I played a big game of Project Highrise (and of SimTower too) just recently, to immerse myself in the games and make them fresh in my mind before working on porting. I think Project Highrise is great! But in the same way I also appreciate the original SimCity 8-bit pixel graphics, and low-tech graphics in The Sims 1, I think SimTower still stands on its own as a game that can still be thoroughly enjoyed.
Especially once we develop an SDK to enable user created content, that lets you add your own rooms and people, and program them with JavaScript, thanks to the way emscripten + embind lets you subclass and implement C++ classes in JavaScript, calling back and forth between the core C++ game engine and the JavaScript user interface and plug-ins.
The YootTower repo README quotes some info about TowerKit that was used to develop many expansion packs for The Tower II that were only released in Japan, and I plan on making a more flexible modern version of TowerKit in the form of a Yoot Tower SDK that lets you dynamically script and download extensions in JavaScript instead of modifying and recompiling C++ code.
>Tower Kit is optional software for The Tower II. In The Tower II, you can select the stage where you want to start the game using the concept of a "map." The Tower II package comes with three maps: "Shinjuku Subcenter," "Hawaii Diamond Head," and "Kegon Falls," and the "Tower Kit" adds these maps. By installing this tower kit, a new stage game will begin. Tower kits don't just add more stages. Each map has new features, allowing you to play a completely new game.
>Please try the "Tower Kit" which allows for infinite variations.
>A love story between you, the person in charge of the Liberty Island redevelopment project, and two men and women who are your subordinates. Your work will have a subtle influence on the course of your love life. The Tower II is the first attempt at a crossover between redevelopment and love, set in New York. What is the ending...?
I did a similar thing for Micropolis/SimCity more than a decade ago, but with Python and SWIG, instead of emscripten and embind, so you could program your own agents (like PacBot, who follows the roads and eats traffic) and zones (like the Church of Pacmania, which worships and attracts PacBots, and causes lots of traffic to feed them).
A demo of the open source Micropolis Online game (based on the original SimCity Classic source code from Maxis), running on a web server, written in C++ and Python, and displaying in a web browser, written in OpenLaszlo and JavaScript, running in the Flash player. Developed by Don Hopkins.
Back when I was porting SimCity to Unix in the early 90's, Maxis gave me the source code to SimEarth too, but I never had the chance to port it, and don't have permission now unfortunately. I'd love to make a modern version of SimEarth and SimAnt too, but neither of them were as successful or engaging a game as SimCity. Will Wright discusses SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimCity 2000 in this 1996 talk he gave to Terry Winnograd's user interface class, and also demonstrates a very early version of The Sims when it was called Dollhouse. His point was that SimAnt was too simple, SimEarth was too complex, but SimCity 2000 was just right, and Dollhouse was the next thing he was working on, which became The Sims. I'd also love to make a modern version of The Sims 1, but I don't have permission for that either, and have never been able to talk anyone at EA to reproduce the miracle it took to release SimCity.
But I'm delighted and grateful to have the chance to work with Yoot Saito on SimTower instead, since he retained all the rights to his code, and we're both on the same page about educational games, constructionist education, and our respect for Alan Kay and Seymour Papert's philosophy about teaching kids to program and motivating it with games. A visual programming language in Micropolis and Yoot Tower would be great (that's the long term plan), like the SimAntics VPL in The Sims 1 (but much easier to use and extend).
Will Wright - Maxis - Interfacing to Microworlds - 1996-4-26:
Here's an article I wrote about that talk right after attending it, that I updated in later years after working with Will on The Sims, and then even more recently when Stanford finally published the video of the talk decades later:
Have you looked at the game Project Highrise? How do you think it compares.
Speaking of maxis, do you think we will ever see SimEarth open sourced?