Plant Sim Begins!
August 16, 2017
I’m creating a game I’m temporarily calling Plant Sim*, which lets you plant a strawberry plant from seed and follow its growth!
It’s like a Tamagotchi, but with a strawberry plant: if you water the plant daily, you’ll see it grow! You’ll get a score that reflects how healthy and happy your plant is.
The plant will grow in random directions, depending on watering + space available (and maybe the sun). No two plants will be the same!
*argh I really need a better name.
Mock plants
I drew these by hand in PICO-8’s sprite editor*:
(*I know that this is not really the purpose of PICO-8’s sprite editor but it was convenient for my needs!)
Vague game ideas
- Start out a seed
- Plant grows 1px? per day?
- The plant grows in random directions, depending on space available
- Water the plant by clicking the area of the screen above the plant
- Water dynamics like Falling Sand
- If not watered, parts of the plant will wither and turn brown and fall off
- If healthy and watered: after a certain number of days, the vines flower - flowers turn green, then red
- Optional: Add a sun that can be dragged into different positions, which controls
Software design
- Milestone 1:
<canvas>game with data saved to local storage (and a god mode to control age, etc.) - Milestone 2: Port game to PICO-8 ???
- Milestone 3: Run the PICO-8 on a Raspberry Pi with a cute display
For tomorrow
- Start coding M1!
- Decide on game world size
- Create a canvas with pixel grid
- Begin generating “complete” vines, as if they had been watered + grown
- Start with 1 vine, then add branching
- Flowering + strawberries to come next