The source code to the original SimCity game has been released under the GPL, with all references to the SimCity name removed due to copyright trademark issues; it is now called Micropolis. You can download the source code, or read a bit more about it. SimCity is one of the most critically acclaimed games in history.
Nice move but let’s see how the community is going to deal with it…
“The plane crash disaster has been removed as a result of 9/11.”
I’ll leave the silliness of that for somebody else to rant about, but I’d like to see someone recode it back in (even though they’d probably have to do a fork). I also think it’d also be pretty cool if somebody made a fork and added the gifts and graphics from the old Super Nintendo port of SimCity (my favorite version) to it.
When I was growing up, SimCity was definitely one of my favorite games, so it makes me happy to see it open-sourced. I just hope the code will be taken advantage of (tinkered with, polished up, ported to all sorts of operating systems, etc). I’d love to see SimCity 2000 open-sourced as well, but I won’t hold my breath on that one.
Edited 2008-01-12 23:16 UTC
Oh, that stinks. I dont remember a plane crash in 3000 anyway, but it was a pretty good disaster: it taught you how to not put the airports in stupid locations. If you did, they crashed.
Had nothing to do with terrorism… well, it might remind some people of it if they stick the airport is a commercial area with high rises.
Now I’m going to be spending the rest of my weekend playing sim city instead of fixing the fence in the backyard. Curse you!
This game still has its charm. I’m fairly young person (22 soon) but I have quite fond memories of first Sim City. It’s a great game. Even though I enjoy modern games (finished Call of Duty 4 recently) I have hard time adapting to SimCity sequels. I hope that thanks to releasing the original source code it can be made more friendly to children (I mean, made prettier) so they can enjoy it as much as we did.
I used to play SimCity in CGA under DOS back in the day. I would love to play it again after say… more than 15 years or so…
What, you need the source code to do that?
Somebody confused copyright with trademark law.
“references to the SimCity name removed due to trademark issues”
Or, more likely, not having the permission of the owners.
…considering the already excellent clone LinCity, which has a much better GUI than the outdated SimCity Classic. If they had opensourced SimCity 2000, well…
http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Initially the original SimCity is primarily release to get the game on the XO laptop and will get some enhancements as pointed out in the article to take advantage of XO system. EA has the final say whether SimCity 2000 and its sequel will be open-sourced.
Notwithstanding how nice Lincity-NG might look, opensourcing SimCity is a great move, IMHO. I have always felt that the logic, or AI, or whatever you want to call it, in the actual SimCity games to be better than the Lincity ones. Who knows — maybe the LinCity developers can take the best bits from SimCity and make LinCity even better.
At the end of the day, opening up SimCity can only be beneficial.
As much as I like LinCity playing it is in no way the same as playing SimCity. They are simply different games, far more so than the minor Civilization/FreeCiv differences.
The source code on the Don Hopkins web page has been tweaked for the OLPC. I want the original DOS source code! Where is it?
…downloaded the binary they provide, it sort of works, but the main screen displays only a featureless salmon rectangle, instead of the map. The small whole map shows.
Where can I file a bug? I’d love to play again with my good old simcity, on my platform.
Fascinating.
I wonder how the graphics are licensed. Even the XO’s display packs a lot more power than the displays available in SinCity’s hayday. I would love to see the community update the tiles to 32bit and maybe even up their resolution too.