~Maxis Game Update

Obtained via the Internet from: ralph.baumgartner@wol.com 
                                (RALPH BAUMGARTNER)


This is a update for all those who play the various games from Maxis
(SimCity Classic, SimCity 2000, SimTower, etc, etc, etc):

I recently had a talk with several people involved with technical 
issues at the company.  The following seem to be the most recent 
stands on things:

1)  The Win95 versions of the games are TOTALLY different from the 
Win3.1 versions and do NOT have cheat codes in them.  They are 
totally new versions and not rewrites of the 3.1 versions. The 3.1 
versions are 16-bit while the 95 versions are true 32-bit versions, 
meant to take advantage of the 95 environment features.

2)  The latest version of SimCity 2000 for dos does NOT have the 
double fund cheat in the game any more - it will not work.  The 
only way you can do anything with regard to money with the latest 
version is by using a hex editor on the money bytes or use a cheat 
program.  By the way, the cheat programs made to work with cities 
produced with the dos version of 2000 do NOT work with cities 
generated with the windows version of 2000 - you have to use a hex 
editor on those cities or a cheat program meant for 2000 cities 
produced with 2000 for windows.

3)  SimIsle will be the last dos game that Maxis produces - only 
games for the Win and Mac environments will be produced after 
SimIsle.

4)  With regard to the windows environment, probably after a year 
or so, only games for the win95 environment will be produced.  In 
the mean time, dual versions for win3.1 and win95 will continued 
to be produced.  The reason for this is that much of the stuff, 
such as graphics routines and similar, that are overhead for 
programs produced for the win3.1 environment are already built in 
to the win95 operating system itself.

This info may not please a lot of people but most game companies you
will find are going the same way these days on many of these issues.


(ralph.baumgartner@wol.com)