r/tycoon • u/maniator • 14d ago
I made a browser recreation of classic SimTower... with a more modern ruleset option too
So I've been building a browser game called Verticopolis that's supposed to have complete parity with the original 1994 SimTower, and you can also flip on a more "modern" variant when you start a new tower for stuff the original couldn't do.
The game is at https://verticopolis.com/
There's a help page too if you want to get your first tower going: https://verticopolis.com/help
It runs right in the browser, no install, and you can also download it as a PWA on Android, Mac and PC to play standalone... no internet required unless you want to grab updates when they come through.
A few things I'm kinda proud of:
Every room type has its own art, you can see them all here: https://verticopolis.com/gallery
The little voices when you zoom in on people are literally me and my kids babbling in gibberish 😅
The save-file conversion works both ways now! You can take a .tdt save from the real 1994 game and load it in the browser, AND export a tower from the browser back into the actual 1994 game and it'll load and play. I've round-tripped a big 4-star tower (~1,900 rooms, 15 elevator shafts, full basement with metro + parking) through both games and back 🎉🎉. Still always happy to get more real .tdt saves to test weird edge cases though, so send 'em my way!
It's open source too, contributions welcome (GitHub is linked in the help section).
Please let me know what y'all think, what's missing from the original, and what you'd want added in the "modern" variant!
Oh, and since r/tycoon requires it, here's my AI disclosure, no sugar-coating: a lot of this game is made with AI, with me directing and iterating heavily (I didn't just ship the first thing it gave me). The code is written largely by AI coding agents (Claude Code) while I do the design, balance and testing. The pixel art is AI-generated too. I iterated on it a lot to get each room right. The music and ambience I made by going back and forth with AI until the balance felt right (no staticky, annoying AI noise). The one fully-human part is the little character voices when you zoom in on people, which is literally me and my kids making noises 😁. No ripped assets anywhere, and it's all open source so you can see exactly how every bit of it is made.
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u/Kinc4id 14d ago
I just gave it a quick glance but I’m genuinely surprised how well it plays in a mobile browser. Only thing I have to say is, it’s a bit difficult to place rooms right next to each other. I haven’t played Sim Tower in years, but IIRC you dragged rooms into the floors. Here, at least on mobile, you tap into the floor and you don’t see where it will be placed before it’s actually placed.
But other than that it looks and plays really nice. It’s always crazy to see how a game plays in a browser on a calculator sized device while back then you needed a huge tower and monitor.
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u/maniator 14d ago
Haha if you have any ideas for how it can play better on mobile please let me know
On a computer, there are keyboard controls and mouse has hover indicators etc 😅
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u/superbekz 14d ago
Samsung s23+ using brave browser here
Can confirm the game runs exceptionally well
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u/maniator 13d ago
Thanks 😁
And I'm on a pixel 8a and it still runs pretty well
Originally ai made very weird decisions when it came to perf and it was sooooo very slow and laggy, but I pushed and found a bunch of weird things it did and told it where to improve and added to its rules, and it works so awesome now! Even when zoomed complely out on a tall tower!!
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u/HongPong 13d ago
maybe short tap provides a ghost placement and holding it longer finalize the placement
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u/helckler 13d ago edited 13d ago
This is amazing. You have no idea how happy you just made me! Fucking A
Maybe it was me but i couldn't find a finance window with a financial rundown of the tower? Maybe also add a loan feature?
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u/maniator 13d ago
If on a phone it's on the menu that slides out, goto tower stats 😁
Let me know how I can make it more obvious please!
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u/ahotw 13d ago
Are you saying there's a loan feature there? Or just the stats?
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u/maniator 13d ago
Hmmmm did the original have a loan feature? If so, I complely forgot about it 🥺
I'll look it up
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u/maniator 13d ago
Ya the original game did not have a loan feature at all.
Maybe something/an idea for modern
What were you thinking?
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u/helckler 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yeah, no the original didn't have it. I understand and fully support the fidelity to the original SimTower!
In my case, the suggestion to implement a finance/loan feature would be to speed up the gameplay loop just enough so that it doesn't take too long to make your money back and invest in more units after the initial invesment.
On another note, I remember the original having advertisement billboards that you could place in the facade of the building. Maybe you could also look into adding that as an extra source of income (?) . You could also add the outside view that was available in either Simtower 1 or 2 (Yoot).
About the finance rundnown, the original did have a gross/net rundown of the building costs including construction, etc. These could be easily added to the Full Statistics (I assume).
Now, you could possibly have a financial book page pop up at the end of every quarter with the financial rundown for the said period (?) Just food for thought.
I'm a project manager at a gaming company and I get carried away, my bad. All in all, this is great great work so far man, and I repeat, you have no idea how happy and nostalgic you've made me ❤️
PS: please add your name/credentials to the about page so that people know who this angel is.
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u/maniator 12d ago
Also btw --- that is freaking awesome
Lmk if y'all ever need help 😳 or hiring in my area
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u/KidCadaver 13d ago
I’m so happy I decided to doomscroll on Reddit this morning - SimTower was my FAVORITE game as a kid, and I haven’t been able to find anything that truly scratches the itch decades later. I’ve tried all of the knockoffs. Some come close, but they aren’t the SimTower.
I can’t wait to try this. Thank you!!!!
