Deep Space – A Simulation Drama [video]
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For example, I think complex inter-species behavior could emerge if instead of colors, civilizations could have a set of quasi-genetic attributes. Like aggression, risk taking, need for colonization...
I think I'm going to dedicate this day to exploring that :)
A future revision of this was going to have Intents, so each empire basically did what you mentioned.
If it was going to be a game, the player would set the intent, or proportion of different intents, for their empire (eg colonize, trade), and not be able to micromanage specific plays.
Hostile or otherwise encounters with other empires would affect rules of engagement for future encounters.
Soon enough everything would get complex, messy and unpredictable and much more interesting to watch!
Such concepts are better understood or taught through interactive simulation (where the interaction is the users tweaking the settings, coefficients, equations or rules) combined with easy to grasp graphic representation of both the simulation in progress and the results.
Some of the things I’ve thought of illustrating this way:
- Game Theory. For example have a population where individual sims engage in prisoner’s dilemma repeatedly with a random other sim each time (until it runs out of money). What are the results when different portions of the sim population use different strategies? Is there a way to setup the rewards/penalties in a way that encourages the best greater good even when individuals behave selfishly?
- complex systems, positive and negative feedback, chaos, emergence, evolution
- The Mathew Effect (e.g. rich get richer, poor get poorer). The general concept of vicious/virtuous cycles.
- the notion of the Tragedy of the Commons. And also the Tragedy of No Commons.
- market economics, supply and demand, the invisible hand. when does it work and when does it not. what happens when consumers have perfect knowledge, and what happens when they have different degrees of partial knowledge?
- Cooperation vs competition, in evolution/ecosystems, economies, politics.
Please let me know this overlaps with your interests!
The market economics part is interesting to me. I touched on it in the Q&A at the end of the talk. Initially I wanted to have ships trading to make up for deficiencies in their homeworlds (agriculture, raw materials), which would also help generate revenue, and lead to conflict. However it's not so simple (hey! let's build a functioning commodities market and HFT/algo trading system). The seed of this idea came from Traveller[1]. It's worth checking out the trade system in the first edition of that game.
The original planet sim was much more complex (along the lines of World3 [2]) and explored finite resources, overpopulation, technology growth and a whole lot more, but again, for the talk that would have been overkill. I think it's worth exploring this angle as it would provide a whole different dynamic, and would be great to see at huge scale (1000's of systems or larger) and playing out at a slower pace.
Also from Traveller, the idea that information cannot move faster than the speed of light, so it has to move at the speed of transport, which creates great dynamics for trade, and the command & control aspect of warfare. Centralized governments are not so effective. A treaty could be signed, but fighting forces will not know until the knowledge reaches them. A war can start and end before the seat of power even knows it had started.
There are so many things that could go in to it. Basically the presentation is a simple version of what I'd like it to be, but I stripped it back to the essentials (spaceships and lasers!) to make the talk interesting.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_%28role-playing_game%... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World3
It would be interesting to create a game where the population has limited ressources on a planet and if it overdoes the exploitation it gets extinct (like 'How bis is our island' https://twitter.com/dirkk/status/549866431480074240 ). Also I was equally inspired by Vi Harts and Nick Cases 'Parable of the Polygons' (http://ncase.me/polygons/).
'Boidz' and 'Game of Life' make complex behaviours from a simple set of rules. It was very smart of you to throw in some simplified physics rules (and civilization rules etc) to make these work together.
I can't access your website right now (is it down?), so I don't know if you run a blog or something. Will you continue to work on this?
I'll revisit Deep Space at some point, there's a lot to do on it.
I have some other related but different I'm working on.
Hopefully I'll get the chance to talk about them somewhere (hint hint).
If you were looking at these simple simulation without knowing what rules they follow, I'm pretty sure it would take a fair amount of efforts to discover them.
Imagine how much of a complex task we're setting ourselves with trying to understand the world we live in and the insanely complex emerging properties of our basic human behaviour.
I really like how Deep Space incorporates planet's orbital paths into the simulation. It'd be even better if orbital dynamics were simulated more accurately on the ships as well.