Graham's great work deserves generous donations to his favorite charity (which helps refugees, very important these days)!
His approach is much less destructive and annoying than what the commercial version of Unix SimCity did before it was GPL, if you hadn't bought a license, which I called the "Akira Effect".
The free demo version (which could be unlocked by buying a license) would let you play for about 5 minutes, then it would abruptly and without warning melt your city with one of two different cellular automata effects, animating the cells using the SimCity tiles, while the editing tools would still work, and sprites like the monster and tornado would still run around the melting city!
>Multi Player SimCity is available directly from DUX Software, and via anonymous ftp from ftp.uu.net (192.48.96.9), in the directory "vendor/dux/SimCity". You may freely copy it, and play the fully functional game in "demo mode" on one display without a license, but the city melts every 5 minutes. If you enjoy SimCity, you can buy a license over the phone by credit card, without leaving your seat! A single player license lets you save and restore your cities, and play for as long as you like on one display; a multi player license lets you play SimCity with your friends over the net!
(You couldn't use credit cards over the internet in 1993 so we had to sell license codes over the phone.)
> Cellular SimCity: Cellular Automata in SimCityNet on Unix.
In retrospect, melting your city seems like a pretty mean and hostile way of intimidating prospective customers into forking over their money. I'm glad Graham's figured out a better approach, which helps a deserving charity, and also reminds you not to ruin you life by playing too much!
