Will Wright, creater of Sim...well...Simeverything, has done an
interview with
Feed. Great interview - Wright gives away a lot of info about Sims Online, which will be (duh) the Sims in a giant contiguous online world. He also talks about adaptive software and other goodies.
Slashdot Mirror
The scary part is when you jump into a game like Asherons Call or Everquest and see people displaying patterns of behavior as if the world was real: rioting, stealing, etc. It takes the whole 'online identitiy' one step further by allowing people not only to voice their opinions anonymously (like /.) but also act them out with an avatar. ie: I'm not really evil in real life, but I can be in this game or I'm not really a leader in real life, but I am in this game.
Just wait until the cults start to form...(hillpeople?)
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Call it the street protocol, and you've got something right out of Neil Stephenson's fiction.
Or maybe plenty of other authors. All you gotta do is hook it up to something like PayPal and people WILL live in this world.
-Ben
Maybe you could put together a SimDTD to describe the SimXML that you could use to make the data transactions between the various SimGames feasible. Your entire SimUniverse could work out to one XML tree...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
SimSurvivor. Put a bunch of Sims on an island and have them vote to eliminate one another until only one's left. Who goes on to star in SimProductEndorsement. It'd be kind of funny if the sims would use more inventive methods of eliminating one another, too. Whoops. SimCannabalism has broken out on the island...
SimTireMaker. Vie for contracts from Ford. May end up being popular with soon to be unemployed Firestone execs.
SimRealWorld. Simulate 5 college students living together on a bus. Include the hand from Dungeon Keeper so you can smack them on a regular basis.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ah yes, like the real-world social interaction of Mother Theressa kissing some guy she meets on the street in order to destroy Brittney's popularity.
the difference between the real world and the world of the Sims is a lot more hazy
Agreed. Just the other day I thought to myself, "Boy, I've sure made a lot of friends from building that roller coaster and comedy club. Then I remembered that I had only done that virtually. Egad, real life so mimics the tasks encountered in the Sims Online game.
No matter how good the programs get, nothing can ever quite match the real world, and people get bored of things quickly when the novelty wears off
Not until a computer can hug you.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I have some programming experience, and I think what you suggest would be more than a pain: it would be easier to start from scratch. You'd need to make loads of fundamental changes to, for example, SimAnt, in order to get it to interoperate with anything. It was designed to be run on its own, draws directly to the screen, doesn't have an architecture that can be implemented over a network, etc.
Although it's conceptually possible to imagine such a mesh, the codebases just weren't designed with that in mind, so you can't just grab them and make them work with each other :(.
This kind of problem is why object-oriented programming and related paradigms are so popular. Good OO code diminishes, though of course doesn't eliminate, this sort of problem (i.e. getting code to do things it conceptually could do, even if that's not what it was written for at first).
It would be interesting that if the Sims Online could be built sufficiently open-ended (see the discussion a few days ago on the 'death of puzzle games') such that you can have a Sim that you teach to do rather complex tasks, and then take the sim online (or if already there) and 'show off' to others. However, I doubt we'll see that anytime soon, but it's an interesting idea.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Essentially it will all leverage upon several facets of society. If these facets tip the the write way, it will work, if they tip the wrong way, this alternative world you suggest (as others have suggested many times before you) would become a negative asset.
At what point does an alternative reality become real enough to dispense with a prior reality?
The Matrix, to use an overused analogy, described a world in which that alternative reality became so indectectably ingrained, that the only reason you would not call it reality is because the plot of the story was centered around entrapped humans. The Thirteenth Floor did a better job of depicting this "world-within-world" philosophy.
If the inevitable end of online gaming and virtual reality results in a world that is as rich as ours, yet with the added bonus of being able to escape the types of problems that plague our intelligence-oriented society, what could be wrong with a migration?
The obvious answer to that, would be the fact that our bodies and the machines keeping them alive would still be rooted in this reality, and thus our lives within the alternative reality would be anchored in the safety of these machines, and our flesh body. If there was nobody on the "look out" anything could happen and nobody would know it had happened until they snapped out of their world and found their body trapped in a tomb of ice and machinery.
So then, what about a society based upon balance? Instead of one alternative reality, why not many? Why not have them all be built to serve individual goals in their chaotic structure, like a function produces mathematical order, and have these massive functions increasing the value of the planet, as well as the other societies within societies?
I know, I know, this is all rather far fetched to say the least. My point is to make clear that the concept of dissasociation might very well need to be discarded here, bringing the whole topic to be viewed in a different manner.
V
The oversimplified version of what's up is this:
Windows to Mac ports often have to reinvent a decent amount of the wheel, since they will typically use the MS DirectX API's (DirectSound, DirectX, etc.). This can result in some inefficiency in the port.
Also, Windows does a somewhat better job of swapping out RAM as needed - the kernel has a smaller footprint, despite the OS' bloat overall. Apple's monolithic MacOS needs about 32MB of RAM just to boot nowadays - all their newer systems ship with 64MB or more in the base config. My iBook, with VM off, uses 42.2MB of RAM for the OS! Thank heavens I have 160MB in it! With VM on, the RAM usage drops to 27MB for the OS, but performance drops noticeably. The MacOS VM model is fundamentally broken, and will remain so until the end of time (at least in the Classic OS). OS X will reduce memory needs, though Classic apps will continue to be pigs.
They also copy a ton o' stuff off the CD - but I think you can skip a lot of it and run a lite install.
It plays quite nicely on our iMac DV-450, and pretty well, though occasionally a little sluggish on my iBook-300. The gameplay is actually a little snappier on the iMac than it is on my Athlon 700 - indicating to me that the folks who ported it did a really nice job, and concentrated on speed over size.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I don't think an interesting world is beyond the capabilities of most game creators, but it's something you have to put a lot of thought and design in to from the beginning.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
After reading the interview and thinking a bit about what it would be like to play the sims online, for some reason i started thinking that there could be a real social value to this game.
I'm not a shrink, but wouldn't this kind of interaction help the rehabilitation of inmates or similar? I mean, put some computers in correctional centers, for example, and have the inmates socialize through somethink like simsonline, maybe that could be a safe way to learn some values? I know it sounds crazy and far fetched, but if you think about it, maybe it could help develop interest in being part of a community.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
--
Sounds a bit like Poe.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I agree, if it doesnt degrade into a fight for power by a few who know how to exploit the system. If I could build a city, and the surrounding 4 cities were controlled by other players, then that would be neat. Trade items with them, build highways, sell them space in my landfills, etc...
Bloody javascript.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
In a way I suppose the trend towards interactive online games that describe an entire world for players to interact in is kind of scary - it's taking the need for real world social interactions out of the loop. But, at the same time it can be seen as a very good thing indeed for people who either have trouble getting out and meeting people or those that aren't self-confident enough to do so.
But games like this new version of The Sims have an even stronger pull in that they are like real life in a way - characters interact in an idealised version of this world, in situations that they encounter in everyday life. Whereas you always know the difference between the real world and Brittania, the difference between the real world and the world of the Sims is a lot more hazy, and as the technology gets better it will get even hazier.
Eventually we can see a point where there is very little difference between these two worlds, and in that case what will happen? Will we see groups of people attempt to disassociate themselves from normal reality as much as possible, or will it just be another form of gaming? I suspect that there will be people for whom the lure of an idealised world will prove too much, and a new form of addiction will rise.
But in the end I don't think that these worlds will ever quite replace our own. No matter how good the programs get, nothing can ever quite match the real world, and people get bored of things quickly when the novelty wears off.
I want sim-psons.
I want sim-ply the best by Tina Turner
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
Ok, this may be a troll...
I got Sims for my gf, I think to make up for something stupid I did. I had read reviews in several places, and although I usually only find Sim* games interesting for about 15 minutes, I thought this would be cool.
So we get it home and install it, and I'm thinking, hey this is cool. But after about 15 minutes I'm like "this is it!?". Am I the only one who is bored out of his skull from making people make food, eat, crap, take out the trash and clean themselves? Hell, I don't even want to do that stuff in my *real* life. Now I have all these people that I have to do chores with? How *boring*. I think I'm like the only one who hates this game. Am I not "getting" it? Is there something "fun" about doing chores over and over and talking some babble to annoying neighbors who come uninvited, leave crap all over your house and don't know when to leave? And I wish I could shoot those damn babies. Wah! Wah! SHUT UP!.
This game would be a bit better if you could play, say, a FPS terrorist game and come in and assassinate all these boring people.
<rant>
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Personally, I do not see this inevitable, and it is inevitable, coupling between artificial worlds and the one we currently consume as a wrong or bad thing. In fact, it could be argued that an eventual migration to such technologies could be beneficial, rather than degenerative.
No, I'm not saying that this process will be a bad thing, merely that for some people it will be, in much the same way that for some people alcohol or drugs are used solely as a means of escaping a world they hate. I'm sure that for many these new worlds will be of great benefit, for recreational, educational and scientific purposes.
If the inevitable end of online gaming and virtual reality results in a world that is as rich as ours, yet with the added bonus of being able to escape the types of problems that plague our intelligence-oriented society, what could be wrong with a migration?
What do you mean? Surely the problems that plauge our "intelligence-orientated" society (could you clarify that?) mainly arise from the people that live in it. Moving from the real world to a virtual one won't change human nature, that's something that will happen slowly.
The obvious answer to that, would be the fact that our bodies and the machines keeping them alive would still be rooted in this reality, and thus our lives within the alternative reality would be anchored in the safety of these machines, and our flesh body. If there was nobody on the "look out" anything could happen and nobody would know it had happened until they snapped out of their world and found their body trapped in a tomb of ice and machinery.
I think you're assuming some kind of permanent migration, which is something I think will never happen. After all, the technology will always be limited by processing power, and the Universe cannot contain the necessary processing power to model itself after all. There won't be any true frontiers in a virtual world, and its underpinnings will always reflect the knowledge its creators had when they built it.
So then, what about a society based upon balance? Instead of one alternative reality, why not many? Why not have them all be built to serve individual goals in their chaotic structure, like a function produces mathematical order, and have these massive functions increasing the value of the planet, as well as the other societies within societies?
It depends whether or not the societies are linked or not. If they aren't, then you basically have a huge fragmentation of human resources, and this will likely lead to stagnation of a lot of these groups. You'd assume that like-minded individuals would form each society, and in that case you'd lose out on the strengths that interactions between opposing viewpoints gives humanity.
If these societies were separate but interacting then you have the problem of nationalism all over again, but based upon the aims and beliefs of these groups. Just think about the conflicts that have occured over the different ideas of God, even between groups were the beliefs were remarkably similar.
I know, I know, this is all rather far fetched to say the least. My point is to make clear that the concept of dissasociation might very well need to be discarded here, bringing the whole topic to be viewed in a different manner.
I don't think it's too far fetched to be unworthy of discussion. But at the same time, its hard to see exactly how it'll turn out in the end. But judging from the polarisation of beliefs that occurs on communities like /. I tend to think fragmentation would cause more conflicts than it would solve.
This sounds a little bit like ActiveWorlds.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
...need to basically beef up my popularity so I can go after Brittany. She's the only one who's close to me in winning this game
It sounds really sick. I can't wait.
--
--
E_NOSIG
Don't forget about Birdz - your simulated girlfriend (screamingly funny, deeply un-PC)
Birdz part 1
Birdz part 2
Birdz part 3
Erh, how are 'The Sims' like a MUD? In a MUD, you interact with other people. In 'The Sims,' you just interact with your simulated people. If we ever had a large online world of it, chances are you'd only through a few layers of simulated people be able to communicate.
That's not a MUD at all because you don't directly control your avatar.
--
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
That's what's great about the Sims. All the game hints are hints your mother could have told you. "Don't have a baby unless you can afford it",etc.
I still laugh from the screenshots of Sims pissing their pants as soon as they see a ghost, just standing there.
On a side note I am kind of amazed at how many articles there are, appearing on slashdot lately, about security. I think it is good, but I also wonder if this is a little overdone? Earlier this week I read three articles on securing your Linux box. Well I'd ahve to say, mine is not as secure as the authors, but it is close. Most of my services in inet are turned off like he said. I unfortunately do use ftp adn telnet althoguth I am moving to ssh soon. I have a window box that I frequently transfer files between th etwo and until I find a windows GUI replacement for wxftp I'll have to have ftp (not for me for the windows users). I do have other services but most are not running through inetd. Except Linux conf. I do need to change that default port though.
Well I think it is good to know about how to secure your machine, shoudl some of these vendors start 'closing up ' the machines and set up some kind of GUIs to make it easy to open these services when people want. Here is what I propose to the vendors. Stop shipping the machines with inetd, or at least give people the option at install to install inetd. (some do some don't). