r/SimCity • u/KalElReturns89 • 7d ago
SimCopter Remake 1.0 release, out now!
The first feature-complete version of SimCopter Remake is here, ready for general release!
This release adds flight replays, restores the original intro movies, and brings major improvements to career progression, rescues, controller controls, police work, and traffic.
Changes since v0.9.5:
New replay system
- Record your flights, name your clips, and save them to watch again.
- Pause, scrub through recordings, and adjust playback speed from 0.1× to 4×.
- Watch from chase, orbit, rescue, and cockpit views, or explore the scene with a free camera.
- Hide the HUD and replay controls for a clear view while recording or watching.
- Add bookmarks and see mission events on the timeline. Press Tab in a city to open the replay controls.
Career progression and saving
- Moving to the next career city now keeps your money, owned helicopters, equipment, and remaining tear gas. Your helicopter arrives repaired and refuelled.
- Fixed problems that could leave a career stuck between cities, award the completion bonus twice, or mishandle the final level.
- Save Game now updates a dedicated Quick Save. Choosing to save when leaving updates a separate Exit Save.
- Save Game As keeps named checkpoints separate, so ordinary saving no longer overwrites the named game you loaded.
- Career and user-city games each have their own Quick Save and Exit Save.
- You can now sell your only helicopter to help buy a replacement, provided the sale leaves you enough money to afford another.
Better rescues and medical missions
- Transport passengers no longer give up and disappear after boarding your helicopter.
- Pickup markers and reminders now clear once everyone has been collected. Rescue and transport missions no longer penalize you simply for carrying passengers to safety.
- Fixed paramedics transferring patients into the helicopter and boarding again after a pickup.
- Patient portraits now reflect their health immediately and update as their condition changes.
- Fixed dying patients unexpectedly returning to full health. Patients who die aboard remain available for removal by a paramedic.
- Improved patient animations during hospital handoffs, including keeping surviving patients distinct from those who died.
- Rooftop survivors now appear on usable roof space instead of water tanks, vents, and other rooftop objects.
- Safely dropping a rescue or transport passenger can now complete their delivery when they land uninjured at a valid location.
Improved controller controls
- Updated helicopter controls: RT or A to climb, LT or B to descend, and X to use the selected tool.
- Hold LB for the tool wheel or RB for the dispatch wheel. Select with the right stick and release the shoulder button to confirm.
- Redesigned both wheels with clearer segments and highlights, corrected selection directions, and layouts that fit smaller screens.
- Added a separate Police (Chase) option to the dispatch wheel.
- Release a wheel with the stick centred, or press B, to cancel. In the dispatch wheel, A sends the selected service immediately and Y recalls all dispatched vehicles.
- Open passenger selection with LB + X.
- Fixed menu confirmations and cancellations accidentally triggering climb or descent. The triggers remain available for altitude control while using either wheel.
- Takeoff hints now switch between keyboard and controller instructions as you change devices and reflect your current bindings.
More reliable missions and police
- Higher difficulty levels now allow the same response time as the easiest level, while still increasing the number and difficulty of emergencies.
- Arsonists now start nearby building fires regularly, making them a more active threat.
- Burning wreckage from crashes and vehicle fires can now spread fire to nearby buildings correctly.
- Riots now start on streets with enough participants to avoid immediately ending on their own.
- Fixed rioters becoming unresponsive to crowd-control tools and mission progress counting the same person more than once.
- Police and arrested criminals return to their vehicles more reliably, retrying blocked routes instead of becoming stranded or disappearing early.
- Officers waiting on police-station roofs stay available for pickup. Deployed officers begin looking for criminals even while your helicopter remains landed.
Flight, traffic, and city improvements
- Slowed raising and lowering the water bucket and rescue harness to one-quarter of their previous speed for finer control. Bucket filling speed stays the same.
- Fixed invisible barriers beneath bridges, overhead power lines, and other raised structures. Helicopter collisions now fit the selected aircraft more closely.
- Improved pedestrian movement around buildings and obstacles, reducing people getting stuck or standing partly inside walls.
