Copyright: ® 1995 Maxis, Inc.


Help Contents
Contents

Introduction

Welcome to SimTown!

Townbuilder's Reference

The Main SimTown Screen

The Town Builder Toolbar

The Designer Character Window

The Natural Resources Window

The Menus

Easy and Hard Games

Fixer-Upper Towns

Starter Towns

Natural Resources and Credits

Awards

The Eco-Villain

Disasters

Town-Building Hints and Tips

Inside the SimTown Simulation

Preferences

Maxis Software Toys® for Kids

Maxis and Home Learning


Welcome to SimTown!

SimTown is your town. It's yours to build, to play with and to take care of. You're the Town Builder—the boss. You're in charge.

You can build and run lots of different towns, each one different. There are three ways to build your towns:

1.	You can start with empty land and build your own town from the ground up any way you want.

2.	You can load in any of the included Starter Towns, take them over, and build them.

3.	You can load in any of the Fixer-Upper Towns—towns with real problems—and try to turn them into nice places to live.

You can watch the Sims (the people who live in SimTown) work, play and travel around town. You can peek into their homes and see where they live. You can even design your own special Sims—one in each of your towns—and decide what they like to wear, eat, play, say and what kind of pet they own.

Of course, part of being in charge is being responsible. Your Sims need your help to run their town, to help it grow, and to make it a place they can be proud of. You'll be in charge of guarding the natural resources—the trees, water, air and crops. And be sure to recycle so your Sims aren't buried under garbage!

Most of all, you'll be in charge of having fun and experimenting and designing all kinds of towns, especially ones that you would like to live in—your dream town.


The Main SimTown Screen

Most of your time with SimTown will be spent in the Main SimTown Window:

At the top of the window is the Title bar. It tells you the name of the program (SimTown) and the name of the town. The Title bar has the usual Windows buttons for maximizing and minimizing and closing the window.

Below the Title bar is the Menu bar. The menus here help you control SimTown.

Below the Menu bar is an information display. It tells you the date (in SimTown), the town's population and the name of the town. There is also a balance to help you build the right mix of places to live and places to work, plus a warning light that lets you know when there is an emergency. Messages from the Sims are also shown here.

On the left side of the window is the Town Builder toolbar, with all the tools you need to build your town.

At the bottom of the window, near the left, are words that tell you what tool you are using and how much it costs to use it.

At the bottom of the window, to the right, are different options for the active tool.


The Town Builder Toolbar

The Terrain tool is for placing roads, bicycle paths, trees, grass, ponds, and other "outside" things in your town.

The Home tool is for adding houses to your town so the Sims have somewhere to live.

The Business tool is for adding stores, offices, factories and other places so the adult Sims have places to work.

The Fun Place tool is for adding arcades, zoos, ice cream stands and other fun places to your town.

The Community Buildings tool is for adding important city buildings, like fire and police stations, libraries, medical centers and schools.

The Bulldozer tool is for removing buildings and other things from your town.

The Investigate tool lets you find out more about each building, person and terrain area.

The Far Away View shows you your whole town at once.

The Middle View shows you your town at a medium view.

The Close-Up View shows you your town up close with the most details.

The Designer Character button opens the Designer Character window so you can create your own special Sim to live in your town.

The Resources button opens the Natural Resources window where you manage your town's resources and garbage.

The Newspaper button opens a newspaper that tells you what's going on in your town.

The Stop/Start button lets you pause the game and start it again.


The Designer Character Window

How to Create a Designer Chatacter

1.	Click on the type of Sim you want to design, a girl, a boy, a woman or a man.

2.	Name your character.

3.	Click on the blue shirt button, then choose your character's shirt or blouse color.

4.	Click on the I Like (heart) button, then choose the different things that your character likes.

5.	Click on the Blah Blah button to choose the things that your character says.

6.	Click on the My diary button to see your character's diary.

7.	Click in the lower-left corner to return to the Main SimTown screen.


The Natural Resources Window

Controlling the Natural Resources Window

Click on the tree to plant trees. This costs one credit.

Click on the strawberry to plant crops. This costs one credit.

Click on the water drop to increase your water supply. This costs one credit.

Click on the recycling symbol to recycle garbage. This costs one credit.

Click on the cloud to improve your air quality. This costs one credit.

The number tells you how many Credits you have.

