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!
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.
56 minutes ago [-]
jlev1 5 hours ago [-]
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.
zamadatix 3 hours ago [-]
Project Highrise is also worth checking out. It's a 2016 re-imagination of the same type of game. I'm not sure I enjoyed it as much as I did Yoot Tower... but I'm also not sure if that's just because Yoot Tower was a few decades younger back when I played :).
pixelcort 5 hours ago [-]
One of the maps in Yoot Tower is Kegon Falls. When I moved to Japan I found out it was a real place. Just took another day trip up there last month. Of course IRL it’s just an elevator but the view each season is amazing.
thispbowden 5 hours ago [-]
Love Yoot Tower! Can we clone it next?
patrickhulin 5 hours ago [-]
yes! I've been thinking about how to do it, but it will take some work!
Dwedit 1 hours ago [-]
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.
efromvt 3 hours ago [-]
Can you still build a garage in the bottom corner to get more starting money??
cortesoft 2 hours ago [-]
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!
MrPowerGamerBR 2 hours ago [-]
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.")
ryeguy_24 6 hours ago [-]
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.
findalex 7 hours ago [-]
I loved this game so much. Can't wait to see Santa.
taejavu 7 hours ago [-]
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.
patrickhulin 5 hours ago [-]
Patches are welcome, especially for UI stuff - the simulation I'd like to keep matching exactly. I have one deviation already: the floors are 0-indexed and lobbies are on 15, 30, ..., which would be 16, 31, ... in the original game.
schnebbau 7 hours ago [-]
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.
6 hours ago [-]
2 days ago [-]
yesitcan 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
iamjs 4 hours ago [-]
This is an unnecessarily rude, dismissive, and low value comment. I loved this game growing up and I think it's fantastic to see this work. I don't find it particularly relevant whether or not a language model was involved.
SuperNinKenDo 4 hours ago [-]
God I loved this game back in the day. Thank you!
EDIT: Nevermind... [sigh]
I_am_uncreative 3 hours ago [-]
What's with the edit?
cozzyd 3 hours ago [-]
Judging from user's posting history, they're not the biggest fans of llms
This is kind of the perfect use case though -- it's a game who cares if it's right or not.
DonaldPShimoda 2 hours ago [-]
Some people also have moral issues with LLMs. If the poster is such a person, the accuracy metric may simply be irrelevant.
Rendered at 03:02:25 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
> 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
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.
I’ll have to check this out!
...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.")
I don't think I ever made it to the cathedral though.
EDIT: Nevermind... [sigh]
This is kind of the perfect use case though -- it's a game who cares if it's right or not.