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After more than a quarter-century, SimCity 2000 still receives plenty of interest from nostalgic gamers who like to relive their early gaming experiences. This is likely one of the reasons why developer Nicholas Ochoa decided to code a remake using the Electron framework.
The game, titled OpenSC2K, was released on GitHub earlier this year and received quite a bit of attention on sites such as Reddit and Hacker News.
While it is billed as an “open source” version, the remake did include original artwork, belonging to Electronic Arts. These images and sounds are definitely not free to use, something the developer is fully aware of now.
A few days ago Electronic Arts sent a DMCA takedown notice to GitHub asking the platform to remove the infringing repository from its site.
“Assets from the game SimCity 2000 are being infringed upon,” EA writes. The company points out that the game can be purchased legally through Origin where it’s still being sold for a few dollars.
While OpenSC2K is far from a full remake, Electronic Arts makes it clear that the SimCity 2000 assets are not for public use.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @06:58AM (12 children)
Seriously, this has been known in the recreation industry for 25+ years now. You can load assets from a legal copy and be mostly unmolested. But if you have even one thing that looks like an asset from the original work in your project, it is tainted and will get C&D'd or sued out of existence.
For anyone considering a project like this in the future: Don't be a dumbass. Keep assets and code separate.
The worst part about this is the SimCity 2k assets weren't even that complicated. A reimplementation project for free assets would take a few months tops with some good pixel artists. And with a bit of work the whole project could be voxelized, allowing true 3d movement through the normally 2.5D simcity universe. Also for anyone who missed it, there was a game called 'Streets of SimCity' that allowed exactly that. Interstate 76 style cards driving around through a 3d recreation of your simcity 2000 city. Any map you could build you could drive in your car. The only downside was the roads were small and the 45 or 90 degree corners make it hard to speed or smoothly corner on the maps. That would be a great followup project if this gets restarted with the assets removed, as the basic gameplay in that would be enjoyable. And since it only had 3 cars to begin with, modelling replacements and improving on the game design would be very easy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:27AM (5 children)
Quite.
There are so many developers like this, that it's worrying though.
If they don't know that you can't just re-use commercial assets in a remake of a game (at least without being careful not to distribute them, and work on replacing them) then it makes me worry where you're sourcing your code thing, especially library-like code for unzipping, networking, etc. and how diligent they are being with the licensing.
I write games, and I have one game in particular that I'm basing on the style of several older games. But every line of code is mine or licensed (and documented, so I can prove where it came from), and every sprite, sound, music, anything like that is licensed or attributed (again, with proof, because this stuff has a tendency to disappear over the years yet I can say "I downloaded it, it was showing this licence, on this URL, these are the emails from the author giving me permission, etc.". Anything vaguely belonging to other people are only placeholders if they are not paid-for and licenced (e.g. random unattributed clipart so I can continue developing until I can get a proper replacement image for it).
If programmers aren't keeping track of this kind of thing, or don't even understand that they need to, they can taint the entire codebase.
And it's not like SimCity 2000 didn't have free demos - lots of people use them in this way. "This is the code but you'll need the game, if you haven't got the game, the assets from this free-to-download demo will suffice for most things", etc. and then it's in the user's hands. It's the same for almost any recreation project - FreeSynd, CorsixTH, OpenTTD, etc.
It's worrying that a developer can be intelligent enough to rip off another program, and yet dumb enough to do it on a public github repository with a major game studio's most-famous assets.
(Score: 2, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday July 31 2018, @11:34AM
And when there's a lot of links -- this one has so many -- hard to follow them all. But, Hacker News, there's a link to the Hacker News. And someone there tweeted, the guy knew what he was doing. He knows about Copyright -- so important. He knew he was violating the Copyright. But he asked, please don't sue me. And, they haven't sued him. Nice folks!!!!
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday July 31 2018, @02:36PM (2 children)
> If programmers aren't keeping track of this kind of thing, or don't even understand that they need to, they can taint the entire codebase.
While all this is true, should it be?
> every line of code is mine or licensed (and documented, so I can prove where it came from), and every sprite, sound, music, anything like that is licensed or attributed (again, with proof, because this stuff has a tendency to disappear over the years yet I can say "I downloaded it, it was showing this licence, on this URL, these are the emails from the author giving me permission, etc."
Exactly what I mean. All that sounds unduly burdensome, and for what? Fairness to authors and producers? Or, more like chilling and stifling competition? It's crazy that you should have to be ready in case someone wants to go on a fishing expedition and comb through everything you've ever done. Supposing you didn't preserve some crucial email? Are you now guilty until proven innocent? At least the cops searching your car for drugs deals with the present and immediate past only, not stuff from 15 or more years ago.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday July 31 2018, @02:58PM (1 child)
It's really not that burdensome. Hell, it's one "Save As" or a small tag on a file. If we can "git blame" software writers, we sure as hell can put in a line about where a file that takes HOURS to make came from, and who made it, and what licence is was provided under.
Compared to writing a game from scratch, it's literally minutiae lost in the noise.
The alternative? People literally just nicking Mario images and shoving them in games, making carbon-copies of apps with the same graphics and assets, and no artist or musician wanting to give you their work.
Yes. I've hired artists and musicians for in-game assets. I then save the files they send me (usually by email, and I have every email going back to the year 2000 - it's really not that burdensome to "keep" something, compared to "choose what to delete"), and keep them in folders with their names and a copy of their terms/conditions/contract. The free assets I download, I store in a folder called by the website name (e.g. opengameart or whatever), and the filename includes their username. Past that all I have to do is record the licence they were under (in case it changes under me later).
