Re:SimRefinery Recovered
by mikehollinger on Friday June 05, 2020 @01:12PM
(#23430902)
Ha. Have you ever played SimTower[1]? On the surface of it, you build a high-rise mixed-use building (complete with basement levels). If you click around most things in the game can be tuned a little bit (oh, you don't have enough housekeeping staff, so your hotel will become infested with bugs).
A major piece of the game is moving people from point A to point B, usually via elevators. If you happen to click into the control panels behind the elevators you find a whole, very different, complex control panel with its own UI. That turns out to be because SimTower was built around a pre-existing elevator sim[2] that's complex enough to have its own guidebooks on the web.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimTower
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20090916193335/http://www.gamasu...
Re:SimRefinery Recovered
by creamyhorror on Friday June 05, 2020 @05:17PM
(#23434089)
Contrary to what that Gamasutra article says, it sounds like the whole game was actually developed by the Japanese company and Maxis just published it. Was a lot of fun back in the day. The creator also made the very strange Seaman for Dreamcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfW6EbFXtCQ
That explains a lot. I remember playing that game as a teenager and having fun right up until the elevator logistics got complicated, then having to basically give up because everybody was waiting all the time. I don't remember even trying the "advanced" elevator controls, but I probably wouldn't have gotten very far with them anyway.
oh man, i still play SimTower.... keep my OS9 emulator running for it!
Lots of jargon, buzzwords, and abbreviations, and very little documentation explaining what they mean. It's possible that had Chevron continued their partnership with Maxis, SimRefinery would've included a mode, or at least improved documentation, that introduced these concepts to non-technical staff in a way that could be understood, but that never happened.