Click in the lower-left corner to return to the Main SimTown screen.

Click on the advisor in the lower-right corner for advice.

Understanding the Natural Resources Window

The sky will darken when it gets polluted.

The trees get used up when you build your town, so you have to keep planting if you want to keep building.

The crops get eaten by the Sims in your town, so you have to keep planting more.

If the water supply gets too low, you can't build and your Sims can't take baths.

Garbage from the town piles up, and keeps piling up unless you recycle.


The Menus

File Menu

Sound Menu

Eco-Villain Menu

Disasters Menu

Windows Menu

Help Menu


File Menu

New... begins a new, empty town.

Open... opens a dialog box so you can load in a previously saved town. See the Quick-Start Guide for details on opening files on your computer.

Save... saves the current town to disk under the same name and in the same place where it was last saved. If it hasn't been saved before, the Save As... dialog box will open, allowing you to name the town and choose the destination disk and directory or folder.

Save As... opens a dialog box that allows you to rename the town and choose a new destination disk and directory or folder. See the Quick-Start Guide for details on saving files on your computer.

Load Fixer-Upper lets you load any of four different towns: No Water, No Crops, No Trees or Bad Air. These towns each have a problem that needs fixing. If you can fix the problem in time, you win. See Fixer-Upper Towns later in this guide for more details.

Load Starter Town lets you load any of four different towns that you can use to get a jump start on building your own towns. See Starter Towns later in this guide for more details.

Page Setup... opens a dialog box where you can adjust the way your printer prints.

Print... opens a dialog box where you can choose options for printing your town. See the Quick-Start Guide for details on printing with your computer.

Preferences... opens a small window where you can make some choices on how SimTown works. See Preferences later in this guide for more details.

Quit ends the SimTown program.


Sound Menu

Sound Effects turns sound effects on and off. When it is on, there will be a check mark to the left of the words "Sound Effects" in the menu.

Music turns the music on and off. When it is on, there will be a check mark to the left of the word "Music" in the menu.

Song 1, Song 2 and Song 3 let you select which song will play if the music is turned on. The selected song will have a check mark next to it.

Note: Not all computers can play the music and sound effects.


Eco-Villain Menu

Timber Thief steals trees.

Food Pig eats up lots of your crops.

Water Hog drinks up lots of your water.

Litterbug produces lots and lots of garbage.

Air Polluter makes the air dirty.

Eco-Villains Off prevents Eco-Villains from coming to your town.


Disasters Menu

Drought causes a water shortage in your town.

Earthquake shakes up the town and deteriorates some of the buildings.

Fire starts one building on fire. The fire will spread if you don't take care of it.

Disasters Off prevents disasters from happening in your town.


Window Menu
Windows Menu

Main opens the Main SimTown screen.

Designer Character opens the Designer Character screen.

Natural Resources opens the Natural Resources screen.

Newspaper opens the Newspaper.

Awards opens the Awards window.

Find Designer Character centers the display on the towns Designer Character (if there is one).

Center Display on Mouse centers the display on the next place you click the mouse (If you click it in the Display Area.

Show Grid toggles the display of the grid (the diamonds on empty ground) on and off. Whether the grid is displayed or not doesnt affect placing things, it just affects the way the ground looks.


Help Menu

About SimTown reveals the fascinating copyright information and credits that we all just LOVE to read!

Contents opens the on-line Help system to the Contents page.


Easy and Hard Games

Whenever you start a new town or open a Starter Town, you get to name it and decide whether the play level will be easy or hard.

There are four things that make the games easy or hard:

1.	The amount of credits you get when you start a new town.

In easy games you start with 10 credits.

In hard games you start with 5 credits.

2.	The amount of credits you get every month.

In easy games you get 2 credits every month.

In hard games you get 1 credit every month.

3.	The amount of damage disasters cause.

In easy games, fires are less likely to spread, earthquakes do less damage, and droughts cause water to cost twice as much as normal.

In hard games, fires spread more quickly, earthquakes do more damage, and droughts cause water to cost three times as much as normal.

4.	The amount of damage Eco-Villains cause.

In easy games, each time an Eco-Villain comes to town he will steal 1 credit's worth of natural resources or add 1 credit's worth of pollution or garbage.

