• lime!
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    72 days ago

    weird take. video games have to have a command economy because they are designed to be played. a free market city builder would just be a screensaver.

    • @DoubleSpace@lemm.ee
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      32 days ago

      Cities are not functionally free market. You could have control of layout, zoning, regulations, infrastructure design and allocation, tax incentives, etc.

      Not sure how well this would model a real city where the “freehand” is guided by countless individual decisions.

      • lime!
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        31 day ago

        fun fact, most old screensavers were super resource-intensive.

        • @ulterno@programming.dev
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          122 hours ago

          Yeah, I remember a few of the Win98 ones.

          Which one would be harder on the old processors though? Pipes, or the one in which it put a moving magnifying glass or bubbles on an image of the current desktop?

          • lime!
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            120 hours ago

            i think pipes was opengl and swirl was software, so probably the latter

              • lime!
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                115 hours ago

                did pipes even work without a graphics driver? i know maze didn’t

                • @ulterno@programming.dev
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                  011 hours ago

                  Hmm. Now my memory might be being a bit flaky with Windows 98 vs Windows XP (which was run on a Pentium 4 and that one surely had a onboard GPU on the motherboard), but I remember for sure that if there was a listing in the screensavers dialogue for it, it worked (because I don’t remember any one of that not working).

                  I do remember seeing the message about voodoo not being available, when I tried to install Desert Storm from a CD, so it definitely didn’t have that (the computer was handed down and I was a kid and didn’t open and see it).