Barchok Blog

The title says it all, really. An isometric remake of Sim Tower, the Maxis game from 1994. I know that various people have made attempts to do a straight remake of the original game, and I know there’s at least two attempts that are currently “active”. HighRise Developer seems to be the most successful so far, having actually released alpha versions. OpenTower looks to be pretty much dead. Other remakes are even less known about, and are either as unknown as this one currently is, or died before they got anywhere.

So, why isometric instead of straight up 3d or a straight 2d remake? Well, the original 2d lacked a lot of depth, in that you couldn’t really lay out the building with more designs beyond the basic large base, smaller top, or even the less exciting sold rectangular block. Yoot Tower improved things a bit with the ability to build multiple bases, and have sky bridges that spanned the gaps, but you were still limited to two dimensions. Actual towers are usually a bit wider than a few meters. Thus, the decision to include a third dimension. However, full 3d requires additional complexity with the code and graphics, and good 3d graphics take longer to do than good 2d graphics. Plus, I had an isometric engine that could do multiple levels already made, so why not?

So, what’s next? Currently, I don’t have much more done than most of the remake projects, and nothing that’s worthy of showing off. Any screenshots right now would consist of terrible graphics made within 5 minutes in Paint.net, downloadable version isn’t too exciting when there’s nothing to do outside of build some blank flooring. My next goal is to get some of the basic game elements in, such as offices, a lobby, and elevators, and possibly more. I hope to get there in a month. At that point, it will probably be worthy of a demo. For now, terrible graphics screenshots.

Skybridges are possible.

Cutaway view of the skybridge.

Sim Mine is a game where you build a small, old west style mining town from the ground up. The original version was created around September 2007, as was basically a flat 2d style game, with terrible, small graphics.

Additionally, the coding turned into a horrible mess and it got to the point where adding any more features would be too painful. The project was scrapped with plans to revisit it at a later date. I spent some time with Ludum Dare projects to get better at coding overall, and get a better grasp on what was needed to complete a game. Post Mortems of those games are on this blog.
Continue reading ‘Game Engine Redux: Sim Mine’ »