Games PC SIM ISLE-MISSIONS IN THE RAINFOREST User Manual
ISLE
Missions In The Rainforest
CD-ROM
Quick-Start Guide
Windows'95 Edition
Windows 95 2
System Requirements 2
Installing and Starting 2
Handy Reference 4
SimIsle Mini-tutorials . 7
Table of
Contents
ISLE
Introduction
System
Requirements
Installing and
Starting
SimIsle
Pack your bags, have the neighbors collect your mail, and
take a working vacation in the rainforests of SimIsle. Build
tourist hotels, exploit natural resources and develop
industry in a land of beauty and danger. Can you become
wealthy and keep native populations, tourists, and industry
leaders happy? Or will your actions destroy the delicate
balance of a fragile ecosystem?
SimIsle for Windows 95
• Any computer using Windows 95 (486/66 minimum
recommended)
• 8 MB
RAM
• 5 MB free on hard drive
• 2x CD-ROM
You must have the SimIsle CD in your CD-ROM to play the
game. Since the CD is read-only, any games you want to save
must be saved to your hard drive or a floppy.
If your CD-ROM supports AutoPlay
Put the SimIsle CD into your CD-ROM drive. The SimIsle AutoPlay
screen will open, and you'll have the choice to install and play
SimIsle, check out the Goodies, or quit the installer.
Page.
Click the "Play" button to begin installation. (If you have
already installed SimIsle, clicking the Play button will begin
the game.)
Follow instructions on the screen. You'll be prompted to
select the directory where SimIsle will be installed on your
hard drive. The default installation is in a Maxis folder within
Program Files. If you select the default and do not have a
Maxis folder in Program Files, one will be created.
SimIsle — Quick-Start Guide
You can start the game right away after installation, or play at a
later time if you have more pressing engagements. The AutoPlay
screen will open every time you insert the SimIsle CD.
If Your CD-ROM does not support AutoPlay
Put the SimIsle CD into your CD-ROM drive.
Open the Start menu from your Task Bar and select Run....
In the Run dialog box, type d:\setup and hit Enter. If your CDROM drive is some letter other than "d," use that letter instead.
Follow instructions on the screen. You'll be prompted to select the
directory where SimIsle will be installed. The default location is in
a Maxis folder within Programs. Either accept the default or
specify a location which is more to your liking.
No matter how you install
SimIsle, a shortcut will be
created in directory where
you install it. Drag this
shortcut to your Windows
95 desktop so you can
easily begin the game (as
long as you have the CD
in the CD-ROM drive).
There are a few things in SimIsle that work a little differently
than as described in the manual:
• The Main Menu has a slightly different arrangement of
options and drop-down submenus. All the functions
exist, and they work the same way as outlined in the
manual.
• The Load and Save dialog boxes now follow Windows
95 standards.
• The Toolbar, Control Panel, Notebook and most
windows can be moved around on the screen. The
main window itself can be minimized and moved
around on the screen. Many of the game messages are
now in movable windows.
Windows 95 Page 3
Undocumented
Enhancements
ISLE
Handy
Reference
Agents
Agents are the worker bees of your island. They carry out
your orders for the development of your island. You have
the authority to hire and fire agents according to your
whims, moods and fancies, although you must have at least
one agent at all times, and can never have more then ten.
Hire and fire your agents at Agent Headquarters. HQ is the
building with a large green disk on your island. As long as
any agent is present in HQ, you can hire and fire agents. If
the agent present has Employment skills, that agent can also
train other agents to increase their skill levels. However,
agents can only improve on what they know. They can't
learn new skills. A skill level of 100 is the highest an agent
can have.
Agents cost money (surprise). Agents require some time to
perform their assigned tasks. Also, map movements reflect
distances: moving an agent from one end of an island to
another takes more time than a short stroll along the beach.
Finally, some scenarios can expose your agents to potentially
fatal situations. (Don't worry though. Slain agents are only
dead for that particular scenario, and can be used in other
scenarios.)
Page 4 SimIsle — Quick-Start Guide
There are 25 agents in SimIsle. Twenty four are listed below. The
elusive Caption Sprout did not return our calls.
