Maxis officially announced that the SimCity Building Architect Tool (BAT) for SimCity 3000 will finally be available for download on June 16 from the SimCity web site.

　　The tool has been promised on the retail box of SimCity 3000 since it first shipped, and soon gamers will be able to build anything from a small house to a massive skyscraper. Basically, the 3D modeling software gives gamers a chance to replace buildings in SimCity.

　　The BAT is broken into two parts: the Architect Toolkit and the Building Manager. Users build and paint their structures in the Toolkit, and then use the Manager to add those structures to the game by swapping them with already-existing buildings (unfortunately, you can't add the new structures as landmarks). New users will have a variety of prebuilt buildings to alter, as well as some tutorial buildings you'll be able to do your magic on.

　　And in Maxis fashion, the company will launch a "Count the BAT Building Contest" on June 11 at noon PDT. Contestants will view a city though the official web site's CityCam and will have to pick the BAT-created buildings out of the original SM 3K buildings. The first contestant to guess the right number of BAT buildings wins his choice of an Electronic Arts game.

　　This is the second building-builder option offered for the series. The first was offered as an add-on called the SimCity Urban Renewal Kit for SimCity 2000. Buildings created in the Urban Renewal Kit are not compatible with the new BAT.