City sims

ElectroCity is pretty much an eco friendly mini version of Sim City, provided by Genesis Energy. It’s aimed squarely at educating people as to the merits of clean energy.

ElectroCity is a new online computer game that lets players manage their own virtual towns and cities. It’s great fun to play and also teaches players all about energy, sustainability and environmental management in New Zealand.

Sign-up is aimed at teachers, the idea being that once  a student finishes a game, they enter the code supplied to the teacher, who will then receive credit and hopefully some prizes at a later stage.

It’s clear that a lot of work has gone into this “game” and it does seem to be of sound educational benefit.

Online browser based nation building sims seem to be popping up all over the place these days. The latest to hit the web is Cyber Nations.

Create a nation anywhere in the world and decide how you will rule your people by choosing a government type, a national religion, ethnicity, tax rate, currency type, and more in this new geo-political, nation, and government simulator. Build your empire by purchasing infrastructure to support your citizens, land to expand your borders, technology to increase your nation’s effectiveness, military to defend your interests, and develop national improvements and wonders to build your nation according to your choosing.

Interestingly, this one makes use of Google Maps at its core. The game itself looks to be well thought out, although I can’t honestly say I can see anything there that makes it stand out from all the other browser based nation building sims.

Electronics Arts has announced the first official expansion pack for SimCity Societies - Destinations:

New City Pack filled with content and features coming soon!

From unspoiled nature parks with campgrounds and hiking trails to tropical beach resorts with water sports and fine dining, from humble county fairs with hay rides and midway games, to sprawling modern theme parks with all the bells and whistles, you’ll build an entire city based on attracting visitors, and keeping them entertained and satisfied.

That swimming pool does look like fun!

Following on from my earlier post about an Open Source version of Sim City (Micropolis), the Graphic Graffiti blog has now posted detailed instructions on how to get it working on Mac OSX. It looks reasonably straight forward (famous last words?!).

I shall give this a try over the weekend on my MacBook Pro and report back.

The source code for the original SimCity is being released under the GNU General Public Library. The game will no longer be referred to as SimCity, due to copyright restrictions and currently has a working title of Micropolis.

The Fear and Loathing blog reports:

The “MicropolisCore” project includes the latest Micropolis (SimCity) source code, cleaned up and recast into C++ classes, integrated into Python, using the wonderful SWIG interface generator tool. It also includes a Cairo based TileEngine, and a cellular automata machine CellEngine, which are independent but can be plugged together, so the tile engine can display cellular automata cells as well as SimCity tiles, or any other application’s tiles

This is great news for all SimCity fans and I’m looking forward to seeing the first of the ports.