Simulation

When I met with Professor Andelson last week, I mentioned to him our plan to make a "Sim-esque" simulation, and he lent me his copy of SimFarm. I've been playing around with it and it's pretty neat. It's not a whole lot like what I've envisioned our game to be, but it's probably closer than SimCity or other such games. In this game, you are given an empty plot of land to begin with. It's your job to buy whatever seeds/equipment/chemicals, etc. you want and try to make a productive farm. You can choose the type of farm that you have, as well as the what markets you sell your crops in. You also have to watch out for droughts, changing markets, and other occurrences.

We have two primary goals for this project during Jelal's time here as our summer intern:

• identification of candidate simulation software technologies and development of a proof of concept for The Local Food Economy Game as a web-based exploratory learning environment, and
• identify and pursue the development of collaborative relationships with Iowa-based kindred spirit researchers in both the local food economy and agent-based simulation domains.