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Reply 21 of 43, by gerwin

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Here is a UK only offer. EA Classics release EN/FR/DE. The back of the box shows only the Windows 95 version.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/391790435739

Would it be possible to make a patcher for all those stuck with the win3.1 version?

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 22 of 43, by Osprey

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gerwin wrote:

Would it be possible to make a patcher for all those stuck with the win3.1 version?

It would depend on how much changed between versions. If the Win95 version has a different graphics set, the different main menu and maybe other things like improved music, it wouldn't be very justifiable. If, on the other hand, it's basically just the executable and, maybe, a few DLLs that changed, then a patch would be more feasible. It probably wouldn't be technically legal, though, since you'd be patching one retail release to turn it into another. The argument could be made that "EA/Maxis didn't release a patch to upgrade the Win3.1 version to the Win95 version because they wanted you to buy the game all over again, so producing an unofficial patch would reduce sales." On the other hand, it seems like the Win95 version (or any version) isn't being sold anymore, so some sites (but probably not this one) would likely let it slide. That said, I'm guessing that a lot more changed between versions than just a few files. I wouldn't know because I don't have it and never even played it.

Reply 23 of 43, by jaZz_KCS

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A patch isn't feasible. As I have described in grand detail on the last page, the differences are too big to make a patch viable.

Different music, different Graphic Sets ("Classic 95"), different HUD, different sounds and a different main menu, not to mention the added Maxis logo-video. Except for the asset files used for the other graphic sets from before, it has been redone basically.

Same is true for the Terrain Editor, it has been redone from scratch for Win32. See last page for further info + screenshots.

Reply 24 of 43, by gerwin

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Yes, I was aware of most of that. Still technically anything can be patched to anything, as long as there is usable fingerprint. A piece of software is in a way just a very long number. The legality; don't know what to say. I just leave it worded by members more interested/knowledgable in that subject.
It was just a wild idea, after concluding that I have no reasonable way to buy such a rare used CD around here. A terribly tedious but still faster way is to continue the micropolis tile redraw, that someone started on reddit Link 1 Link 2. Actually micropolis needs a tile-combiner tool first, to work on it properly.

--> ISA Soundcard Overview // Doom MBF 2.04 // SetMul

Reply 25 of 43, by noshutdown

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jaZz_KCS wrote:

As promised here are comparison screenshots of both versions.

First up, the widely known "for windows" version, SimCity for Windows, later renamed SimCity Classic for Windows:

Compared to the elusive Windows 95 version, also known as SimCity for Windows 95, or Simcity for Windows 2.0:

hello
i am also interested in how many versions did the old simcity have.
does the first version support sound cards? and does it have the infamous "divide by zero" error on fast computers?
is the second version, the "simcity classic for windows95" a pure 32bit windows executable and would it refuse to run in windows3.1?
what are the title screens of the two versions?

Reply 26 of 43, by vogamer

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Hi all, SimCity 2.0 was, as I understand, re-coded for 32-bit Windows and no patches or upgrades were made available for the 16-bit version.

I think the most interesting aspect of this is that the 32-bit version works and is good, however no one is really promoting or talking about it.

Thanks again for everyone who has contributed to this thread and cheers!

Reply 27 of 43, by NeoVamp

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Great news to hear that this was found, maybe some day I'll see it for sale somewhere and it can grace my DOS/W95 PC

Pentium 1 - 233MHZ MMX / 96MB / Soundblaster AWE32 / MT-32 / SC-55 / SB-55
Diamond Stealth 64 / Diamond Monster 3D (4MB) / Dos 7.1 / 120GB IDE HDD

Reply 28 of 43, by ssybesma

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SimCity for Windows 95 will not install onto Windows 10 because of the Installshield Setup Launcher having a 16-bit stub.

You can fix the issue so it will successfully install by replacing the ISL executable which you can download.

I posted instructions on archive.org:

The SETUP95.EXE will refuse to install the game. That's because it's a very old version of Installshield Setup Launcher (version […]
Show full quote

The SETUP95.EXE will refuse to install the game. That's because it's a very old version of Installshield Setup Launcher (version 3) that is not compatible and contains a 16-bit setup launcher stub.
The solution is here:
https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10988
Download LS3ENGINE.ZIP
Add SETUP32.EXE to the same folder that has Setup95.exe and run that instead. Voila!!!
This solution may actually work for other games of the same era of the late '90s which used the same version of ISL that SimCity used.

After you do that, get the HLP file working in Windows 10 by following these instructions:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/f … ed33265c?page=2

Now you have EVERYTHING working like it should.

One irritation that I've noticed with the SCW95 game is that scrolling does not work unless you manually drag the scroll down or across on the edge of the window.

Previous versions from the very first one automatically scrolled by simply moving the mouse to edges of the window.