Andy Knitt
Billy Tell
Bob Moon
Dee Jarvis
Doug Hammer
Emma Herby
Iain McNeil
Ian Banwell
Joan Brett
John Balker
Karen Krelin
Kevin Ward
Marty Henson
Matt Stibbe
Mike Rune
Local Culture
Negotiation
Industrial
Negotiation
Industrial
Local Ecology
Local Ecology
Employment
Criminal Contacts
Industrial
Flora & Forestry
Industrial
Construction
Local Ecology
Negotiation
Criminal Contacts Fauna & Zoology
Local Culture
Construction
Employment
Flora & Forestry
Fauna & Zoology
Construction
Fauna & Zoology
Criminal Contacts
Exploration
Flora & Forestry
Construction
Molly Heart
Morven Sloane
Neil Crossbow
Nigel Dennis
Paul Smith
Randy Gates
Rick Groves
Sandra Jenkins
Tod Swann
Construction
Fauna & Zoology
Negotiation
Industrial
Industrial
Industrial
Exploration
Flora & Forestry
Fauna & Zoology
Construction
Industrial
Employment
Construction
Flora & Forestry
Flora & Forestry
ISLE
Terrain Types
and Elevations
Forest Types
Sea
Sea level
Coastal (< 100m)
Lowland (100-200m)
Midlands (200-500m)
Uplands (500-1000m)
Foothills (1000-1500m)
High Foothills (1500-2000m)
Mountains (2000-2500m)
Beach/Mangrove Forest—Only at sea level next to the sea
Peat Swamp Forest — Only at sea level; acidic
Freshwater Swamp Forest—Only at sea level; needs peat
swamp nearby; alluvial
Heath Land Forest—Sea level or coastal; acidic
Limestone Forest
Mixed Dipterocarp (tall trees) forest—Only in lowlands or
midlands
Montane Forest—Only in uplands or higher
Grass—Due to human intervention, or if nothing else is
possible
Weather
Page 6 SimIsle — Quick-Start Guide
The weather in SimIsle is easy to understand: it's raining
most of the time, and it's quite warm.
The SimIsle manual provides you with a broad Tutorial that
introduces the most critical gameplay commands,
procedures and issues; the Reference section covers the
program in comprehensive detail. You are well advised to
immerse yourself in both to deepen your understanding of
the program's complexities.
However, if you're more of a mind to just
grab some basics and go, we've also
provided five introductory islands that let
you rapidly absorb some command
fundamentals—these will allow you to
jump into the regular islands at least
partially armed. Most of these condensed
tutorials can be completed within 10-30
minutes. However, it's necessary for you
to read the first few pages of the manual's
Tutorial to familiarize yourself with the
game's interface and terminology first,
and then you can come back here and do
some island hopping.
Scenario Selection Map
SimIsle
"Mini-
Tutorials"
Unless you're told otherwise, click with your left mouse
button. Pay attention to the Message Bar below the pictures
of your agents. It will reveal to you what resources or agent
skills are necessary to carry out assignments. Read the
Notebook information—by clicking on the "i" button—within
each island site window for elucidation on the commands
found there.
Tutorial one Page 7
Some
Basics
ISLE
Tutorial
One
Create a large airport and
train your village to 85%
efficiency.
Agent Headquarters Window
Click on the small island at the top of the five-island tutorial
cluster, and then click on the Play button. Your task of
creating a large airport and an efficient village is designed to
acquaint you with the uses of your agents, without which all
of your SimIsle intentions will come to naught.
When your island comes to onscreen life you can see that
your agent pool is almost dry: Bob is sitting pretty—pretty
lonely, as seen by the "1" above the red map pin
representing the Agent Headquarters. Let's make that one
into three: Click on that Headquarters pin to bring up the
Headquarters window and put Bob to work pumping up your
personnel pile.
Varied skills for varied tasks: Iain's your man
for village training, and Dee's the dude who
can train your agents to enhance their skills.
Click on the plus button on the right side of
the HQ window to shuffle through potential
hires. When you get to Iain, click on the Hire
button. You'll see he's joined Bob on the Agent
Panel. If Dee's name isn't next in the HQ
window, click on the plus button until it is, and
then click on the Hire button again. Close the
HQ window by clicking on its Close box, at the
top-left of the window.
