''OpenCity'' is a

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

city-building game A city-building game, or town-building game, is a genre of simulation video game where players act as the overall planner and leader of a city or town, looking down on it from above, and being responsible for its growth and management strategy. ...

started in 2003 by France-based Vietnamese programmer Duong-Khang Nguyen. The game mechanics are similar to '' SimCity'', although the game developers do not strive to make it a direct ''SimCity''

clone Clone or Clones or Cloning or Cloned or The Clone may refer to: Places * Clones, County Fermanagh * Clones, County Monaghan, a town in Ireland Biology * Clone (B-cell), a lymphocyte clone, the massive presence of which may indicate a pathologi ...

Gameplay

In the game, the player builds a city by marking land as commercial, industrial or residential zones. Those zones depend on each other to grow. The player is also required to supply the city with power and connect the different zones by building roads.

Origins and development

''OpenCity'' is the product of programmer Duong-Khang Nguyen and 3D artist Frédéric Rodrigo. Nguyen was inspired by the open source game ''FreeReign''; when he realized that the ''FreeReign'' project was cancelled and the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

was not in the condition to be improved, he began development on his own city-building simulator. The work in project started in 2003 with the registration on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrorin ...

.opencity
on sourceforge.net ''OpenCity'' is

due to the licensing as GPLv2. Contributions to the game came from the game's community in form of translation and quality testing. ''OpenCity'' is built on cross platform libraries and

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

s like

Simple DirectMedia Library Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform software development library designed to provide a hardware abstraction layer for computer multimedia hardware components. Software developers can use it to write high-performance computer games ...

and

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

, which allows porting to various OSes and platforms, like

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

OpenCity 0.0.6
on Macshareware.com (August 24, 2013) and many

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

Reception

''OpenCity'' achieved a broad spread as

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

and

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

video game, and was downloaded directly from

between 2003 and May 2017 over 190,000 times according to the SF download statistic.opencity - stats
on

sourceforge.net SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

(May 2017) ''OpenCity'' has also been packaged for many

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

,Package: opencity
on rpms.remirepo.net

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

,opencity
on packages.debian.org

SuSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...

, Slackware,

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

,OpenCity
on apps.ubuntu.com Pardus, Frugalware. ''OpenCity'' has been reviewed as "well made 3D

remake A remake is a film, television series, video game, song or similar form of entertainment that is based upon and retells the story of an earlier production in the same medium—e.g., a "new version of an existing film". A remake tells the same ...

" of ''SimCity'' by Chip.de in 2013.OpenCity 0.0.6.2
on Chip.de ''"OpenCity ist ein liebevoll gemachtes 3D-Remake des Spiele-Klassikers SimCity aus dem Jahre 1989."'' (in German, March 5, 2013)

Gallery

Opencity-0.0.3-textured-terrain.png, Screenshot of version 0.0.3 OpenCity0.0.5.png, Screenshot of version 0.0.5

References

External links