The following blog post is both a monstrosity and a possible work of genius–well, if you are mad man that is. Perhaps my madness will benefit other FarmVille players–irrationally addicted ones and casual rationals alike.

First off, I want to begin by saying that I am NOT a mathematician, I am not a statistician, I am not and accountant or a finance planner, or any other profession of number-crunching aficionados. I am an artist and a writer–but I have the luxury of also having been trained in logical processes and coding and have been a life-ling gamer conditioned to find patterns when anything metric-based pops up in a game.

My natural tendencies gravitate towards an intuitive path on “best reward” pretty rapidly. Once I begin becoming aware of it, more than I’m aware of wasting my time playing a redundant game for a few weeks, then something in me brain tips over and I start a spreadsheet. I do this to once and for all find an ultimate answer to all the metrics swarming in my head.

With Farmville, there are loads of things to distract you in your day (when you should be working… or sleeping). Some people like a quick rise to power, level fast and open up new things along the way. Others take it more casually and plant day crops so that the game has limited demands on their real life (I should take a hint). You can chase XP… or you can chase financial profit.

I am not going to get into tree and animal harvesting or gift exchange and the benefits of those as well with this crunchathon. My main focus here was to find an “X-SCORE”: An ultimate rating score for each seed’s “value”. And yes, the “X” is also representative of yours truly: XEI… because, well, because it’s MY darn score system!

Alrighty, lets get into some of the foundations for the ultimate equation I’ll present you with. Lucky for you there’ll also be an image with the results for your referral. If new crops come out though you can continue this work on your own–I’d just appreciate a link back here if you build on this any further. Think of it as a Creative Commons License (By Attribution)!

VARIABLES

Seed Cost = Base Cost of Seed
Harvest Time = Required Hours to Harvest
FarmVille Day = 23 Hours = 1380 Minutes
XP = XP Gained per Seed Planting
Plow Cost = Cost to Ploy Soil = 15 Coins
Plant Cost = Cost of Seed + Plow Cost
Sell Price = Seed’s Gross Price
Profit = Seed Sell Price – Plant Cost

VARIABLES WORTH DISCUSSING

The following stuff is when my brain started going to some pretty complicated places–at least for me initially. Places I was aware of but ignored because I just assumed it all floated in a pretty irregular and unpredictable variable that can’t be given a constant metric to. That variable is called LIFE people. It gets in the way and throws these kind of breakdowns right of. But that’s not saying you can’t create a metric value for each seed.

What needs to happen first is a common unit of measurement needs to be reached. Seeing as a FarmVille “day” actually comes to 23 hours, it’s pretty simple to turn every crops into an “hourly profit” variable:

Profit Per Hour = Profit / FarmVille Day = Profit / 23

Next thing to consider is theoretically how many times the crop can get cycled through the day… “theoretically” is important to state here as this variable will absolutely be impossible to achieve in the game. Each cycle requires time which I’ll detail below, but for now all I want is a non-hindered-by-real-time variable:

Possible Rotations = Harvest Time / FarmVille Day

This brings us to a non-constant variable because it has to do with how large a user’s farm area is. I’ve called each plotting area square a “unit”. I then created a variable to capture roughly the amount of time it takes for the process of each action to take effect in real time. I’ve found that each process takes about 1 second; so a total of 3 seconds per unit is required to complete one cycle. The “rotation buffer” then is a variable that takes into account this lost time and turns it into a minutes variable:

Plot Area = Max Units Farmed
Action Process = Harvest, Plow, Seed = 1 Second per Process = 3
Rotation Buffer = (Action Process x Plot Area) / 60 Minutes
= Approx. 12.5 Minutes for 250 Units
= Approx. 25 Minutes for 500 Units

Now that the handicap time is resolved, I wanted to correct the “theoretical” possible rotation cycle. I’ve subtracted the buffer from the possible rotation cycle in order to output a “more theoretical” daily rotation cycle. Again, these things can always get delayed for whatever other reasons, like FarmVille going out of synch (annoying), or you start harvesting animals or trees between the processes, or you close your browser by accident, etc, etc. BUT this is closer and I wanted to at least capture it, even roughly, just to put my mind at peace. The following then also accounts for the new daily profit and hourly profit:

Buffered Rotation Cycle = Possible Rotations x Rotation Buffer
Remedied Rotation = (FarmVille Day Minutes – Buffered Rotation Cycle) / 60 Minutes
Altered Rotation = Remedied Rotation / Harvest Time
Altered Profit Per Day = Units Farmed x Profit Per Hour x Altered Rotation
Altered Profit Per Hour = Profit Per Day / FarmVille Day