We can quickly demonstrate the value of training: click with
your right mouse button on the orange map pin below the
Agent HQ, and then click on the bottom plus ("Zoom")
button on the Control Panel. That's your HQ with the
beaming green ball on top. Click with your right mouse
button on Iain's picture in the Agent Panel, and then click
with the "moving boots" cursor on the village, the small
cluster of huts below and slightly to the left of the HQ. That
will send Iain to the village.
Page 8 SimIsle — Quick-Start Guide
Click on the Village itself to bring up its window. You can see
in the info box for the window that the village is at 50%
efficiency. Click on the Batch Train button, which will direct
your agent to repeatedly train the village with one click.
When Iain is finished with his work, you can see that the
village's Efficiency has only risen 5%. There's got to be a
better way—here it is:
Close the village window. Click on Iain's picture—this action
will bring up a specific command and statistical panel for the
selected agent; you can see that he has a 50 rating for his two
agent abilities. You have the power to change him! Click on
the Move button, and click on the HQ with the boots cursor.
Now he's back at Headquarters and eager to learn. Click on
the HQ to bring up its window and click on the Train button.
Click on Iain's picture with the mortarboard cursor;
repeat this command seven times so that when you
open his personal agent panel again, his ratings
have gone up above 80. Note that Dee, the
Employment agent, is the one doing the training.
Now that Iain's supercharged, see what kind of work
he can do. Close the HQ window, send him back to
the village and click on the Batch Train button
again. The results should be considerably different
this time—you can hit your 85% goal with ease.
Mortarboard Cursor
Now about that airport—you know, the place where those
planes keep going, just to the right of your HQ? Click on it,
and in the Airport window, click on the dimmed Large Airport
button, and look in the Message Bar. The last part of the
message lets you know that you'll need a skillful Construction
agent to expand its capabilities; if you open Bob's panel,
you'll see that he's a hammer and nail man, but his talents
need a little sprucing. Close the Airport window, click on the
Agent HQ, and then the Train button. Train Bob through
seven sessions, and then send him flying (driving will do) to
that airport. Click on the airport to open its window.
Tutorial One Page 9
ISLE
Large Airport
Click on the Large Airport button and you'll see that piddlysquinch airport replaced by something a little more
substantial, suitable for an island governed by a squire like
yourself. You also should see a congratulatory message
about your solid scenario achievements.
You could click on the New Scenario button to move on to
other islands, or if you like the pace of things here on this
island, you could click on the Continue button (you're too
good to Re-Start). There is more to
do here: You can press the "s" key to
bring up a Balance Sheet window,
and from there click on the Statistics
button to see how your burgeoning
tourist industry is doing. Then you
can open the various tourist site
windows and attempt to improve
conditions there with the skills
you've learned from this exercise.
Consult the Balance Sheet again later
to check your work. When you're
ready, move on to Tutorial Two.
Tutorial
Two
Create a tourist industry
and earn 1,000 EMUs in
any one month.
Page 10 SimIsle — Quick-Start Guide
This island invites you to create a basic tourist industry, and
pad your wallet in the process. You'll have to check your
Balance Sheet periodically to see whether you are
approaching the 1,000 EMUs (just think of it as dollars) profit
for a single month. The lessons of the first tutorial island are
valuable here: dispatch the correct agents to build, expand
and improve some tourist accommodations. We'll let you in
on a little secret as well: a few improved and extended hotels
and tourist attractions provide more revenue than a lot of
small ones—make the most of each facility, rather than
building bunches of poorly maintained properties.
Start by opening the island onscreen and then sending Bob
Moon (right-mouse click on his picture, remember?) over to
the right corner of the island, anywhere near the yellow pin.
Click on his pin (the blue one that just appeared) to open the
Construction window and click on the Hotel button there.
The map will go to the high magnification, and your cursor
will be an image of the soon-to-be-placed Tourist
Accommodation. Settle it in anywhere the cursor cross-hairs
remain white and click. You're a landlord!
Move Bob to a couple of more sites in
the general area; you can see Bob's
jeep in this view, which you can click
to open the Construction window.
