Swales: The Permaculture Sim / Game, first public build

Hello everyone,

About ten years ago I posted a video about an attempt I was making at a gamed called My Backyard Farm.



Over the years I threw away and ran at the same thing multiple times, but was never satisfied with the crucial element (to me) of a Permi game.

Water.

At last, hardware and software have reached a point where we can do real time (to a point) water simulation, with real time terrain deformation as well.



With real time water simulation you will be able to direct runoff to fill your fish ponds, dig your swales and immediately see whether they are on contour or not, and irrigate your property from your dams at the top.

We are using voxels to create the land. With development time and money that means erosion simulation, soil type simulation, root simulation, and soil soakage.

The roadmap for something like this is infinite, as the real Planet Earth simulation is so immense. So we are breaking it down into small parts of the simulation, making them useful to real world people, then gamifying, then circling back around to add another layer.

The core simulation will be used for different products as time goes on. Users who want to model their property in the real world will have an evolving product, and games will come out as regularly as we can create updated or new experiences. Like how Farm Simulator has yearly updates, except this is beneficial to the world, not simulating monoculture. One year will be a greening the desert release, another a tropical biome release. The additions then go back into the real world simulation.

Today's release is bare bones and buggy. If you create overlaps, the water will start "spiking". You have to Alt-F4 to get out. And it's ugly (except the water) because it is just to show features.

But it might just get you excited for the future tool it will become. You can dig and add soil to divert water, try to make contour lines and create ponds. If it holds your attention for five minutes I'll be happy. I just want you to see the beginning.

It's on Patreon, but is a public release, so you don't need to have subscribed to get access to it. Until the next build there aren't any supporter exclusive rewards. Of course, any contributions are welcome.

Swales: The Permaculture Sim first release

The first Patron Only build of the Permaculture Sim is available!

It now includes an early method for making Zones!

We're using splines to create quite nice shapes. At the moment they are represented by fences, but in the future they will be invisible lines that can be color coded and numbered. Way down the line they will help NPC's decide what area to spend what percentage of their time.

Additionally digging and "creating" land has been refined a bit.

Please take a look!

Sounds awesome, I’ll go check it out!

Looks very cool, excited to see this develop

Terrain editing and the resulting water flow took a big step forward this week thanks to an update of Voxel Plugin. It is now operating a lot faster, making the whole thing a lot more fun to play with.

Yes, play with, finally. It's just a toy so far, not a game. But I feel like playing around with it making this Saddle Dam is hitting that part of the brain that brings understanding of concepts one doesn't even know one is missing.

Have a look, and if you would like to start playing with it as well, Patrons have access to the version in the video.



Much more to come!

If you aren't a supporter but would like to play with the terrain editing and real time dynamic water, I encourage you to download this build..

Experiment and try to build a Saddle Dam.

Note: You need to change the item in the drop down menu (top left) once before it functions. Yes that's a bug.

Instructions for movement and drawing "zones" (still represented with fences) are in the post.

A Patron only build with topography lines and better camera movement is just around the corner.

Enjoy and if you like the direction this is going, please consider supporting.

Sorry, I pointed directly at the files instead of the page with instructions:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/build-0-0-0-3-82845994

Congratulations!  This is fantastic.  I tried sketching out something like this in Godot last year but I didn't get very far.  This must have been a ton of work?

A sim-farm game that incorporates realistic ecology would be really fun and useful.  Game rules to encode Permaculture per se wouldn't be required, eh?  It should fall out naturally (no pun intended) from the behaviour of the simulation.

Simon Foreman wrote:Congratulations!  This is fantastic.  I tried sketching out something like this in Godot last year but I didn't get very far.  This must have been a ton of work?

A sim-farm game that incorporates realistic ecology would be really fun and useful.  Game rules to encode Permaculture per se wouldn't be required, eh?  It should fall out naturally (no pun intended) from the behaviour of the simulation.

Thank you!

The realtime water and terrain manipulation isn't something I could have done on my own. I am using Fluid Flux and Voxel Plugin 2, both available on the Unreal store. They are both still in development as well, so I'm kind of riding the wave of "what's working now and how can I take advantage of it"?

I agree about not smashing Permaculture in. I'll be modeling nature as much as possible, and then integrating systems from Permaculture. Zones, for instance, are already in in a not useful, not finished way. Eventually I want players to be able to get an understanding of how planning with zones, waiting a year, using topography and collecting water helps them make a better design. And I want USERS to be able to put their own property in and have useful tools (such as zone layout) to be able to set up and export/print out a Permi design that they've watched simulate over many in game years.