BRINGING THE VARIABLES TOGETHER

This last part is where I attempt to condense the variables down further into a ONE scalable variable that can represent the “ultimate value” to each crop. This is not quite the “X-Score” that I’m aiming for (that will come later), but this is the closest to being the most relevant for a FarmVillian to plan their strategies around. My method involved converting financial profit into an XP value. This uses the foundation that you can buy things and generally speaking you gain 1% of the purchase price as an XP bonus. This is incorrect with items under 500 coins as the lowest XP reward seems to be 5 XP. But in general this is the model for that:

Profit XP = Altered Profit Per Day / 100
XP Profit Total Per Day = (XP x Altered Rotations x Plot Area) + Profit XP

THE X-SCORE: THE ULTIMATE FARMVILLE CROP VALUE CHART

Finally, what I was hoping to achieve with all this madness: Some sort of crop score that accounted for as many variables as possible. This would ultimately place all other aspects of the crop aside–XP gain, harvest time, gross profit–none of it would matter, because here you’d have ONE score that would indicate OVERALL where the crop was placed against all other crops.

The factor that still remains mostly random and erratic is crop mastery. There are three variables left to place not this whole uber-equation:

• How many times you have to harvest a crop to get Mastery of it
• How much XP each Premium Crop outputs
• What the percentage of return is for how many crops become Premium crops

Thankfully the first of the missing variables can be found collected already on many sites and forums. There is a definite number of times each crop requires to be harvested. This alters the long-term value of a crop’s importance.

Additionally, the amount of XP a Premium Crop outputs can also already be found in numerous places online (if you dig them up… ha… pun not intended). It’s also not as easy as assuming longer crops have larger payouts. Thankfully I found a Google spreadsheet that collected all the appropriate variables that include not only the Premium Crop bonus XP, but also the approximate percentage potential.

Speadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t8oPV_Ww0uWQjyBaZxM2kaw&gid=0

So far I’ve returned a result of approximately 40% on Blueberries which is agreeable with the spreadsheet’s breakdown. It is missing Morning Glory, but thankfully this was the second crop I mastered and collected data on my own and so far it’s outputting a whopping 60% Premium Crop wield. On TOP of that, the Morning Glory returned a +6% bonus per Premium Crop harvested. I’m assuming these numbers will be getting updated as new data gets collected, but for now we’ll use the current percentages.

We can add three Basic Variable to the chart:

Crop Mastery Total = Total Required Harvests to Complete
Mastery Bonus XP = Bonus Premium Crop XP
Mastery % Output = Average % to be Premium Crop

With this data we can add another variable to the XP Profit Total per Day that will increase it’s value and give a better representation of the crops overall “X-Score”! Here’s the equation breakdown:

Potential Premium Crops = Plot Area x Mastery % Output
Premium Profit = Potential Premium Crops x Mastery Bonus XP
Premium Profit Per Day = Premium Profit x Altered Rotations
Master Profit Per Day = Premium Profit Per Day + XP Profit Total Per Day

Almost there! Next I had to get a variable out of the length of time it’d take to even get the benefits of the bonus XP from Premium hauls. I resolved figuring out how many days it would take to complete the Mastery cycle:

Days to Master = Crop Mastery Total / (Plot Area x Altered Rotations)

To get the X-Score of the crop I had to create another “benchmark” of time; I decided on 30 days. This gives a range that can be checked against the benefits of focusing on other crops. With that benchmark I was able to get a total profit value by adding the total profits from pre-Mastery and post-Mastery values. The X-Score I decided would be the resulting total. For a smaller number, divide by 100 (really doesn’t matter ).

Post Mastery = (30 – Days to Master)
First 30 Day Profit = (XP Profit Per Day x Days to Master) + (Master Profit Per Day x Post Mastery)
X-Score = 30 Day Profit / 100

Huff… huff… huff… ok, I hope you all got all that! Enjoy the FINAL RESULTS!

QUICK CONCLUSIONS

For those who don’t care to filter through the Hows and Why and number crunches–that for the most part are just values with no absolute reflection on the reality of playing through it with human tendencies and life distractions, etc. Like it was stated earlier though, that’s not the point: The point is to just get a value that all crops can compare against in order to get an informed and near-omniscient overview (ha… omniscient indeed…) of how to power-play FarmVille.

