<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Games</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Linux Ecology-HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Uninterruptible Power Supply - UPS" HREF="ecology-howto-ups.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Ecology Software (Simulation, Data Collection, Statistics, etc.)" HREF="ecology-howto-software.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="chapter" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Linux Ecology-HOWTO</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="ecology-howto-ups.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="ecology-howto-software.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="chapter" ><H1 ><A NAME="ecology-howto-games" ></A >Chapter 12. Games</H1 ><P > Personally I'm not much a player of computer games but maybe they can be used for environmental education. In a first investigation I found <A HREF="http://lincity.sourceforge.net/" TARGET="_top" ><B CLASS="command" >Lincity</B ></A > and <A HREF="http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/faculty/gmar/realife.html" TARGET="_top" ><B CLASS="command" >Real Life</B ></A >, please check their usefulness by yourself. </P ><P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P > <A HREF="http://lincity.sourceforge.net/" TARGET="_top" ><B CLASS="command" >Lincity</B ></A > - Build & maintain a city/country. You are required to build and maintain a city. You must feed, house, provide jobs and goods for your residents. You can build a sustainable economy with the help of renewable energy and recycling, or you can go for broke and build rockets to escape from a pollution ridden and resource starved planet, it's up to you. Due to the finite resources available in any one place, this is not a game that you can leave for long periods of time. This game is similar to the commercial simulation game with a similar name. This package provides files common to both the X and SVGALIB versions of the game. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > <A HREF="http://www.sunysb.edu/philosophy/faculty/gmar/realife.html" TARGET="_top" ><B CLASS="command" >Real Life</B ></A > - "In <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life" TARGET="_top" >Conway's Game of Life</A > every cell is either fully alive (has the value of 1) or completely dead (has the value 0). In Real Life this restriction to bivalence is lifted to countenance -real-valued- degrees of life and death. Real Life contains Conway's Game of Life as a special case; however, Real Life, in contrast to Conway's Game of Life, exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions which is characteristic of chaotic systems." </P ></LI ><LI ><P > <A HREF="http://www.sierra.com" TARGET="_top" >Sierra</A > has produced (some time ago) Eco Quest 1 - <B CLASS="command" >Lost in Rainforest</B > and <B CLASS="command" >Eco Quest 2 - The Search for Cetus</B >. The EcoQuest games were for MS-DOS and Windows 3.x. These were targeted at younger players. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > SimEarth, 1988, Maxis (DOS, Win3.x, Mac) Simulates the development of a planet from the forming of the crust to the spread of civilization. Based on James Lovelock's Gaia theory. Somewhat dull and difficult to learn, but there's a good amount of educational value to be gotten out of fiddling around with the models, particularly greenhouse effect. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > Balance of the Planet, 1991, Chris Crawford (DOS, Mac) You take the role of a government policy-maker who must try to balance industry and ecology. Remarkably complicated and drab (even moreso than SimEarth), but certain to be educational and thought-provoking if time is spent with the manual. (The Mac version can now be downloaded for free from Crawford's website http://www.erasmatazz.com/free.html, but Executor seems to be unable to deal the filenames in the archive.) </P ></LI ><LI ><P > Global Effect, 1992, Millennium (DOS, Amiga) An early real-time strategy game where you must try to conquer your opponent while dealing with the ecological ramifications of your weapons and industry upon your population. Clunky interface, not a lot of fun compared to current Warcraft-type games. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > SimIsle, 1995, Maxis (DOS, ???) Develop a tropical island without destroying the rainforest ecology. Large learning curve but supposedly a lot of fun. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > SimPark, 1997, Maxis (Win 95, ???) Sort of a children's version of SimIsle, which is simpler and more education-focused. </P ></LI ></UL ><P > I suspect the older games should run just fine on <B CLASS="command" >dosemu</B >. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="ecology-howto-ups.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="ecology-howto-software.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Uninterruptible Power Supply - UPS</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Ecology Software (Simulation, Data Collection, Statistics, etc.)</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >