Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!fluke!mce
From: mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Short games review (SimCity)
Message-ID: <9609@fluke.COM>
Date: 13 Jul 89 21:10:57 GMT
References: <20573@bikini.cis.ufl.EDU> <1573@marvin.Solbourne.COM>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Distribution: usa
Organization: SRS Recursive Software, Castrovalva, WA
Lines: 54

In article <1573@marvin.Solbourne.COM> dce@Solbourne.com (David Elliott) writes:
>I've seen the color upgrade, and my opinion is that it's almost not
>worth bothering with.  On the plus side, it's in color, not
>copy-protected (I may buy it for this reason), and works with
>MultiFinder.  On the minus side, it requires you to be in 16-color
>mode.  So, it may be useful for viewing existing cities, but
>having to switch your monitor sucks, Switch-a-Roo notwithstanding.

There are some major problems with this (according to Maxis) "nearly bug free"
1.1c version:

	The user interface is slow.  VERY slow.  Unbelievable slow.  On a Mac
	II with 5Mb!  I imagine this is why they insist on 16 color mode
	(rather than fixing a real design problem).

	Mouse down events ignore the cursor position.  Instead, when the event
	is finally handled, they use the *present* mouse position.  A real
	*obvious* problem for a slow program.  The 1.1 version does the same
	thing, but it's so much faster you don't notice.

	"Drawing" (roads, etc) too fast will skip areas.  A related, and
	frustrating, design flaw.

	Drawing with the shift key held down does constrain to horizontal and
	vertical, but it will only draw underneath the cursor!  This means you
	*still* have to very carefully draw on the horizontal or vertical line.

	Colors are not managed correctly.  If you are silly enough to run
	another color program in 16 color mode (yuck), when you switch back to
	SimCity all your colors are wrong.  It is apparent that they didn't
	bother using the Palette Manager, which is strange as it greatly
	simplifies using color.

	But that's not so important because, although the program may "work"
	under MultiFinder, don't try to switch out too often.  I've crashed
	three times when switching back in to SimCity.

	There are many other minor bugs (such as the "go away" box: it
	highlights as per the user interface spec, but nothing happens!).

The game itself is amazing and addictive.  They do know how to write an
entertaining city simulator.  They don't know how to write Macintosh software
(as I understand it they are "really" Amiga programmers; still I can't believe
how bad 1.1c is; surely the Amiga handles mouse events correctly).

It is nice to have color (the industrial areas are particularly good), but the
only reason I use the 1.1c version is because I don't have to &%$#@ reboot
under UniFinder like I did for 1.1.

Luckily, you can only buy 1.1c as an upgrade.
 
 
Brian McElhinney
mce@tc.fluke.com