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SimCity 3k in 4k (2025)(thran.uk)
155 points by speckx 3 hours ago | 42 comments
Paul_S 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

What a strange person, from the same author: https://www.thran.uk/writ/yarn/2025/03/road-rage-maxxing-or-... I don't understand how you can feel morally superior by blocking the overtaking lane and letting people through if they're respectful enough.

dnnddidiej 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Not only that this is so dangerous. Back off, and let the idiots idiot.

That said, probably don't want to discuss other weird posts for each HN submission!

jjordan 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Real people are complex and hold a wide palette of skills, opinions, habits, biases, etc. Just enjoy the good and disregard the bad.

iknowstuff 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> his is allegedly for better compatibility for streaming, but since I'm not an egotist who needs every second of his life broadcast to an audience, we will switch it to true fullscreen.

Ahh of course, every streamer streams every second and is egotistical. What a moron

foo12bar 7 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tailgating in a massive SUV is not disrespectful, it's dangerous to other person. Why encourage this behavior by immediately letting them through?

jp191919 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it's some type of personality disorder.

wehnsdaefflae 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, I can

arjie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This was one of my favourite games. City simulators took up an enormous amount of my childhood and I still dream about arcologies. When I see a modern development like Brentwood in Canada's BC or some older ones like along the river in Chicago it reminds me of the wonders we can build.

As an aside since it's in the article, what are other cultures' irreverent targets? e.g. Anglo-cultures seem to casually joke about disasters like he does here about 9/11. Somewhat diminished by the fact that he's British, not American, but Americans do it too, and the American-British interaction involves this and Irish Car Bombs taken rather lightly. I find that curious. Do the Quebecois joke about Opération Satanique and the French have likewise a thing they make fun of the Quebecois for? Or is this an Anglo-culture thing? Obviously, I principally read in English so this might be specific to my language.

rl3 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

SC3K had a masterfully executed advisor system that felt both classy and warm. Ditto its music and art.

Unfortunately for SC4, they proceeded to make all the advisors 3D-rendered Sims. For SC2K, well:

https://www.somethingawful.com/news/simcity-advisors/4/

(that was the least offensive page to link; for the canonical experience start at page 1)

trynumber9 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I must also admit to preferring Sim City 3000 over 4. I don't know if I can handle a 4K user interface without a magnifier, however.

tracker1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Same.. I'd rather have it 2x scaling at half-resolution. Vision issues.

greenavocado 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you played SC4 with NAM?

lbrito 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

Probably moves sc4 further away from what he would like. If you're into NAM might as well just play cities skylines with transit mods

sp1nningaway 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sim City 3k is my least played Sim City game, but this is inspiring me to take another look. I really like the sweaty micromanagement and bigger scope of 4, but maybe I will prefer 3k's simplicity in my old age.

The picture caption with a 9/11 joke is a little off-putting, but it's at least proof that this isn't AI generated content...

jedberg an hour ago | parent [-]

> The picture caption with a 9/11 joke is a little off-putting

9/11 seems to be an important milestone in his life. In the about section of his web page it says this:

Q:/> How old are you?

A:/> I can't remember the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can remember 9/11.

nico 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Loved SimCity growing up.

Would it be possible to automate porting the windows version into a mac or web version? Like giving a long-running agent the task and some tools to check/play the game on both platforms?

spockz 9 minutes ago | parent [-]

At this point you can probably just run it with proton or wine. Why bother porting the whole thing?

Dwedit 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

4K screen resolution, not a 4KB intro.

iccananea 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Signs that you are old: I saw "in 4k" and thought that it was in 4 kilobytes, not 4k resolution

vardump 4 minutes ago | parent [-]

Or a demoscener.

receiptful-io 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Great, and how does that translate if we want to run it 4k in Linux?

xerox13ster 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I run Arch. I purchased it on Steam last week after the dos.zone site was shared here and dropped the GOG executable in the steamapps directory, and it worked flawlessly with proton.

jp191919 an hour ago | parent [-]

Nice! I'm going to have to try that now.

squeedles 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was surprised to see SC3k described as isometric like 2k. I recall versions after 2k being "look anywhere" 3D, but I guess I missed some versions. So many games, like Railroad Tycoon post RRT2 and Worms went full 3D and gameplay was never the same.

I actually keep a Basilisk II System 7.5 Mac environment just so that I can play SC2k from time to time ...

Waterluvian 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A small frustration I have with playing old games is that the GOG/Steam version is always the PC original and the Mac versions almost always had far better sound and music and sometimes graphics.

MrDOS an hour ago | parent | next [-]

And when you say “PC original”, you really mean “DOS version wrapped in DOXBox”, because it's easier to ship that on both Windows and Mac than patching the Windows version for Windows, and shipping a Wine wrapper for Mac. (Have they ever shipped a Wine wrapper for anything? I don't think so.) What a shame.

I do really wish an application-level classic Mac OS emulator existed. There are lots of great full-system emulators for classic Macs (Basilisk II, SheepShaver, DingusPPC), but no Rosetta-style “make the old application run in the context of a new machine” execution environments. I'll grouse to whoever will listen that all of the best edutainment software of the '90s and early '00s is trapped on PPC Mac OS.

phs2501 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Probably the closest thing I remember existing to this was (in its "modern"-ish form) https://github.com/autc04/executor

Not quite what you're looking for I think but it was a Wine-style reimplementation of MacOS.

Waterluvian 7 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Marathon Trilogy. Ambrosia SW games. Spectre VR. My childhood was so flavourful. The one downside is that nobody on the playground were talking about the games I had access to.

ndiddy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can run the Windows 95 version of the game (similar to the Mac version) on modern computers with this patch: https://sc2kfix.net/ . It's definitely disappointing that GOG doesn't distribute that version. Stuff like this is why I have to keep a CD drive around.

nekzn 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe you can play using an emulator. I use VMware to emulate Windows XP to play The Sims and it works great.

TylerE 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're thinking of simcopter maybe, which follwed 2K and was full 3D.

wifipunk 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sweeet well done, especially with the audio. I like this patch method much more than the HD Patch I've been using the last few years.

We played SimCity in my shop class at school on olds macs and i like picking it back up every now and then. It still holds up better than most new games.

nielsbot an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> SimCity 3000 is the best SimCity

I disagree! SimCity 2K FTW. :)

Best balance of complexity IMO and ran pretty well on my old Mac. I'd love a retro-futuristic reboot.

ortusdux 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Diablo 1 in 4k - https://i.imgur.com/4ResbPc.jpeg

zuzululu an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

what would be really cool is a first person world generated from simcity maps and you can walk around and go inside buildings etc

racl101 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd love to see to see this game remade and released. I'd buy it in a second.

dawnerd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I hope GOG makes this all an easy to install mod/patch.

xerox13ster 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Replace the executable, even on a Steam copy.

kristofferR 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

claude --dangerously-skip-permissions -p "get this all installed https://www.thran.uk/writ/hdid/2025/12/simcity-3k-in-4k.html"

luxuryballs 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What A View! Sims Thrilled As Local Landscaping Artist Hosts DIY Expo

AbraKdabra an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Man, I played the fuck out of this game in my teens, it's in my top 5 best games ever made.

selectively 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Obnoxious author. Refusing to 'pay twice' for a game they care enough about to go through all this trouble + deeply obnoxious bit about Windows 11 at the end of of the post.