(Note that the close-by ferry port will
bring in your well-heeled crowd.) Place
two more accommodations. Now send
Bob to a spot that is easily accessed
from all three hotels, and that's also
fairly close to the ferry port. When
you've got the Construction window
open, click on Attraction, and place
your tourist trap.
First Hotel Placement
Now that Bob's warmed up, keep him movin'—shoot him
over to all of your hotels, and click on the Extend Resort
button in all of their windows. (You can click with your right
mouse button on an active command button to check the
resources required for Bob's work.) When he's finished, you
should notice the total hotel rooms figure (and the total
number of current occupants) has risen, and so has your
bank account.
It would be a good idea to increase both the attraction
excitement and to improve the hotels as well as extend them,
but you'll need to do a little hiring first. Billy is the boy when
it comes to Local Culture skills, so go to your Agent HQ,
Tutorial Two Page 11
ISLE
locate Billy with the plus or minus buttons, and bring him on
board. When he arrives, put him right to work: send him to
all of the hotels, and click on the Improvements button.
When he's done putting Baccarat crystal in all the
bathrooms, send him and Iain to your Tourist Attraction and
click on the Inc. Excitement button a couple of times. Now
Placed Hotel/Attraction Buildings
You should be ready to do some big-time expansion, though
don't build so fast that your profits evaporate. Check the info
box of your accommodations to see if they are ready for
expansion. Then, improve, expand, and increase excitement
at your accommodations and attractions (bring those
Tourist Accommodations at least up to 30-room Motel size).
Be sure to keep tabs on whether there are tourists waiting
for hotel rooms at either your airport or your ferry port. If
there are more than a few, you need to build more hotels.
Keep tabs on your incomes as well as expenses in the
Balance Sheet. If you continue to manage your buildings in
this hand's-on fashion, you'll soon hit your scenario income
requirement, and you can move on to Tutorial Three.
you've got the basics for steady income
production. Press the "s" key (or click on
the Files/Options button and then the
Statistics button) to see your income and
expense figures for the last couple of
months. You should see good things
happening, but you'll have to keep working.
Send Bob out to make another couple
rounds of expansion at all your resorts,
and then build another Tourist Attraction
within convenient transportation range.
Now you're ready to bring in some more
suckers: send Bob to another nice spot, say
up on the edge of the island a little towards
your Agent HQ, and use the Construction
window to place an airport.
Page 12 SimIsle — Quick-Start Guide
This island requires you to acquire and transport 100 logs to
a warehouse, using unskilled labor derived from a village
population. This scenario will clearly demonstrate the
interconnections of SimIsle, where a successfully achieved
task requires the integration of a host of elements, much like
the complementary natural forces of the rainforest itself.
Tutorial
Three
Bring the island onscreen, and then give Iain five or six
training sessions (remember Tutorial One?) so that he's
primed. Then send Dee and Iain from the Agent HQ to the
nearest village, the orange pin a little below the
Headquarters building. You need to increase the population
of a village to produce the unskilled labor necessary to build
your logging camp, and Dee and Iain's combined skills are
necessary. Open the Village window after they've arrived and
click on the Batch Train button a number of times, noting the
Efficiency and Population levels rising as a result.
When the population reaches 140, put Dee to work by
clicking on the Unskilled Labor button. (Note what hiring
labor does to the Efficiency, Population and Happiness
totals.) Repeat both Iain's and Dee's labors until you have 6
unskilled laborers, the number necessary to build a logging
camp. And build you will: Right-click near the Agent HQ,
zoom the map to high magnification and send Bob to a spot
on the edge of the forest (the woods up above the Agent HQ
will do), open the Construction window, click on Logging
Camp, and put that sucker down. (Click Yes in the sawmill
route dialog window that appears.)
Explore labor, build
logging camps, transfer
logs to a sawmill, then to
a warehouse.
Now you'll need a sawmill to gnaw those felled trees. Place
one near in the cleared area near the logging camp, using
Bob's immense building skills. You'll need to ensure that the
mill is set up for internal use of the wood; otherwise your
logs are going to be exported. Send Dee over to the mill.
Open the mill's window and click on the Internal Use button.
