✎ red_leaf [the libarynth]

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======Red Leaf======

A proposed project to act as a counterpoint (and homage) to [[http://www.farmville.com|FarmVille]], a game by [[http://www.zynga.com/|Zynga]]. FarmVille is a free to play game on facebook designed to raise money by purchasing "FarmCash" or "FarmCoins" for use in the game. Most things in the game are free if you play long enough, but players pay to get ahead quickly. This is important because you can see all your friends playing too, and things get competitive.

There are currently more people playing FarmVille than using Twitter, or living in France. It's the most popular computer game ever made.

There are a few issues with FarmVille's depiction of the world that we feel we should be able to poke fun at, these are very well expressed in this blog post by Funny Buzz [[http://fuzzybuzz.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/farmville-what-is-it-teaching-people/|Farmville: What is it teaching people?]]

* No changes in weather - bizzare plants can live side by side.
  * No pests, crop failure, or disease to restrict your earning power.
  * No blood - animals are raised entirely for dairy, wool, hair, eggs, truffles (pigs!).
  * Any cooperation in the game is rewarded by instant cash, the reason you can see your friend's farms (and for instance, fertilise their crops) is really to foster competition.
  * Space is your only real restriction, so factory farming is the logical method.

{{:factory.png|}}.

<blockquote>The fact that Zynga can make a farming game that is this popular while being so wildly divorced from reality is a sad commentary on both the company and its fans’ level of agricultural ignorance.</blockquote>

Zynga are not ignorant, they exist to make money. We do not have that restriction, so we can explore some of these issues more deeply:

* A cooperation model for players - collectivization, players share the means of production.
  * Space is not an issue, you can roam freely.
  * Monoculture out - a simple, but complete model for nutrients in the soil, nitrogen fixers, permaculture layers - all based on [[fukuoka gardening]].
  * The use of native species of plants based on your physical location.
  * Animals as part of the ecosystem (eg. deep ploughing avoided by introducing chickens)
  * Animals have a full life cycle - we deal with the death issue.
  * The whole thing could just be a dissemination strategy for more intelligent information about food production.

======Current stupid version======

Use cursor keys to move around and space to plant a pata-seed. You can move around the world by walking to the edge of the current tile.

Problems:
  * Plants will be lost when you move out the current tile. We need a server program running for the world to be persistent for all players.
  * For the same reason, your name doesn't matter for the moment.
  * Plants are not drawn in the right order, so overlap badly.
  * Need to be able to choose what plants to grow
  * Needs a permaculture model
  * All the graphics should be considered placeholder, particularly the robot!

The source code is currently at this location: [[http://www.pawfal.org/flotsam/haxe/wilderness/]]

======Links======

* Building big social games, a presentation on FarmVille by Amit Mahajan, short but informative [[http://www.slideshare.net/amittmahajan/building-big-social-games]]
  * The real farmville project: [[http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&ref=nf&gid=192831553631]]

foam is a group of artists who think that science is great and food is greater

======Work needed======

Game design
  * Player collaboration - I have an idea where each player starts with one thing they need, and have to ask for help from people in their collective before they can start - ie. "Joe starts playing and has to borrow a spade from

Plants
  *
  * A plant for each layer * function - each one needs frames representing growth through different stages, also for decay, disease.

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