An introduction to plantstudio, 10 years too late

far more considered/ in-depth/ realistic than the standard l-system simulation

What happened to our old software and the plans for it? We spent years working for other people to pay off money (with interest) we borrowed to finish it and free it, we helped take care of elderly parents, we had a kid, and other events came up. Life. :-)

a freedom and safety that only web dev (which wasn’t really a thing back then) gives you

enrich architectural model details, landscape arch

Some time in 2007 we got the code for all three projects (GWI, PlantStudio, StoryHarp) about three quarters of the way ported from Delphi to Python but got stuck on the GUI part. Finishing the port would require rebuilding about 100 windows in Jython (Swing) or Tk or WxWidgets... which would take a while. If anybody is seriously interested in finishing the port for any or all of these applications, let us know. We would have released all of the code under the GPL (like the GWI code) but it’s nearly impossible to recompile it under what-Delphi-has-become at this point.

native app dev, has always been problematic. it would’ve been more successful on teh mac, but they’d still be swimming upstream to keep compatibility with each new release. instead of working on improving the product itself

could be a procedural plant simulator for game engines: what kinds of plants would grow in an environment with these conditions, make a bunch of them

it’s sim earth, sim city

It’s surprisingly deep simulation model could have been the seed of a game like sim earth // if only maxis/will wright knew

The project has included work in several development environments, including Smalltalk, Symantec C++, Borland C++, MetroWorks C++, Visual Basic, and finally Borland Delphi

hit a technical wall

during testing they found that ppl liked playing w the plant designer, more than the garden simulator

pulled out the plant drawing algorithm from gwi, slimmed down the science, spruced up the graphics a bit, and thought about how people would want to use it to draw plants

more realistic than l-trees. flexible to draw the wide variety of plants you find in gardens and to show how plants grow when they are stressed for water and/or nutrients

drew soem plants for the gw simulator, but hand drawing them got old fast so tried to automate.

ps started as an offshoot of gw

work on the project part-time, and continued it on and off, while doing computer consulting and going to graduate school in Ecology

gw goals: garden simulation that was educational, entertaining, and easy to use, that covered all major aspects of gardening, and was accurate

but some magic is lost, harder to enter for new ppl. creativity not invited = not assumed

easier to tutorialize, you know you wont have to outgrow it or learn something else

bryce export, reminds me that we moved from an ecosystem of small easy utilities to giant tools to do everything