Tutorial Three Page 13
ISLE
s In The Rainforest
After a road-building delay, you should soon see some truck
traffic between your logging camp and your mill, and not
long after that, some loaded log trucks arriving at your
warehouse below the HQ.
You can check your log totals in your
warehouse window or in the Stats window;
the progress should be good and steady.
There are some transportation
considerations for map resources (such as
wood) that you can learn from this
exercise. One is that mills should always
be placed near camps because they won't
ship their wood very far. Requested
materials will move a pretty long distance
from their source to a warehouse, but the
warehouse will only ship them to facilities
that use them if the facilities (e.g., a
factory) are nearby.
Placed Camp and Sawmill
extraction choices (and extraction speeds) at the logging
camp by sending Rick (and his Forestry skills) over, but use
the "i" button in the camp window to read of the
consequences of Slash and Burn or Non-Sustainable logging.
Speeding
though you must always consider environmental
consequences in SimIsle. Of course, you can merely consider
them, and then ignore your considerations, but your Ecology
score will reveal your true face. Regardless, your 100 logs
should pile up pretty quickly, and you can move on to
Tutorial Four.
Page 14 SimIsle — Quick-Start Guide
up the log
You can experiment with the various
felling
will
fill
your warehouse
faster,
This scenario requires some more warehouse work, though
your quarry this time is 100 units of steel and oil rather than
wood. You'll need an iron ore mine for your raw materials
and a steel mill to refine the ore. And for your oil needs, an
oil rig for drilling and a pumping station to refine the crude.
Let's get to work.
Put the island in high magnification.
Go to the 2-D map and click on the
Iron Ores button. You can see you
have a high (red) concentration of
ore near the western edge of the
island. Right-click on Bob and then
click on the left-upper edge of the
red square, where the orange flows
into the red. A small white square
will indicate he's arrived. Open the
regular (3-D) map and locate his
jeep, in the little clearing below the
gray mountain. Click on the jeep,
and in the Construction window,
click on Iron Ore Mine.
Send Bob Here
Tutorial
Four
Fill your warehouse with
100 oil and 100 steel.
Now, for efficiency's sake, let's place
the steel mill between the mine and
the warehouse, for those shorter—
and cheaper—transportation costs.
Send Bob over to the flat area
between the Agent HQ and the
warehouse to the right of the mine.
Open the Construction window and
click on Steel Mill. Now send Dee
over to each new site and click on the Internal Use button
so that your materials are available for your purposes.
Now let's get greasy. You'll want to try and place your
pumping station first, because the program will warn you of
Tutorial Four Page 15
Placed Mine
ISLE
Ore Mine
any impediments in routing the oil from your rig to your
station. Check the 2-D map for oil-saturated spots—there are
bigger deposits, but there's a small juicy one on the
southwestern coast, where you can easily oversee both your
mining and pumping operations at the second zoom level.
Send Bob to build your station on a proximate coastal
square—there's a good one on the southwestern edge of the
Pumping Station
island, below and a little to the left of where you placed your
mine. (Like ferry ports, pumping stations can only be built on
a coastal tile located on deep water.)
Next send Bob to build a rig near where you saw the red
square on the map—it should be pretty close to your
pumping station. Send Dee over to the station to make sure
that this crude's for internal use only. Your mining trucks
and oil-laden tankers should be active on your landscape.
You can check the accumulation of Steel and Oil through the
warehouse window, or by using the Stats button. If things are
Page 16 SimIsle — Quick-Start Guide
Map Overview
moving a little too slowly for you, up your personnel totals at
the extraction sites, or send an agent out to double
production levels. You could even order a New Tanker at the
oil
rig.
It will interest you to see the increased production, but you
can also note immediate increases in pollution (2-D map) as
well. This is not the most efficient use of development
positioning (road-building distances will cause a little delay)
but it shouldn't be long before you get your congratulations
on making a steely, oily mess of things—at least your
warehouse workers are happy. You're ready for Tutorial Five.
