A new Open Source game
I wrote a game to illustrate peak oil and christened it "Oilsville". My hope is that people will now be able to grasp the phenomenon of peak oil - how any finite resource (or even a renewable resource stripped faster than it is being replenished) will peak with increased extraction and eventually start declining, no matter what improvements in technology are made.
The premise of the game is simple: There is a new oil field to be exploited. You got a rig (with configurable "size of the straw") which will start pumping out oil. Every well will start yielding lesser and lesser over time as the underlying geology dictates that the pressure must decrease. Larger sized rigs, as with reality, requires larger amounts of energy to operate and are also costly to operate. The only way to ramp up production is therefore to drill more. But the catch is... the more you drill, the closer you are to peaking production and you'd eventually reach a point where no matter how big your rig is, you cannot increase production! But given this is Oil Money, rest assured you'll be a millionaire oil tycoon!
Feel the frustration as you ramp up your fight against Entropy! :)
Here is a screenshot:
I wrote this in perl ("sorta" Object Oriented Perl) using SDL for the graphics. This is available for free download as a source tarball as well as a deb. The deb is perhaps easiest to install (depends on libsdl-perl). I'm GPL'ing the source.
We needs your help!
I'm seeking volunteers, code contributors and hackers for the following things:
Rewards?
Anybody who helps with one of the three mentioned needs (Facebook, Flash, windows port) will get an (available) domain name of your choice along with hosting on NearlyFreeSpeech.net for one full year!
The premise of the game is simple: There is a new oil field to be exploited. You got a rig (with configurable "size of the straw") which will start pumping out oil. Every well will start yielding lesser and lesser over time as the underlying geology dictates that the pressure must decrease. Larger sized rigs, as with reality, requires larger amounts of energy to operate and are also costly to operate. The only way to ramp up production is therefore to drill more. But the catch is... the more you drill, the closer you are to peaking production and you'd eventually reach a point where no matter how big your rig is, you cannot increase production! But given this is Oil Money, rest assured you'll be a millionaire oil tycoon!
Feel the frustration as you ramp up your fight against Entropy! :)
Here is a screenshot:
I wrote this in perl ("sorta" Object Oriented Perl) using SDL for the graphics. This is available for free download as a source tarball as well as a deb. The deb is perhaps easiest to install (depends on libsdl-perl). I'm GPL'ing the source.
We needs your help!
I'm seeking volunteers, code contributors and hackers for the following things:
- Port to Facebook - the core game is SDL agnostic so it should be quite easy to port, I believe. I'm specifically looking for hosting a Farmville contender (hence the name "Oilsville") :)
- Port to windows - I'd ideally love to have a windows installer, much like what the Frozen Bubble folks have done.
- Port to Flash - since I have peakoilgame.com registered, I'm looking for a flash version that can be played online - hosted on peakoilgame.com
- ... of course, I'm willing to get surprised by new, creative applications of the code. The code is general enough to be used for any "peak anything" types game/simulation.
Rewards?
Anybody who helps with one of the three mentioned needs (Facebook, Flash, windows port) will get an (available) domain name of your choice along with hosting on NearlyFreeSpeech.net for one full year!