Reply 29 of 43, by filipetolhuizen

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Just tried it and it has the same problems SC2000 for Win95 has, it crashes when saving or loading cities on Win7. IIRC someone here made a patch for SC2000. Same fix is needed for SCW95.

Reply 30 of 43, by Srandista

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Try attached patch.

Attachments

  • Filename
    SC_Savepatch.zip
    File size
    34.42 KiB
    Downloads
    116 downloads
    File comment
    SimCity Classic 2.0 save patch
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Socket 775 - ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA, Pentium E6500K, 4GB RAM, Radeon 9800XT, ESS Solo-1, Win 98/XP
Socket A - Chaintech CT-7AIA, AMD Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9600XT, ESS ES1869F, Win 98

Reply 32 of 43, by Srandista

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Does it work for you?

Socket 775 - ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA, Pentium E6500K, 4GB RAM, Radeon 9800XT, ESS Solo-1, Win 98/XP
Socket A - Chaintech CT-7AIA, AMD Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9600XT, ESS ES1869F, Win 98

Reply 35 of 43, by Errius

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OTish question, but between what versions are the saved games sharable? Can you load a DOS version savegame on the Windows or Mac versions and vice-versa?

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 36 of 43, by Gernot1966

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Errius, SimCity (classic) cities are interchangeable between all releases on all platforms (as far as i know).
NOTE: DOS and Win versions will open an Amiga or Mac file, to open a DOS file on the Amiga you have to load the city first to the Terrain Editor (Mac i can't remember even if i had one for a couple of years).
Glitches are possible i noted that not all data is properly written by the DOS Terrain Editor (V1.0 fails to write the set difficulty level, fixed in V1.1 but still it writes the cash amount twice to a wrong address and no one ever noticed this never fixed and "ach was noch")
---
It is even possible to load a classic city to SC2K (the borders of the city will be extended to fit the new size).

Btw, nice cobby 😉

Edit:
MS-DOS and Amiga have exchanged use of church and hospital (a church in DOS release is a hospital in the Amiga release and vice versa), i have a script to fix this for the Amiga a batch for DOS i would have to write first. I assume the effect of the building to the simulation is the same but i don't like churches to well thus i like to fix this.
There exists a DOS programe called "EditCity" which will do a similar job (it was the paragon for my script) to exchange churches and hospitals to either a hi-density residential or hi-density commercial but it won't exchange them to fix the "DOS to Amiga" issue. EditCity allows you further to set the amount of cash (next best thing to do), change the tax rate (whatfor?) and alter the "external market size" (which isn't clear to me what it is, later more). You could even change population, crime and pollution ramp as well as the growth (rci graphic) but as the author atates himself these have no influence on the game since these values change (will be calculated new) as soon as a game is loaded also "EditCity" doesn't shows the actual population the value needs to be calculated based on this how i haven't solved properly yet, you can subtract com-pop and ind-pop from res-pop and multiply this with 40 and get to a value near to what is shown in the game.
Right yesterday i found a similar program to edit the savegames of SC classic but i haven't tried it yet.

Since i don't remember where i retrieved "EditCity" from i link mine here:
download/file.php?mode=view&id=151299

You might like "Terraform" (teraform) to, this DOS proggy generates fractal terrains (sort of height map) which differ a lot to what SimCity offers, it's worth to be tried out i only use terrains created by "Terraform". It is as well what i have on my machine and i use a different "teraform.dat" which is simply a SimCity city, from this "Teraform" takes the values for, tax rate, cash, year, marketsize (probably even more).
download/file.php?mode=view&id=151300


To the market size assumptions,
the manual states that the "external market size" would grow with the demand/production of you city but this isn't true, the value which is registered as "external market size" doesn't changes from start to end no matter how big or how old the city is. MS-DOS games start with a size of "6" while the DOS Terrain editor writes here a "zero" resp. the value stays unchanged and unchanged means "zero" for a new map, another issue of the DOS TerrainEditor, if you ever wondered why maps made by the terrain editor grow bad - here's the reason "external market size = 0", it seems the DOS release is buggy as hell and i assume it's not the last - but the least!), Amiga games start with a value of "4" as well as the Amiga terrain editor will fill in here "4". Personally i use a value of "5".
For a little while i thought it could be the connectivity similar to the connectivity values in SC2K (1-8), the effect of altering this value is very little that's why i assumed this. Since i played some games since my first assumption i noted an effect of the altering (i used "7" then) especially in hard mode cities grew notable better, to good for hard imho.
Since this value is static it could reflect the amount of neighbour cities and "4" would make some sense.
However, resp. whatever it reflects it has an influence on growth, not immediately noteable but it has an effect.

