SimCity 3000 on Linux Using Lutris

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is shadow_8472 and today I am exploring the feasibility of running SimCity on Linux. Let’s get started!

Short Answer

Have fun. Good luck. You’ll need it.

My Attempts at SimCity3000 Unlimited

While digging through Garage Space, I happened across a copy of SimCity3000 Unlimited. This city building game of yesteryear puts you in the role of mayor and city planner of a city. You must balance zoning, manage public streets, power, and water service, clean up after disasters, and more as you fight to keep your budget in the black. The case says it’s for Windows 95/98, but I remember it running at least as recently as XP.

Gaming on Linux has a fascinating history. In short: the userbase will sometimes “cheat” Windows games into running through the WINE compatibility layer, though it doesn’t always work. Lutris is a multi-game launcher that makes WINE a lot more approachable. I figured there would be no harm in popping the CD in a drive and trying it out. Like all my previous attempts to install a game manually in WINE, I had little-to-no luck.

My efforts were soon split multiple directions. DosBox is a DOS virtual machine. I found a fork called DosBox-X, which claims to run Windows programs up through the 3.x era as they’re basically just fancied up DOS applications. Windows 95 made some major additions, but was still built on DOS until XP dropped it as a base. Consequently, if our Windows 95/98 CD’s/product keys were to show up, they could be installed into DosBox-X and we could again play our period games.

Garage Space was not so kind. With help, I located a bucket each of 3.25” floppies and CD’s. A further CD binder turned up full of drivers, but no Windows 9X install disks. In one of these caches, the original SimCity3000 turned up.

My Attempts at SimCity3000

This earlier version of Maxis’ once flagship game installed nicely on Derpy Chips running PopOS, but failed miserably at anything past the main menu until I turned on dgvoodoo2 under Lutris’s “Runner options” under the game’s configuration popup. I found it very playable, but sound effects were only in my left speaker channel and I got a nasty buzzing sound in the right speaker/headphone if I turned off the music the way I preferred to play.

Moving on, I attempted a more advanced installation on my Upstairs Workstation, where I created and mounted a disk image on my hard drive. This configuration had a better response time, while still requiring the actual CD to be mounted. Unfortunately, there was a serious graphical issue that affected the main menu, all textual popup boxes except the No-CD notification, and the in-game sidebar sub-menus. It’s like animation layers render black instead of clear. The main menu and text boxes mostly look strange, but are perfectly usable. On the other hand, the in-game sub-menus render as black bars and only show their buttons when hovered over. This arrangement might work for someone who is desperate.

Additionally, I tested SimCity on my father’s computer running Linux Mint. The game would not even install to the prefix; a usable, but slightly graphically glitched launcher was all I got. No matter what I tried on any system, I could not improve its respective base issue. In a last-ditch effort to get it working for my father’s computer, I attempted to copy over my WINE prefix from Derpy, but when I found its debug and pasted a prominent error into a search, I learned how WINE’s Intel integrated graphics support is incomplete and unlikely to ever see completion.

Takeaway

This is a progress report. At present, I believe my issues have to do with AMD vs. NVIDIA vs. integrated graphics. I don’t know if I will follow up or not. The main conversation online around SimCity3000 and WINE is focused around the edition from GoodOldGames. The Unlimited edition on CD has practically zero heartbeat – probably because its DRM is incompatible with WINE, like many games not on lists maintained by Lutris or PlayOnLinux (another WINE tool I tried out, but didn’t remember while weaving my narrative). I also learned of a Linux port of SimCity3000 [and Unlimited] by Loki Games through a script for getting it to run on “modern” versions of Linux as of a few years ago, but it went bankrupt reportedly due to piracy.

Running Windows games on Linux is a puzzle. Your particular one may come pre-solved or there might be pieces entirely missing. I am very proud of my first-ever successful “manual” install, even if I used a tool and it still isn’t perfect.

Final Question

Do you know of a good place to learn WINE? Have you had any success playing SimCity on a Linux system?

I look forward to hearing from you in the comments below or on my Socials.