In hard games, each time an Eco-Villain comes to town he will steal 2 credits' worth of natural resources or add 2 credits' worth of pollution or garbage.


Fixer-Upper Towns

There are four Fixer-Upper Towns that you can load. Each of these towns has a bad problem. Your job is to solve the problem within a certain amount of time. If you solve the problem in time, then you win. If you don't solve the problem in time, then you lose—but that's OK, you can always try again.

When you start a Fixer-Upper Town, a dialog box will open on the screen giving you information about the town, what you have to accomplish in order to win, and the amount of time you have to complete your tasks. The four Fixer Upper Towns are:

No Water is a medium-sized town with almost no water. You'll have to spend some credits on water right away, because once you run out, all your buildings will deteriorate. Next, you'll have to carefully manage all your resources and repair the town.

No Crops is a very large town that is almost out of crops. Once the crops are all gone, the people will start to move out of the town. You'll need to use credits on crops right away, but don't ignore your other resources.

No Trees is a town with no trees available in the Natural Resources window. (It will have some trees in the town, but these can't be used for building.) With no trees as natural resources, it can't grow, and buildings can't be built or repaired. You'll have to manage your credits, grow some trees, repair the deteriorated buildings and make the town bigger.

Bad Air is a big town with lots of roads and horrible air quality. You'll need to spend credits to clean up the air, then redesign the town to reduce pollution by taking out roads and replacing them with bicycle paths.

If you win, you will be notified of your great achievement, and you will be allowed to continue playing in the town. If you lose, you will be kicked out of the town by an angry mob. (But you can always try again!)

Related Topics:

Saving Fixer-Upper Towns to Disk


Saving Fixer-Upper Towns to Disk

If you save a Fixer-Upper Town to disk before the time limit is up, when you load it back in it will continue from where and when you left off. You can still win or lose.

If you save a Fixer-Upper Town to disk after you win, it will be just like a regular town.


Starter Towns

There are four Starter Towns. These are towns that have been started in different ways to help you get started with your own towns. When you load in a Starter Town, you name it anything you want, and choose either Easy or Hard.

Road Town has a framework of roads all ready for you, so you can spend your time building buildings and parks.

Park Town has lots of park land all ready for you, so you can concentrate on roads and buildings.

Bike Town already has a network of bicycle paths for you to build your town around.

Mixed has some roads, some bike paths and some parks, so all you need to add is buildings.

Unlike Fixer-Uppers, there is no time limit and no winning or losing in Starter Towns.


Natural Resources and Credits

Natural resources are just as important in SimTown as they are in a real town. One of the most important things that you do when you play SimTown is managing the natural resources. The way you manage them is with Credits.

You need to use Credits to increase your supplies of natural resources, and to clean the air and recycle the garbage.

In an easy game, you start with 10 Credits and get two more every month (in SimTown time, not real time). In a hard game, you start with 5 Credits and get one more every month.

The most Credits you can have at a time is 99.

You also win credits for winning awards:

10 Credits for Small Town Of the Year,

20 Credits for Best Town In the State,

30 Credits for Best Town In the Nation, and

50 Credits for Best Town In the World.

Credits can only be used in the Natural Resources window.

For a complete description of SimTown's natural resources, and an explanation of how the simulation keeps track of them, see Inside the SimTown Simulation later in this guide.


Awards

Besides winning the Fixer-Upper Towns, there are four different awards that each town can receive. Awards are based on how well and how long you manage your town.

The four awards are:

Small Town Of the Year, for reaching a population of 100, then keeping a well-managed town for 6 months.

Best Town In the State, for reaching a population of 100, then keeping a well-managed town for 1 year.

Best Town In the Nation, for reaching a population of 100, then keeping a well-managed town for 2 years.

Best Town In the World, for reaching a population of 100, then keeping a well-managed town for 4 years.

Every time you win an award, a dialog box will pop up and congratulate you. But there's more than mere congratulations—you also win extra Credits! If you win:

Small Town Of the Year, you receive 10 credits.

Best Town In the State, you receive 20 credits.

Best Town In the Nation, you receive 30 credits.

Best Town In the World, you receive 50 credits.

If you have a badly managed month, then a different dialog box will pop up and tell you the bad news. If this happens, you won't lose any awards that you have already won, but to win more, you will have to start the count of well-managed months over. For example, if you already won the Best Town In the Nation award for 2 years of good management, then get a Bad Management warning, you will still have your Best Town In the Nation award, but you will have to start over and manage your town well for four whole years before you can win the Best Town In the World award.

