
SimRefinery Recovered - velmu
https://obscuritory.com/sim/simrefinery-recovered/
======
cm2187
For those who wondered like me who this software was built for, the answer is
in the full article:

> _The operators at the refinery sometimes had trouble getting a big picture
> for what was happening at the plant beyond their particular area of focus.
> “The whole goal if this was to teach operators that they are part of a
> bigger system,” Skidmore said. “Their concern at the time was that operators
> tended to be very focused on their one plant, and their one thing they do,
> and so [they] weren’t keeping in mind that what they do affected other parts
> of the plant. So they wanted a training tool that allowed operators to
> manipulate inputs and outputs of the various pieces of the refinery process
> to see how they impact.”_

> _The non-technical staff at the Richmond refinery needed to know how it
> worked too. The people in human resources and accounting weren’t chemical
> engineers, but it would help their work to see how the different areas of
> the plant were networked together, how one department affected another
> department._

[https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-
serious/](https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/)

~~~
cosmodisk
We urgently need OfficeSim version of this.

~~~
blululu
It already exists and it's fabulous:
[https://pippinbarr.github.io/itisasifyouweredoingwork/](https://pippinbarr.github.io/itisasifyouweredoingwork/)

~~~
reidjs
I've never been so simultaneously entertained and annoyed in my life.

------
EFruit
Interesting! The game reminds me a bit of another industrial simulation game
called "Oakflat", a nuclear power plant operations simulator for MS-DOS (and
later Windows).

The DOS version can be played on archive.org, but I'm not sure if it's
possible to get the Windows version anymore.

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oakflat_Nuclear_Power_Plan...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oakflat_Nuclear_Power_Plant_Simulator_The_1992)

~~~
eru
To drift further off, there was also a container shipping simulation called
Ports of Call.

[https://archive.org/details/PortsOfCall](https://archive.org/details/PortsOfCall)

~~~
timClicks
Wow, I have been looking for that for about a decade. I played it a few times
at a friend's house as a child and was mesmerised.

~~~
cyxxon
I used to play that a ton as a teenager on my Amiga 500, but it just is not as
much fun on an emulator, rose tinted glasses.

~~~
btbuildem
Yeah for some reason PoC was such a fun game!

------
vnxli
There's still a huge pursuit around this in most of manufacturing. Operational
engineering groups are pushing for high fidelity digital twins to test out
process control code before it hits the physical plant. The merge between
simulation games and simulations gets even more blurred now that some software
companies are replicating the entire plant in a 3d "game engine" and using VR
goggles for immersion for operator training

~~~
KineticLensman
A company I used to work for built a large sim for an Australian mining
company, using a commercial game engine and a large 'igloo' type structure as
the interaction environment. This was chosen over VR because it was believed
to be easier to have groups of trainees in the same environment. The trainees
were equipped with physical 'torches' that were geometrically paired with the
virtual environment so you could actually shine a pointer on objects.

The main training tasks were spatial orientation in the large 3D maze that was
the mine, as well as hazard recognition and safety /;emergency training. E.g.
knowing which way to go if an explosion occurred and how to avoid being
crushed by the large vehicles that moved through the mine.

The main unexpected development cost turned out to be the high degree of
customisation required of the virtual assets, in particular the signage. Every
tunnel and shaft had individual location and safety info on signs, and these
had to be correct or the training value was lost.

~~~
vnxli
The high-fidelity replication is much easier for things like industrial
control systems (ICS)because all that needs to be replicated is the operator
interfaces. Those interfaces are usually intentionally bland and typically
dated - meaning really simple, standardized graphical assets

I can imagine a complete mine recreation would be a huge development effort -
especially with how huge they get. Is that something that like a camera drone
could scan? i guess it could get the topology figured out with some special
software, but could it get the signs and landmarks too? Can drones fly
effectively in a mine?

~~~
KineticLensman
> but could it get the signs and landmarks too?

