New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggestions?

General discussions and Technical Support for Capitalism II.
counting
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by counting »

It's largely on suspense since last year, the starting forum on simtropolis is
http://community.simtropolis.com/forum/100-boomtown/
The original concept document is here
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5459 ... entv10.pdf
A lot of the original contributors moved on to another project CityBound, which is still on the way to alpha and more promising, but the concept of CityBound is quite different, more focus on road-network and traditional zoning of city builder.
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counting
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by counting »

I can see the appeal of generating an organic city on its own as a Capitalism player, a lot of time the city in Capitalism is simply too passive and artificial, no matter how many randomizer to change default layout, it's still largely reactive not proactive to feel alive. (the reason why 2 of the major expansion pack ideas for Capitalism are city simulation and transportation mechanism)

There are fractal algorithms for procedural generated "city-like" blocks, but only give you starting layouts. The real challenge is the "growth" part. And this is where agent-based simulation might come in handy. Since usually it can generate the most complex and unpredictable outcome, still largely felt organic. The trouble though, is boundary condition, without proper check, it might destroy the original pattern combined with unpredictable player actions.

In other words, fast procedure generated city has an artificial history where citizens are just abstract figures without story, so when you try to make people start telling story on their own, it will not fit the original history, and causing chaos. Like a wealthy family was dropped off in one part of the town when the city is generated, may find it no where to go because players decide to buy out all the best land for no-good reason and never rebuild proper replacement. You either give agents great deal of freedom to affect the world on their own where players have limited control of, or limit what agents can react with very strict rules (which most simulation game have to, and causing unnatural reaction and boundary). I imagine you would prefer the first option, but it's not easy to implement with a lot of work to do. It's essentially building a "god-game" first, then place a business simulation aspect into it.

However I think there is a middle ground to focus on just a few aspect of the simulation city. The questions are what are they. Traffic management should leave for agents? Road-network planning? Residential placements? Have to pick certain area for players to manipulate with and main focus. (Or even total freedom just for future modding possibility? That would be interesting)
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woubuc
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by woubuc »

CityBound I've heard of, I've actually supported it ever since it came into existence and I'm following it closely because it's showing a lot of promise. However, this is not the direction I want to go at all.

Road networks and traffic simulation is one thing I don't intend to focus on, purely because it is an entirely different simulation. I do want to add conceptualised "traffic jams" based on the population density in a certain area (which in turn would influence worker happiness and transport times), but not a specific road-by-road calculation and simulation since the city simulation isn't the core of the game. Then again citizen simulation is an important part of the concept, but also on a more conceptual level. People or families won't have an individual story or history, but their behaviour will be calculated based on the numbers. For instance, to respond to your example, if an area has high land values wealthy people will come live there. But if a player buys some of the ground around their mansions, the values will drop and over time, one by one, the wealthy people will move away and build themselves a new mansion somewhere else. So I do want to give citizens a lot of possibilities (I'd give them as much freedom as they have in real life, if that were possible) so they will respond not only to the player doing something but also to the citizen simulation itself (for instance, wealthy people might also want to move away if slums appear next to their houses). This would create a living, breathing city simulation because even without actual player interactions cities will change, people will move to other places in the city or even to a different city, etc.. But this all on a numerical, statistical level, not on a single citizen level.

I was also thinking to work with a fixed total number of citizens. Every day some are born and some die, some migrate, etc.. and that would change that maximum, but there aren't more people than that maximum. This eliminates the "build it and they will come" mentality of Capitalism. Those available people will try to find the best place to live, so the player's job on the real estate market wouldn't be to just build as many apartment buildings as possible but to actually strive to provide the best living possibilities.
counting
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by counting »

Well, what I was trying to say is not literal "character history", but a metaphor for the trajectory or states in a generative fractal algorithm. Let's get down to programming level, a generative model need variables input from the start (like map seed) and do iterative steps, like growing a tree from trunk to branches to leaves to fill-in details. These iterations are analog to "collective history" of the entire population. But when this initial step is finished and we start letting players to interact with the world, players' actions are like telling their version of "stories", some input there, another change that. So in order to use these input as extra variables, the "in-game generative steps" certainly need a lot of more conditional statements to make sure they can fit into the generated world parameters. That's what I was talking about be careful to set boundary conditions.

You can set the game-mechanic rules for players to play with where only certain limited actions can yield positive result, or you limit players' possible operation space where their actions always end up within limited "operational alternatives". The extreme from of the first option is dwarf fortress like game, where the FUN can almost always ensure and frustrated players a lot, the later option is like 1849, where you let players finishing goals where the building sequence or placement don't actually matter much.

