I’ve considered building something like this. Basically:
NPCs will gather materials, produce wares, stay inside at night, spawn chidlren, and be permanently killable
you play in an MMORPG setting as part of a faction, and you work w/ your faction to protect your sims
object of the game is to control and protect the most cities
However, there must be a reason this doesn’t exist. Perhaps it’s too computationally intensive to simulate an entire city? Or maybe the gameplay ends up not being very fun? Idk, but I think it would be really cool.
I’m sure there are efficiencies to be found that would make simulating it viable. It’s graphics that are compilationally expensive, far more so than simulation, I think. Shadows of Doubt does it!
Most video game developers are not great computer scientists. I’m not saying this with any dispersion, but it’s true. If you’re going to have a distributed agency model simulated, you have to deal with cross-processor, cross thread, or even cross machine, data structures. Either a lockless data structure, or some locking mechanism that doesn’t have a tremendous critical path. It could be outsourced to a database outside of the game engine. But it gets computationally complex
I can believe that. I focus on data science so these things seem (relatively) simple to me… or perhaps not simple, but exciting to work with haha! But then I’ve looked with horror at the things you have to write to get graphics working.
I’ve considered building something like this. Basically:
However, there must be a reason this doesn’t exist. Perhaps it’s too computationally intensive to simulate an entire city? Or maybe the gameplay ends up not being very fun? Idk, but I think it would be really cool.
I’m sure there are efficiencies to be found that would make simulating it viable. It’s graphics that are compilationally expensive, far more so than simulation, I think. Shadows of Doubt does it!
Most video game developers are not great computer scientists. I’m not saying this with any dispersion, but it’s true. If you’re going to have a distributed agency model simulated, you have to deal with cross-processor, cross thread, or even cross machine, data structures. Either a lockless data structure, or some locking mechanism that doesn’t have a tremendous critical path. It could be outsourced to a database outside of the game engine. But it gets computationally complex
Something like this https://aeplay.org/citybound
Or even dwarf fortress
I can believe that. I focus on data science so these things seem (relatively) simple to me… or perhaps not simple, but exciting to work with haha! But then I’ve looked with horror at the things you have to write to get graphics working.