For information on managing your town well enough to win awards, see Town-Building Hints and Tips.

Related Topics:

The Awards Window


The Awards Window

The Awards window keeps track of your awards. You can see it by opening the Window menu and selecting Awards.

This window lists the four rewards, tells you which ones you've won, and tells you what you need to do to win the rest.


The Eco-Villain

The Eco-Villain is the bad guy. He appears every so often and either wastes natural resources or adds pollution. He has five aliases:

Timber Thief wastes your town's trees.

Food Pig wastes your town's crops.

Water Hog wastes your town's water.

Litterbug adds garbage to your town.

Air Polluter adds pollution to your town's air.

When the Eco-Villain comes to town, you'll be sent a message in the Message bar in the Main SimTown screen.

You can only see the Eco-Villain in the Natural Resources screen. He appears when you try to use Credits. For example, if he is loose in your town and is being a Water Hog, then the next time you use a Credit to increase your water supply, the Water Hog will appear and waste all the new water.

In an easy game, the Eco-Villain wastes one Credit's worth of natural resources or adds one Credit's worth of pollution or garbage. In a hard game, the Eco-Villain wastes two Credits' worth of natural resources or adds two Credits' worth of pollution or garbage.

The Eco-Villain appears randomly. You can also bring him to town as a challenge and to see how he will affect your town by opening the Eco-Villain menu and selecting the type of Eco-Villain you want.

If you don't want the Eco-Villain to visit your town, you can open the Eco-Villain menu and select Eco-Villain Off.


Disasters

There are three natural disasters that can occur in SimTown:

Droughts are water shortages. They last for a random period of time, up to one year. While a drought is in progress, increasing your water supply is more expensive. In an easy game, it will cost two Credits for the amount of water that normally costs one Credit. In a hard game it will cost three Credits for the amount of water that normally costs one Credit.

Earthquakes shake up your town and deteriorate houses. The amount of damage that an earthquake does is random, but it will always do more damage in a hard game than in an easy game.

Fires burn buildings, and turn them to rubble. They can spread from building to building. Fires will spread twice as fast in a hard game than in an easy game. Deteriorated buildings are most likely to catch on fire. Fires can't cross over roads, bike paths or empty spaces larger than two tiles. (Tiles are the little squares that you see on the bare ground in the Medium and Close-Up views.) Fires near Fire Stations go out quicker. The only building that can't ever catch on fire is the Fire Station.

Disasters appear by themselves randomly. You can also set off disasters in your town as a challenge and to see how they affect your town by opening the Disasters menu and selecting the name of the disaster you want.

If you don't want any disasters to happen in your town, you can open the Disasters menu and select Disasters Off.


Town-Building Hints and Tips

Here are some hints and tips to help you be a better Town Builder.

Related Topics:

General Hints and Tips

Managing Your Town to Win Awards


General Hints and Tips

Place roads and bike paths before you place buildings.

Play through all 17 steps to Becoming a Town Builder in the SimTown Town Builders Guide.

Remember: there are three different views. Use the Far Away view to see the whole town and make your long range plans. Use the Medium view for placing roads and buildings. Use the Close-Up view for exploring, looking for fun spots and investigating the people, houses and businesses.

Watch the message bar for important messages and warnings.

Read the Newspaper regularly.

Watch the House-to-Business Balance at the top of the screen, just below the Menu bar.

The more roads you have, the more traffic there will be. And the more traffic there is, the more polluted your air will get. So be careful not to place more road tiles than you really need in your town.

If you want to fill a large area with grass without stamping out each tiny grass square one by one, you can use this shortcut:

1.	Click on the Terrain tool in the Tool Builder's toolbar.

2.	Click on Grass at the bottom of the screen.

3.	Hold down the Shift key.

4.	Click and drag to form a rectangle where you want to grass to grow.

5.	Release the mouse button.

Use the Investigate tool often. Activate the tool, then click on any Sim or Shift-click on any building to open a Profile window.

Fires won't cross over blank areas, so if you have a fire, bulldoze around the burning object to create a firebreak that is as least two tiles wide. (Tiles are the little squares that you see on the bare ground in the Medium and Close-Up views.) Fires won't cross over roads or bike paths, so don't bother bulldozing them when you are making a firebreak.