IIRC the customers supplied the primary graphics content for the signs
digitally from their own files; the underestimated development cost was
finding and editing the appropriate instances of the signpost objects. The
corridor rock walls were a generic texture. There were also lots of physical
'emergency exit this way' indicators (e.g. arrow shapes that could be felt by
touch in darkness) on railings. These were instanced as well, but the
direction had to be checked.

> Can drones fly effectively in a mine?

No idea but think lots of corridors with short Line Of Sight. Probably easier
now to use Lidar or similar.

[Edit] Also, some of the signs were dynamic, e.g. "Checked by X on date Y" and
needed to be updated in a scenario-specific way.

------
nnx
I wonder if it supports negative oil prices.

~~~
Paperweight
Where's the disaster menu?

~~~
sushshshsh
Interestingly enough, in the article it does confirm that Chevron encouraged
new users of the system to change certain input values to produce explosions
andnl disasters right as they were first learning how to play, so that they
could learn what does what in real life.

------
SeanDav
While on the subject of old games, does anyone have access to a working
version of "Vogon Poetry"? This was a shoot-em-up game bundled with Sidekick
Plus.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1988/03/21/s...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1988/03/21/software-
firm-offers-new-version-of-sidekick-
program/fc1ee721-f3ec-4a8b-985e-567f4cd8b936/)

~~~
jhomedall
Saw that you've been looking for this for a few years, so I decided to take a
crack at it. I was able to get it working.

I obtained disk images for SideKick plus from
[https://winworldpc.com/product/sidekick/plus](https://winworldpc.com/product/sidekick/plus).
Using 86Box as an emulator (Window-only, unfortunately. PCem or DosBox might
work OK as Windows alternatives), I then:

1\. Installed MS-DOS

2\. Installed SideKick Plus

3\. Ran 'install' from 'c:\skplus'

4\. Added a new configuration with Vogon Poetry enabled. Called it
'skplus2.com'.

5\. Ran 'skplus2.com'

6\. Hit ctrl-alt

7\. Selected 'Vogon Poetry'

I've put together an preconfigured 86Box installation that you can just unzip
and run. To actually start the game, run 86Box.exe, then 'cd c:\skplus', then
'skplus2' (note the '2'). Then press ctrl-alt once or twice.

Video demonstration:
[https://1drv.ms/v/s!AvBLRLPXTc9ihVPL0VMtzexUmw8k?e=cVtKxj](https://1drv.ms/v/s!AvBLRLPXTc9ihVPL0VMtzexUmw8k?e=cVtKxj)

Preconfigured 86Box installation: [https://jmn.link/sidekick-vogon-
poetry.zip](https://jmn.link/sidekick-vogon-poetry.zip)

~~~
Hallucinaut
This is really excellent, what a nice thing to do. Also interesting for others
of us; I'd not heard of 86box before

------
jugg1es
Did Maxis just lose the game? Why didn't the company have a copy of their own
game.

~~~
teruakohatu
It's was a niche project for a client that didn't want it developed further.

Not nearly as outrageous as the BBC taping over their archives to save buying
new tapes. They have a page listing all the justifications, some of which are
quite weak:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/bbc-archives--wiped-missing-
an...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/bbc-archives--wiped-missing-and-
lost/z4nkvk7)

~~~
skissane
I remember reading a certain company (not my current employer)'s data
retention policy issued by their legal department. It had a schedule for
destroying all business records. Product source code was in there as a
business record – to be destroyed N years after end of support. Made me want
to cry. I hope they don't actually do what their legal department tells them
to.

~~~
londons_explore
If hypothetically, someone were to take a copy of that code just before the
business destroyed it, they could do almost whatever they liked with it,
because the original business wouldn't be able to prove it was stolen from
them.

~~~
skissane
Let me use Microsoft as an example. (And, I'd rather not identify the company
in question, but I can say that it wasn't Microsoft – I have absolutely zero
information on what Microsoft's data retention policies might be.)

