SIMCITY 2000(R) Last Minute Info v1.0 (17-NOV-94) Congratulations and thank you for purchasing SimCity 2000. This readme file should be able to answer any questions or problems that you are experiencing with SimCity 2000. It also contains some game hints and explanations of things that may not have been clear in the manual. Please read it. CHANGING THE DEFAULT SIMCITY 2000 AMIGA RESOLUTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------- By default, when you launch SimCity 2000 for the Amiga, it will ask you the screen resolution you wish to run in and save that setting. Should you change your system or wish to launch SimCity 2000 in a different resolution, hold down the Shift key while double-clicking on the SimCity 2000 icon. GAME PLAY ISSUES Saved Cities ------------------------------------------------------------------------- For your simulating pleasure, we have included several saved cities created by various Maxis employees. They are located in your SimCity 2000 directory. Micro-Simulators ------------------------------------------------------------------------- When querying some structures, you get local statistics about that structure. For instance, querying on a Police Station will tell you how many crimes and arrests were handled by that station, and querying on a school will tell you how many teachers and students are attending that school as well as the average grade of the students. Most placeable structures (police, fire, schools, colleges, power plants, the Mayor's House, arcologies, etc.) have these micro-simulators. Some structures share one micro-simulator for all the structures placed. Things like the bus system, railroad depots, marinas, libraries, windmills, and hydroelectric power plants among others have one micro-simulator for each category (one micro-simulator for all the bus stations, one for all the railroad depots, etc.). Where is this all headed, you ask? Well, each city can only have 150 microsimulators in it. If you go beyond that, the structure you place will still affect the simulator globally (police stations will still stop crime, bus stations will still carry passengers, arcologies will still hold people), but you just won't be able to see any local information on those structures. This isn't going to harm your city in any way. We're telling you this because it's pretty easy to run out of micro-simulators in a large city and we don't want you thinking something's wrong. Terrain Editing ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are building a city and go into the terrain edit mode, your city will disappear, but any trees or water that you have placed in the city will show up in terrain edit mode. Also, if you have placed a bridge or other structure that automatically builds landfill, the landfill will also show up in terrain edit mode. These can be removed with the Lower Terrain tool. Airports ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Keep in mind when building an airport that it needs space for a runway, or it will not build. The minimum usable airport space is 2 x 6 tiles. Your best bet is to build the airport in 4 x 6 tile increments. And make sure no tall buildings are nearby; SimCity 2000 pilots are not known for their building-avoidance skills! In addition, make sure that your airport is blanketed with power lines. Airports may not initially build unless they are receiving power to certain tiles. Each tile must have power or be touching one that has power on it; every other tile should therefore have a power line across it. Newspapers ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are running low on hard drive space, you may experience a problem where multiple newspaper stories are open at one time. You will need at least 300KB free hard drive space (on the drive that SimCity 2000 is installed to) before starting the game, and this will fix the problem. If you do get multiple stories, you can clear them by pressing 'ENTER'. If you are running into low memory situations, the Newspaper menu item may gray out. Don't be alarmed; it won't hurt anything. Importing Cities From SimCity Classic and SimCity 2000 Mac/DOS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can load saved cities from both SimCity Classic, SimCity 2000 Mac and SimCity 2000 DOS into SimCity 2000 Amiga. For importing purposes, SimCity Windows and SimCity DOS files are identical. To make files imported from other systems useable in SimCity 2000 Amiga, you will need to copy an info file from one of the cities that came with SimCity 2000 Amiga and rename it to be the same as the imported file (with `.info' appended, of course). You will need to do this from the shell, as there is no way to copy or rename just an info file (without its associated city file) under the Workbench. Alternatively you can use the workbench to copy and rename an existing city file *before* importing your new file; the imported file will then overwrite the copied city, and you will have a useable city. Note that you will only be able to start a city from its icon if it is in your `SimCity2000' directory. You can, however, load a city from another directory once the game has started, provided that it has an info file in the same directory. Do *not* change the `Default Tool' or `ToolTypes' of an info file, or it will not work. To convert SimCity 2000 Amiga files for use in SimCity 2000 Mac you will need to give the file a Filetype and Creator for the Macintosh. The Filetype should be "CITY" and the Creator should be "SCDH". Hot Keys ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SHIFT KEY- 1. While placing draggable items (such as Roads, Power Lines, Zones, etc.), pressing the Shift key before releasing the mouse button will cancel placement of the item. 2. Holding down the Shift key while clicking on an item in the city window will open the Query window for that specific item. 3. Holding down the Shift key while clicking on a button or entry in a window will open a help description for that item. CTRL : temporarily turns the current cursor into the Bulldoze Tool. HOME or + : zooms in one level on your city END or - : zooms out one level on your city DEL : rotates your city view to the left by 90 degrees PAGE DOWN : rotates your city view to the right by 90 degrees Cursor Keys: scroll around your city ALT key : temporarily turns the cursor into the Center tool -------------------------------------------------------------------------