As a fire safety precaution, leave blank areas between houses, or at least some space with grass or trees that can be bulldozed as a firebreak. That way you won't have to bulldoze anyone's home or workplace.

Vegetable Gardens produce food for your Sims the same as crops in the Natural Resources screen. Placing 16 Vegetable Gardens supplies as much food as one Credit's worth of crops. But remember: Vegetable Gardens cost water to build and maintain, so don't place too many of them.

Sometimes computer programs have built-in hidden surprises called Easter Eggs. You usually type in a special word or secret code to "crack" the Easter Egg. For a sample Easter Egg, type USPA87419 while SimTown is running.

The girl gathering letters off the bottom of the pages of the Town Builders Guide is helping you find Easter Eggs.

Read the Inside the SimTown Simulation section of the Town Builders Guide.


Managing Your Town to Win Awards

There are two things to master if you want to manage your town well:

1.	Managing your natural resources so you don't run out and don't get too polluted or buried in garbage.

2.	Keeping your town balanced.

Of course, you dont qualify to start earning awards until your town reaches a population of 100.

Managing Natural Resources

Remember to check the Natural Resources screen often, so you don't run out of resources. Try to keep at least three credits worth of each resource on hand at all times.

Check with your Advisors in the Natural Resources window. They are there to help.

Read the section Natural Resources and Credits above, and Natural Resources (and Pollution) below.

Keeping Your Town Balanced

Keeping your town balanced is different in a small town than in a large town. In a small town, the trick is to balance the number of houses and the number and types of businesses. The House-to-Business Balance at the top of the screen, just below the Menu bar, will tell you whether you need more houses or businesses.

Your goal is to keep the number of jobs and the number of working people (adults) within 10% of each other. That means if you ever have more than one out of 10 of the jobs unfilled, or more than 1 out of 10 of the people without jobs, you had better add jobs or people, fast! On the average, you'll need about three houses per business. Check the reference charts in the Quick-Start Guide for exact numbers.

As a town gets bigger, there are enough houses, people and businesses that the house-to-business balance is fairly easy to maintain. But with so many buildings, the maintenance costs—crops and water—really add up. So now the problem is keeping the balance between town size and available resources. At this point, be sure to keep enough water and crops to maintain your town or buildings will deteriorate.

The bigger the town, the more often you'll need to check the Natural Resources window. You will also have to be very careful not to grow too fast, or you'll run out of credits.


Inside the SimTown Simulation

Here is an explanation of the SimTown Simulation—what's going on inside the computer. If you read and understand this, it will help you to be the best you can be at playing SimTown.

Related Topics:

The Elements of SimTown

Buildings

Terrain

Natural Resources (and Pollution)

People  (The Sims)


The Elements of SimTown

There are four elements, or basic parts to any town you build in SimTown:

Buildings

Terrain

Natural Resources (and Pollution)

People (the Sims)


Buildings

SimTown has four different types of buildings: houses, businesses, fun places and community buildings. But inside the computer—in the simulation—there are only two types of buildings: houses and "other." All the businesses, fun places and community buildings are grouped together.

While there is a difference between an Office Building and a Pizza Parlor to you as a Town Builder (and as a hungry person looking for lunch), as far as the computer cares, they are the same. First let's look at how houses are treated in the simulation, then we'll look at the "others."

Houses

In the SimTown simulation, when you place a house, you automatically place the people who live there. As long as a house is there, there will be people living there.

If you have a lot of houses, your town will have a lot of people. If you have a lot of people, you'll need a lot of places for the people to work (other buildings). If you have too many houses and not enough other buildings, then you will have unemployment, which will cause houses to deteriorate because the people in the houses won't have jobs and won't be able to afford to keep their houses fixed up.

When houses are built, trees and water are used up. The amount of trees and water that is used depends on the size of the house. The cost to build a house is shown on the screen whenever that house is highlighted at the bottom of the screen and ready to place.

After a house is built, the people who live there need both water and food (crops) to live and maintain the house. If there is no water or no crops, the house deteriorates. Fixing a deteriorated house uses trees and water. Once there are enough trees and water, houses will automatically be fixed up, but it will take a month or two before they are finished.

Houses produce garbage every month.

