Road to Zero - The Microgrid Management Game

(C) 2023 - [ESC] Interactive

Anthony Truelove MASc, P.Eng.
github:  gears1763-2

This is a 3X (i.e. eXplore, eXpand, eXploit) game that aims to teach players about integrating renewable energy production and storage assets into an isolated microgrid (in this case, a remote island settlement), and then managing their operations over the long term. The goal is to grow your settlement while also achieving and maintaining zero emissions energy dispatch. That said, the only way to win is to achieve a population of at least 1,000 and achieve at least 12 consecutive months of zero emissions. But take care! If you fail to meet energy demand at any time or you run out of credits or you generate too many emissions, you immediately lose. Good luck!

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Licensing

• This software and the associated documentation files are released under a 3-Clause BSD License (a.k.a. "New BSD License" or "Modified BSD License"). See the enclosed LICENSE.md for terms and conditions.

• The assets (i.e., textures, sounds, music, etc.) associated with this software are governed by their own individual licenses. See the 0_*_refs_licenses.md files in assets/... for details.

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Contents

In the directory for this project, you should find this README.md, a LICENSE.md, a makefile and the following sub-directories

assets.7z   For holding the various game assets (textures, sounds, music), compressed
docs/       For holding documentation (including a `config.doxygen` and a `refs.bib`)
extlibs/    For holding external .dll dependencies (specifically for Windows build)
header/     For holding the various header files (`.h`)
source/     For holding the various source files (`.cpp`)

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Key Features

• A procedurally generated, hex tile world with varying tile types (plains, forest, mountains, lakes, and ocean) and renewable resource qualities. No two playthroughs the same!

• Modelling and simulation of various renewable energy production assets (solar, tidal, wave, and wind), both with and without paired energy storage.

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Setup

Windows

Road to Zero was developed using SFML 2.5.1., so be sure to be using at least this version. For this version of SFML, you can download the complete library from https://www.sfml-dev.org/download/sfml/2.5.1/. Be sure to amend the provided makefile as necessary so that the include (-I) and library (-L) options point to the SFML-2.5.1\include and SFML-2.5.1\lib sub-directories of wherever you unzipped SFML.

Since the provided makefile is set up to do static linking in the case of building on Windows, you need to ensure that you're using a compatible C++ compiler. For this part, the mingw32 compiler g++ was used (and is available at https://www.sfml-dev.org/files/SFML-2.5.1-windows-gcc-7.3.0-mingw-32-bit.zip). Note that version 7.3.0 of mingw32 is specifically needed in order for static linking of SFML 2.5.1. libs to work! Of course, once you've unzipped mingw32, be sure to add ..\mingw32\bin to the system path.

Finally, you will need to install make in order to use the provided makefile. For this part, Make for Windows was used (and is available at https://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/make.htm; specifically, the download from https://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/downlinks/make.php was used). Of course, once you've unzipped Make for Windows, be sure to add ..\GnuWin32\bin to the system path.

Having done all that, it should suffice to

make all

from the command prompt (cmd).

If you do run into any missing .dll issues when trying to execute RoadToZero.exe, you may be able to find the missing files at https://github.com/SFML/SFML/tree/master/extlibs. If the problem you encounter pertains to openal32.dll specifically, this .dll is provided here in extlibs/.

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

Road to Zero was developed on Linux, so building it yourself should be pretty straightforward. First, if you don't already have a C/C++ development package installed, you can do so by way of

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Then, the SFML development package can be installed by way of

sudo apt-get install libsfml-dev

See https://www.sfml-dev.org/tutorials/2.5/start-linux.php. Finally, it should suffice to

make all

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Documentation

Documentation for this project is auto-generated using Doxygen (see https://www.doxygen.nl/). HTML documentation can be found in docs/RoadToZero_html.7z, and LaTeX documentation can be found in docs/RoadToZero_LaTeX.pdf. All references are listed in docs/refs.bib.

If you do make changes to the code, you can easily generate updated documentation by way of

make docs

assuming you are set up to do so (i.e., doxygen installed, etc.).

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Support

If you have enjoyed playing Road to Zero (or modifying the source), please consider making a donation! The game is available for donations on itch.io; see https://gears1763.itch.io/road-to-zero-the-microgrid-management-game.

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SFML Version

Road to Zero was developed using SFML 2.5.1. See https://www.sfml-dev.org/.

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Testing

The provided makefile and all source code was successfully tested on the following OS and architectures:

Operating System: Linux Mint 21.2
          Kernel: Linux 6.6.6-76060606-generic
    Architecture: x86-64

Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
         Version: Build 22621.ni_release.220506-1250
    Architecture: 64-bit OS, x64-based processor

The following compilers were used in testing:

g++ (Ubuntu 11.4.0-1ubuntu1~22.04) 11.4.0
g++ (i686-posix-dwarf-rev0, Built by MinGW-Wg4 project) 7.3.0