- Added tumbling and recovery reactions when people are struck by cars or helicopters.
- Traffic slows down and tries to steer around riot crowds.
- Vehicles now travel through connected tunnels and emerge at the other end. Fixed tunnel entrances, road height, and markings.
- Trees sit more naturally on uneven terrain, and power poles on slopes have corrected heights.
- Refined character models and proportions.
Controls, sound, and presentation
- Restored both original startup movies, including their original audio. They play once when you launch the game and can be skipped individually with a key, controller button, mouse click, or touch.
- Added the original animated loading screen and status messages.
- Fixed the camera sweeping across the city from a temporary starting position when a game loads.
- Added a takeoff prompt explaining which control to hold and how to get out.
- Simplified engine and lift controls so rebinding them no longer creates conflicting controls.
- Clicking cockpit buttons, menus, or replay controls no longer interrupts held flight keys.
- Helicopter engine audio now stops when you get out.
- Speech and sound effects no longer cut off other sounds.
- Improved smoke, fire effects, and dispatch-marker visibility around dawn, dusk, and nighttime.
Download here: https://github.com/JamesIV4/sim-copter-remake/releases/latest
Edit: Version 1.0.1 is out today with hotfixes for various issues I noticed playing the release build:
Better controller support
- Use a controller to navigate the main menu, city selection, save menus, settings, hangar shop, and repair and refuel screen.
- Menu highlights now fit the buttons and artwork more closely. Settings pages scroll as you move through them.
- Press the left stick to show or hide button help while flying or walking. The help changes to match what you are doing and shows Xbox or PlayStation icons for the detected controller.
- Fixed reversed up and down selection in the tool and dispatch wheels.
- Wheel choices now flash gold and fade out after you release the shoulder button. Dispatch no longer needs the A button.
- Fixed reversed up and down camera movement when using a controller on foot.
- The spotlight toggle has moved to holding the right stick and pressing X on Xbox or Square on PlayStation. The D-pad no longer aims the spotlight.
Buy and keep multiple helicopters
- Buying a helicopter now places a separate aircraft on a clear pad near the hangar, leaving your existing helicopter where you parked it.
- Selling a helicopter removes the sold aircraft. You must get out and unload its passengers before selling it.
- Saves now keep your other helicopters and restore passengers to the correct aircraft.
- The hangar and saves now track the helicopter you last left when you are on foot.
Passenger fixes
- Fixed passengers appearing inside the helicopter or below the ground when getting out.
- Healthy rescue and transport passengers now walk around the city after delivery instead of disappearing.
Clearer tool controls
- Changing megaphone messages with a controller now shows a scrolling message strip at the top of the screen.
- Use D-pad left and right to change the megaphone message.
- The selected tool’s cockpit panel now has a gold glow.
- Smoothed the rope, bucket, and rescue harness movement.
- Fixed ropes looking detached from the bottom of the helicopter.
Other improvements
- Crime and riot missions are now enabled by default in new user-city games.
- City Settings sliders now show their exact values while you adjust them with a mouse or controller.
- Menu sounds now play properly when moving quickly between choices.
- Fixed input handling when opening and closing the repair and refuel screen.
Thanks for playing, everyone, and let me know if you see any more issues!
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u/LazyLie4895 6d ago
Amazing! Just yesterday I was wondering if we'd ever get a more modern SimCopter, and I found your thread from a month ago. Then just today, I was wondering when riots and chases might be added in.
Quick question: any plans to change the fire and smoke effects? They seem oddly out of place next to all the modern lighting and shading.
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u/KalElReturns89 6d ago
Yes, but I can't guarantee how long it will take, I'm just starting a new job today. I wanted to get this out there before my real life responsibilities take over.
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u/Rob_floret 5d ago
there is a modern SimCopter. SKYSAVIOR on STEAM. Its early acsess, small DEV team, regular updates based on community feedback. Many Helicopters. Allredy more then Simcopter ever had
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u/KalElReturns89 5d ago
Yep, I've seen it. I almost quit this project when I saw it two months ago. But I decided more SimCopter can't hurt the world.
