It seems like a reoccuring cycle with me. I suddenly get the urge to make a Space Game, then run into the wall where I can't reconcile the issues of soft scifi with my hard scifi leanings, and now I'm on the next phase, where I start thinking about applying the mechanics of a space game to a fantasy or other setting.
In this case I've started thinking about Cyberspace. It was the opening lines of the book Neuromancer that got me thinking down this line; the description of the sky as the static between t.v. channels. I imagined a ship traveling through that instead of the black void of space, and then I thought about a game set in cyberspace.
I've got a pretty good idea of how Cyberspace will/would go down, given the internet and things like Second Life. I'm not sure it's compatible with a space game though. I mean, I think Second Life got it pretty close; the problems with it are that the values of resources are skewed and don't match with the realities of a virtual world, and also it's not an open platform. There's also some structure enforced where it shouldn't be. In Second Life the players have worked around these things to demonstrate what the priorities really are. Specifically, Second Life lets all users draw equally from a limited pool of computer processing resources, slowing everything down the more scripts are running, and the more complex the scripts are. There's no way in Second Life to give priority to, for example, local scripts that run the local area. Strangers with elaborate costumes can bring everything to a crashing halt, or people with intentionally bad scripts can bring things down on purpose.
There's a lot going on in a VR simulation. Some is on the server and some is on the client. My future view of VR is a world where your avatar is built in layers, where you start with a tiny 2D graphic representation, then an animated 2D graphic, then a series of more detailed 3D meshes with texture and and animation packs. These are formatted so that different clients can pick which one to display without having to invest all the resources of storing and displaying them all. Also, the server can choose which to use based on it's own priorities like how many polygons are allowed and how complex your physics model can be.
The virtual world will be made up of servers, which simulate a volume of space and the objects within that space and all the physics of that space, and avatars of the users who interact in that space. It'd be an open platform based around a standard, shared design, probably a single avatar format. Maybe even all objects in the virtual space would use that avatar format, with possibly stricter rules on their properties.
From a user standpoint, you'd use it like the web. You'd go to places in virtual space by following a link to a location in a server. Most servers would be either private worlds shared by friends, or something like a business's website. During Second Life's height it was popular for businesses to have a virtual presence there. I could see that happening again if VR ever supplants the world wide web. It probably won't, since the 2d graphics and text are too easy to digest, even in a world where everyone's cellphone can access lifelike VR.
But, I think something really interesting would be persistant virtual worlds that are procedurally generated, but also simultaneously simulated across all points. That would take a lot of processing power, but Second Life does it on a small scale. I'm not sure how many simulator regions they've got now, but in the old days you could fly a plane between several airports on multiple island 'continents'.
In the far far future, when we have computers who are also people, virtual worlds will be a much bigger thing. It's possible that von neumann replicators will transform whole planets into computronium dedicated to simulating virtual worlds. Places for minds to dwell apart from fleshy bodies. In such a time, there may be uncontrolled, unexplored virtual spaces waiting to be claimed and formatted by artificial minds.
It might be interesting to explore the artificial space of a jupiter brain, to be among the first minds to inhabit it and shape it, and contend with the shapes that others impose upon it. And it might have a similar vibe to a space game...
I'll give it some thought.
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8 years ago
27 Mar 2016 09:16 CEST
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