Finally since i post here about SimCity Classic, a difference of "SimCity Enhanced CD-ROM" (interplay) to all other SimCity, apart from the look and the cheesy clips "SC-Enhanced" has an extreme setting for hard, the annual costs for roads and railroads are about 4 times higher as i all other releases this makes difficulty "hard" to "impossible" since already Roads will eat your budget up.
A workearound is to use no roads, resp. one road tile in front of every building - that works in "Classic", you have zero traffic nonetheless all buildings are connected to the non existing grid and the cost is low enough to make profit in "SC Enhanced" with difficulty set to "hard".
Btw, this is stored in the savegame because if i reopen a city from "Enhanced" in hard mode in a different release the extreme high cost stays, on the other hand if i load a city from a different release to "Enhanced" it will be changed.


Another DOS SimCity/TerrainEditor issue (least important one):
The Amiga Terrain Editor writes to the fields for "traffic funding", "police funding", "fire dept. funding" a 0x0064 (dec 100) for 100% .
The DOS Terrain editor needs a longword for this (a dbl word to store a value from 0-100???) and stores here 0x0000FFFF resp. the games stores 0x00010000 - 65536 to reflect 1-100% huh?
MS-DOS will interprete the Amiga 0x0064(0000) proper as 0x00010000 while vice versa the Amiga release will make 1% out of 0x0001(0000).
That the DOS Terrain Editor mirrors the cash amount in the field for "police funding" doubles this issue (means lower as 0x0001(0000) is zero %, i.e. 0x0000FFFF equals to zero %.
Practically this means a game started on the Amiga and loaded to MS-DOS SimCity has the proper funding percentage while a game started in MS-DOS SimCity and loaded to the Amiga release has the funding set to 1% and must be revisited at start (or use a "fixit" script like i do).

Attachments

  • Filename
    TERAFORM.zip
    File size
    62.36 KiB
    Downloads
    64 downloads
    File license
    Public domain
  • Filename
    EDITCITY.zip
    File size
    55.27 KiB
    Downloads
    61 downloads
    File license
    Public domain

Reply 37 of 43, by Gernot1966

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Since you might like to hack or write a "fix-it" yourself here's what i found out so far:

Values for unsmoothened terrain
-------------------------------

0x0000 Dirt
0x0002 River/Sea
0x0003 Edited River
0x0004 Channel
0x3025 Forest


savegame addresses
------------------

0x0BC3 external market size, either 0 (tered), 4 (amiga) or 6 (ms-dos), stays through whole game

0x0BC4 residintial population, value changes when loaded
0x0BC6 commercial population, value changes when loaded
0x0BC8 industrial population, value changes when loaded
total population: (respop - indpop - compop) x 4 x 10, not exactly but quite close to


0x0BCA residential value (rci graphic), value changes when loaded
0x0BCC commercial value (rci graphic), value changes when loaded
0x0BCE industrial value (rci graphic), value changes when loaded

0x0BD0 - 0x0BD3 weeks since january 1st 1900, NOTE: one year equals 48 weeks

0x0BD5 crime ramp, value changes while playing (change has no real influence)
0x0BD7 pollute ramp, value changes while playing (change has no real influence)

in between: unknown values

0x0BDF level 0 - 2

0x0BE1 city category 1 - 5 (1 = village, 5 = megalopolis)

0x0BE2 overall city score (max. 0x03E8, 1000), value changes while playing (without annual change, while i can't find the value for annual change stored somewhere)

0x0C24 - 0x0C27 cash

0x0C29 auto bulldoze 0/1
0x0C2B auto budget 0/1
0x0C2D auto goto 0/1
0x0C2F sound 0/1
0x0C31 tax rate 1 - 20 (0x01 - 0x14)
0x0C33 speed 0 - 4 (amiga 1 - 3, unfortunately 0 pause is fast (3) as well)

ms-dos 0x0C35 police funding 100% 0x1000
ms-dos 0x0C39 fire funding 100% 0x1000
ms-dos 0x0C3D traffic funding 100% 0x1000
amiga 0x0C35 police funding 100% 0x64
amiga 0x0C39 fire funding 100% 0x64
amiga 0x0C3D traffic funding 100% 0x64

NOTE:
tered writes first line of map from top left to bottom left

What is apart from hacking the savestate of interest is maybe the channel (0x0004), assumed you like to edit the channel of a generated map (i.e. with Teraform) it can be useful to change all channel data 0x0004 to 0x0002 "river". to avoid that any else data as the factual map will be changed (because 0x0004 could be external market size, tax rate or probably any) split the source file at address 0x0CB0 and alter only the map data then re-join the snippets.

The final note is a personal reminder and reminds me that the map data is written in columns startet at top left to bottom left since i had the idea to retrieve this data and to show a preview (i tossed this idea, it will take aeons to generate the preview when i use a script)