Status Update 16 May 2019

    • Status Update 16 May 2019

      As you all know well from last year, the weather has a major influence on plant growth. Due to prolonged drought, the fruit grows very poorly or not at all, or dies in the worst case. At the same time rain can have a negative effect. The weather is therefore one of the great challenges in agriculture.

      Up until now, we have calculated a simple daily average from historical weather data, but this was more difficult than expected to implement and led to undesirable side effects, such as too much fog or permanent turbidity. We are currently converting our system to real hourly data so that the weather can be mapped more accurately - and realistically.

      Thanks to access to a large pool of historical data from the last decades we can show a very real weather development over the entire year. In particular, we can use the weather of a station that geographically matches the map’s location. In the beginning we will implement the weather data of a specific year, later there will be several variations.





      The image shows a daily analysis of the weather data - in this case a varied June day. While the morning brings a few sunny hours it gets more windy and cloudy at noon. From early evening until midnight it rains continuously.

      Note: the charts shown are data visualizations in Excel. The ingame representation will differentiate.

      The individual elements such as sun duration, precipitation and wind will be an important basis for plant growth in the game and will accordingly also have effects - both positive and negative. Therefore, it will be essential in the future not only to base your planning on machine and staff availability, but also to take weather forecasts into account.

      Another advantage of actual weather data is that it’s not our fault if the weather doesn't play along when you’re playing. ️️️

      Our Community Manager is on vacation from Monday and will be back for you from 03 June.
    • Today there won’t be a specific info update covering the development and the topics MBB is working on. The preparation and publishing of these posts mainly falls within the purview of the Community Manager who is currently on vacation.
      For this reason I gathered some information bits from the team:
      They are currently working on the two systems that have been introduced in the last two weeks. In particular they are working on the biogas plant’s functionality and new visuals for the silos (deformation). Previously (last week) the map was evaluated again and the silo sizes and the input for the biogas plant were adjusted to the available field sizes on the Albergtal map. We can expect more details on the functionality and visuals of this soon.
      At the same time, the weather system is nearing completion. Real weather data is now read in and converted to weather blocks generated in hourly intervals. On this basis, the plant growth system can now proceed further, as the environmental factors such as water quantity, temperature, wind and many others are now correctly transferred and accurate to reality.

      These systems currently take up most of the time and are the focus of development. Simultaneously, of course, bug fixes are also being worked on - with Caedes, for example, currently taking care of some of the AI bugs (especially bugs related to harvesting) that have been reported.
    • After talking to MBB for a little bit, I have a bunch of new information about the current status of the development again this week.
      There isn't as much to report about new systems this week, but a lot of interesting news on systems we already know of.

      The team is still working on the new visualization and features of the silos. This weeks main focus was the compression of the silo by vehicles and how it affects the fruit stored inside it. There is a lot to consider, because different fruits like maize or grass can be compacted to a different degree and different machines have different effects on the compression.

      In addition, they have continued to work on plant growth. This time everything revolved around the subject of water. The goal was to find a realistic cycle for the water, since plants, soil and weather must complement each other realistically. In particular, the amount of water required for the dry matter formation of the plant must be determined, taking into account effects such as transpiration, soil evaporation, rainfall, soil storage capacity and water availability from other sources such as groundwater.

      The map and the average rainfall over the year were also evaluated to determine realistic water availability for the fields. Fields close to the river, for example, will generally have better water availability than fields far away from the river.

      The focus of the coming time will lie on how exactly the plant can convert this water together with the nutrients in the soil into mass or in more detail: protein, fibre and energy.