The fun thing though is that to achieve your vision, you WILL need some serious designing and planning process for it to work. It will not be easy to implement, or at least won't be interesting to play without proper mechanism and algorithm to make the city feels alive. Certainly won't cut it with just using existing generative algorithms or models libraries.
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counting
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by counting »

Enough with the technical discussion. I feel that as a player to give personal opinions about what we want is probably more helpful for you to select which features to focus on. (You can browse the suggestion section in the forum, there are more suggestions you can gather and see what other Capitalism players would want, or you can start a poll or something to gather information)

For me personally, from a Capitalism player POV, first certainly I would like to continue the "corporation" central theme, where I can be an CEO or at manager level to control things, but also I would like to be just a regular characters and just as observers or clerks to see what living in a city with my corporation would be like.

From my background, I would like a more realistic financial sector simulation to invest or influence the market with capital. It's certainly lacking in Capitalism. Capitalism's strong suit is at manufacturing and probably accounting simulation aspects. If possible I would like in Caesar 3 or that type of walker-based city builder where you can click on a citizen and hear their story, or in a Capitalism stores click on an employee to hear what it says.

I don't really care much with general map layout, and I am ok with 2D graphics, but I want a strategic map where you can clearly see what's my action's influence in the world. And I don't mind if you need many windows or tags to show detail information. For me, more complex the better (sorry, I used to deal with lots of data and I can speed read, so the complex part probably not true for other players).

Anyway, these are what I can think of right now. I'll add more if I came up with something else.
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counting
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by counting »

I see you add quite a lot in the pixelworldgame wiki, good work ^_^.

Just curious, do you want to setup your own forum for people to discuss ideas?
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woubuc
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by woubuc »

counting wrote:players' actions are like telling their version of "stories", some input there, another change that. So in order to use these input as extra variables, the "in-game generative steps" certainly need a lot of more conditional statements to make sure they can fit into the generated world parameters. That's what I was talking about be careful to set boundary conditions.
Of course. The entire city simulation will in fact require extensive and well thought-out coding, to make sure the city changes and develops realistically even after input from the players. Basically after everything the player does, the entire area around him - and by extent the entire game world - should be processed over and over again to see if the player action changes anything. Now of course this would be very heavy on the server, so for programming this would be better done in a series of intervals/loops, where part by part the entire city gets re-processed and re-developed according to what's changed.
counting wrote:You can set the game-mechanic rules for players to play with where only certain limited actions can yield positive result, or you limit players' possible operation space where their actions always end up within limited "operational alternatives". The extreme from of the first option is dwarf fortress like game, where the FUN can almost always ensure and frustrated players a lot, the later option is like 1849, where you let players finishing goals where the building sequence or placement don't actually matter much.
Building placement and such does matter a lot. Though I enjoyed 1849, I definitely don't want to create a game like that. Going for the analogy with Gnomoria (a DF-like game, don't know if you know it but I'll use that as a reference since I've only ever played DF for like 5 minutes), the placement of resource buildings, factories, warehouses and stores in Pixel World would be a bit like the considered placement of stockpiles and workshops in that you'd have to find the optimal position between resources, manufacturing and storage, and added to that the difficulty of finding a good demand market to build your stores.
counting wrote:The fun thing though is that to achieve your vision, you WILL need some serious designing and planning process for it to work. It will not be easy to implement, or at least won't be interesting to play without proper mechanism and algorithm to make the city feels alive. Certainly won't cut it with just using existing generative algorithms or models libraries.
I know. This is for a later stage though, first step is to detail all the features I have in mind for the concept, then I will try to bring them together from a user point of view (how will the user interface with the game), and then step three is to see how this would be achievable in programming.
counting wrote:You can browse the suggestion section in the forum, there are more suggestions you can gather
I'm definitely doing that. This forum, simtropolis, various other sim game forums.. They all help to shape the ideas I have for this game.
counting wrote:like to continue the "corporation" central theme, where I can be an CEO or at manager level to control things, but also I would like to be just a regular characters and just as observers or clerks to see what living in a city with my corporation would be like
Although the game focuses around being CEO of your own coporation, there will be a "personal" aspect to the CEO as well. I'm not sure how elaborated this will be, but I'm definitely thinking about it.
counting wrote: more realistic financial sector simulation to invest or influence the market with capital
Personally I don't have much experience or knowledge of the financial/investor type things, but I'm planning to talk to some friends of mine who study economics and see if they can join in on the concept and make it richer and more interesting. The financial sector is certainly something I want to expand upon, even letting the players create their own stock markets, banks, and stuff like that. I will be talking to a lot of people I know to help shape the game and make it as realistic and as dynamic as possible.
counting wrote:I don't really care much with general map layout, and I am ok with 2D graphics, but I want a strategic map where you can clearly see what's my action's influence in the world. And I don't mind if you need many windows or tags to show detail information. For me, more complex the better
Same goes for me. What I want to go for is what I call a 'layered' interface: the basic features (building, setting up production chains, etc..) are easily accessible and everyone can make use of them (to make the game approachable for anyone), but then there are statistics which provide huge data overlays for the entire world, statistical lookup functions (e.g. to find the best spot to build a store), and then there will be financial and abstract stats like stock markets which will require their very own interface.

