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First post, by Guspaz

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Rank Newbie
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Newbie

I noticed that in modern versions of Windows (I'm using 10, but I've heard this affects 8+), palette-based animations in the Win95 version of SimCity 2000 don't work.

I did some digging, and the issue appears to be that the 256-color compatibility mode changed at some point such that Windows does not reflect the results of palette changes until the application repaints that part of the window. By default, SC2K only repaints little bits of the window as it requires, so all the palette-based animations (water, traffic, powerlines, buildings, etc) are for the most part frozen.

I wrote a small app that fixes this by repeatedly invalidating the paint status of SC2K's windows, causing it to redraw the entire window every time it changes the palette, fixing the animations. I've released it here:

https://github.com/Guspaz/SC2KRepainter

There are some side effects. When you click and drag to place things like powerlines, roads, zones, etc. the price will flicker and only show up until the next repaint, which is probably because the game doesn't expect that part of the screen to be repainted. That's well worth the tradeoff for fixing animations for me, though I've not tested this extensively, so there may be other side-effects.

This problem is definitely better fixed by patching the game directly (to repaint the window every time the palette changes, and maybe to bypass the side effects by redrawing those numbers too), but x86 assembly hacking is outside my wheelhouse, so I just threw together this external solution.

Reply 1 of 1, by vetz

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Rank l33t
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l33t

Welcome to Vogons btw 😀

Nice patch. I normally play Simcity 2000 on my retro systems, but it's great for those who wants to play on their modern PC 😀

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