen realestate, and only 1 or 2 bit bitplanes, it performance shouldn't be a problem.

    Neither should memory. I belive it ran fine in 512kb on the Amiga, and while I don't remember how much memory it ate, I believe I ran other programs beside it, and much of what it did use was certainly graphics and sound.

    So I would cretainly not had said it couldn't be done... :-)

  • It works fairly well and seems to be an exact port, down to some of the minor bugs I remember from the original. What is interesting to me is seeing how a mouse-driven interface translates to one which is pen-based. Until I became used to the zone placement, my city was looking very patchy and the roads are still somewhat uneven but that could just be a digitizer on the fritz. Its very addictive and has now replaced dopewars (high: 86 million) as the meeting distraction of choice.

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