This is big. Sim City, the really cool computer game simulation program, is open source as of now.
This past holiday (I’ve been bugging him since November about it) my good friend Don Hopkins got a lot of work done on the finishing touches on releasing the original SimCity source code under the GNU General Public Library (GPL). The code won’t have reference to any SimCity name as that has all be renamed to Micropolis. Micropolis was the original working title of the game and since EA requires that the GPL open source version not use the same name as SimCity (to protect their trademark) a little work had to be done to the code.
Read the rest here.It’s going to be a while before this turns into anything that matters to most of us, but the process will be intersting to watch.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
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Time until a version appears which replaces all the llama references with LOLCats…three….two…one….
Ah, yes. Good ole SimCity, where each game started with gracious application of the money cheat and a construction of a nuclear farm, suitably removed from the residential and industrial areas to prevent irradiation in the event of the inevitable meltdown.Too bad they’re not publishing the original code. I recall that Borland offers their ancient DOS Turbo C for free. With DOS-EMU it might have been possible to compile and run the original code. Porting to modern OSes would’ve been a fun exercise from fully functioning code.
Oh no. Does this mean my husband is going to spend countless hours building cities on his Linux machine??? 🙂