The results on almost all levels push the berries up to the top tier (except Cranberries). Black Berries seem to be only slightly better than Blueberries, and after 30 days it still won’t make much of a difference. You can sell a Golden Lawn Gnome to pair up the values after 30 days! My suggestion is PICK ONE and forget the other.

If Super Pumpkins ever come back–concentrate on them and ONLY them. This is when I stated playing about a month ago. I flew past all my Neighbours because I gravitated towards the obvious unchallengeable crop and was proven correct with this breakdown.

The only thing that will absolutely destroy Super Pumpkins by more than THREE times after 30 days is the Super Berry. I wasn’t around for this crop so I don’t know much about it–but if it comes back… I better turn into a robot and catch those 2 hour rotation cycles!

Have fun everyone, and remember, seriously: It’s just a game . Get farming!

JUST FOR FUN: Here is the uber-equation

XP = XP
HT = Harvest Time
PA = Plot Area
PR = Crop Profit
CM = Crop Mastery
23 = FarmVille Day
1380 = FarmVille Day Minutes

((((XP+1)*(((1380-((23/HT)*((3*PA)/60)))/60)/HT)*PA)+
((((1380-((23/HT)*((3*PA)/60)))/60)/HT)*PA*CP)/100)*((CM/(PA*P55)))+
((((PA*L55)*(((1380-(I55*((3*PA)/60)))/60)/HT))*
(((1380-(I55*((3*PA)/60)))/60)/HT))+
(((XP+1)*(((1380-((23/HT)*((3*PA)/60)))/60)/HT)*PA)+
((((1380-((23/HT)*((3*PA)/60)))/60)/HT)*PA*CP)/100))*
(30-(CM/(PA*(((1380-((23/HT)*((3*PA)/60)))/60)/HT)))))

DOWNLOAD MASTER CHART PDF

Best Hourly Profit
Best Overall Profit + XP

Am I the only one hungry for this and wanting it RIGHT NOW!?! I can’t be. Seriously, how many people out there just need a machine to take with them while on the move–to get email, use the numerous Google web apps like Docs, Calendar, Maps, Gmail, etc? This will be a PERFECT alternative. Fast, simple, less hassle, less encumbersome… did I mention faster? My Asus Eee Pc with a light linux OS is pretty darn fast… but I don’t even want to bother with the additional applications that comes on it that I never use.

I have slowly but surely moved almost everything I do into the cloud–the internet is where I keep all my files and work–I’m not fully there yet, but knowing Google Chrome OS is coming in 2010 makes me want to wrap up the migration process. Having data lost to computer crashes in the last 15 years has finally gotten me to this point–the last 7 or so years I’ve been lucky and have had no crashes, but I’ve also learned to backup everything pretty hardcore.

Still… I’d rather make “backing up” my work, part of “saving my work” somewhere on the web–the cloud–instantly secure… This would be the awesomeness.

Some times I come across a video that immediately strikes me before I even watch it. This coming from Boing Boing, was headlined as a “video about the world’s greatest pop shop”… and you know what… they’re probably right. Here’s the info from YouTube about the video above:

John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world. John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it).

This guy speaks with such knowledge and enthusiasm that it made me want to fly out to LA, .like, RIGHT NOW, so that I could try some of those damn sodas! I love to experiment with food and drinks. I’ve stopped drinking as much pop as I used to–but let me tell you, if a store like this opened in Waterloo, I’d be screwed.

… Maybe I’ll find some partners and funding and open one…

When my friend asked me if I’d be home after midnight tonight I immediately knew something was up. This is a humble guy who doesn’t do “surprises” and doesn’t fit in with the normal mold of folk who celebrate holidays of any kind (to more of a degree than even I). His name is Rui DaSilva, him and I are currently co-creating/writing The Aquatic League of Heroes webcomic and aquatic hero support site.

There’s another under-dog character I defend almost as much as Darkhawk. The character is Booster Gold. One of the first issues I had a few years before I jumped on to comics strong with the Archie Ninja Turtles stuff, and eventually got won over by Darkhawk, was Booster Gold #7.

I’d always remember that issue number because Superman guest stars and whops Booster’s ass. I always respected the lesson I knew would be learned from that experience even if I never got another comic of Booster Gold (until now, 20 years later). Something about the concept of the character intrigued me because it broke the mold of “the norm”. I finally just bought the Essentials collection that collects the first run of the series in the mid-80s. I just read the issue Booster Gold saves President Nixon and Vice-President Bush from an alien shapeshifter assassination/take over. (Go Booster Go! Talk about a guy who now fights to fix time blips huh?)