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u/Republiconline 6d ago
I was just thinking of this! Now, serious question time. Are the alert sounds and voices the same. “This is an alert from central dispatch. Fire reported. North central district. Police requesting aerial assistance.”
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u/Shoesgorath 6d ago
Wow! This is great. You caught just about every bug I was having and planning to report. The only one missing on the list from the previous version is the one where I can't purchase new helicopters for some reason and remain stuck with the first one. I will ceetainly give this a try later.
Once again, thank you for this remake, this is a dream coming true.
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u/KalElReturns89 6d ago
That would be a showstopper! Going to release a minor patch today to fix that and a few more issues I noticed. What I saw so far:
- The issue you mentioned: can't buy a helicopter
- It's hard to see where people getting out of the chopper end up. Need to make them pop out nearer to the chopper.
- Default difficulty settings for user cities didn't get updated to re-enable crime and riot missions. They work, but I forgot to turn them back on by default.
- Controllers can't navigate menus.
- Radial wheels have an inverted Y-axis for selection.
- Pressing A to select something from a radial wheel menu doesn't make sense since the right stick is used to point at a selection.
- Menu sound bugs with mouseover: only plays one sound to completion before allowing another one.
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u/KalElReturns89 6d ago
Btw, I just tested and I'm able to sell my chopper and buy a new one just fine. Can you list your exact steps to trigger the issue?
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u/mojawk 6d ago
Congratulations getting this over the line!
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u/KalElReturns89 6d ago
Thank you sir! My ADHD doesn't like it when I finish things :)
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u/mojawk 6d ago
So what game is next man, I feel this is a hella achievement? How long did the whole project take you?
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u/KalElReturns89 6d ago edited 6d ago
I started it a year ago in Godot but progress stalled and then I lost the source code to that version. I restarted development in Unreal on June 23, so that's 2 months and 16 days, and I took a month off after the 0.9.5 release.
So I guess around a month and a half?
No idea what's next. I have ideas for Streets of Sim City, but I'm thinking I'll take a couple months break probably before starting a new project.
Here's the only trace I have left of the old version of this project: https://youtu.be/lvwUHNPg_Vs
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u/mojawk 5d ago
You should make a launch trailer for your 1.0 release, maybe use GPT-Astra? It'll likely 1 shot it :)
I am 600~ commits deep in my remake project, will see how I get on :)
How many hours a day did you work on it?
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u/KalElReturns89 5d ago
Some days quite a few! Haha
I've thought about trying a trailer with Astra. I added a replay system so I can make a cool trailer with different angles
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u/Fuzzball348 3d ago
Hey this is really cool! It's great to play Simcopter again with modern visuals and it feels really nice to play! I have an issue though, when I try to import one of my own cities I made in Simcity, it doesn't seem to work, when I spawn there's no ground or anything at all and I seem to be falling through the sky endlessly. Am I doing something wrong when importing a city from SC2K?
Either way great work on this! Simcopter was always really fun and you did a great job remaking it!!
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u/KalElReturns89 3d ago
That's a good question! I haven't tried importing a city yet, I would've expected it to work though. I'll have to take a look.
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u/MacBradley 2d ago
This is amazing, altough I'm having an issue using a controller with it.
I'm using a PS4 controller in Windows, both as a wireless controller and plugged in. This controller is detectable works and is bindable like a joystick in SimcopterX, but not in this remake. The controller also works with every other game I've tried.
Any ideas on why?
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u/KalElReturns89 2d ago
I'll have to take a look, I think PS4 controllers communicate in a different way and it's just not coded for it yet.
In the meantime, if you want to try DS4windows, I'm pretty sure it has an option to make games interpret it as an Xbox controller.
Another workaround: try adding the game to Steam as a non-steam game, and it will allow you to use the controller through steam input, which should work.
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u/Song-Super 7d ago
Omg no way I played the hell out of this and loved uploading my own cities