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[sonerohi]

     For a very long time, I've wanted to make games for a living. I'm not expecting to be able to succeed as my own studio, like Toady is, but I do know, without a doubt, that this is one of the few jobs I would want to have. In the past, I've never had any big ideas for what I want to create, usually only having ideas about what features would best improve games and how to implement and balance them. But the other day, I got to thinking, and I did have my big idea. I want to create a realistic game.

     No arbitrary features or mechanics. I want everything that happens to have a realistic and good reason. If a game says that cavalry have a 50% penalty on certain terrain, I want to go in-depth and figure out why. Is it because there is a resistance to their movement? Is the ground too springy, too hard, too soft and muddy? I want to figure it out. I don't want it to be general either. If a player can precisely quantify and calculate variables within a battle, then I've done something wrong. I don't want a 'muddy' terrain that confers random penalties and bonuses for no reason either. If that ground can be called muddy, I want it to be because the plant-life couldn't absorb all of the recent rains, or because a river over-flowed into the area, not some horse-shit 'because it is muddy'.

     I'm not going to be ready to do any work on my idea for a looooooong time, but I know that I will when the opportunity comes. For now, I'm asking for any good reference books, course books, authors, etc. that you know relating to factual Earth and how it runs. I need to do a lot of study on geology, biology, climatology, meteorology, astrology, gemology, geochemistry, hydro geology, volcanology, seismology, pedology, architecture, physics, chemistry, and others. I need to know about architecture and electricity, all I can about light and sound, paleontology and evolution,  and way too much more. I want to be able to give a concrete method of why every single thing works in the game, according to what we know now. Thankfully, I don't need to study any psychology, archeology or anthropology, or really anything of human workings besides the body and what that entails, because I won't need to have anything imitate players. If you have any books that you find to be very insightful into any of these fields, please give me an MLA citing if possible, otherwise just the name and author will do. If you have a good book but aren't sure if I'd want to get a copy, just post the field it deals in please.

[Hippoman]

SOunds cool. Keep us updated.

[FluffyToast J]

That is a huge undertaking. I'd honestly be surprised if you ever finished researching everthing, letalone actually starting to code a game. Still, dont let that stop you. If you manage to do it, I will be the first to bow down and call you god.

Good luck!

[Hippoman]

That is a huge undertaking. I'd honestly be surprised if you ever finished researching everthing, letalone actually starting to code a game. Still, dont let that stop you. If you manage to do it, I will be the first to bow down and call you god.

Good luck!

NO I GET TO BE FIRST!

[FluffyToast J]

:<

[Strife26]

That's a pretty big project. I'd start with some of the classics, On War would be a good first step.

[Bricks]

Without any idea what you are trying to do, I think you are missing the point of a game.  Some of the best games have silly, bullshit rules that have no close real-world analogues.  Having recognizable countries, weapons, and environments in an FPS does add to the game, but calculating the effects of wind resistance on a traveling projectile in real time is not only unnecessary and processor-heavy, it adds nothing to the fun.

From what I can extrapolate, you don't mind silly penalties, as long as there is a reason behind them.  However, a giant dictionary of cause-and-effect relationships does not a game make.  Say you do want muddied ground to confer a movement penalty.  You then asked what causes muddied ground.  I'd guess it's a mixture of weather and geography.  Now you need to design algorithms to generate weather and geography patterns, which means you'll have to study and implement theories that are largely untested or simply too advanced and complicated.  Or, you could simply design some game maps by hand, and rotate weather randomly based on some seasonal patterns, but now you've rescinded on your original goal.

That was looking at the big picture.  Now you need to understand why mud causes movement penalties.  Is it simply more difficult to walk through, and therefore confers a simple on/off penalty?  Does it increase fatigue, causing movement to go slower and slower as time passes?  How do you quantify "muddiness" of terrain?  Is all mud the same?  How does mud affect walkers compared to horses, wagons, tanks, etc?  Does the muddiness of the terrain increase or decrease when walked through?

Let's say you answer all of these questions, solve all of the problems, and develop fast and efficient algorithms.  Congratulations, you've just spent your lifetime studying mud, and to your players, it's just going to be an unenjoyable system that seems to respond randomly unless they also happen to be mudologists or hardcore leet professional powergamers.

I'm not saying that researching for your game is wrong - I hate the sort of game that has me mix two brightly colored liquids together, the result it calls "acid," which I then use to melt through solid steel.  Totally ridiculous.  Start out with whatever the hell the game IS, though.  The real world is fascinating, but it doesn't lend itself to actual gameplay mechanics.  I've always been impressed by the "Age of" games, since every technology, building, and unit had a little history blurb that could be accessed through the game's help files.