Anyways… here is the result of Rui hearing me rant one time too many times about my second favorite under-dog comic hero of all time:

When I saw this oil painting time-laps of Battle Cat by Robert Burden last week, I finally unpacked a couple more boxes, left until the very end since I moved to this new home less than a month ago. What was in them? My 80s toys! I desperately wanted to get my hands back on Battle Cat after seeing it here in epic scale. Unfortunately mine has lost its head armor over the last 2 decades. But at least it’s free again–to adorn one of my library shelves. Yes sir!

[View the Video on YouTube]

He’s done a Voltron time-lapse as well. Ah Voltron… I threw out the Voltron base toy two months ago during the move. Cobwebs and age had finally forced me to just let go of that part of my past. Knowing people like Burden still exist to allow me to re-visit those memories will suffice–as should the movie if it ever actually gets made.

[View Video on YouTube]

Artist Robert Burden goes well beyond the average person’s perception of how much dedication, time and reverence should go into a series of painting based on 80s toys. In truth though, at least across the internet, there are a group of us that DO understand WHY this theme deserves such respect and legendary proportions! These are toys that took over the market when we grew up. Toys that front-lined armies and armies of other attempts to carve a market niche for competitors… before a time when cartoons entered a loud, fast-paced, jarring, manic stage of Japanese-influenced entertainment.

When we return to some of our memorable 80s cartoons, they don’t ring true to our MEMORY of them–but they left a much much longer impression that carries into the generation of children that come from us. A generation of children that can grow up in an age when all OUR childhood dreams are being realized as summer blockbuster films.

I wish much good fortunes on Robert Burden and may he continue to preserve more 80s awesomeness for the future generations to come! Go follow him on YouTube!

[View Video on YouTube]

You know, when this video became an internet meme and folks all around the world started dancing in leotards with their own rendition of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” I was swept in and amused thoroughly for about 24 hours. Then the amusement of it all faded away… thankfully.

Then I come across this. This needs to one day be my baby. I need a baby that GETS IT early in life. A baby that is comfortable with their sexuality and understands what “15 minutes of fame” means before, well, they know what it means. That kinda baby needs to be MY baby.

My utmost respect goes out to these wonderful wonderful parents for cementing hope into my core.

Batman isn’t really dead, see? Aliens took him. Or he’s lied to us this whole time and he IS an alien. Or, or, or, the ALIENS need his help and superior detective skills to solve an inter-galactic mystery, and this is their form or “Bat Signal”. Ah, yes, it can mean so many things…

Or it could just be an awesome Photoshop idea DeviantArt user TWManny did up. There was also a Worth1000.com “alien message ins crop circle” competition you can check out as well. The below Batman inspired circle was posted there.

Here we go again with speculation before self-motivated research. The new tale is that the Loch Ness Monster has been spotted by a dude named Jason Cooke with the Google Earth application (The image can be seen by entering coordinates Latitude 57°12′52.13″N, Longitude 4°34′14.16″W in Google Earth.)

You know, I get it. Some of these sites that spring this type of news as exclusive press want eyeballs–not literally of course–unless their goals are darker than perceived! But seriously, after the scenario I went through with the mystical 100-foot-snake from Nabau, I surely wasn’t going to get duped by this nonsense news.

Again, I wish SOMEONE could actually prove its existence and be over with it–I mean the damn creature has been reported since 1933 folks! I think there comes a time when awesome stories of extinct dinosaurs actually being found in today’s world can be put to rest.

Researcher Adrian Shine, of the Loch Ness Project, told the newspaper: “This is really intriguing. It needs further study.”

I’ve gone ahead and posted some screenshots grabbed from my Google Earth. I’ve zoomed in to show the close up image. It’s terrible but it’ll suffice. The next is the same image but with some details added by yours-truly.

• Notice the shape of the main white mass? Nessie is an organic creature as far as I can tell–unless the Beast Machine Transformers are also real in our world and I’ve just been a noob about it.
• The arrows indicate where a motor would be placed at the back of the more OBVIOUS possibility, which is that of a BOAT.
• The red lines outlining the white “legs” and “tail” are the WAKE of the boat, not limbs, unless the presumed plesiosaur Nessie is more akin to a massive developing tadpole of a large squid missing half its legs.

Once again… a disappointing reality to a guy who wants nothing more than a real-life Jurassic Park to become reality through DNA reconstruction, revitalization and cloning technology advances.

