- First of all, super cool. I have a soft spot for SimTower as well. :)
> I didn’t want to do a function-by-function port. First, APIs may be copyrightable - and copying a binary that closely might implicate copyright more than an approach closer to clean-room design. But it was clear that I needed some level of feedback from the ground-truth binary in order to provide a hill for the LLM to climb on the reimplementation.
Interesting, but isn't this what, say, the Ocarina of Time reverse engineer port does[1]? I imagine the fact that this hasn't been served a takedown notice from Nintendo is a proof that it's defensible? Or at least that there's precedent, ha.
Anyway, this is really cool. I genuinely think the only thing that's missing for me to waste an afternoon here is the sound effects!
[1]: https://github.com/zeldaret/oot
- Wow!
There was a little-known sequel to SimTower called Yoot Tower (named after Yoot Saito). It was a commercial flop, but I played it in the 2000s and again in the 2010s and very much enjoyed it! It had a lot of added customizability (more choices of restaurants and shops, for one thing). I would love to see that game recreated.
- It is missing the most important function.
If the first tile you build is a lobby in the bottom left corner, it is supposed to double your starting money. :)
- Every once a while, I get the itch to replay SimTower. Unfortunately, the latest times I've attempted, something in WINE manages to interact so poorly with the window manager that it crashes X altogether. This has led me to poke at it to consider either building my own version of WINE that doesn't crash my desktop or building my own UI on top of the existing 16-bit code in a franken-build to make it work.
I've been leaning towards the latter, partially because I have an idea to replace one of the functions that's currently implemented as a horrible irreducible CFG that's a pain to understand with... some 16-bit AVX instructions. Mostly for the amusement of saying that I have used 16-bit AVX instructions.
by s1mplicissimus
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- So I really liked SimTower back in the day, this was a lovely read. Not sure if this is intentional, but while playtesting, I noticed that I can just build Condos and destroy them again for a total of ~+100k. Was it that way in the original?
- > This project used an absolutely ridiculous number of tokens. I had to upgrade to the Claude Code $200/month plan and carefully avoid usage in the 8 AM-2 PM 2x peak window.
that doesnt sound too terrible to be honest. TIL that 8am-2pm is 2x usage.
- I want someone to do this with SimCopter. I loved that game but I don't think it was very popular
by grogenaut
1 subcomments
- I played when I was a kid. I figured out you could just build condos like crazy and make money pause build more, and repeat, get tons of money, build all the way up. But I couldn't figure out how to get people to the top level for that achievement.
I'm gonna Google that and see what I got wrong
by MrPowerGamerBR
2 subcomments
- Just a fyi for anyone that doesn't know: A few years back Don Hopkins got the permission from Yoot Saito to open source Yoot Tower, SimTower's sequel: https://github.com/YootTowerManagement/YootTower
...however I don't think that the source was ever published anywhere, considering that the repository still doesn't have the source code yet. ("Please check out the YootTower repo, where I'll publish the source code once it's cleaned up, reviewed and approved by Yoot, and relicensed with the MIT licensed.")
by qingcharles
1 subcomments
- Can you talk about how you actually disassembled the EXE and reverse-engineered it?
by petercooper
0 subcomment
- I did something similar, though at a much smaller scale, with Windows 3.1 Solitaire a few weeks ago, both to see how possible it is (with LLMs) and also to learn about Ghidra for myself. Sadly, I discovered nothing new that wasn't already surfaced through previous reverse engineering, but did turn it into a behavior-equivalent (almost, Draw One by default, and I got lazy with Vegas scoring) Web port: https://peterc.org/solitaire/ (you can press W to trigger the win animation without winning, just for laughs)
I can certainly believe a much larger app like SimTower could overwhelm an LLM-based process without a lot of handholding as even Solitaire required a fair bit of that from me. I'm hoping to take on 1991's A-Train next (the game that inpired SimCity 2000's interface).
by cortesoft
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- I love SimTower, and one of the reasons I keep my SheepShaver environment working is so I can still play it on Mac OS 9.
I’ll have to check this out!
- I loved this game so much. Can't wait to see Santa.
- Very cool! I used to play this game for a few minutes every morning at a friends place before school. With the clone being open source, would you be open to QoL patches? I don’t have anything specific in mind, just curious how close to the original you want to stay.
- Played it for a few cycles. I feel like the elevators are a bit bugged, they keep idle in the lobby why people are waiting to get on (and turning red)
- Can you still build a garage in the bottom corner to get more starting money??
- I remember that SimTower (Windows 3.1 version) would briefly draw the dialog boxes in Japanese, then immediately redraw it in English. This was on a computer without any Japanese fonts.
by LostMyLogin
2 subcomments
- > First, the AI makes premature conclusions about subsystems, records them, and then struggles to figure out when to abandon its earlier guesses.
This perfectly describes what feels off to me about Opus 4.7 (unsure if that’s what you are using). It seems to go down an incorrect path, I correct it, but it still references things from it. Trying to direct it back becomes a mess.
Has anyone experience this as well or am I going crazy? Doesn’t happen with 4.6 for me.
- Amazing, loved this game when I was younger. I would keep restarting every time I thought of a more effective layout.
I don't think I ever made it to the cathedral though.
- Oh my gosh, this really brought me back. Haven't played that game in 30 years. What a great use of AI. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
- I love you this was the best sim game when I was a kid and now I’ll spend my weekend on your site!
by ChickeNES
1 subcomments
- Heh, I have four different games I am currently experimenting with, luckily I skipped this one as I am still expecting the original/Yoot source will be published (hopefully DonHopkins sees this and it nudges him to get it uploaded!).
- You can only serve the 3 closest levels to a lobby with stairs or escalators.
by EdwardDiego
0 subcomment
- I sunk ages into "the world's most brutal elevator simulator" - how does the game model elevator demand? I always wondered if it was some sort of Poisson distribution.
- Never heard of SimTower. Only knew about SimEarth, SimAnt, SimCity and SimLife
by socratic_weeb
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- > Coud an llm
You lost me there
by madcaptenor
0 subcomment
- I had SimTower but could never quite figure it out - might be time to give it another shot.
- [dead]
by immanuwell
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
by SuperNinKenDo
1 subcomments
- [flagged]
- [flagged]
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