Editing SimCity 2000 (section)

== Development ==
[[File:SimCity 2000 being played on an iMac G3.jpg|thumb|300x300px|SimCity 2000 being played on an [[iMac G3]] running [[Mac OS 9|OS 9]]]]
Fred Haslam recalled being pitched on a sequel for SimCity at a Maxis company dinner in December 1990, just as he and Will Wright had finished SimEarth. Wright had spent five years working on the original game and did not want to work on the sequel, delegating the task to Haslam. Haslam spent the first 8 months of 1991 working on a top-down two-dimensional game. At that point, Maxis had contracted to work on the game ''[[A-Train]]'', which used near-isometric dimetric projection to represent the landscape. Maxis decided that the SimCity sequel should also use this graphical style. Haslam spent the next year trying to accomplish this task without success, at which point Will Wright joined the team.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Tauber |first=Daniel |title=SimCity 2000 Strategies and Secrets |publisher=Sybex |year=1995 |isbn=9780782116649 |edition=2nd |location=Alameda, California}}</ref>

Haslam and Wright worked together to complete the game, and each found their input complemented the other's. Haslam gives examples such as including the square grid from A-Train, which Wright then removed for the underground view. Haslam also describes how Wright wanted to add labels for locations, which Haslam also used to signify neighbor connections. Wright's other additions were arcologies, microsimulations, and the underground view. Haslam's additions included the city newspaper (in place of the 'score' from SimCity), free-size zoning, and the ability to issue bonds. Haslam coded the lists of variable terms in the newspaper headlines, with Debra Larson writing the actual newspaper articles. Other features were removed during the production process, such as zones for mining, farming and lumbering, one-way streets, and tidal waves.<ref name=":0" />

The art team researched buildings extensively in creating the realistic look of the buildings. Jenny Martin, the art director, and her team were conscious of buildings having distinct identities: "Cities don't have one style, so we wanted to make a mix of the deco and the modern and the old style ornate buildings." 3 x 3 tile buildings were designed first, then were cut down to create 2 x 2 tile buildings, which were in turn cut down to create 1 x 1 tile buildings. Using [[Electronic Arts|Electronic Arts']] [[Deluxe Paint]] on [[I486|486]] PCs, Jenny and her team of four worked full-time on the art and appearance of the game for four months.<ref name=":1" />

There are only about ten minutes of music in the game. The music lead, Sue Kasper, was told to make the music moody and dark, like in Blade Runner. However she stated she was held back in this goal by the limited capability of sound cards at the time to sustain long notes. "One of the limitations you're working with is sustain. To have it really moody and dark you need a lot of sustainy-type sounds".<ref name=":1" /> The music team had to include multiple MIDI files for the DOS and Windows releases. Different versions of each [[MIDI]] file were optimised for different cards. CD-quality sound was not used because of the storage required. Many versions of the base game shipped on two [[Floppy disk|1.44 Mb floppy disks]]. To include the 10 minutes of music at CD quality would have required over 100 [[Megabyte|Mb]] of space. The 10 minutes of MIDI music by comparison took up only around 100 [[Kilobyte|Kb]] of space.

Maxis had a reputation for including extra information in their manuals beyond that which was needed to play the game. With this in mind, documentation manager Michael Bremer had initially wanted to write about trends in [[Urban planning|city planning]]. However, while researching this topic, he learned that most cities are not planned at all. So Bremer took a subjective view of the city, and included "people's opinions, in words and pictures, of what "city" means to them. There're a few poems, some drawings, some photos, a couple of essays... I think it all turned out great".<ref name=":1" />