Sam Earle did exactly this with RL agents trained via quality-diversity methods on Micropolis: https://github.com/smearle/gym-city

For running locally, I'd recommend the MicropolisCore repo over the one linked in the original post. MicropolisCore is a clean C++ rewrite that compiles to WASM -- runs headless in Node or in any browser:

https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore

The Raspberry Pi wall display idea is great. The simulation is lightweight enough for that.

The simulator runs and I've written a tile rendering engine in TypeScript/WebGL, but I haven't finished the user interface. (But the Space Inventory works!)

Live demo: https://micropolisweb.com

Here is a video demo of how it works:

Micropolis Web Demo 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlHGfNlE8Os

For fun, I added all the classic tile sets, and it can run a couple of cellular automate rules as well as the game simulator. Here's a video to some original music by Jerry Martin, who composed the music in The Sims and SimCity (see the above video and the keyboard shortcuts in the help window to understand what's going here):

SimCity Micropolis Tile Sets Space Inventory Cellular Automata To Jerry Martin's Chill Resolve:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=319i7slXcbI

Here's more about my plans for making a multi player version of Micropolis with time travel, branching, and merging, by using github as MMPORG platform (when it's not down ;):

https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/designs/sims/s...

MOOLLM's "micropolis" skill is still in the design stages, but here's what I've started, which starts by describing the multi player version of SimCity I released in 1993:

SimCityNet announcement (1993):

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/simcity/simcity-announcement...

Multi Player SimCityNet for X11 on Linux:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVl4dGwUrA

micropolis skill README, including GitHub-as-MMPORG (MicropolisHub), and Alan Kay's Critique and Vision:

https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/tree/main/skills/micropo...

micropolis skill prototype:

https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/skills/micropo...

More context about what MOOLLM is:

https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm

And how it extends Anthropic Skills with 8 important features:

MOOLLM: A Microworld Operating System for LLM Orchestration:

Show HN: AI agents play SimCity through a REST API