Hello, I hacked up a game to illustrate Peak Oil[1] 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 reach a "peak" in how much volume can be extracted 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 waiting 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! :) Check out the screen shots: http://peakoilgame.com/scrshot.html Download: http://peakoilgame.com/download.html The game source is perl + SDL. perl pod documentation exists but there is lot to be desired in the code documentation area. I've tested this on Ubuntu (karmic). The source ships with a script that builds the deb and doubles up as a (hacky) non-ubuntu installer. I'm seeking volunteers, code contributors and hackers for the following things: 1. 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") :) 2. Port to windows - I'd ideally love to have a windows installer, much like what the Frozen Bubble[2] folks have done. 3. Port to Flash - since I have peakoilgame.com[3] registered, I'm looking for a flash version that can be played online - hosted on peakoilgame.com but also available for free download. 4. writing test cases, documentation, etc., (you know, the part that developers typically avoid :) ). ... 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. (more or less the same) Announcement on my blog: http://sunson.livejournal.com/209412.html Footnotes: [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Oil ... and my own thoughts and articles on Peak Oil ... http://sunson.livejournal.com/tag/peak-oil [2] http://fb-win32.sourceforge.net/ [3] http://peakoilgame.com/ -- "The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race is our Inability to Understand the Exponential Function" Dr. Albert Bartlett _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
