The game was designed for Windows 3.1, so Win98 is already a lot different. Issues regarding window size might show up with these titles, like Nightmare 3D hangs if you try to run it in full screen in any Windows version other than 3.x and Fury3x can't go full screen on any Windows based on NT.

Try lowering your resolution to 640x480. I think you might be able to do that in the compatibility mode options, or perhaps with Resplendent Resolver.

There are alternatives such as LinCity or Micropolis, but I haven't tried them myself.

I don't think you guys read the post to the questions I actually had.

Ayoye... 😒

Starting the game with a resolution higher than what the game expects may be causing the game to load up a "blank layout". Try lowering your resolution to 640x480. In Windows 7 or XP, I think you might be able to do that in the compatibility mode options, or perhaps with Resplendent Resolver.

There is no universal solution to this sort of problem as this is not a problem that happens in a wide variety of applications. Have you looked for patches already?

But the layout is not blank until I save options. Also, this has happened on my Win98SE machine, so it's not a quirk of a newer OS.

Googling "simcity classic for windows patch" results in this page. I'm sure that's a dead end.

bucket wrote:

But the layout is not blank until I save options.

So maybe it is calculating the numbers it should store on the basis of the current resolution, and combing up with bad numbers.

Also, this has happened on my Win98SE machine, so it's not a quirk of a newer OS.

So are you running Windows 98SE at 640x480? What resolution are you running it at? Windows 3.1 was often run at 640x480.

Hmm.
Would it be better to track down a copy of SC2k? How does that run on a netbook?

This is why I mentioned LinCity and Micropolis. Micropolis is in fact based on the original SimCity source code and should run easily on all modern systems, and presumably will even play exactly the same as the original. It seems you can get it at http://sourceforge.net/projects/micropolis.mirror/ .

Netbooks come in a wide variety of different specifications, so it is hard to say how well anything will run on your netbook. Does your netbook run DOSBox?

It's an Atom netbook (basically an underpowered P4), so I imagine it's powerful enough to run a game made in 1993. I'll go out on a limb and say all x86 netbooks are similarly capable. My concern was whether it's still compatible.

Jorpho wrote:

There are alternatives such as LinCity or Micropolis, but I haven't tried them myself.

I was hoping Micropolis would be a good alternative but it does not have a convienent Win32 release. Yet today I found and tried a new branch micropolisjava-1.1. This one actually runs nicely. 😀

bucket wrote:

My concern was whether it's still compatible.

As SimCity 2000 does nothing fancy with actual 3D rendering, I would not expect it to have any compatibility problems with the hardware.

bucket wrote:

It's an Atom netbook (basically an underpowered P4), so I imagine it's powerful enough to run a game made in 1993. I'll go out on a limb and say all x86 netbooks are similarly capable. My concern was whether it's still compatible.

It is powerful enough. The window problem happens because Win7 AND Win9x deals with them a lot differently than Win3.x. If you do what Jorpho said, plus lowering the colours to 8-bit mode and disabling visual themes there's a chance you may get rid of the problem. If not, there are some few more things to try using Microsoft ACT 5.x. Simcity 2000 still complains when running with more than 256 colours and some animations do not play correctly.