[Activities] SimCity and Micropolis Testing

[Greg Smith]

Hi Testing team,

Below is a thread I had about including SimCity in the factory image for
9.1.0. I included the full thread for background.

In order to do better this time around, I want to get some SimCity and
Micropolis testing done early.

Can I ask the activity test teams to write test cases and do some
testing on SimCity and Micropolis?

Find the latest versions here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/All#Games

Let me know where to track the results. There will still be a question
of space available on the XO so its not sure we can get them in, but we
need them tested and ready to have a chance.

Thanks,

Greg S

***************

Hi John,

Looking back at 8.2, I went back found the ticket (at least we have a
ticket :-) where we removed simcity and I see your comment asking for a
reason.

I also see you didn't get an answer. I think the reason was that it
wasn't well tested or possibly that there was a problem found (maybe it
didn't launch right from the journal). I think it came down to someone
opening it up here in the office, seeing something they didn't like and
then deciding that we didn't have time to test it more.

I know that's not a good answer. There should be a bug filed if there
was a specific problem. I plan to make sure we do better this time
around. That's why I'm trying to start early.

There is also a question of how much available space we have. We may be
much more squeezed this time if we also include a standard Fedora desktop.

Anyway, its obviously a great activity which meets my request for fun,
entertaining and interesting to look at.

I'll put it on the list and make you the contact (using wiki name) if
that's OK.

Can you help test it and write a simple test case for it?

Is there a Spanish translation for it or is it in Pootle?

I don't know what the implications are of the Micropolis vs. SimCity.
Tell me which one will be available for test and better supported by
January/February and we'll focus on that.

HTHs.

Thanks,

Greg S


John Gilmore wrote:
>> I want to get all potential activities listed there. An activity 
will need to be tested with the release and have a maintainer to have a
chance for inclusion. Like last time, we will gather input from everyone
then make a decision on the final set. OLPC management gets the final
say but I will make sure they hear the voice of the community,
preferably consensus.
>
> SimCity was in the almost-final set for G1G1, and was then excluded at
> the last minute.  In OLPC's usual transparent process, I never found
> out why, or who made the decision.  If there's something we can do to
> SimCity that would give it a better chance for 9.1.0, please let us
> (me and Don Hopkins <dhopkins at donhopkins.com>) know, and we'll see what
> we can do.
>
> Don has recently gotten a small European grant to work on improving
> Micropolis (the same game without EA branding, which avoids trying to
> get EA to QA it before we can ship it).  He has it limping as a Flash
> client/server web application.  He's refactored much of the code to
> make it modular, which will help to make it easier to port.
> Personally, since I think Sugar is a dead-end, I hope his non-web
> efforts go into making it a great game on any Linux machine.  The OLPC
> should be able to run that version, via 9.1.0's support for running
> the thousands of ordinary Linux GUI applications.
>
>     John
>