[Hippoman]

I only read the first paragraph of your post brick but I think you're right.
It doesn't make it much fun, but it would be a great SIMULATOR.

[KaelGotDwarves]

This ties in with the "game ideas" thread, where we were all bitching at each other about ideas vs. concepts vs. implementation and the worth(lessness) of it all

Don't let anyone discourage you. IMHO my advice is that you have an idea, but you should figure how you're going to implement it in your game mechanics/code, because otherwise you'll have a laundry-list spreadsheet of factual information but no game.

You'll be doing this in your free time of course, because no one has success overnight. But in the process you will learn, or not.

I think that was the lesson in all of this.

[sonerohi]

     Bricks raises some good points, and I'm not sure how to put to words the responses I've formed. What I'm trying to do is exactly what he describes and condemns in his post, but not quite as... directed to whatever demographics he falls under. The point of the game is to learn about all the systems that you feel like, inside of a player driven world. If you could give a shit less about studying the terrain that you move through, and just know the basics, like which terrains are favorable for what, then that is fine. But if you want to take a more detailed look, I want there to be more details to look at. I want it to be the best simulator and teaching tool I can manage, and leave space for an emergent player world.

[Frelock]

Well, I hate to be somewhat of a nay-sayer, but you've basically taken on an impossible task.  Even today, scientist don't really understand what makes the world tick exactly the way that it does; hence why science exists.  We haven't looked at all the details of our own world yet, and you want to create another with just as much detail.

Eventually, you're going to have to get to some level of generalization, where the reason something happens is "because the code says so."  Whether that's at the level of "muddy terrain halves cavalry's speed" or "muddy terrain provides a give of approximately 3cm, which costs approximately 5 calories each time a horse steps into it, which deplete's a horse stamina at a rate of 20% for an rested horse and 10% for a horse that was trained in such conditions, plus or minus metabolic rates for each individual horse" your players are going to run into a point where there's no more details to look at.  So, what you really need to do if you're making an actual game is ask "what are my bounds?"

Simply put, you can't simulate the real world, because we haven't got the glorious physics "Theory of Everything," which, as the name says, explains everything.  We're still looking at bits and pieces, and trying to patch those together in a coherent fashion.  There's a reason colleges have majors, and a reason as well why some people spend their entire lives dedicated to one singular field.  I know a woman with a PhD in Geology; she has spent her entire life studying clays, and she still doesn't know everything about that one particular subject.  Being a Renaissance man is interesting, and there's no doubt we need more generalists in this world of specialists, but you've got a finite amount of time to learn the sum of all human knowledge. 

If you still want to proceed, then I wish you the best of luck.  I suggest starting out with you're local college's bookstore.  Pick out a title from some interesting field and buy the book online (bookstores generally charge an arm and a leg).  I'd suggest Mathematics to start with, as everything is based on it.  Begin with calculus, and work your way up to differential equations(you'll probably need them if you're going to be doing modeling of actual events).  Then move on to mechanical physics.  After that, tackle chemistry, followed by astronomy, geology, climatology, and possibly biology.  Some point down the line, you're going to want to go really in-depth into computer science, with a focus on geological modeling (since you will be modeling a planet) and climate modeling.  By the way, if you can come up with some sort of accurate climate model, you'll probably get a Nobel Prize (don't forget to include reflections of sunlight off of airplane contrails in the upper atmosphere and its effect upon ground temperature).

[deadlycairn]

Someone once tossed out a random fact that Ben Franklin is believed to have been the last person alive who knew all the important science-y stuff of his day. As there is now so many new breakthroughs that no man can keep up. Never validated it though.

But yeh, this is a herculean task. Look at DF: It is an amazing sandbox game, far deeper than most, but still nowhere near as deep as the game you're describing. And let's be honest. It wouldn't be a game, it would be a world - a full, accurate simulation of our world. It would probably achieve sentience and predict the apocalypse, if you really put all that information in

My best advice would be to focus on just one thing. Perhaps it's a mining simulator. You could put in all the geographical data you want, and, depending on its implementation, it could be a great game, and highly educational. But there's no way you could create an everything simulator.

[Hungry]

You can in-fact make a everything simulator, but to run it would require a computer the size of a moon (with current technologies), and use several hundred petawatts a second...

[Cheeetar]

Of course, that's assuming facts you pull out of your ass are real.

[Hungry]

!
I extrapolated damn you...