What is the SimCity 3000 Terrain Generator?
The SimCity 3000 Terrain Generator is a utility created by a friend of mine and myself in 1998 to assist in generating terrains for SimCity 3000.You see, SimCity 2000 had an excellent built-in Terrain Generator. But when Sim City 3000 was released, the feature was non-existant. Seeing an opportunity, my friend and I took a first stab at writing this application. I think I was about 16 at the time.
The application was very popular, despite the fact that I now see, in that it was very difficult to make a real terrain. It featured a number of programming challenges for me, including writing my own (lame, but functional) 3D engine, and dealing with exporting to filetypes like BMP.
With that in mind, the application was surprisingly complete, including documentation and an extensive website. My friend and I even received emails from Maxis, the creators of Sim City, asking if we'd be interested in submitting our resume's to Maxis. I don't think that ever went anywhere, though. I was still in middle school!
This is what the application looked like, in it's final unfinished form (the version in the download):
After being imported into Sim City 3000, this is what the created terrain looks like:
This is the 3D engine I wrote:
The terrain was brought into Bryce 3D and rendered:
License
The source code is protected by the GNU GPL.Download
Download the latest release, version 1.1, here:sc3te_v11_full2.zip (2.1 mb)
Download the source code to the unreleased and unfinished version 2.0 here:
terrain.zip (11.2 mb)