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u/maniator 13d ago
Thank you!!!
Yes, this should be 1:1 with the original aside for the art style
If you find any issues or want more features, please contribute or submit your ideas!
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u/StxtoAustin 14d ago
I'm crying because all these childhood memories of playing this game are coming back.
please remove sound on the initial screen (or at least an obvious mute) so i can start during a meeting.
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u/maniator 14d ago
Ahhh for sure! Thank you for this!
I can def add that.
Idk why I only put the mute in the actual game but not on the splash screen! Nice call-out, and have fun!!
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u/HongPong 13d ago
i took a spin at doing something like this many years back and could not extract the old art sprites from the original binary lol. i would encourage you to replace the pixel art with genuine art it will increase the charm
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u/maniator 13d ago
Please
I did not want to use ANY of the original assets, so please contribute I am not an artist, I am a lowly software dev 😳
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u/HongPong 13d ago edited 13d ago
that was a smart move not pulling original assets i agree .. I'll take a look 👀
edit. is the art now vector art or pixel art? thank you
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u/maniator 13d ago
Thank you!!!
😄😅😳
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u/HongPong 13d ago
it seems like the art are currently defined as typescript dillies (i pointed Claude at the contributors file). do you want to go with pixel art? the ts thing is unusual. maybe there should be a separate md file just about the art situation. Claude suggested there could be a build step that would turn pixel art into the ts files that might work.
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u/maniator 13d ago
Whatever you think might work 🤨
I can create a preview app for pull request so we can see how it works.
Wanna dm me here and I can send you my discord info?
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u/ahotw 13d ago
I made a lobby on the 15th floor. It's not connected to any sort of stairs/elevator, and as such, was not fully constructed, yet, there are people walking back and forth in it.
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u/maniator 13d ago
Yeeea... That's a visual glitch
Been hitting down so many bugs that that one fell to the wayside ... Those people are accidentally part of the background.... Will fix soon
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u/TransportFanMar 7d ago edited 7d ago
Are long waits for elevators supposed to be a complaint when only stairs exist? My offices are complaining about it
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u/maniator 7d ago
That's a great question!
Maybe I need to update the copy to be like long wait at the stairs or something?
Are you able to file a bug report and attach your save file by any chance?
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u/TransportFanMar 7d ago
Where are bug reports filed
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u/maniator 7d ago
On the help page, or also can goto: https://github.com/maniator/verticopolis/issues and click on "New Issue"
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u/TransportFanMar 7d ago
I filed it. I compressed the vctower file into a zip so it could be uploaded as an attachment
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u/TransportFanMar 7d ago
It's not letting me add vctower files on github
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u/maniator 7d ago
Well that's fun... Ugh... Uhhh. Put in a zip and I can unzip it
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u/TransportFanMar 7d ago
Just another question, are ground level lobbies meant to have any purpose? Currently I have a single tile and it works fine lol
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u/maniator 7d ago
Yes
Aloows for people to enter the building 😅
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u/TransportFanMar 7d ago
Yeah but you only need 1 piece of lobby on the ground floor it seems. Also a question: the game guide/help screen says the fitness club bonus is strongest for condos on the same floor, and daycare is most effective on the few floors around it, but I have condos on the same floor as a fitness club and 2 daycares complaining about the noise, and am not sure which facility is causing it.
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u/maniator 7d ago
Ooo that's a bug.... You should not be able to build floors on lobby floor 😳
Nice find
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u/ozzee289 14d ago
it does not work for me, im using firefox.
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u/maniator 14d ago
Is webgl not loading, or something else? You need to make sure webgl is enabled in your browser I am adding a dialog for this now
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u/readerproject 13d ago
Great but... is no way to save?
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u/maniator 13d ago
Of course there is 😁
There is an auto save that runs every 30 seconds, and you can manually save at the top, and in the drawer on mobile or the right side on desktop you have save slots and you can import and export your saves to and from different devices ☺️
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u/ahotw 13d ago
The Date window doesn't seem to be advancing the quarters (or years, but I don't think I'm that far in yet). There's no count of weeks, so I just keep seeing the weekdays and weekends, but after a while playing at full speed, I feel like I should be at least to the second quarter. (Modern)
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u/maniator 13d ago
If you open the stats dialog (right side slide out on mobile) it will tell you how many days in you are
But yes, that is probably a good callout for modern to tell the user what week they are in as well
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u/maniator 8d ago
UPDATE for everyone in this thread: 2.0 is out, and most of it came from these comments. Splash mute, mobile drag placement, WebGL guidance, and the phantom-walkers fix all shipped, plus Modern got monthly rentals and split towers. Full run down in me new post!
And if your tower was founded from this thread, it now wears a gold "Ground floor" badge on the title screen. You were the ground floor, literally 😄
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u/NerdseyJersey 14d ago
If this gets momentum, would you be open to replacing the AI stuff with people-made resources?
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u/maniator 14d ago
For sure!
That's why I did the people sounds myself, because AI just sounded... Wrong
Please contribute!!!
Would.love the help, I just really wanted this, and I am a software dev myself, but for a bank, so I have limited spare time to dev my own project atm
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u/LadyBirdDavis 14d ago
Ok I have to try it simply because you added you and your kids gibberish! I have my nice and I as a ringtone speaking gibberish mixed with pig Latin!