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[Ohlawdy]

Now, I am not talking about real science. I am talking about simulated science where I don't know the results and I can't just look it up on a wiki. I want controlled variables and variables that I manipulate where I can write my results with the blood/remains of my failed experiments.
I played the Creatures series and this sort of fulfilled the urge. The genetics part was interesting but it seemed like it was more of just observe for long periods of time and hope for something interesting. Right now I am messing around with mods in Minecraft and creating nuclear reactors and such. I'm not sure how much science! I can do with minecraft since there really isn't very many variables (that I can think of) to be changed when performing experiments. I figured that maybe I could mod minecraft myself but then I would know the properties of everything and it would become just "testing out my mods".

Is there any game where many of the properties of things are randomized and/or I can do controlled and repeatable experiments?

[Rakonas]

Dwarf Fortress is always good with this, to name the obvious.

[Girlinhat]

Minecraft's mod of Forestry and More Bees is fun.  Genetics are interesting.

Corneroids, currently very high on the forum list, has interesting physics.  We're still experimenting with "how do you build a goddam ship" for the most part.  Golems is fun too, as well as that one "something sand simulator" thing.

[Man of Paper]

Playing the Geneticist on Spacestation 13.

Want to give someone X-Ray vision? Space and heat immunity? How about telekinesis or superstrength (the second of which also comes with green skin)? Or maybe you'd rather just change someone's hair, skin, or eye color. Or maybe their gender. Or maybe just turn them into a monkey.

It's fun to experiment with, especially since sometimes you'll have people willingly come up to you and offer themselves as test subjects. Be careful not to make them deaf or blind, or give them countless mental disorders! Or death! Don't give them death^*!


^*-On the off chance that you are a traitor, go nuts!

[ukulele]

This maybe? http://powdertoy.co.uk/ its basically a chimical simulator or something like that.

[Girlinhat]

Powdertoy.  That's the sand-thing I couldn't remember!

[Man of Paper]

Ooh, I can also back powdertoy.

A friend and myself have gotten alright at it. He's gone the more "see what makes awesome weapons of mass destruction" route and has made some pretty devastating and neat explosives. I, however, went more for the "neat science precision strike" and work with the electronic system and various elements to create badass lasers and such.

Or you can make a huge pile of fireworks and watch them go off, which is entertaining in its own right.

[scrdest]

Now, I am not talking about real science. I am talking about simulated science where I don't know the results and I can't just look it up on a wiki. I want controlled variables and variables that I manipulate where I can write my results with the blood/remains of my failed experiments.
I played the Creatures series and this sort of fulfilled the urge. The genetics part was interesting but it seemed like it was more of just observe for long periods of time and hope for something interesting. Right now I am messing around with mods in Minecraft and creating nuclear reactors and such. I'm not sure how much science! I can do with minecraft since there really isn't very many variables (that I can think of) to be changed when performing experiments. I figured that maybe I could mod minecraft myself but then I would know the properties of everything and it would become just "testing out my mods".

Is there any game where many of the properties of things are randomized and/or I can do controlled and repeatable experiments?

I am currently sciencing the silliest thing possibly, but oddly well-suited for !!SCIENCE!! - I am the foodomancer of the mountainhome in the Bay12 server for Minecraft mod TFC. Currently 4 status effect recipes found, but those are randomized, based upon a map seed.

[Matz05]

We need more games with systems like that. Those food recepies are actual TECHNOLOGY: knowledge that lets a person/group produce a good/etc. that others cannot.

[DrPoo]

I fucking agree.

I have always wanted to make a game that randomly generates a planet, everything, textures, sound, models, creatures, physical constants and set you off in a survival nightamre on that planet.

[Matz05]

That would certainly be interesting. Crafting + randomized (to an extent) but internally-consistent physics would be very interesting to play...
 
"So I put the crushed yellow rock into the spotted deathbug blood... AYEEE! GAS GAS GAS! RUN AWAY!!!"
"OK, not doing that again. It corroded all the metal in my lab... Might make a decent weapon against the bronze gatorbots though..."

[scrdest]

That would certainly be interesting. Crafting + randomized (to an extent) but internally-consistent physics would be very interesting to play...
 
"So I put the crushed yellow rock into the spotted deathbug blood... AYEEE! GAS GAS GAS! RUN AWAY!!!"
"OK, not doing that again. It corroded all the metal in my lab... Might make a decent weapon against the bronze gatorbots though..."

OH LORD YES! YES PLEASE! In situations like this, I wish I took up coding instead of what I'm doing now. However, I don't think you could randomize physics per se, since that would result in very alien worlds, the world must be a bit anthropic-principley so that it won't look like designed by H.R.Giger and H.P.Lovecraft's child tripping balls.

 Hmm, actually, I think it could be done in a Roguelike style or text-based kind of thing (Hell, think HFS in DF!)... those appear to be the most non-constrained in terms of what you could do with the world, so if you type 'Eat my boots' you don't have to make an animation of the character taking the boots off and chewing them, but can instead concentrate on the result. The randomization would be a problem with graphics, and text form fixes it, so the deathbug may have bluish chitin and 7 legs in one world and light-yellow starch body covering with 3 legs in another, and in yet another it may be actually a 90 feet tall Tokyo-smashing monster.

 To add even more fun, they wouldn't have pre-set names, but descriptors, yet with the ability to set nicknames for them, so, say, each bluish toxic bug with 7 legs would be labelled a 'deathbug', and let's say that even if it was only a similar creature, but non-toxic would be called 'unusual (X)', X being the nickname.

Now, to the Code-mobile! Err, please? Someone?

[ConscriptFive]

"Lab of the Dead" is you as a scientist, experimenting on captured zombies.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/581901
(Though it's a flash game, so you can find it via Google on other sites.)

[scrdest]

"Lab of the Dead" is you as a scientist, experimenting on captured zombies.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/581901
(Though it's a flash game, so you can find it via Google on other sites.)

Played it for a couple of hours, was quite OK until I got bored of the repetitiveness of it. Also, you eventually have to either grind one specific set of mood/intellect or kill off your trained zeds.