Suppose Microsoft's policy was to destroy all copies of the Windows 3.0 source
code. Having followed that policy, they have no copies left. Now suppose an
ex-Microsoft employee has a copy of the Windows 3.0 source code in their
possession, and decides to distribute it. You really think that Microsoft
couldn't prove in court that said source code is in fact the Windows 3.0
source code, even if they no longer possessed any copies of it themselves?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> I'd rather not identify the company in question, but I can say that it
> wasn't Microsoft – I have absolutely zero information on what Microsoft's
> data retention policies might be.

While earlier things may have been lost, Microsoft operates a Microsoft
museum. Anything they have today is pretty likely to be intentionally
preserved.

~~~
mikestew
It's been fifteen years since I've last darkened MSFT's doorsteps, but they
had an internal server that had everything back to DOS 2.0, IIRC. Now, _source
code_ I cannot say with any real knowledge, but the bits were (and I'm
guessing, still are) there.

------
bauc
Didn't take long but LGR has just released a video of him playing it -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ6Cqn5rTfs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ6Cqn5rTfs)

------
ameyamk
Great work! Is there a place I can checkout for good quality non spammy
"business simulation" games?

~~~
adventured
I'll refer one that I don't see mentioned very often, that is my favorite
business simulation game: Capitalism / Capitalism Lab (latest version). It has
been around for about 25 years, the author keeps working on the concept.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism_\(video_game\))

[https://www.capitalismlab.com/](https://www.capitalismlab.com/)

~~~
stupidcar
This is a really amazing sim, and I'm surprised how under-the-radar it is.
It's kind of Dwarf-Fortress-esque in how it has this slightly antiquated
presentation, but hiding behind it is an incredibly deep sim, where the author
keeps on adding new features.

------
dehrmann
Clinging through to the Archive.org link...

Not sure if it's nostalgia, but the Maxis logo still looks really good. It
doesn't scream 1992.

------
jslakro
Some of the best strategic sims: Sim City -> Theme Hospital -> Game Dev Tycoon
-> Kerbal Space Program -> Factorio

~~~
kortex
Factorio has genuinely taught me lessons about software design.

\- learn where in your stack it's worth optimizing vs just let it chug along
inefficiently. \- Unintuitively, often a simple, inefficient, unmaintainable
automation slapped together is better than something well-written, especially
in the domain of ML/data munging \- feedback is essential. When I started, I
didn't spend much time in the plots windows. This is your QA dash. Pushed me
heavily into using integrated CI pipelines \- don't be afraid of rewrites. But
do have ample tests. \- CSP rocks

It's even pushed me from a "pythonic" dynamic style to writing much more
golang and python that feels a bit like go.

~~~
darzu
CSP?

~~~
kortex
Communicating Sequential Processing. It's a multithreading/processing model
which as the name suggests, leans more on communication, less on sharing
memory.

It's not as efficient for some types of computing, like doing tons of
operations on the same buffer, but it scales horizontally very nicely.

------
cbanek
This is so cool that someone recovered it. Reminds me of all the crazy burned
CDs I have with random software from the days of yore.

Here's the previous discussion where it was shown / talked about but thought
to be lost:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23236132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23236132)

~~~
LoSboccacc
> all the crazy burned CDs I have

lucky you, mine all became unreadable with time. I didn't know/think of
refreshing them periodically on newer cds, and now they're gone for. most of
the games wouldn't run on modern hardware anyway, but a lot of first gen
digital photos are lost in there.

~~~
suddencoma
Yeah, CD/DVD media degrades over time, often on the time span of a decade they
become unreadable. They are a bad choice for long term storage.

