Henry Coulson wrote:Hello Folks, greetings from New Zealand,
The title says most of it: I was thinking of creating a Permaculture game/ simulator used not only for serious scientific, and educational purposes but for fun as well. My friends and I are currently in a more-or-less informal part time startup group at the moment, and we thought that this would be a great idea to pursue.
There is at least one other person attempting this that I know of:
https://permies.com/t/53977/rid-grass
And I would be keen to know who else would be interested in helping produce it. If it already exists, awesome. Please show me where to download it.
We were considering doing a free version of maybe a small garden simulator, which could give you advice on planting, and crop rotation, given one's latitude, location, rainfall, soil conditions etc.
Perhaps, then having several versions, with the more expensive* versions having more interesting features, such as full blown, 3d terrain, modelling water flows, pest species, and plant guilds, taking into account topology, mineral content and soil structure to make a training product for die-hard permaculture enthusiasts/ teachers.
Perhaps something like these:
http://theselfsufficientliving.com/10-free-garden-landscape-design-software-tool/
But, dynamic in the time dimension. watch your plants grow, (or not) depending on environmental factors. Change the contours of the land to see how water run-off occurs, and nourish your land with compost, for improved yields. (sort of thing)
*unfortunately, while I like to do this, simply because I am a permaculture nut and I find it fascinating, my friends (who are mostly students, and need to pay the rent) would like to get some form of lucre for their efforts. (Hence a price tag.) Also, making polished software does take a lot of time and effort, so I don't think that the final version could be open source.
However, I was also considering crowd funding this, as it might be a better way to cover our overheads. Also, then we could make it open source, and everyone could use it free of charge! (more aligned with the culture of permaculture, I would say...)
Whatever the case, I would love to release a simple, initial tool which would suit most beginner gardeners for free.
From the Permies community, I would be very appreciative if you could give me your opinion:
a) would you use this?
b) how much would you be willing to pay/donate?
c) what would you like to see in it?
d) could you help us? (even if you aren't a computery person, we could do with data on what plants like what other plants, yeilds in certain soils, what water concentrations will kill them. etc.)
Any thoughts and/or (constructive) criticism is most welcome
All the Best,
Henry