It's basically an endless project, so I'll be putting out small products using the sim as an engine, to start with. Then once I've got a solid framework we move into more tradition and robust game/full farm sim.

Toggleable topography lines and better camera movement (hold right click to aim the camera) are now available in the latest Patron build. The lines are fantastic for making the tool usable, and being able to toggle them off has magically started working with the recent Voxel Plugin update.

I'm now back into an experimental crossroads. Do I shoot for erosion? Or putting in earthmoving machines? Voxel Plugin is changing rapidly, so work on those may suddenly go poof. Perhaps it's better to spend some time on plants or hooking into Fluid Flux to build some basic game elements? Integrating real world lidar data is also a looming possibility. Or maybe it's time to make a level that actually looks nice?

It's going to be a few days of design and consideration at the start of this week.

Please have a look and maybe even support. https://patreon.com/PermacultureGame

Thanks!

> The realtime water and terrain manipulation isn't something I could have done on my own. I am using Fluid Flux and Voxel Plugin 2, both available on the Unreal store. They are both still in development as well, so I'm kind of riding the wave of "what's working now and how can I take advantage of it"?

FWIW I figure that's how it should be this late in the game (of software development.)  More and more powerful components should be off-the-shelf, eh?  Now that the machines can talk we can just tell them what we want and they can kludge together the components for us and we refine it until they get it right.  We're not quite there yet, but it's already happening.

> Eventually I want players to be able to get an understanding of how planning with zones, waiting a year, using topography and collecting water helps them make a better design.

Oh that's going to be sooooo useful, especially with VR and AR.

> And I want USERS to be able to put their own property in and have useful tools (such as zone layout) to be able to set up and export/print out a Permi design that they've watched simulate over many in game years.

The folks over at https://permapeople.org/ are working on a garden planning tool.  I'm going to repeat here what I said to them: In re: the garden planner, what we all want is SimPermaculture right?  The thing is you want: open DB schema, open file formats, open ecological models, open protocols and APIs, etc. that can be used with several tools and simulators.  Like the CAD space but for land and plants and animals.  There are lots of existing tools and software libs and data in the non-game domain too, it would be truly awesome if the SimPermie game was a gateway to professional (regenerative) ag, eh?

And this is where I would normally add an appeal to you to open source your work, however I find that now that the computers can talk I'm personally much less into programming than I used to be (to me it feels like my career is over), so since I'm unlikely to contribute to your project anyway, it's kind of foolish to ask you to reveal the source code.  Good luck!  If you make it inter-operable with other stuff (especially things like scientific databases and mathematical models of ecosystems, etc.  Professional stuff, eh?) then I will give you money (I am supporting the permapeople.org folks now with a nominal monthly $$ contribution.  I think this is the way of the future economically: ecologically-harmonious semi-independent neighborhoods that support an easy life as a foundation, and then we have a gifting economy on top of that for e.g. electronic media, etc.)

Simon Foreman wrote:> The realtime water and terrain manipulation isn't something I could have done on my own. I am using Fluid Flux and Voxel Plugin 2, both available on the Unreal store. They are both still in development as well, so I'm kind of riding the wave of "what's working now and how can I take advantage of it"?

FWIW I figure that's how it should be this late in the game (of software development.)  More and more powerful components should be off-the-shelf, eh?  Now that the machines can talk we can just tell them what we want and they can kludge together the components for us and we refine it until they get it right.  We're not quite there yet, but it's already happening.

> Eventually I want players to be able to get an understanding of how planning with zones, waiting a year, using topography and collecting water helps them make a better design.

Oh that's going to be sooooo useful, especially with VR and AR.

> And I want USERS to be able to put their own property in and have useful tools (such as zone layout) to be able to set up and export/print out a Permi design that they've watched simulate over many in game years.

The folks over at https://permapeople.org/ are working on a garden planning tool.  I'm going to repeat here what I said to them: In re: the garden planner, what we all want is SimPermaculture right?  The thing is you want: open DB schema, open file formats, open ecological models, open protocols and APIs, etc. that can be used with several tools and simulators.  Like the CAD space but for land and plants and animals.  There are lots of existing tools and software libs and data in the non-game domain too, it would be truly awesome if the SimPermie game was a gateway to professional (regenerative) ag, eh?

