[BRIEF NOTE] SimEarth Terraforming
Dec. 31st, 2005 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe 1991 computer game SimEarth: The Living Planet, available here at Home of the Underdogs, is wonderfully addictive. I've known this ever since I got that wonderful hacked copy of the Commodore 64 version of SimCity back in 1990. SimEarth, though neglected, is particularly interesting inasmuch as ambitious players can try to terraform planets, to make Mars and Venus livable planets.
As it happens, I don't seem to be a very good terraformer. I can only play with unlimited resources available to me, otherwise I end up with not enough ice meteors to create oceans (or, in Venus' case, to keep the oceans from evaporating entirely), or with only prokaryotic life. Even then things can go badly": Last night, one wonderfully terraformed Mars of mine was blighted entirely by an information-age civilization that I seeded, expanded to a global population of two billion, then collapsed and left the planet a desert. Again.
As it happens, I don't seem to be a very good terraformer. I can only play with unlimited resources available to me, otherwise I end up with not enough ice meteors to create oceans (or, in Venus' case, to keep the oceans from evaporating entirely), or with only prokaryotic life. Even then things can go badly": Last night, one wonderfully terraformed Mars of mine was blighted entirely by an information-age civilization that I seeded, expanded to a global population of two billion, then collapsed and left the planet a desert. Again.
