Contents tagged with Game Development
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SimCity Source Code Released to the Wild! Let the ports begin...
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. There's been changes to the original system like a new splash screen, some UI feedback from QA, etc. The plane crash disaster has been removed as a result of 9/11. What is initially released under GPL is the Linux version based on TCL/Tk, adapted for the OLPC (but not yet natively ported to the Sugar user interface and Python), which will also run on any Linux/X11 platform. The OLPC has an officially sanctioned and QA'ed version of SimCity that is actually called SimCity. EA wanted to have the right to approve and QA anything that was shipped with the trademarked name SimCity. But the GPL version will have a different name than SimCity, so people will be allowed to modify and distribute that without having EA QA and approve it. Future versions of SimCity that are included with the OLPC and called SimCity will go through EA for approval, but versions based on the open source Micropolis source code can be distributed anywhere, including the OLPC, under the name Micropolis (or any other name than SimCity).
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.
The key thing here is to peek inside the mind of the original Maxis programmers when they built it. Remember, this was back in the day when games had to fit inside of 640k so some "creative" programming techniques were employed. SimCity has been long a model used for urban planning and while it's just a game, there are a lot of business rules, ecosystem modeling, social dependencies, and other cool stuff going on in this codebase. It may not be pretty code but it's content sure is interesting to see.
In any case, it's out there for you to grab and have fun with. It was originally written in C and of course is old (created before 1983 which is ancient in Internet time). Don spent a lot of time cleaning the code up (including ANSIfying it, reformatting it, optimizing, and bullet-proofing it) as best he could. Don ported the Mac version of SimCity to SunOS Unix running the NeWS window system about 15 years ago, writing the user interface in PostScript. A year or so later he ported it to various versions of Unix running X-Windows, using the TCL/Tk scripting language and gui toolkit. Several years later when Linux became viable, it was fairly straightforward to port that code to Linux, and then to port that to the OLPC.
There's still a lot of craptastic code in there, but the heart of the software (the simulator) hasn't changed. I know there will be efforts underway to port it to a better platform, replace the age old graphics with new ones, rewrite the graphic routines with modern-day counterparts, etc. The modern challenge for game programming is to deconstruct games like SimCity into reusable components for making other games! The code hopefully serves as a good example of how to use SWIG to integrate C++ classes into Python and Cairo, in a portable cross platform way that works on Linux and Windows.
Don also wrote some example Python code that uses the TileEngine module to make a scrolling zooming view of a live city with the Micropolis module, and a scrolling zooming view of a cellular automata with the CellEngine module. The TileEngine comes with a Python TileWindow base class that implements most of the plumbing, tile display and mouse tracking, so SimCity and the CellEngine can easily subclass and customize to suit their needs. You can pan with the mouse and arrow keys, and zoom in and out by typeing "i" or "o", or "r" to reset the zoom. The TileEngine supports zooming in and out, and has a lazy drawing feature that calls back into Python to render and cache the scaled tiles right before they're needed (so you can implement the tile caching strategy in Python, while the rendering is in efficient C++ code calling hardware accelerated Cairo -- and the Python code could easily render tiles with pretty scaled SVG graphics). 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.Grab the source code from here and go have some fun!
Enjoy!
This is a series of posts exploring and extending the Micropolis code. You can view the full list of posts here.
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Another Kick at the Can
Look like a new development community is forming, this time around XNA and Game Development. GameDevKicks.com uses the DotNetKicks code and has launched a new site for game development content. There's only 5 articles submitted, but looks like it's off to a good start. A good set of categories to start, a bit of a redesign from the typical DotNetKicks look and feel (something like a cross between Digg and DNK) but it's just starting off. So if you're into the game development scene feel free to help out and see if this kicks community can grow and prosper. Check out GameDevKicks here and give a whirl.
More game development news to come shortly from your friendly neighborhood SharePoint-Man.
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Terrarium Anyone?
Anyone out there got a copy of the Terrarium client and server they can flip me? I'm working on something new and need to find a copy of it. It seems to all but vanished from any Microsoft site I can find. For example, the download page is here on the WindowsClient.NET site but doesn't work. It continues to be listed as a Starter Kit for Windows Form (it hasn't been updated since .NET 1.1) but I can't seem to track it down anywhere. If you have a copy let me know via email and if you can send it that would be great, or I can provide a place for you to upload it to. Thanks in advance.
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DevTeach Day 2 - XNA with Live!
Sitting for the first session as we're going through the XNA session with Pat McGee. The session was an intro to XNA (and filled with a room full of guys who haven't done any XNA work so it was a good audience) but was fun with the people involved.
XNA on Xbox requires you to be connected to XBox Live and the Xbox networking was down so the guys couldn't demo anything on the XBox. However the fallback plan was to demo some networking on the laptops they had (of course when you come for an XNA demo you bring extra laptops and Xboxes, it's all about the hardware). Luckily it was John "The Pimp" Bristowe who saved the day and got the Xbox hooked up to the network so the demos were good to go.
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52 Game Ideas from a Game Designer
I don't know how I missed this. Grant you, being the Renaissance developer that I am I dabble in everything. SharePoint, Agile, Scrum, CAB, Mobile, Games. You name it and I've either written software for it, or want to. It's been a long time since I did full time game programming but I do follow it these days and recently have been haunting the hallows of the XNA world when I moved my XBox to my office so I could try out some console programming.
One of my favorite games of all time (at least created in the last 5 years) is Stubbs the Zombie. It's brilliant in that it lets you be the zombie and go off and eat brains. I'm all for shooting zombies in the head ala George A. Romero and going all Tom Savini on the screen, but to be the zombie. Man, that stuff just writes itself.
So it was a pleasant surprise that I found the lead designer the of the game, Patrick Curry, had a blog. What was even more surprising is that last year he posted a new game idea. Every week. Yup, 52 new game ideas that he just threw out there for all to see. The list is quite impressive and shows this guy thinks out of the XBox. It's a fun read with each entry giving the high level concept, the platform it's intended for, a description, and some thoughts. The community responses are interesting as well as people come up with extensions to Patrick's idea. Anyway, if you're into this stuff or have nothing better to do on your Saturday afternoon then check out the list here.