------
0x0
A weird error happens if I try to run the embedded javascript dosbox emulator
on iOS Mobile Safari. It launches the PKSFX INSTALL.EXE but most (but not all)
files fail to extract with a CRC error. Emulation bug or a flaw in Mobile
Safari's javascript engine? It seems strange that it can interpret the entire
pksfx x86 code without crashing while still yielding corrupted CRCs? If there
are bitflips or miscalculations you would think the interpreted x86 cpu would
crash long before even printing the pksfx banner. On a different computer,
unzip -t validates the INSTALL.EXE zip contents.

~~~
mattigames
I bet the installer is using the storage JS API or something related but the
pksfx x86 code does not and such API is buggy or limited on Safari mobile.

~~~
0x0
The only thing I can think of is running out of virtual disk space because the
storage JS API quota is filled. But I would assume PKSFX calculates the CRC
based on the in-memory decompressed stream, not a read-back copy of what's
written. Or it would print some sort of "out of disk space" error, but maybe
dosbox does not have that.

So I wonder if there is a sneaky data corruption bug hiding in the iOS version
of Safari's JS/JIT engine here..? If the .zip file embedded in the PKSFX
INSTALL.EXE was incomplete, then I would think it would fail early with a
missing end-of-archive TOC?

------
malka
It was litteraly developped by the BS division.

>From 1992 to 1994, a division called Maxis Business Simulations was
responsible for making serious professional simulations that looked and played
like Maxis games.

[https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-
serious/](https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/)

------
octygen
What they built feels like the business simulation holy grail where it
transcends to being fun as opposed to setting triangle distributions in Arena
(example of an old-school business sim software we used at some point to
simulate ambulance times).

Now if only there was interest for other types of simulations like:
SimClimate, SimSociety, SimPandemic.

------
battery423
Awesome!

Now i only need to find out what game i have played.

It was also a Simulation, one person in a house and you were able to buy a tv
and something with insurance was also happening.

~~~
akling
Just a hunch, but was it perhaps Sierra’s “Jones in the Fast Lane”?

~~~
battery423
Mh that doesn't look familiar. It also looks quite colorful.

That pc also had ibms ally cat installed.

------
KlimYadrintsev
Interesting how some assets are never released to the public.

~~~
anewdirection
*most

------
ludamad
Very neat, although I very much wanted the lets-play

~~~
DonHopkins
I was going over some old archives and ran into this old Windows installer
called "The Sims Steering Committee Installer.exe" from June 4, 1998, that I'd
completely forgotten about.

So I installed it on a virtual machine, and made a "lets-play" demo of an
early pre-release version of The Sims that was made for The Sims Steering
Committee at EA. It includes the Edith SimAntics visual programming language
editor and debugging tools, and has a very early "sketchy" user interface,
colored dots above the character's head instead of the signature plumb bob,
crude klunky architectural editing and object movement tools, and only a few
essential objects (eat, sleep, shit, shower, watch TV, dance), and some cool
debugging menus (create any number of instances of Archie Bunker and his
friends).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY)

~~~
IntelMiner
Please upload that to the Internet Archive if you can, would love to see it
preserved!

~~~
DonHopkins
I definitely want to, and I'm working on the "if I can" part with some helpful
digital archivists/librarians, figuring out how to properly archive and
distribute that and any other stuff I can dig up.

The fact that EA recently released the source code for Command and Conquer
Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert under GPL3 makes me hopeful that they will be open
to releasing more old source code like they did with C&C and SimCity!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23249964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23249964)

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/20/21265663/ea-command-
conqu...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/20/21265663/ea-command-conquer-
tiberian-dawn-red-alert-open-source-remastered)

Rebecca Heineman has an unreleased version of SimCity for the Apple ][gs that
she'd love to see the light of day. And I think SimEarth would be really
interesting to release in source code form.

[https://www.uvlist.net/game-239645-SimCity+GS](https://www.uvlist.net/game-239645-SimCity+GS)

[https://www.callapple.org/software/the-long-fabled-
simcity-f...](https://www.callapple.org/software/the-long-fabled-simcity-for-
the-apple-iigs-exists/)

------
jhoechtl
Wondering about the cheats in this game :)

------
wiz21c
Does it simulate Hubbert peak ? :-)