This final tutorial will use all your industriousness to go
industrial. On this island, you've already got most of the
initial resources and one available industry to begin on your
car construction, but you need to link the chains—one of
SimIsle's primary lessons—in the circle of creation. First of
all, bring the island to life and then send John to the top,
rightmost blue pin, your Heavy Industry factory. Open the
factory window and click on the plus button above the
Switch Job box until you get to C Car (Cheap Cars). Then
click on the Apply Job button. You've set that plant in
motion, but there are additional steps.
You'll need a Hi-Tech factory to produce a Quality Car; send
Bob a little to the left of your chemical plant, near the Agent
HQ—the roads are already in place, so your materials can
get trucked there quickly. Open the Construction window
and build the plant. In the Hi-Tech window, click on the
Switch Job buttons to get to Q Car (Quality Cars) and click
on Apply Job. (Bob has the Industrial skill for this work, as
well as Construction talents.) Then send Dee over there and
click on the Internal Use button so you can squeeze a nice
Rolls out of the available resources.
Tutorial
Five
Expand industry to produce a
quality car and a cheap car.
Tutorial Five Page 17
ISLE
Placed Buildings
One link that has to be
established is a manufacturing
plant that provides cheap
manufactured goods—you know,
like windshield washer blades—
for both types of cars. (You can
see what's required for the
selected manufacture in the info
box of plant windows.) There's
still some room right above your
Hi-Tech plant; send Bob over and
put him to work building two
manufacturing (Mfg) plants, one
on either side of the Agent HQ.
As soon as they are up, switch one's production to CM
Goods (Cheap Manufactured Goods), and click on the Apply
Job button. Send Dee over to make sure that the goods are
for internal use (but don't swallow any wiper blades). Do the
same for QM (Quality Manufactured) Goods at the other.
You'll note that you can't make those goods without wood
and wood waste, and there's no logging industry on the
island. Well, you know what to do: Send Bob over to that
little cleared area below the Agent HQ that's surrounded by
forest, and have him build a sawmill. Then move him right up
to the edge of the nearby trees and put down a logging camp.
Dee can march right over and set up the mill to use that
wood internally—there are cars to be built!
Well, you've set the whole complex scheme in motion, and it
shouldn't be too long before the car-making materials are
moving on the map. There are a number of variables you can
exercise to alter the production process: you can change
personnel totals to discover just how lean and efficient your
plants can be; you can save a good deal of money by
employing fewer people. While you're waiting for some
Page 18 SimIsle — Quick-Start Guide
products (like wood waste), you can use Dee to export
materials like oil and steel from the plants if you've got
enough for car production at the two plants, and you can
reduce personnel at those extraction sites to channel more
money into production of needed goods.
You can speed up the process by employing more personnel
at critical sites; remember the interdependencies: if you hire
more loggers you might have to employ more workers at
every related plant to balance the increased production. If
you get one type of car produced, you can switch processes
to produce the other (the Hi-Tech factory can produce both
cheap and quality cars). You may see in some info windows
that you have a surplus of something, like plastic, for
instance, and thus you can shut or slow down production at
your oil rigs, or reduce your employees to save money—just
make sure you don't need the product elsewhere!
And of course if you want to cheat, you can click on the Buy
Product button to have everything shipped to you from the
outside world, but that would be a little weak-kneed,
wouldn't it?
Well, when you get the BMW of your dreams, you can
take a spin over to the unpolluted side of the island.
You're probably ready for some of the more difficult
scenarios. Remember that in these tutorials we often
provided you with the needed money, resources and
labor pool; in most of the scenarios, you'll have to
obtain them on your own, and juggle their use to
achieve the scenario goals. You've also got a lot of
people to keep happy on the islands, and you don't want
your industrialist's cigars to foul the air of too many rare
songbirds either, do you? Whatever approach you take
to island management, do have a jolly time. Be sure to
go over the manual Tutorial and the Reference section
for a complete overview of SimIsle.
