SimCopter Remake 1.0.0

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.

SimCopter Remake 0.9.5

0.9.5 is the last major pre-release pass before 1.0.0.

At this point, nearly all of the original game's mission types and major gameplay systems are working. Most of the work leading into this build has been less about adding new systems and more about fixing the hundreds of little interactions that have to work correctly for SimCopter to actually feel like SimCopter.

There are still two exceptions: Crime and Riot missions are not working reliably enough to include yet. For this release, both have been set to 0 in the default User Cities settings so they will not be generated there. I'm working on the remaining issues with those missions now, and they're planned to return with the 1.0.0 release soon.

Everything else is ready for testing.

What's Changed

Missions

A lot of mission behavior has been fixed and tested for this release, including:

• Rooftop rescue missions
• Boat and water rescue missions
• Passenger transport and drop-off behavior
• Paramedic and patient handling
• Mission difficulty and generation logic
• Mission dispatch UI and opening radio/dialog lines
• Correct passenger exit and drop-off locations

Several edge cases involving passengers getting out of the helicopter too early, appearing in the wrong place, or being removed from the helicopter incorrectly have also been fixed.

User Cities

User Cities received quite a bit of cleanup as 0.9.5 came together:

• Fixed default mission difficulty values
• Fixed several problems with imported city filenames
• Apostrophes in city names work correctly again
• User Cities no longer accumulate points toward career level completion, since they don't have a career level goal
• Crime and Riot mission values now default to 0 until those missions are finished

You can otherwise play imported SimCity 2000 cities normally and use the remaining mission types.

Sims, Passengers & Police

There were quite a few small fixes here that make a surprisingly large difference during normal play:

• Improved passenger sprite and face display
• Fixed passenger state handling
• Fixed Sims remaining permanently frightened after the helicopter hits something
• Fixed police sometimes refusing to get out of their vehicle during pursuits
• Fixed people getting out of the helicopter too quickly
• Fixed helicopter dismount and passenger spawn positions
• Fixed dropping passengers from the helicopter
• Added the missing enter/exit sounds
• Added footsteps

UI & Settings

• Added mouse/control sensitivity settings
• Added FOV settings
• Save games now record the time they were created
• Fixed HUD scaling at different resolutions
• Added HUD font scaling
• Fixed the Career level selection screen
• Fixed several header/menu issues
• Fixed oversized text in the saved game list
• Fixed the dispatch UI
• Improved and upscaled several in-game tool UI elements
• Fixed the Apache instrument panel

Audio

• Fixed several radio playback issues
• Fixed missing or incorrect sound lines
• Added mission-start dialogue
• Fixed helicopter enter and exit sounds

Graphics & World

• Improved building materials
• Added animated water surface noise
• Added reflection variation to water and building windows
• Added additional street objects
• Fixed windmill blade behavior
• Fixed several traffic issues

Performance & Compatibility

• Fixed DLSS not working correctly in Low Power mode
• Anti-aliasing can now remain enabled in Low Power mode
• Additional packaging and Windows build fixes

Flight

• Adjusted rotor speed to better match the original game
• Tweaked default difficulty values

Known Issues

Crime and Riot missions are currently disabled.

These are the two remaining mission systems that aren't behaving closely enough to the original game for me to call them finished. Rather than leave partially working missions in the build, I've disabled them in the default User Cities configuration for 0.9.5.

They're the main remaining gameplay work planned for 1.0.0.

Looking Toward 1.0

0.9.5 gets the remake very close to the point I've been working toward: being able to load up a city and simply play SimCopter again without having to think about which parts of the original game haven't been rebuilt yet.

There will certainly still be bugs to find, which is exactly why this is marked as a pre-release. If you run into something strange, please open an issue and include as much information as you can about what was happening when it occurred.

The next milestone is 1.0.0, with Crime and Riot missions restored and the remaining issues found during 0.9.5 testing cleaned up.

SimCopter Remake v0.9.0 - First pre-release build

Place the original SimCopter game files in Windows/SimCopter in order to play.