It's really not that hard. Not even for someone with ZERO admin expertise, who just wants to focus on the coding. I also do the same for libraries used - this is the library, this is where I got it, this is my compiled version/branch of it, this is the LICENSE file. One folder and you have it all (e.g. SDL_image folder, containing a zip file downloaded from the official website, extracted into a subfolder, done). Not hard, but very important when someone later realises you made, say, millions out of some Box2D Scorched Earth mix-up with some circular birds and green pigs and says that you stole his art or, as in this case, EA comes knocking to your EA-asset rip-off project.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday July 31 2018, @03:48PM
> It's really not that burdensome. Hell, it's one "Save As" or a small tag on a file.
Smart viruses that reduce your system performance by only 1%, exercise a little restraint the better not to be noticed, aren't that burdensome either. How about automatic login, is that much of a burden removed? Yet people want it.
> The alternative? People literally just nicking Mario images
See? You are infected with "copyrightitis". That word "nicking" does not describe what they are doing. They are NOT stealing, they are copying.
And "nicking" is not the sole alternative.
> no artist or musician wanting to give you their work.
What exactly are we talking about here? Give? For free? If they are willing to do that with copyright, why not without copyright? Particularly as long as attribution is kept? Or is it really plagiarism to which they object? Don't need copyright to keep attribution.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:42PM
We've had open-source game remakes like this for a very long time now, including the open-source DOOM engines (which was actually the real thing, not a remake, but the point is the same here). Doesn't everyone know by now that you can't include the original game's assets with the open-source code? And that the standard way of handling this is to actually require the user to get the original game, and then have a script which uses those assets with the new engine? This sidesteps the legality, and most games are easy enough to download (not quite legally...) online, though if they're available for a few bucks as this one is, that'll probably help drive sales which the company surely wouldn't mind.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:32AM (2 children)
I wanna see a remake of SimCopter. Did the same as you say - you were a rescue copter over your own SimCity 2000 maps. Awful graphics but it's the most "fun" handling of a helicopter I've ever played in a game.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday July 31 2018, @03:54PM (1 child)
I spent a lot of time in SimCopter and Streets of Sim City. Driving/Flying around a city I built was really cool and satisfying. SimCopter was also right at my skill level: I cannot fly a helicopter in any proper flight simulator.
Now, SimCity2000 does have some limitations (such as sloped terrain only coming in 45 degree slopes). It would be cool to get a modern city simulator with SimCopter functionality.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 31 2018, @09:53PM
(see other long comment)
One thing I could imagine would be adding random "noise" when translating a SC2K map into a Copter/Streets-like 3D form. Mountains gain random adjustments to the slopes, so that they look better up close (even though they can look pretty good at a distance [patcoston.com]). There are a few levels of trees that can be on an empty dirt SC2K sprite, ranging from 1 tree to densely packed. And you can have many tree tiles put together like a forest. You could make it so that an algorithm renders large groups of tree tiles as a dense forest but renders more sparse tiles as tiny bushes, cacti, etc. depending on the intended environment. And render trees near home/commercial tiles as hedges and beautification instead of forest.
Of course, you could easily ditch the SC2K map format and come up with something more complex and granular, make your own SCURK-like editing tool, etc. But possibly find a way to convert SC2K maps to the new format (then make adjustments in your new editor).
The chances of any of this happening depend on the intersection of skill, boredom, and interest in SC2K/the genre.
Hat's off to you for putting up with the Streets of Simcity bugs long enough to play it.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @10:03AM (1 child)
I'd much much much rather have an Interstate '76 remake. The best game ever made.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @07:40AM
I76 was pretty cool, fun gameplay and funky soundtrack even if childish over the top plot.
Yet hardly the best ever. Also, no reason why we can't have both. As long as people don't cut corners.
There was this I76 remake but it seems stalled http://www.interstateoutlaws.com/ [interstateoutlaws.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 31 2018, @01:07PM
It is an interesting project. Streets of SimCity (SoSC) loads any SC2K map, including the custom maps you could make with the SimCity Urban Renewal Kit (SCURK). SoSC's own assets looked like complete garbage to the point where even a non-artist could probably do a good job making the replacements. The game was also a bug-filled mess. Although not responsible for the decline of Maxis, SoSC was the last game Maxis made independently from EA. You would have trouble running it on any computer in the world, not just a modern one. The game did have a good soundtrack (presented randomly as a "radio"), snippets of which were used in later games like The Sims. For an open source remake, these tracks could easily be downloaded and dumped into a folder (like how The Elder Scrolls and other games handle music). You could also have the remake load from Internet radio sources.
Any remake of SoSC could deviate wildly from the original gameplay and it wouldn't matter because the game was so broken to begin with. There were maybe up to 20 enemy, cop, and neutral cars in a map. Most of them would be repeatedly "hopping" in place due to an AI bug. Campaign missions basically consisted of driving around from point to point on the map while picking up packages and fighting other cars. Races were just maps with checkpoints.
There were more than 3 kinds of cars [igcd.net] in the game. Only about 5 playable, with mostly Plymouth Fury enemies and the Oldsmobile Cutlass cop cars. Still, it's not the most difficult 3D modeling job ever.
Ledow wants SimCopter. That was a similar 3D engine to SoSC, but a bit older and with less game breaking bugs. It should be possible to implement both games in one project. Don't forget to include HIMBO mode [wikipedia.org]. It might be possible to load in both SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000 maps. SimCity 3000 was originally going to be a 3D game with a "street mode", but those aspects were scrapped [lostmediawiki.com].
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/streets-of-simcity/ [hardcoregaming101.net]
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