My love for Simcity began in the early 90’s with Simcity Classic. My family had just moved to Colorado from Omaha and we were staying with my uncle while they finished work on the house. I was first introduced to it when my uncle let me use his super fast 486 PC. I would sit for hours playing, and then let the game run by itself while my budget went up. I engrossed myself in every aspect trying to figure out the perfect measure of industrial, residential, and commercial lots. When Simcity 2000 came out my family’s PC was too slow to run it. I saved up every penny from babysitting and mowing lawns so I could buy a Sega Saturn, then I bought Simcity 2000. What followed were more countless hours building massive cities and trying to populate them with the Arcologies which were cities within cities. All this was followed by Simcity 3000, Simcity 4, then Simcity 4 with the Rush Hour expansion pack. A game I still play today more than any other. In fact you can now download hundreds of custom buildings and add-ons making the game even more incredible and realistic.I even have Simcity on my iphone.
DOSBox 0.74-2 has been released! A maintenance release for DOSBox 0.74, which solves the following problems: Windows: Fix auto/max cycles algorithm on Windows 7, which helps with stuttering audio. Mac OS X: Bring a 64 bit version and improve performance. Linux: Fix the 64bit dynrec cpu core and a lot of compilation problems. On my screen, that doubled the window size just as it does with the max Font tab in Windows Properties (for the exe file; as you'll see below the marks, 32-bit Windows doesn't need Dosbox). Then, search on 'output', and as the instruction in the conf file warns, if and only if you have 'hardware scaling', change the default 'output=surface.
Custom mods, add-ons, buildings, and maps for Simcity 4 Rush Hour / Deluxe can be found on these sites.
But I’m not writing about the newer version of Simcity today. Because I recently fell back in love with Simcity 2000 and I can still play it on Mac OS X, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 with DOSBox. (Even in Win7 x64!)
Anyone who hasn’t used DOS before are going to need to know a few commands first. DOSbox is a DOS emulator so all the commands work just the same but DOSbox also comes with some new ones for mounting CD’s, folders, etc. DOSbox for me has worked great with SC2k out of the box, so to speak. I haven’t had to change anything with the settings or setup a config file. Here are some simple instructions.
1. Download DOSbox for whatever OS you are using (http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1) and install it.
2. Downloads Simcity 2000 (http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/82/SimCity+2000.htmlits free!) After you have downloaded it extract the files into a folder called SC2000 and put that on the root of your C: drive.
3. Run DOSbox and type int he following command at the Z: prompt. “mount c c:sc2000” (without the “”). This will mount the sc2000 folder as the C: drive so you can navigate to it in dosbox. Another option is to create a folder on C: called DOSgames and put all your games in there within separate directories. I currently have one with Simcity Classic, Simcity 2000, and Simant.
4. After the game folder is mounted you can navigate into it by typing “c:” at the z: prompt. This will automatically move you into the c mount. You can then type “dir” to get a directory listing and find the exe you need to run. Or just type “sc2000” to run the game.
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A few other commands for browsing DOS:
cd is change directory. Example would be “cd C:sc2000”
cd will take you to the root.
cd.. will go up one directory
I leave you with some wonderful images of Simcity 2000 in action.
But what about Mac? Follow the instructions above, download DOSbox?Download Boxer for Mac OS. Simply follow the really easy instructions that come with Boxer.
Put the sc2000 folder in your user directory. For example usersmkauspesc2000. (Above the doucments and downloads folder).
Use the command “mount c ~/sc2000” instead, it will mount that sc2000 folder in the users directory as C:.
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Game plays the same with music and sound!
Compared to today’s high-definition games, DOS games used low resolutions, so playing old games in DOSBox on a modern LCD monitor or HDTV is not an optimal experience without some configuration. The dosbox.conf file controls how DOSBox displays old games and software. These settings can be changed by opening the DOSBox Options from the Start menu.
First, I change the line that says fullresolution=original to fullresolution=1920x1080, which is my monitor’s native resolution. If your monitor is different, be sure to use its resolution (e.g. 1680×1050, 1366×768, etc.).
Next I change output=surface to output=ddraw to allow for scaling and aspect ratio correction. Some DOS resolutions do not use square pixels, so aspect ratio correction keeps these games from looking “squished” on the screen (old CRT monitors did not have a fixed number of pixels, so this was not an issue back in the day).
Once the output is set to ddraw, we can enable aspect correction and scaling. To do this I change the aspect=false line to aspect=true. Right after that I like to change scaler=normal2x to scaler=hq3x. This will depend on your personal preference and the speed of your hardware. hq3x scales the image up 300%, but it can make things look a bit “cartoon-ish” because it smooths pixellated edges. Notice how the large red numbers in the screenshots below are pixellated in the first image but smoothed out in the second image with hq3x scaling. The results vary depending on what’s being displayed on the screen, but something is better than nothing.
Just for comparison, here is DOOM at its original resolution. It’s amazing how much information game artists were able to cram into so few pixels.
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As I mentioned, these settings are my personal preference, so you may want to experiment to find settings that look good to you and give you the performance you want.