Deteriorated houses have no fun spots on their outsides. You can open them and look inside, but there are no fun spots inside. People don't move out of their houses when they deteriorate, but they become unhappy.

"Other" Buildings

When you place a building (other than a house) you create jobs. As long as a building is there, there will be open jobs for adult Sims.

If you don't have enough jobs for your Sims, there will be unemployment. On the other hand, if you don't have enough Sims to work at your businesses, then the businesses will deteriorate.

When buildings are built, trees and water are used up. The amount of trees and water that is used depends on the size of the building.  The cost to build a building is shown on the screen whenever that building is highlighted at the bottom of the screen and ready to place.

After a building is built, the people who work there need water to drink and maintain the building. If there is no water, the building deteriorates. Fixing a deteriorated building uses trees and water. Once there are enough trees and water, buildings will automatically be fixed up, but it will take a month or two before they're finished.

All buildings produce garbage every month.

While a building is deteriorated, its chance of catching on fire increases. If a building stays deteriorated long enough, it will catch on fire and burn down, leaving nothing but rubble. These fires can spread and burn down the whole town if you're not careful.

After a building burns down, you can bulldoze the rubble to clear it away, or build over it. Either way, the rubble has to go somewhere...and that's the garbage pile in the Natural Resources window.

Another thing about these "other" buildings that is important in SimTown is their support population. Because they are businesses (remember: the fun places and community buildings are the same as businesses inside the simulator), they compete with each other for employees and for customers.

The support population of a building is the number of people that a particular type of building can support. If you have more of a particular type of building than the population will support, its business will be bad and it will deteriorate.

Let's look at a Pizza Parlor as an example. The support population of a Pizza Parlor is 10 people. That means the support population for two Pizza Parlors is 20 people. If your town has two Pizza Parlors and only 15 people, then the business will be divided between them, and both Pizza Parlors will suffer and deteriorate. If your town has 30 people, it can support three Pizza parlors.

Remember: support population numbers are for a single type of building. Let's look at another example: a town with a Pizza Parlor and a Chinese Restaurant. (The support population is 10 for a Chinese Restaurant, too.) If your town has 10 people, it could support one Pizza Parlor and one Chinese Restaurant—but not two of the same kind of restaurant.

The kinds of buildings and business can be similar, as long as they aren't the exact same building. This means that you can make special "theme" towns, like:

Food Town—a town that only has houses, restaurants, and a Grocery Store—as long as you don't have too many of the exact same kind of restaurant.

Fun Town—a town that has only houses and fun places—as long as you don't have too many of the same fun places.

Other theme towns that you like—as long as you don't have too many of the same types of buildings.


Terrain

Everything you can place in SimTown that isn't a house or other building is considered terrain. This includes roads, bike paths, grass, trees, flowers, vegetable gardens and all the other things that you place with the Terrain tool.

All terrain objects use water when they are built, and need more water every month to be maintained. If there is no water, then terrain objects will deteriorate. (Except Roads—they don't use any water for maintenance and don't deteriorate.) Once there is water again, deteriorated terrain objects will automatically be fixed (using up some water). Terrain objects take up to three months to be fixed.

There are two terrain objects that affect the simulation in important ways: roads and vegetable gardens.

The more roads you have, the more traffic there will be. And the more traffic there is, the more polluted your air will get. So be careful not to place more road tiles than you really need in your town.

Vegetable gardens grow food that can be eaten by the people of the town. So planting a lot of them is like adding crops in the Natural Resources window. (And they look nice, too.)


Natural Resources (and Pollution)

SimTown has three natural resources; trees, water and crops. There are also two forms of pollution, air pollution and garbage. Here's a general explanation of how each of these affects SimTown.

Trees

Trees are used up whenever you place buildings. They are also used up to repair buildings that have deteriorated. The amount of trees that are used up depends on the size and type of building. The trees in the town can't be used for building or maintenance—only the trees in the Natural Resources screen.

If you run out of trees, you can't place any buildings, and buildings that are deteriorated cannot be repaired.

New trees only grow when you use Credits to plant them in the Natural Resources window.

Water

Water is used up whenever you place buildings or terrain objects. It is also used by the people in the houses and businesses every day. So even if you stop building things, your water will run out if you don't regularly increase the supply. The amount of water used depends on the type of building and the number of people that work or live there. Keeping too much garbage in the garbage dump for too long can lead to your water being polluted. When your water becomes polluted, it gets used up faster.