What I do want to do is create a clean interface that gives you the data you need without feeling 'bloated' or showing statistics you can't really do anything with - A problem I tend to have with some of the screens and windows in Capitalism (which tries to pack all kinds of data into one and the same window, making everything feel more complex and hard to read than it really is). Also, I want to provide keyboard shortcuts to browse through all available information quickly and easily. Speaking from a user interaction standpoint, I plan to find one or two game interface design experts to assist me in creating the best possible interface for all the data in the game. However, this requires me to first lay out all the different data that will be in the game.
counting wrote:I see you add quite a lot in the pixelworldgame wiki, good work ^_^.

Just curious, do you want to setup your own forum for people to discuss ideas?
Thanks. I'm only getting started though :-)

I'm thinking about setting up a discussion platform, once I've worked out the basic concept like I have in my head I will start sharing the site everywhere and invite people to come take a look at the concept and give their opinion. Whether I will do this in the form of wiki talk pages, on a separate forum, or on an idea tracker with votes, I'm not sure about that yet. But I will definitely be welcoming input and ideas from everyone.
counting
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by counting »

One of the problem we have as CEOs in Capitalism is that there's not much we can do with all the personal wealth gathered, other than climbing the ladder of the wealthiest list. But if you can create more possibilities of "spending" the wealth, like how wealthy people in real world do : buying luxuries, cars, houses, even donation to charities, being investors as angels, players will find incentives amount them as long as there are enough options (or potential options as adding mods, etc). Most importantly is the interaction between friends that can "compare" to each other, the social aspect is a huge incentive.

The financial market is one huge sector, albeit an important engine for real world market economy, and wasn't done right in current Capitalism game IMO. Though there are quite a bit work done using simulation with models in modern economics study, but quite boring if you asked me. And honestly I never seen any game trying to tackle with believable fiscal sector, nor monetary mechanism. A lot of developers don't even know what is the mechanism of money creation, and the difference between primary and secondary market. If done right, the "financial machine" could be the driving force of your economy simulation, and make it more fitting to the name "Capitalism" than the current Capitalism game.

I've written programs to study the emergence of "commodity money" and financial institutes using agent-based approach, and there are a lot more studies have tried to explain some underline macroeconomic phenomena. There is a lot we don't actually know about it, and some conclusion from traditional theories are now being challenged with works from experimental economics. The practice in real world market is very different than what "models" and most economics theories taught or predicted. You might need to find consultants not just from academic background but also experienced traders and dealers. Real life market is more like living biology and social game playing against people, than mathematical equations.
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woubuc
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by woubuc »

counting wrote:there's not much we can do with all the personal wealth gathered
As you can see on the wiki http://www.pixelworldgame.com/wiki/CEO I am planning to give the player some more things to do with his earned money. This is something in Capitalism that bothered me as well.
counting wrote:If done right, the "financial machine" could be the driving force of your economy simulation
I'm not gonna say I know everything about the financial market, I've only taken a few finance and marketing classes at the university a couple of years ago so I probably barely know anything about it. But I know there is much more to it than what Capitalism offers, and I do want to expand on the financial market aspect because it is needed for a truly realistic and full-featured game. I will need assistance on this topic in particular though, cause I can only do so much reading up on the subject before I need experts to assist in finetune the concept and the mechanics.
counting wrote:Real life market is more like living biology and social game playing against people, than mathematical equations.
Which is why I'm not looking to set up a "fictional scenario" but rather create the tools and possibilities for it so that all players together can shape the financial market through their actions. This is actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to make this an online multiplayer game, because no matter how elaborate the algorithm is, in the end an AI economy will become predictable and can be manipulated (look at all the guides of "how to succeed in Capitalism" - they all seem to outline the same ideas and actions you have to take to become rich).
counting
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Re: New capitalism-inspired game: Your thoughts and suggesti

Post by counting »

Is there a register page for the wiki? However I can edit with IP records though. An independent forum system, developer blog might help compartmentalize and track different focus, idea, and development progress.

Player interaction or "incentive" of the game can still be refined during prototyping, not necessarily need to be concrete from the start. More importantly is still the main theme of the open world and its underlining background setup. So on the subject of simulating economic activities, there are multiple phases, levels, and perspective you could try.

Since "game theory" is a major part of the micro-foundation in economics providing tools for models, that could be a field to create players interaction templates. As for macroeconomics phenomena, that would be more interesting and some what difficult. We've learn from observation that individual behaviors don't always transfer in macro scale. And most of the time, irrational behaviors (economics like to called them bounded rationality) don't generate chaos, but rather patterns and complex phenomena, and most of all, usually required a lot of individuals for emerging property to express.

Although a small group of people follow a set of rules, that can be modified and adapted over time, could form a stable economic system. But on the scale of modern financial market, that usually required a lot of bounded rational traders in thousands to millions. The ideal situation would be to somehow let AI agents generate enough complex behaviors or set of feedback information, so players can be part of the system, rather than outside variables.
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