1 <head><title>Introduction
</title></head><body>
7 Enter Micropolis and take control. Be the undisputed ruler of a
8 sophisticated real-time City Simulation. Become the master of existing
9 cities such as San Francisco, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro, or create
10 your own dream city (or nightmare slum) from the ground up.
<p>
12 Whether you take over an existing city or build your own, you are the
13 Mayor and City Planner with complete authority.
<p>
15 Your city is populated by Sims -- Simulated Citizens. Like their human
16 counterparts, they build houses, condos, churches, stores and
17 factories. And, also like humans, they complain about things like
18 taxes, mayors, taxes, city planners, and taxes. If they get unhappy,
19 they move out; you collect fewer taxes, the city deteriorates.
<p>
21 The next few sections will explain the overall concept of Micropolis and
22 give information that will help you win Scenarios and design and build
25 <h2>About System Simulations
</h2>
27 Micropolis is the first of a new type of entertainment/educational
28 software, called System Simulations. We provide you with a set of
29 Rules and Tools that describe, create and control a system. In the
30 case of Micropolis the system is a city.
<p>
32 The challenge of playing a System Simulation game is to figure out how
33 the system works and take control of it. As master of the system, you
34 are free to use the Tools to create and control an unlimited number of
35 systems (in this case, cities) within the framework and limits
36 provided by the Rules.
<p>
40 In Micropolis, the Rules to learn are based on city planning and
41 management, including:
<p>
45 <li>Human Factors: Residential space and amenities, availability of
46 jobs, and quality of life.
48 <li>Economic Factors: Land value, industrial and commercial space,
49 unemployment, internal and external markets, electric power, taxation,
50 and funding for city services.
52 <li>Survival Factors: Strategies for dealing with disasters, crime,
55 <li>Political Factors: Public opinion, zoning, and keeping residents
56 and businesses satisfied with your city and your performance.
63 The Tools provide you with the ability to plan, lay out, zone, build,
64 bulldoze, re-zone, and manage a city.
<p>
68 <li>Plan: Mapping systems give physical and demographic overviews of
71 <li>Layout: Design living and working areas, road and transit systems,
72 and recreational areas.
74 <li>Zone: Set zoning boundaries for parks, residential, commercial and
77 <li>Build: Place roads, rails, airports, seaports, fire and police
78 stations, sports stadiums, and power plants.
80 <li>Bulldoze: Clear forests for city growth, build landfill along
81 waterways, clear and re-zone developed areas.
83 <li>Manage: Using the mapping and graphing systems, gather up-to-date
84 information on traffic density, population trends, power grid status,
85 pollution, crime, land value, police and fire department efficiency,
86 and cash flow. Set the tax rate and funding levels for city services.
91 But the most important Tool of all is the Simulator itself. Test your
92 plans and ideas as you watch the city grow or shrink through the
93 immigration and emigration of industrious Simulated Citizens. Sims
94 will move in and build homes, hospitals, churches, stores and
95 factories in the zones you provide, or move out in search of jobs or a
96 better life elsewhere. The success of the city is based on the quality
97 of the city you design and manage.
<p>
99 <h3>Simulator Reaction Time
</h3>
101 The simulator is a very complex multi-tasking piece of software. It is
102 constantly performing many checks, calculations, and updates, as well
103 as keeping watch on the mouse and keyboard to respond to your demands.
104 When you load in a city, give the simulator some time to compile its
105 data and update the maps, graphs, population levels, etc. Some of the
106 other times when the simulator lags behind you are when powering zones
107 and updating the city services map after installing police and fire
110 <h2>The Goals of Micropolis
</h2>
112 There are many goals to be pursued and reached in Micropolis.
<p>
116 Each of the eight included scenarios is actually a game in itself,
117 with an unlimited number of ways to win -- or lose.
<p>
119 Each Scenario is a city which is either the victim of horrible
120 planning or about to be the victim of a natural disaster. After you
121 load in a Scenario, you will have a limited amount of time to correct
122 or repair the problems. If you are successful, you will be given the
123 key to the city. If not, you may be ridden out of town on a rail.
<p>
125 If one strategy doesn't work, try another. There are a million stories
126 in each city, and you write them.
<p>
128 <h3>Your Dream City
</h3>
130 Perhaps the main goal of Micropolis is for you to design, manage and
131 maintain the city of your dreams.
<p>
133 Your ideal place to live may be a bustling megalopolis, lots of
134 people, lots of cars, tall buildings: high-energy, high density
135 living. Or it may be a small rural community, or a linked group of
136 small communities providing slow-paced country living.
<p>
138 As long as your city can provide places for people to live, work, shop
139 and play, it will attract residents. And as long as traffic,
140 pollution, overcrowding, crime or taxes don't drive them away, your
143 <h1>Getting Started
</h1>
145 <h2>Micropolis Requirements
</h2>
147 Micropolis requires an Intel processor running the Linux operating
148 system, with the X11 window system installed, a
16 bit deep color graphics display,
149 a kernel with the shared memory option enabled,
150 and at least
32 megabytes of memory.
<p>
152 <h2>Micropolis Features
</h2>
154 <h3>On-Line Help
</h3>
156 You can get help on the Micropolis user interface, by pointing the mouse
157 at anything mysterious, holding down shift, and clicking the left button.
158 The Help window will pop up, giving instructions and useful hints on how
159 to use the controls.
<p>
161 <h3>Multiple Views
</h3>
163 You can open up any number of animated city maps and editors at once.
<p>
167 Micropolis features pop up
"pie menus" for quickly selecting city editing tools.
168 Pie menus are radial menus with their choices in different directions,
169 and they're very fast and efficient to use.
170 Since you change editing tools quite often while building a city,
171 you can save much time and effort by using the pie menu shortcuts
172 instead of the moving back and forth to the tool pallet.
179 <h2>Micropolis, Unix Version.
</h2>
180 This game was released for the Unix platform
181 in or about
1990 and has been modified for inclusion in the One Laptop
182 Per Child program. Copyright
© 1989 -
2007 Electronic Arts Inc. If
183 you need assistance with this program, you may contact:
184 <a href=
"http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Micropolis">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Micropolis
</a> or email
<a href=
"mailto:micropolis@laptop.org">micropolis@laptop.org
</a>.
187 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
188 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
189 the Free Software Foundation, either version
3 of the License, or (at
190 your option) any later version.
193 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
194 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
195 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
196 General Public License for more details. You should have received a
197 copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If
198 not, see
<a href=
"http://www.gnu.org/licenses/">http://www.gnu.org/licenses/
</a>.
201 <h3 align=
"center">ADDITIONAL TERMS per GNU GPL Section
7</h3>
204 No trademark or publicity rights are granted. This license does NOT
205 give you any right, title or interest in the trademark SimCity or any
206 other Electronic Arts trademark. You may not distribute any
207 modification of this program using the trademark SimCity or claim any
208 affliation or association with Electronic Arts Inc. or its employees.
211 Any propagation or conveyance of this program must include this
212 copyright notice and these terms.
215 If you convey this program (or any modifications of it) and assume
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221 You may not misrepresent the origins of this program; modified
222 versions of the program must be marked as such and not identified as
223 the original program.
226 This disclaimer supplements the one included in the General Public
227 License.
<b>TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, THIS
228 PROGRAM IS PROVIDED TO YOU
"AS IS," WITH ALL FAULTS, WITHOUT WARRANTY
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</b>