E3: SimCity 4 Preview Goodness

Anonymous Coward writes "Wowie! The folks at Electronic Arts look to be working hard on the next installment of SimCity! Although there's no official, dedicated release date, they plan on demoing it at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Gamers.com has an article, as does GameSpot, and both seem to have a number of screenshots. Interesting: there now seems to be a nighttime mode, and perhaps there's some weather effects? The note from MaxisJoseph claims there will be a personal angle to every high-level action taken; will there be a chance for dynamic screenshots of our cities during, say, lightning storms, blizzards or sandstorms? And will they ask Koch or Guiliani for endorsements?" I know I'm not the only one who wants to play the Sims in the SimTower in the SimCity on SimEarth with the pesky SimAnts in the balcony garden.

Quite interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that they're using SDL/Mesa to do the port. It should work natively with most joysticks and mice, sound via OSS and /dev/sound. They're probably using SDL in conjunction with Transgaming's new product as well, so this will show many flagship technologies for Linux. I don't know if they're using the dynamic bytecode recompilation technique or if they're going with a straight transcription matrix for portability, but I'm looking forward to it all the same because I'd like to see SimCity with a full colour depth.

Re:The thing that made the original great.

[Anonymous Coward]

That one only worked on the mac version from what I remember. It was spare time game when I was at hyperstudio school in like .. 4th grade that I learned it. It's like the contra code, still remember it.