HOWTO: Micropolis aka, SimCity

[petriborg]

Micropolis is SimCity open sourced for the OLPC XO. It in theory should work Linux in general.


First you'll need the source code from:
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/

Direct link to the code:

$wget http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micro...ity-source.tgz

Untar the source:

$ tar -zxf micropolis-activity-source.tgz

Install the compiling base and then some:

$ sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxpm-dev freebsd5-buildutils x11proto-xext-dev libxext-dev

Add yacc to your path:

$cd /usr/local/bin
$sudo ln -s /usr/lib/freebsd/yacc

Compile the code:

$cd micropolis-activity/src
$ make && make install

Running the game:
Turn off num-lock, there is a bug in Tcl/tk which breaks mouse events when that is on (thanks to Captain Frisbee).

$cd micropolis-activity
$./Micropolis

And go play!
At least, hopefully... Its currently work only 'sort of' working for me in Gusty. It will start up and you can click some on the main screen, but the game area doesn't display anything - attached is a picture...

[ivotedforkodos]

Will there be a .deb for this at some point? Will this be incorporated in into Hardy as a new package?

[petriborg]

Will there be a .deb for this at some point? Will this be incorporated in into Hardy as a new package?

Could be, its been released GPL3. That would assume that some of its issues can get ironed out.

[InspirationDate]

I'm having trouble trying to figure out how to run it at 1024 x 768. It seems to be running at 1152 x 864. I'm on a laptop so I don't have a lot of options.

Also, I'm able to create a city, but once I'm in, the main window only displays a blank brown screen. The map appears fine...

Can't wait to get this running

[pelo8280]

I'm having trouble trying to figure out how to run it at 1024 x 768. It seems to be running at 1152 x 864. I'm on a laptop so I don't have a lot of options.

Also, I'm able to create a city, but once I'm in, the main window only displays a blank brown screen. The map appears fine...

Can't wait to get this running

Same here.

[cyberix]

I filed a packaging request...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/182455

[jonathanhowell]

I get the same brown screen as the main activity screen. The mini-map shows as if it were rendered at a very low res. No sounds at all.

I'm on Gutsy on a Thinkpad T42.

Here's what's happening on the terminal:

Starting Micropolis in /home/jonathan/micropolis/micropolis-activity ...
Welcome to X11 Multi Player Micropolis version 4.0 by Will Wright, Don Hopkins.
Copyright (C) 2002 by Electronic Arts, Maxis. All rights reserved.
sh: Syntax error: Bad fd number
sh: Syntax error: Bad fd number
Adding a player on :0.0 ...
Cool, I found the shared memory extension!
PlaySound Siren
PlaySound Siren
PlaySound Monster
PlaySound Monster
PlaySound HonkHonk-Low
PlaySound HonkHonk-Med
PlaySound Siren
PlaySound Siren
PlaySound HonkHonk-Low
QuitMicropolis

This'll be fun to try and figure out.
- Jonathan

[rrusaw]

The Bad fd number comes from the fact that /bin/sh is not bash on Ubuntu.

sh: Syntax error: Bad fd number

[hikaricore]

Should be a simple tweak to the make files and such to substitute in dash right?

[Hachi]

According to this article - SimCity Source Code Released to the Wild! Let the ports begin...

The Micropolis engine can load a SimCity save file and run it, and use the TileEngine to draw it, but you can't actually interact with it or edit the map yet, since the user interface and other views haven't been implemented, just a scrolling zooming view of its tiles.