[Johan Krauss, Liz Sherman, Hellboy, Abraham Sapien, Roger the Homonculus]

I’ve been getting into custom toys lately. News of these customs got to me, and WOW, are these not the coolest things ever! The mastermind behind these toys is Swedish artist Jakob Westman. He used Playmobil officers as the base and then did a free-for-all on the customizing.

The story is an intriguing one which makes this whole set that much more kick ass. After doing the first four figures Westman was contacted by the Mignola family and commissioned to finish up the set! That’s right, folks, these one-of-a-kind custom figures are currently in the private collection of Mike Mignola and family and regretfully unavailable to the general public.

You can see detail shots of all the figures on this site here (follow link).

[Ilsa, Rasputin, dr. Krönen and Leopold]

I’ve been reading old golden age western comics for the last week. It started, in part, because I am “researching” for a possible new project on the horizon. On a secondary level, I was curious and have been reading superhero or war hero golden age stuff off and on for the last few months–again a bit out of simple curiosity, and a bit for brain food to chew on later.

The below page is from Capital Stories Inc., or otherwise known as “Charlton Comics”, in a one-page “story” titled “Trip to the Moon“. It’s not REALLY a story because it’s actually an informative piece that discusses the future of space travel and–oh hells yes–the reality of man traveling to the moon. Not just men like Neil Armstrong over a decade later, but ANY man!

[View Larger Image]

After reading it I chuckled at some of the awesome enthusiasm in the narrative. I had to step back so that I could put into focus a time when this was actually released–and then I read it again. It was the kind of thing that COULD have come out of a creative story-teller’s mind. It was REAL possible and presumably TANGIBLE science fiction come to life! This would have been a phenomenal experience to have as a teenager back in the 50s!

Below is a list of observations I had during the first reading, thoughts I had after I was done reading the page, and then thoughts I had after reading it again to ponder further what has come since the time it was written.

1. The Hayden Planetarium was taking applications for people to take trips to the moon in 1953?!? WHAT?! Awesome, right? Except that, as we know half a century later, this never happened, or is even PLANNED to happen anymore. At least not with the support from the Hayden Planetarium. That’s right folks, they now have a website and are more focused in bringing the frontier of astrophysics to the public via exhibitions, books, public programs and online resources. They couldn’t take you 75-year-olds to the stars, but they sure as hell do their part to bring knowledge of the stars to you! I really hope 25,000 never PAID to fill out those applications though. Dreams destroyed by a shredding machine.
2. Having an possible endorsement in a comic book calling out would-be astronauts in 1954 is WAY ahead of its time… and reality. The first scientist astronaut selection process began in 1964 in which NASA received 1400 applications (most of which by men). In 1977, during the third selection round, 8000 applications were reviewed (this time 1/3 were from women). Even during this round only a few hundred were deemed fit for the challenge. The fact that this comic page could have helped at least start the youthful American enthusiasm to start studying to be an astronaut is very exciting to me.
3. The comic page mentions interplanetary trips within 25 years. The truth of the matter is that it came 16 years later in 1969 with Apollo 11. There have only been 9 manned missions to the moon, 6 of which actually landed, with a total of 12 men having walked on the surface. All this happened between 1969 and 1972. That’s it. The vision and dreams in the panel were and still are commendable, but alas now we have everyone focused on the next big thing: Mars. Imagine that 56 years later!
4. Apollo 16, in 1969 dollar currency, cost up to $25 billion–that’s about $135 in 2005 dollar value. I think the dream of nuclear fission rocket engines turning this dream into possibility is pretty much out the window… especially during “today’s economic crisis”.
5. In 1953 it couldn’t possibly have been known how long it would take to even GET to the moon–so they didn’t even bother guessing in fantastical ways that would likely have been a humorous attempt looking back at it today. Apollo 17 took about 3 days to travel the 400,000 km. The comic panel wasn’t too far off as to the top speeds though. According to Harrison H. Schmitt’s report on his Apollo 17 mission, they eventually reached about 25,000km/h. So, “well over” that amount was a bit of another dream fulfillment–but for a 16-year-away estimate. That wasn’t too bad!
6. Although many geological studies were done on the spot and plenty moon rock samples collected and thousands of photos collected, the last panel was once again a bit too eager in its prediction. Many future trips equalled exactly 6 landed explorations within 3 years before funding was cut and the program was shut down. Cost is still a major factor 55 years after this comic–even if you ignore the required selection process and requirements individuals need to pass. No other exploration trips have been attempted by governments much less funded, organised, executed and made profitable by Google Microsoft corporations.