SimEarth: still a living planet?

[Pariah]

I just did a search of this forum for SimEarth, one of my all-time favourite games, and found that only THREE posts even mentioned it! Surely I'm not the only one who ever loved that virtual-planet software, with its geology, evolution, civilizations and technology?

People still play Civ1; SimEarth was a not-too distant cousin, certainly in graphical and strategic terms. Doesn't anyone else have fond memories of evolving intelligent starfish and amphibians, spelling their name in continents, boiling off oceans to turn Earth into Arrakis, or having sentient plants develop nanotechnology and emigrate to the stars?

I used to hope that some visionary programmer could combine SimEarth with SimLife and SimCity, producing a whole-planet simulation with open-ended evolution and any number of detailed, customisable cities. Given the power of today's home computers compared with those of 10 years ago, it would certainly be possible. Or what about a combo of SimEarth and the Civilization series?? Would that excite anyone?

Who out there still cares about SimEarth and would like to discuss it?

 

[CivCube]

Perfection will hound you about SimCity 2000.

 

[Pariah]

Yes, SimCity 2000 was damn good. I never got around to trying the more recent versions, however.

 

[Amenhotep7]

I have SimEarth! Wonderful game! A true classic!

 

[Perfection]

Originally posted by CivCube
Perfection will hound you about SimCity 2000.

Actually, I quite enjoyed Sim Earth (Not As much as SimCity 2000, of course!)

Remember, if you nuke a nanotech city, you'll get robots that ac like super-animals!

 

[Silverflame]

It was okay. Simant, Simcity 2000, Simcopter, and Simtower were all better. SimTower was my favorite.

 

[ArmOrAttAk]

Simearth was a great game the only "sim" I actually liked. Unfortunately the game looked like learning which turned many people off, you know the type..

 

[Pariah]

Unfortunately, yes - the idea of education and entertainment being one & the same is still hard for many to grasp, though multimedia school materials have done much to alleviate the misconception. I think all learning should be fun if possible.

What was the greatest number of successive intelligent races you ever had on a single planet? Mine was 11. I called the planet Marduk, and the first civilization - sentient avians - were thus the Marduk Ducks.

 

[Matrix]

Sim Earth was cool! Though I seemed more a simulation in which you could interact if you wished, than a game with a true goal. But perhaps I always played at a difficulty that was too easy.

 

[Pariah]

The SimEarth manual described it as "not so much a game, as a software toy.." and stated that "The Exodus is the closest thing in SimEarth to a 'win condition'." The history of each planet was open-ended, after all. You could achieve the same win condition many times on the same planet, or never at all.

The only real 'lose condition', in my opinion, was to reach the end, when the planet is burned up as its sun dies, without ever even entering the Civilization Time Scale.

 

[Chieftess]

I have it too. I also have Win98, so I have to go into DOS mode to play it. I wonder if it's even playable on newer systems...

My favorite "pasttime" in that game? Turning desert into jungle, then creating a forest fire! (then watch as the similar graphic trees - there's 2 sets that seem to use the same graphic - take over the map). Back when I had a 286, it would take something like 3 hours or so just to get to 200 "years" (33mhz system). I then tried it out with a Pentium 1 system (100mhz), and then with my current system (667mhz). After the Pentium 1 system, I could finally try the largest size worlds, which was still slow after awhile. This system handled the largest worlds pretty well, with very little slowdown.

Definately a game built before it's time. I'm just wondering what the 4ghz systems will do to it... and even 10ghz when it gets that high. (1,000ghz anyone? Probably a huge jungle in 10 minutes, only to be torched in 5 seconds)

 

[Perfection]

I always like taking the current earth scenario and using terraformers to destroy the planet

 

[puglover]

I've heard of it, but never played it. What's it like?

 

[h4ppy]

I remember playing it on my SNES, as a matter of fact I still have it. It was pretty fun but Sim Ant was better. Its a shame the only sim things we see anymore are Simcity and The Sims.

 

[Pariah]

My main criticism was that biological evolution continued at the same APPARENT rate in the Civilization & Technology timescales, as in the Evolution timescale. As a result, dinosaurs could reappear on the present-day Earth, or intelligent insects emerge - ready to become civilised as soon as human left the planet.

You could mitigate this problem by turning split rate & mutation rate down to minimum as soon as Civilization timescale began. This should really have been done automatically.

 

[Pariah]

Just one more quick post. How many "intellignet species" icons can people find on the attached planet map? I think I had all of them (had to paste in the Robot, though).

 

[Perfection]

Let's see: I see
Robots
Dinosaurs
Mammels
Cataceans
fish
insects
radians
Crustaceans
amphibians
Reptiles
Whatever that carniverous plants one is
Avains

I haven't seen that
tetrachord thingy or mollusks

 

[cgannon64]

You can make civilizations?

I have the game, but I got bored, mainly because I thought you'd end up just watching a bunch of animals. Didn't know you could get civilizations...

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by Perfection
I haven't seen that
tetrachord thingy or mollusks

Sentient mollusk as just off the leftmost point of the central continent. Trichordates on the continent in the upper right.

Oh, and the carnivorous plants were known as carniferns.

 

[Perfection]

There are are!