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[tylor]

I think it would be fun to make/play a roguelike that is closed ecosystem. By that I mean, roguelike where nothing pops from nowhere or vanish without trace. And mobs actually have some needs - at least, to eat.

Each mob at each moment is actually living somewhere and doing something - like eating, or hunting, or sleeping, or reproducing, etc.

Each item is lying somewhere, on ground or in someone's inventory. New items only appear if made from other items. And if you take something from village (like, wall of a mayor's home), mobs will live with that, or find some no-pretend way to replace it.

Overall, Dwarf Fortress is very close to it. But even it has "drawbacks". Animals come out of nowhere, caravans and immigrants come from outside. And NPCs are just standing around, doing nothing and having no need for sleep or food. Sims are very close too.

why I think it would be interesting? Well, because this way, it will be a real no-pretend world. It's not really like ours, but it's honest to itself, and to player. And it will allow a lot of things not possible in other roguelikes (or other games) - like, some ecological experiments,

[alfie275]

You would need a sun for plants to gain energy from, otherwise it would be over very quickly.

[Eduren]

And you can bet that the sun would be a HUGE drain on fps.

[thobal]

And you can bet that the sun would be a HUGE drain on fps.

But if we dont simulate down to the level of individual nuclei, how can plant growth rates be accurately determined.

[Eduren]

I think it would be fun to make/play a roguelike that is closed ecosystem. By that I mean, roguelike where nothing pops from nowhere or vanish without trace. And mobs actually have some needs - at least, to eat.

Each mob at each moment is actually living somewhere and doing something - like eating, or hunting, or sleeping, or reproducing, etc.

Each item is lying somewhere, on ground or in someone's inventory. New items only appear if made from other items. And if you take something from village (like, wall of a mayor's home), mobs will live with that, or find some no-pretend way to replace it.

Overall, Dwarf Fortress is very close to it. But even it has "drawbacks". Animals come out of nowhere, caravans and immigrants come from outside. And NPCs are just standing around, doing nothing and having no need for sleep or food. Sims are very close too.

why I think it would be interesting? Well, because this way, it will be a real no-pretend world. It's not really like ours, but it's honest to itself, and to player. And it will allow a lot of things not possible in other roguelikes (or other games) - like, some ecological experiments,

Dude. Dude. What if like... our world was a simulation. Like, just, just like us but only... simulated.

[SiN.Daeus]

Well, that would certainly be a nice game.

I'm no programer (no where near) but it seems to me the biggest obstacle to this would be keeping track of all the objects and interations when there are lots of things on screen or in game..

[tylor]

But if we dont simulate down to the level of individual nuclei, how can plant growth rates be accurately determined.

Are you serious? Of cause there is no need or possibility for it. Game world houle only by fair to itself, not to be fair model of reality.

As for plant, for example, they could by modelled in a bulk. For example, 10*10 grass square being a single game entity with single parameter, showing how thick is it, that increases at random moments and decreases when some animal eat it. Or just being a "shrodinger cat", i.e. only updated when there is someone around that can interact with it.

[thobal]

But if we dont simulate down to the level of individual nuclei, how can plant growth rates be accurately determined.

Are you serious? Of cause there is no need or possibility for it. Game world houle only by fair to itself, not to be fair model of reality.

As for plant, for example, they could by modelled in a bulk. For example, 10*10 grass square being a single game entity with single parameter, showing how thick is it, that increases at random moments and decreases when some animal eat it. Or just being a "shrodinger cat", i.e. only updated when there is someone around that can interact with it.

You obviously have never heard of the internet.

That sounds like a great concept. And no, I was not being serious. Individual solar nuclei to model grass growth, are you mad?

[tylor]

I know internet, and I have seen lots of people in it, which were saying absolute noncense, while being abolutely serious about it. Hell, I myself was one of those people on several occasions

[darius]

I always try to make games with this in mind. Other than that it's not that hard and only thing that needs to be culled is either world is small or not to track (or abstract it away) some of the smaller stuff: insects, earrings, some coins(saving where every coin was placed is ... a lot of data) and so on. I do this on account that they are small and get lost easily.

[Soadreqm]

Yeah. The world has to run even when you're not looking at it, unless you want everything frozen in time whenever the protagonist is away. And keeping track of everything is pretty much impossible, unless your world is really tiny. Dwarf Fortress is planning to get as close as possible; the stuff with migrants and invaders and caravans being created ex nihilo is just a placeholder for all of those coming from elsewhere in the world. Keeping track of every plate and bottle in a game this big is not feasible, but it should at least have some vague numbers describing roughly how many plates and bottles exist in this country here, what places produce them, and maybe something about how they're divided between social classes and geographical areas. And really, it only has to keep track a little bit better than the player.

[tylor]

Game world doesn't have to be as huge as, like Daggerfall. It can be some isolated island, or post-apocalyptic world, with few inhabitants.

Of cause, it's an option to model some off-screen things in bulk. Like distant town being joust a handful of numbers, that expands when player visit it. But then there should be a congruence between fine-grained modelling and large-scale approximation. For example, if layer drop a coin, leave town and return a month later to find there is no coin anymore, then if player would stay in town for that month instead, he will likely see that coin being picked by some local, or disposed in other sensible way. Same for creating things - if there is a flow of bronze sword from some town, then player should be able to go to that town and see that there are actually smiths there that take raw bronze to furnace and actually do that swords. And be able to kill smiths or destroy furnaces to stop sword production.

Another problem - even if it would be possible to model second-worth of world history in seconf of play time, while player character do a step, or swing a sword, it may be much harder to model a hour or day of history in a sensible time, when player character do something time-consuming, like traveling overworld, or crafting.

[Omegastick]

Perhaps, when you're enter a region it determines what should have happened since you were last there. So when you exit a town and it has x people and when you come back it will have x + y people. Y is determined by [number in raws] * [time away]. You could then add various different effects such as if the village was attacked, such as:
if village is attacked
    y = y - (([army size] / [village size]) * [army strength])
if y <= 0
    y = 0

[Stargrasper]

While an interesting idea...many an ecosystem in the REAL world has collapsed because some stupid humans came in and overhunted something important to extinction or just destroyed an ecosystem.  You see that mall on the strip?  You see the swamp that used to be there when you parents were kids?  Yeah see all the animals that died because their homes were obliterated to dig your house's basement?  Yeah..  Principally the real problem is that humans have a big tendency to wreck everything in their path.  Food webs alleviate this problem, but we kindof want to be reasonable here.

That being said...get your hands on a copy of SimLife and turn on the "Civilization" disaster...  It doesn't do near the damage actual humans cause, but even that can destroy local ecologies in a given part of the world.

[Grakelin]

While an interesting idea...many an ecosystem in the REAL world has collapsed because some stupid humans came in and overhunted something important to extinction or just destroyed an ecosystem.  You see that mall on the strip?  You see the swamp that used to be there when you parents were kids?  Yeah see all the animals that died because their homes were obliterated to dig your house's basement?  Yeah..  Principally the real problem is that humans have a big tendency to wreck everything in their path.  Food webs alleviate this problem, but we kindof want to be reasonable here.

That being said...get your hands on a copy of SimLife and turn on the "Civilization" disaster...  It doesn't do near the damage actual humans cause, but even that can destroy local ecologies in a given part of the world.

How is this a problem with the OP's idea?