Tutorial Five Page 19
Factory Window
Key List for SimIsle
Scenario Selection Map
Up/Left Previous island on map
Down/Right Next island on map
Enter Get info on selected island
ESC Quit/Cancel
Home First island on map
End Last island on map
Scenario Info Box
ESC Cancel
Enter Play
Load Dialog Box
Up/Down Change load slot
ESC Cancel
Enter Load
1-8 Slot number
Save Dialog box
Up/Down Change save slot
Page Up Top slot
Page Down Last slot
ESC Cancel
Enter Save
Home Clear whole line
Backspace Clear character
When Entering Text
Backspace Delete to left of cursor
Home Delete to beginning of text
Playing a
F10
Ctrl+L
Ctrl+S
Ctrl+M
Ctrl+E
P
Ctrl+G
Ctrl+C
Ctrl+A
Ctrl+T
Ctrl+Z
Ctrl+W
Ctrl+X
M
{ or [
}or ]
- or _
+ or =
? or <
Shift #
1,2,3,4
, or .
H
Up, Down,
Left, Right
S
Esc
Scenario
Takes a screenshot
Opens Load Game dialog box
Opens Save Game dialog box
Toggles Music On/Off
Toggles Sound Effects On/Off
Pause Game On/Off
Toggles Grid On/Off
Toggles Compass On/Off
Toggles animation
Toggles
trees
polluted trees cannot be moved
Go to DOS Shell
Tilt Map Up
Tilt Map Down
Toggles between Satellite or 3-D View
Sound FX volume down
Sound FX volume up
Music volume down
Music volume up
Scroll next agent's stats
Zoom in from 3-D View
Zoom out from 3-D View
Set zoom level
Rotate 3-D view map
Center Map on middle of island
Move around map
Call Statistics box
Quit game
level — Off/Med/High
On/Off;
non-growing
0058-059-0102-A
ISLE
Missions In The Rainforest
USER'S MANUAL
by Tom Bentley
Trees are a poem the Earth writes across the Sky.
Humanity cuts them down for paper so we may record
our emptiness.
— Kahlil Gibran
If you lived here, you'd be home by now.
Page iii
ISLE
Contents
Introduction 2
Tutorial 6
Reference 32
The Basics 34
Island Models 36
Interface Fundamentals and Presumptions .. 37
The Control Bar 41
Files/Option Button 41
Score Button 47
Graph Button 48
Notebook Button 50
Map Buttons 51
2-D Map 53
Message Bar 55
Agents 56
Agent Maneuverings 61
Agent Profiles 63
Windows and Island Development 66
Development Dependencies 67
Villages 70
Construction Sites 72
Tourist Industries 74
Extraction and Processing Sites 76
Factories and the Manufacturing Industry 79
Warehouses 80
Power Stations 81
Cities 81
Scenarios 83
Scenario Difficulty Table 90
Events 91
SimIsle Environmental Model 92
Isle Gameplay Issues and Hints 93
SimIsle Item Building/Resource Costs 97
Rainforest Essay 99
Credits 105
Index 110
Page iv SimIsle
INTRODUCTION
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree
Indeed unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
— Ogden Nash
ISLE
Welcome to SimIsle, a game that invites you into an exotic
world and then gives you the chance to decide that world's
fate. At its simplest level, there are two forces wielded by
you that determine how each island fares: an ecological
force and a development force. But there's nothing simple
about SimIsle—each island is a dense web of complex
connection, of eco-interactivity: stick your foot in a
freshwater swamp on the east edge of one island, and you
might see the peat swamp on the west end lose its luster
(well, depending on how long it's been since you changed
your socks).
Like all Maxis simulations, SimIsle is about the dynamics of
interrelationships, and no areas in the world have such a
complexity of interrelationships as the rainforests, your
primary island terrain. In the game, you are a provincial ruler
representing a far eastern developing country. It's your job
to manage the vast resources—timber, oil, minerals, ore—of
the islands as a profit-making enterprise. It's a world of great
exotica: clouded leopards, Mahakan river dolphins, thirtyfoot pythons, cheerful leeches, and grandiose insects, and
this incredible species diversity is matched by its plant life.
But the style of the management is all up to you. You can
send your agents on missions of resource depredation to
suck the island dry of all its precious commodities, or you
can assign them training missions to aid the natives in their
local, sustaining agricultural practices—or you can do both.
You can tread into moral grey zones, by inviting ecotourists
to view rare species and use the proceeds to protect the
species—and use the tourist hotels to protect your bank
account.
