User guide

Please file a Github issue or email dabreegster@gmail.com if you encounter any problems.

Installing A/B Street

You can run A/B Street directly in your web browser. It's slower and there are some limitations compared to installing locally.

Grab a pre-built binary release:

  • Windows
    • Unzip the folder, then run play_abstreet.bat. If you get a warning about compressed files, choose to extract -- you can't run from the .zip directly.
    • If you get a "Windows protected you" security warning, click "more info", then "run anyway." We don't sign the release yet, so A/B Street shows up as an unknown publisher.
  • Mac
    • Unzip the directory, then run play_abstreet.sh.
    • If you get an error about the developer unverified, follow this. Help needed to start signing the release!
    • If that just opens a text file, then instead open terminal, cd to the directory you just unzipped. Then do: cd game; RUST_BACKTRACE=1 ./game 1> ../output.txt 2>&1
    • Help needed to package this as a Mac .app, to make this process simpler
  • Linux
    • Unzip the directory, then run play_abstreet.sh, e.g. with the following commands
cd ~/Downloads
wget https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet/releases/download/v0.3.49/abstreet_linux_v0_3_49.zip
unzip abstreet_linux_v0_3_49.zip
cd abstreet_linux_v0_3_49
./play_abstreet.sh
  • For a video illustrating this and more detailed instructions on installing the tool on Linux, see here.
  • FreeBSD, thanks to Yuri

Or you can compile from source.

Common issues

If the size of text and panels seems very strange, you can try editing play_abstreet.sh or play_abstreet.bat and passing --scale_factor=1 on the command line. This value is detected from your monitor settings, so if you have a Retina or other HiDPI display, things may be too big or small.

Data source licensing

A/B Street binary releases contain pre-built maps that combine data from:

Other binary data bundled in: