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• Post #2846009

  Writing something about the tension between simulation and tech design in games. Simulation creates consistent and cohesive results, but not always the most fun results. Reaching into a simulation and tweaking it to make it more fun is difficult - it introduces tension, oscillation and unintended knock-on effects. Simulations aren’t always very readable to players. Looking back through work diaries, I have found ~4 strategies. Are there others?

• Post #2846008

  A: Make the sim simply better. More fidelity, more realistic, capture more behaviours, use real-world experimental parameters. A bet that fidelity is fun. Trades design control for correctness. Changes can cause wide side effects.

• Post #2846007

  B: Segment the simulation into parts, and pass events between them. The emitted events are under designer control, and the receiving simulation can’t tell the difference. Clear design surface. Events must be reasonable, but side effects can be contained. Reduces combinatorial explosion of parameters.

• Post #2846006

  C: Scale and bias simulation params to offset/strengthen/weaken responses. Push and pull the simulation towards fun with y=kx+m. k and m can be adjusted per entity and still remain part of the sim. Structured method of adjustment.

• Post #2846005

  D: Enter/exit simulation. Entities can be taken out of the simulation for a moment and be under full design control. Since the entity is explicitly taken out for a reason, making it match the sim is less of a concern. However, re-entry can be difficult to setup in a transparent way.