And this is where I would normally add an appeal to you to open source your work, however I find that now that the computers can talk I'm personally much less into programming than I used to be (to me it feels like my career is over), so since I'm unlikely to contribute to your project anyway, it's kind of foolish to ask you to reveal the source code.  Good luck!  If you make it inter-operable with other stuff (especially things like scientific databases and mathematical models of ecosystems, etc.  Professional stuff, eh?) then I will give you money (I am supporting the permapeople.org folks now with a nominal monthly $$ contribution.  I think this is the way of the future economically: ecologically-harmonious semi-independent neighborhoods that support an easy life as a foundation, and then we have a gifting economy on top of that for e.g. electronic media, etc.)

Hi Simon, thanks for the reply!

Easy stuff first (at least when I say it fast), AR and VR. Absolutely, someday. I've been a huge fan of seeing things in 3D ever since I found out there's a 2D. With the Unreal engine most of it works automagically. Being able to stand on your farm and plant a tree for shade ten years from now based on your lat/long, while watching how the light will play out in super fast forward for the whole year, that's the dream right?

Interoperability and open source is harder, ironically, than making things look fantastic in VR. My plan has been to buy a license to PFAF for the temperate climates, and the figure out the tropics after that. I see the permapeople are building off of PFAF, wikipedia, and the Royal Botanical Garden. Permapeople has an API that can be used as well, but it looks like if I use that then the whole thing has to be open sourced?

How would I even do that with Unreal blueprints? And do I want to take on extra work and confusion to reduce future revenue? Not really. I remember back in the 90's I loved Open Source software, and thought we were going to be going into a bright future where humans "did the right thing" and everyone was prosperous and happy. Not only did we not do the right thing, but every time I looked at open source licenses there were more, and they were more confusing. Some of the confusion may have come from brain damage due to explosions, but maybe not, maybe they are just confusing.

Anyway, now I'd rather just pay people for their work and get this out as products that can help the world, and help me one day have a staff that can build things that I can imagine but not create.

I see a landowner product, where they can bring in their property on their own, probably with tiers from backyard to corporate overlord, and appropriate pricing to reflect. Until that happens I will be working toward being able to take topo and LIDAR data and do individual properties for an individual quote based on size and complexity. If there's a big time lag between the two I may implement more Patreon tiers and let people build up credits toward me creating them an individual build. Could I do all that in an open source way? I don't know, but I do know that figuring out how would cost me a lot of time that I don't want to use that way.

And then for all the people who aren't fortunate to own land or have access, the game/toy. I'd like to get a base game going, then create scenarios, draught, economic collapse, etc. How does open sourcing a game that is for sale on Steam and Epic work?

So where I am now is "I'd like to create more stuff and have more power to do create more stuff". I'll probably just pay others (PFAF is still the plan) and get it out as soon as possible and not confuse myself more by opening up the in between. I'm confused just writing this

I am going to start streaming the in engine work though, so if someone really wants to see the insides and copy it that will be a way for them to do it. I honestly don't care if they do. I'd like to be the creator of this but if someone suddenly leapfrogs me and does a great job that's fine, hopefully I got it started, and there are about a bajillion things to do if we are going to survive and take care of the planet, I'll just switch to the next project.

But I get you, we should have taken a better path on some many different levels.

Great news! Patreon has just made it so that you can join my community there without paying.

What does this mean? You can more easily keep an eye on what I'm doing by being updated of the public posts.

Active Patrons still get the exclusive benefits, but now everyone can come hang out.

https://www.patreon.com/permaculturegame

And while you're at it, why not check out the Discord server I have set up?

It has different stuff, often more of a stream of consciousness thing on how the work is coming along or Permi related news or handy vids I see online.

https://discord.gg/cYkbyq5k

Thanks!

Real world USGS map in game - check!

Far more usable interface - check!

Resizable and movable boxes that are placeholder buildings - check!

Zones back in - not check....

https://www.patreon.com/posts/release-real-86894937

Thanks for the support everyone! And if you can't or don't want to contribute as a Patron, you can still show support by following and thumbs upping the posts.

And please join the Discord server to get more regular updates and train of thought ramblings.

Where does support money go?

Today's the last day of the Unreal Asset 50% off sale, and there are several things that I'll be picking up.

A flocking system for setting up bird/fish/animal group movement.
A data import/export tool, mainly for importing large amounts of plant data from online plant databases.
A global event handler, so blueprints can broadcast events to everyone without any reference.

Still evaluating todayt:
A heatmap effect generator. This allows me to generate overlays, perhaps even directly using agriculture drone data in the future.

Steam Package & Publish, so I can get this on Steam with minimal headache. That will be a much easier (for supporters) distribution platform than the Patreon -> Mega system I have going now. We'll see, that considerably increases the complications and may be premature.

And the big one, is Hierarchical Task Network Planning AI. That is for the moment when I start dropping little NPC characters in for you to direct to set up and manage your farm. Currently everything is "God Mode", instantanious. And for the Sandbox part, the tool for instant design, that's enough.

But part of Permaculture is the human element. And I need to be able to simulate that across time, hopefully to the point where a user/player can roughly model their family members and see how their strengths and weaknesses will play out in the situation they are being put in, across decades.

Well that one is $150 on sale. Not the most expensive thing I've bought for this project, but I need to spend the day making sure it'll do what I need it to do.

It's coming along nicely and becoming more useful by the day. I get excited thinking about how useful this is going to be to us, and property designers in general. Users can now build directly in the map. Here is an image of me putting down foundations to change water flow.



Here's where we are now:

Real world USGS data pipeline is working and that map is a real location

That real world data can be deformed, cut a road, put in your tilapia pond

Add rain and see what that new earth moving will do to the runoff of the property

Build structures manually, getting buildings to approximately the right size

Manually resize pieces if needed

Build dams with the new building system, or by deforming the terrain

Toggle topographical lines on and off to make all of this easier

Toggle between top down, 1st person and 3rd person view

And the framework for the menu system and interface to make future development easier

A quick near term roadmap:

Pieces sized to standard building dimensions, making user built structures more likely to be of the correct scale

More contemporary styles for the buildings

Foundations can be stacked (or taller pieces) to make dams easier to construct

More maps, flat, flat with noise (bumps), and some common real world topography

Bug hunting and cleanup

Waiting for the next Voxel Plugin 2.0 drop:

Good looking terrain materials

More terrain sculpting brushes

Please have a look and support if you'd like to see development speed up. Or just follow the Patreon if you aren't ready to support, that helps too.

Also, lost of stuff gets posted in the Discord Server, please join and see how it is coming along.

Victor Didra wrote:I want USERS to be able to put their own property in and have useful tools (such as zone layout) to be able to set up and export/print out a Permi design that they've watched simulate over many in game years.

I’ve been dreaming about this exact thing forever epic project! I can’t wait until it gets to a point to upload sites from what google maps or something? Super cool!

Thanks!

The current map is a 10km x 10km USGS topo map, with a 1 meter resolution.

I don't think we'd want to have a lower resolution than that, so Google probably isn't going to be a good source. Higher resolution would be better even. I hope to get the pipeline for high resolution LIDAR data in in the mid run, after more functionality is in. But if your land is in the USGS system as a ARCGIS map it can be imported.

Have you thought about making this into an app an iPhone or tablet could mess around with? I see this being a super cool thing you’re on the cutting edge. If I could plug my phone into some 3D laser hologram projector and load my site plan then edit it on phone or tablet this could be a serious landscaper design tool. Keep at this it will work out you have a super good base! Great idea!

The real time water simulation does not work on mobile. It doesn't work on low end laptops either. It's going to be an amazing design tool, but for the time being you'll need a PC. Macs are up in the air for now.

I snuck in stackable foundations in a quick update.

Dam building has never been easier.

I've been working in Unity for almost a decade mainly building content creation tools & plugins, I took a crack at something like this about a year ago.

The only things I did differently were:
-15 types of GIS data
-Forest Fire Sim
-House/building system
-In-app video fly-through recording
-Text labels

My fluid sim didn't play well with my voxel terrain though so I gave up after a while.

Cool to see someone else doing it.

Sounds like you made it quite a ways. That's a bummer the water sim didn't work. I was using Unity years ago and tried several water simulations, none of which could do what I wanted. Once Unreal got its own asset store I switched (back) over.

The water sim I was using was a 2D heightmap approach so it would be mobile-friendly but if someone wanted caves in the terrain then it would get weird.

I've recently switched to a particle-based sim + Unity's new built-in water system which would be a better approach if I were to revisit the project.

With the amount of experience I have in Unity, it's hard to switch to anything else at this point.

My goal was to get the software to run in WebGL where users could design a property and then get a code that they can send to a client. The client could then go to a website with a stripped-down software build that the code can be used to recreate what the designer made and the client can walk around it. I later changed this to a video recording flying camera using the FFMPEG library. That way clients don't need to have their own PC to run sims, just the designer.

That's a great idea, I hadn't thought about the non-PC users much.

A quick and exciting update.

I figured out quantity of water being created, down to the centimeter. So a roof runoff visualizer is in the not too distant future.

Building is working much better. Planting has been integrated, so you can now plant something and watch it grow.

And as of today, rain waters the plants! It is still an approximation, and I'm working on making it hold over in the soil, but it's a big step in the right direction.

There is still a lot to tie together and tidy up, but I think another release is on the horizon.

Come join us on Discord for much more frequent updates: https://discord.gg/9S5qXnKH

I've been working on getting water tanks in. Still have an issue with their collision, but once this is running you'll be able to visualize how much water you could store based off the amount of rain (which you enter) per year (or however much you want to see).

I've set up the tanks to automatically remove the terrain from around them. So after I build the "measurement map", with some more work you'll be able to pick a size and drop it in yourself.

Someday pumps, water pressure, and all that will be a thing, but for now the water is just flowing downhill into the tanks.

Now, if you just want straight math, that's easy and no need for this.

sq meters of roof * mm of rain = liters of water. Convert to imperial from there.

Usefulness!

In the next update you will be able to put in square foot/meter of an area (for instance, your roof), and an amount of rain in mm or inches (for example, your yearly average), and then see how much water that is.

It's easy to go online (or to your head or to your calculator) and get the numbers for how much water is coming off your roof.

It's not so easy to SEE what that actually MEANS in terms of water volume.

Now you can. Watch with glee as you fill water tanks, or even a swimming pool!



I'm hoping to get this out to Patrons this week. Please follow there, even if you don't subscribe. That will help build momentum. And hearts on the posts is always appreciated as well.

And as always I invite you to join our Discord, where I keep a running To Do list and post much more regularly.

Thanks for watching!

Major update: Water measurements, roof catchment, and more!

Do you ever wonder how much water is running off of your roof yearly? Or do you know the numbers, but want to see what that means visually?

Then this release should really excite you!

We have a new map that lets you get rainfall results visually as well as in numbers. Put in your roof size and a rainfall amount and direct the runoff toward different size tanks to get a deeper understanding of what those numbers mean.

You can start to do some basic design work. Build a house that matches yours. Dig a bit, build up a bit, set up your irrigation and water catchment. Put some plants in there and watch the water from your roof run over to them and keep them healthy!

New Maps:

   

The rain gauge map mentioned above.

   

A mostly flat map for the many people with very little topography variance on their property (About 40 acres / 16 hectares)

Totally redesigned user interface:

   

   Gone are most of the text boxes. Now there are icons representing most of the functions, in handy pop out toolbars.

   The windows/tools/pop up bugs are gone (we hope, please let us know otherwise)

New Functionality:

   Specify rainfall amounts in all maps (metric or imperial)

   Reset the rain simulation without restarting the program

   Better terrain editing

   Farming! It’s basic, but a start. Only potatoes and tomatoes, and the potato plant doesn’t even finish as the correct species. But it is a start!

   You can place seeds and they will grow.

   Water in the level irrigates the plants.

There is still an infinite amount of work to do but that’s ok. It feels great getting to a point where this is becoming useful.

A big thank you to our supporters. You keep the motivation alive. If you would like to support and gain instant access to this release and exclusive Discord channels, please visit the Patreon page today!

Also, keep an eye on the Water Catchment forum here. We are putting together a demo video and will post it there.

Oksana created a character to replace the default Unreal robot.



For a game it may be obvious, but if you're thinking of just using this to map out your land you may be wondering "Why does having a 1st person and 3rd person view even matter?" (That's the Sandbox/Property Design side of the program btw).

It's the difference between being able to walk around on a piece of land, and using a drone to check it out. That lower on the ground perspective gives... perspective. It's hard to understand the topography otherwise.

And that means the default robot had to go.

For the game side, we'll have a lot of characters. I want you to be able to simulate your actual situation, which means putting in NPC's to represent your family or employees, giving them strengths, weaknesses, skills, preferences, and hours per day/week that they get to spend working on property, then running that whole thing through the Hierarchical Task Network Planning AI plugin. And parties, they'll get to have parties. Why do all this if there's no parties? It's about people, right?

Anyway, all that comes after you can fully create a property and simulate it, and print out the resulting maps.

Speaking of those maps, I've got an early version where you can put in your lattitude and longitude and it changes the sun position in the day/night cycle to reflect it.

Ultra Dynamic Sky is doing the heavy lifting, what I'm working on is making it usable. That means once again going down the User Interface rabbit hole.

I'll be dropping a Patreon version with all of that before long. When I do I'll also put out a non-supporter version with the water catchment additions from a previous post.

Please follow and heart on Patreon even if you don't subscribe (that's possible now), and join us on Discord to see more real time info like the To Do list. And there's a spot there you can drop your useful videos if you like!

Thanks!

Real world sun is now integrated! You can manually set your latitude and longitude or use the world map dropdown. Drop in a 30m oak tree, build a little house, and scrub time back and forth to see how shadows will fall across it during any time of the year!



If you have flat property there is a flat map that will let you do a semi-decent mockup. You aren't going to do a full property design yet, but it's enough to save you from some mistakes if you happen to be about to start a real world build. You can check your shadows, visualize your rain quantities and roof runoff, which is all very useful.

Terraforming is still a bit ugly, but it works, so if you have a property with slight topography or want to just put a little rise on the flat one, you could manually do that.

Saving your work isn't in yet though, so be warned. And I don't have the tree losing its leaves due to winter, so take that into consideration with your shadow model.

If you'd like access to this one immediately I invite you to support at the Patreon page. You will also get access to exclusive Discord channels that let you see what's going on behind the scenes.

If you aren't up for paying, you can get the previous update including water and the new character, which is now permies. You can also help out by following without subscribing, which is a new thing on Patreon. So please follow and hit those little heart buttons!

So now it's time to sit back and see where we're at again. Voxel Plugin (for terraforming) is between useful releases for us. It has great new materials (so the ground doesn't looks so blah) but broke the terrain editing. Since it's a moving target I don't want to put any time into soil or erosion simulation, which may suddenly break with the next update.

It may be time to do a content update. Plants, trees, and building prefabs (walls, foundations etc).

Or perhaps integrating farming with the sun. That's going to be a weird one because you can move time backwards, but farming is always going forward. What do you think?

We're going to apply for an Epic Megagrant soon, to get some help on systems my blown up brain can't handle.

Thanks!

I'm working on plants, and hope to have a whole pile of them in toward the end of the week.

Since Spring is coming to many, I'd like people to be able to play around designing a garden.



I had really majorly minorly screwed up how plants were going in, and it was causing all sorts of headaches. So I ripped out some things and went back through it step by step, and now it appears that we can do a major vegetation addition.

I also modified plants so you can plant them right up next to each other in case you want to make your garden really tight. You can also put them on steeper hillsides now.

Setting up time to be most useful for planning is the other goal for this upcoming release. I'd like anyone with a flat space to be able to load up the flat map, put all the plants in and see what they'll look like when matured without waiting too long for them to grow, or the plants blowing past mature into dying (like the corn in the picture).

What probably won't be there yet is saving, so maximum usefulness won't be for a little while longer.

I hope everyone's year is going great! I've been told that the first 19 days were the hardest, so it's all good news from here on out!

Where does the donation money go?



Unreal Assets, that's where! Since today is the start of a big push for getting a wide variety of plants into the game, it was time to buy a bunch.

In an extremely lucky turn of events the new Nanite and Lumen (meaning beautiful) ready Ultimate Farming and Ultimate Farm Trees packs just went on sale for 50% off!

The inventory system that will be used in the future is also on sale for the lowest price I've seen, so I grabbed that for later. That will be used when buying, crafting, and selling your yield are implemented.

All told it came to a little over 2 months of donations. So thank you to our supporters for sponsoring these! You'll have the crops in by the end of the week I hope!

(And thanks to the Asset creators who sell on the Unreal store. If either of us had the skill to make high quality vegetation like this (we don't) it would probably be months of work to do so. Without you this whole project would be impossible or need funding of hundreds of thousands of dollars (Fluid Flux and Voxel Plugin would cost that in person hours to develop).

So stand by for plants!

New Supporter Update, Lots of Trees and Plants!

With the addition of a bunch of vegetation you could now conceivably lay out a garden for the (Northern Hemisphere) coming Spring!

The flat property will work for a lot of people. Some day you may be able to import your own but sadly that is impossible at the moment. But those with flat land are all set!

Be aware that there's no way to save your work yet, so for now it is still highly limited.

Don't forget that you can set your latitude and longitude from the button with the sun on it. You can put it in manually or click the little globe and pick your spot in the world. Then adjust the date and time to see what your shadows look like throughout the year. Pause time with the button above the gray box (in the sun menu).

Plants need water and the easiest way to get it to them is to put in 1mm in the rain menu and make it rain.

If you've already got trees growing and that makes the water look weird, you can reset the water simulation and the plants will still have had a good drink.

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