Page 2 SimIsle — Introduction
Each island scenario has different terrain, different degrees
of existing development, and different teams of agents at
your disposal. In addition to the wide variety of means you
have to oversee and manage your resources, each island is
subject to dramatic events—for example, crashing oil
tankers—that can be triggered by the actions of your agents.
Your prompt reactions to these events can improve island
conditions, avert disasters, and increase your overall island
knowledge. Of course, you could just spend your time
drinking toddies in the governor's mansion while your
beaches get greased, if that's your fancy.
Like the real world, SimIsle isn't just the tidy black/white,
exploitation/exploration, good/evil dichotomy visualized onscreen for you. It's not so easy—but who'd want it to be?
"Development" for a long time always presumed a good
thing, an improvement of the human condition. Nowadays
it's prevalent that the policy and action of development are
thought to achieve much the opposite: species destruction,
land degradation, cultural dislocation. But these pages aren't
for preaching. Anyway, relax, explore; we promise not reveal
to the Sierra Club how you choose to play. Take a jaunt into
the rainforest, but be careful—the humidity's a killer on your
CPU.
Tropical rainforests are the Earth's oldest continuous ecosystems. Fossil records show
that the forests of Southeast Asia have existed in more or less their present form for
70 to 100 million years.
Page 3
ISLE
Page 4 SimIsle
Try this island on for size
TUTORIAL
Roll over any rotting log and I found a world as bizarre
as anything thought up by science fiction. Each hollow
tree was an apartment block containing anything from
snakes to bats, from owls to flying mice. Every forest
stream was an orchestra of frogs, a ballet of tiny fish.
— Gerald Durrell in The Enchanted Canopy
by Andrew Mitchell
ISLE
Make sure your mouse has its boots on—we're about to trek
into the rainforest, and it ain't no stroll in the park. This
tutorial will lead you right into the thick of things and show
you how to get out with your khakis intact—and maybe even
with a little weight gain for your onscreen wallet.
There are five "mini-tutorial" islands which will provide
condensed grounding in different aspects of island
management. The procedures for these islands are detailed
in your Addendum.
Explanations and briefings about the practices and
procedures in SimIsle will be shown in this plain type.
Instructions for you to follow onscreen as we proceed in
the tutorial will be in this boldface type.
An Eyeful of
Island
Scenario Selection Map
Please install SimIsle and load the program according to the
information provided in your Addendum. As the program
loads, you'll be treated to the lavish title screens and a "birdseye view" fly-by of an island environment; you can hasten their
departures by hitting any key on your keyboard or clicking
your mouse. When the program opens, you'll see a map of an
island archipelago. You can select the individual islands to
access their scenarios or get information about them.
(By the way, from now on, when the tutorial
says to click on a button or object, assume it
means to click with your left mouse button.
The right mouse button has some special
functions, and you'll be alerted when you
need to use it.)
If it's not already highlighted (selected
islands are lighter than others), click on the
first scenario island, the one at the top-left
of your screen, and then click on the Play
button.
Page 6 SimIsle — Tutorial
You'll soon see an island with multicolored terrain elements
surrounded by a sandy shoreline and ocean waters. The
island is marked by a number of pins that we shall soon see
represent developed sites; one of the pins has a red "8" near
it. There is also a floating compass up above the left side of
your island that will keep you heading in the right direction.
If your sound card is paying attention, you'll also hear some
lively island rhythms.
You may notice that the terrain
vegetation periodically changes
color—that is caused by the sun's
movement across the horizon. Below
the island is your Control Bar, the
dashboard behind which you'll drive
your island-management ambitions.
(If you notice the little red ball with
the "active-antenna" waves at the
bottom of the Control Bar, it's not Big
Brother tracking your movements, or
merely eye candy—it means there's a
message coming into the Message
Bar, at the bottom of the Control Bar.)
Full-screen island
There are a host of map
manipulation buttons on the
right of the Control Bar that can
enhance your understanding of
the island landscape. The three
"plus sign" buttons in the
middle of the button group are
Control Bar
zoom buttons that change the magnification of your island
view; the active (depressed) top one is the distant overview
perspective you now see. We'll use the others in gameplay in
a little while. For now, let's take a different look at your
island territory.
Page 7
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