Andropolis

Andropolis is an open-source Android port of Micropolis, the GPL release of the original SimCity city simulator by Will Wright. The simulation is the MicropolisCore C++ engine. The Android NDK compiles the engine, and Kotlin drives it through a small C ABI and JNI. The port does not rewrite the simulation.

Features

• The full classic simulation: zones, traffic, pollution, crime, land value, budget, and the city evaluation.
• The 8 original scenarios and 23 sample cities.
• New maps with terrain choices: trees, lakes, rivers, and islands.
• Touch controls: draw roads and power lines, place buildings with a preview, and undo each build.
• Overlays, graphs, messages, the opinion poll, and the annual report.
• Background play (optional): the city continues while the app is closed. The app sends a notification when an event occurs.
• Saves are plain .cty files in Documents/Andropolis.
• No ads, no tracking, and no network access.

Install

Download the APK from the Releases page, then open it on the phone. Android asks for permission to install apps from this source.

Releases on Google Play and F-Droid will follow. RELEASING.md gives the procedure.

Build from the source

You need the Android SDK and NDK (the versions are in android/app/build.gradle.kts). You also need android/local.properties with sdk.dir=....

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ds17f/andropolis.git
make run           # build, start the emulator (headless), install, and start the app
make run-headful   # the same, with the emulator window
make build         # build the debug APK only

The engine tests run on the host computer:

cmake -S android -B android/build-host && cmake --build android/build-host -j
./android/build-host/engine/micropolis_abi_smoke
./android/build-host/engine/micropolis_determinism
./android/build-host/engine/micropolis_sprites

How the project is made

Claude (Opus) plans and reviews. A local open-weights model (qwen) writes most of the code, one task at a time. DESIGN.md describes the method, the architecture, and the C ABI. CLAUDE.md has the working rules.

License and trademarks

Andropolis is free software under the GNU General Public License version 3 (LICENSE), with the additional terms of the Micropolis GPL release (LICENSE-MICROPOLIS.md). The engine comes from MicropolisCore (Electronic Arts, Don Hopkins, and the One Laptop per Child project).

Micropolis is a registered trademark of Micropolis Corporation (Micropolis GmbH), named here only to describe where this port comes from, under the Micropolis Public Name License. SimCity is a trademark of Electronic Arts. Andropolis is not affiliated with or endorsed by Micropolis GmbH or Electronic Arts.