# MineCity 2000 turns a SimCity 2000 save into a Minecraft world > MineCity 2000 reads a SimCity 2000 .sc2 city file, maps the terrain and places the buildings into a Minecraft Java Edition world, and it ships as a browser tool, a cross platform CLI and a source tree that has been open since 2014. **jgosar/mine-city-2000** — An app that converts SimCity 2000 cities into Minecraft worlds - Repository: https://github.com/jgosar/mine-city-2000 - Website: https://minecity.vercel.app/ - Stars: 740 · Forks: 13 - Language: C# - License: GPL-3.0 - Published: 2026-10-21 · Updated: 2026-10-21 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/jgosar-mine-city-2000 ## The pipeline is read, map, place The overview is one sentence, and it is worth unpacking because the whole project is in it. The program works by reading a .sc2 city file created by SimCity 2000, and it then maps the terrain and places all the buildings into a Minecraft world. There is no ongoing connection between the two games, and there is no import of the SimCity simulation state, so what you get is a static translation of the city layout. The screenshots in the readme show a SimCity 2000 city and the corresponding Minecraft world, and three videos show the conversion in action. The audience is a player with an old save file, or a developer curious about how a proprietary binary format gets turned into voxel data, and the licence is GPL-3.0 with the project having been started some time ago in 2014. ## The web app does everything in the browser The most interesting decision in the project is that the conversion can happen with no installation at all. The web app is described as running the conversion entirely in the browser, with the city file never uploaded anywhere, and it is reachable without installing anything. The flow is four steps. You drop your .sc2 city file onto the page or choose it with the file picker, you tick the two optional behaviours, you click Convert and wait for the progress bar, and you download the resulting zip. The zip contains a folder named after your city, and you unzip it into the saves folder of your Minecraft install directory so that saves//level.dat exists. The two options are Fill underground area and Generate terrain around the city, both of which are explained in terms of what the CLI does. There is a cost to the first run, because the first conversion downloads about 24 MB of building models, so the first run takes a bit longer, while a conversion itself takes a few seconds on a modern laptop. Browser support is stated as tested in current versions of Chrome and Firefox and in the WebKit engine that Safari is built on, with Safari itself not tested yet. ## The CLI writes into your Minecraft saves folder by default The command line version is the one to reach for if you want to script the conversion or call it from a pipeline. You unzip the download and run the program against your city file. ./MineCity2000 city.sc2 On Windows it is MineCity2000.exe city.sc2, and the readme suggests looking for city files in the SimCity 2000 install directory, or saving the city from the game itself. The output behaviour is the part to read carefully. The program creates a folder named after the city file, lower-cased so City.sc2 becomes city, and puts the Minecraft world in it. By default this folder goes into the saves folder of your Minecraft install if the program finds one, and otherwise it goes into a generated folder next to the program, with the -o option to choose a different output directory. The remaining options are the two feature toggles, the fill underground option which fills the underground sections of the city with sandstone so you cannot fall through when digging down, at the cost of increased memory usage and generation time, and the generate terrain option which lets Minecraft generate its own terrain around the city instead of creating an obsidian wall with nothing outside. ## Reproducible output and per-run defaults Three options exist for automation. The continue option continues console execution after the command is finished instead of waiting for the user to press a key after reading the output. The timestamp and seed options, given as unix seconds and a number, fix the timestamps and the random seed written into the world so that two runs produce identical files, and the readme says these are used by the tests. The last option is a defaults file, where options you want on every run can be put into the default_args.txt file next to the program, one per line. There is a wiki page with more CLI usage notes. The build from source is a .NET project, so you install the Microsoft .NET SDK 10, run dotnet workload restore in the repository root, run npm install in the MineCity2000.Wasm subdirectory, and then run dotnet build in the root. The repository layout reflects the pipeline, with SimCityReader/ for the save format, AnvilFile/ for the Minecraft world format, MinecraftEditor/, MineCity2000/ for the application, MineCity2000.Cli/, MineCity2000.Wasm/ for the browser build and MineCity2000.Tests/ for the test suite, along with a buildings/ directory and a building_stats.xlsx of building data. ## Java Edition only, and the Bedrock workaround The platform limit is explicit and has a documented workaround. The project was started some time ago in 2014, so it only generates Minecraft Java Edition worlds, and to be exact the generated worlds are based on Minecraft Java edition v1.3.2, so they should work on any Minecraft Java edition version newer than that. To open a generated world in Minecraft Bedrock edition, the readme points at a converter, and the author says they tested it with a world generated by MineCity 2000 and that it works almost perfectly. The one difference noted is that you cannot fly around as fast, because that was a custom setting in the generated Java Edition world, and the draw distance in Bedrock can be much greater. The downloads section also carries a note that the older .rar releases with the GUI are historical, still available on the releases page, but no longer maintained, and that the GUI has been removed from the project in favour of the web app and the CLI. ## Where this is the wrong tool Two limits are obvious and one is a matter of taste. The obvious ones are that it is a one-way conversion, so a city you have edited in Minecraft does not come back to SimCity, and that it only speaks SimCity 2000, since the reader is written against the .sc2 format and a later SimCity title has a different save format entirely. The taste question is whether you want a literal translation or a Minecraft city that plays well, because the program is explicit that the underground is empty unless you ask for it to be filled and that the world outside the city is an obsidian wall unless you ask for terrain, and both of those defaults are the correct choice for fidelity and the wrong choice for play. The fourth limit is the platform story of the binaries, where the readme warns that the macOS build may be blocked on first run because it is not signed, that your antivirus might think it is a virus, and that if Windows SmartScreen warns about an unsigned app you should choose More info and then Run anyway. Those are the ordinary annoyances of distributing an unsigned .NET application, and they are all solved by the web app instead. ## Conclusion MineCity 2000 suits someone with a SimCity 2000 city who wants to walk through it in Minecraft, and it suits a developer who wants a worked example of reading a proprietary binary save format and replaying it as voxel data. It is the wrong tool if you want to edit the result rather than look at it, because the output is a generated world and not a round trip, and it is the wrong tool if you are on Bedrock, since the generated worlds are Java Edition and a third party converter is needed for the Bedrock side. Before running the CLI, read the output location behaviour, since the program writes into your Minecraft saves folder when it can find one, and set the output directory explicitly if you would rather not. The last push was on 2026-10-18 and the newest release is v1.0.0 from 2024-10-11. ## FAQ ### How do I convert a SimCity 2000 city into Minecraft? Use the web app at the project page: drop your .sc2 city file onto the page, tick Fill underground area and Generate terrain around the city if you want them, click Convert and wait for the progress bar, then download the zip. Unzip it into the saves folder of your Minecraft install directory so that saves//level.dat exists. ### Does the MineCity 2000 web app upload my city file? No. The README states that the conversion runs entirely in your browser and that your city file is never uploaded anywhere. The first conversion downloads about 24 MB of building models, so the first run takes a bit longer, and a conversion takes a few seconds on a modern laptop. ### Can I open a MineCity 2000 world in Minecraft Bedrock Edition? Not directly, because the project only generates Java Edition worlds, based on Java edition v1.3.2. The README points at a converter for Bedrock and says it works almost perfectly, with the difference that you cannot fly around as fast because that was a custom setting in the generated Java Edition world. ## Sources - [jgosar/mine-city-2000 on GitHub](https://github.com/jgosar/mine-city-2000) - [License: GPL-3.0](https://github.com/jgosar/mine-city-2000/blob/master/LICENSE) - [Project website](https://minecity.vercel.app/) - [README](https://github.com/jgosar/mine-city-2000/blob/master/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/jgosar/mine-city-2000/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/jgosar-mine-city-2000