If you run out of water, buildings will deteriorate very quickly.

The water supply can only be increased when you use Credits in the Natural Resources window.

Crops

Crops are the food for the people in the town. The more people in the town, the faster the crops are eaten. Crops are sensitive to air pollution—if your air is too polluted, the crops will become unhealthy and it will take twice as much crops to feed your people.

If you run out of crops buildings will deteriorate (because the people are too weak from hunger to fix them up).

The crop supply can only be increased when you use Credits in the Natural Resources window.

Air Pollution

Air pollution is caused by cars. In SimTown, the number of cars depends on the amount of roads you have. So, the more roads there are in a town, the faster the air will be polluted.

If the air is too polluted for too long, your crops will become unhealthy.

The only way to clean up polluted air is by using Credits in the Natural Resources window. If you place Bike Paths instead of Roads you will encourage the people in your town to ride bicycles instead of driving, and the air won't get polluted as quickly.

Garbage

Garbage is generated by the people in the buildings. The more buildings you have, the more garbage you get. Garbage is also added to the pile whenever you bulldoze rubble or place new things over rubble.

If the garbage piles up too high for too long, it will start to pollute your water supply.

The only way to get rid of garbage is to recycle it by using Credits in the Natural Resources window.


People  (The Sims)

There are four types of people that live in SimTown: girls, boys, men and women. They're normal people just like the ones that live in your town...except they're very small and live in computers.

The Sims move into town when you build houses. They stay until the houses are destroyed (by fires or bulldozing).

Adult Sims go to work—if there are enough jobs in the town. Kid Sims go to school—if there is a school.

If your town doesn't have enough crops, the Sims will get weak from hunger and won't be able to maintain their houses. When that happens, the houses will deteriorate.

To find out about each of the Sims, click on them with the Investigate tool to open the Sim's Profile window.

Each Sim has a name and an occupation (adults have jobs if there are enough to go around, kids are students if there are schools). They also have favorite things: their favorite food, favorite outdoor activity, favorite indoor activity and favorite pet.

You can also find out a Sim's Status in the profile window. The Status is how they are feeling or what they are thinking. Sims get sad and upset if they don't have jobs (adults), if they don't have a school to go to (kids), or if their houses are deteriorated.

Besides the Sims that move into town when you build houses, each town can have one special Sim that you design. You can design your Sim in the Designer Character screen. See Step 15: Designer Characters in the Town Builders Guide.


Preferences

The Preferences dialog box lets you modify the way SimTown starts:

Startup Music lets you choose the music that plays when SimTown starts. The five possible options are:

Off—No music plays

Song 1—Song 1 plays

Song 2—Song 2 plays

Song 3—Song 3 plays

Random—Song 1, 2 or 3 is picked randomly and plays

Skip Intro Sequence stops the Software Toys for Kids introduction screen from playing.


Maxis and Home Learning

We at Maxis believe in learning through open-ended play. We take the "building block approach" to software rather than the "jigsaw puzzle approach."

Given ten building blocks, you can stack them all neatly one on top of the other, tier them to make steps, put them in a square to make a box, pile them randomly, or just leave them separate. You can do whatever you want—there's no winning, just investigating the possibilities and exploring.

Given a ten-piece jigsaw puzzle, you can stack the pieces, but you'd be missing the point, which is fitting the pieces together as they belong, and as everyone else has done before you and will do after you. You would have done nothing new, innovative, original, or creative by putting together the jigsaw puzzle. And having completed it, you probably wouldn't ever do it again because you had succeeded in meeting the challenge.

Maxis Software Toys for Kids give children the tools they need to explore the worlds they might have only imagined. Through a fun, colorful, and lively interface, children are encouraged to explore and create. Again and again they will return to the challenge of bettering what they have done. Their reward is a creation uniquely theirs—they own it and respond to it with a sense of ownership. This open-ended exploration captivates children, who bask in the power of building and creating—and succeeding on their own. This is when learning really happens.

With three distinct elements—entertainment, learning and creativity—combined in each of our products, our children's software doesn't fit neatly into any established software category. But that's OK. After all, blurring the line between fun and learning is what Software Toys for Kids is all about.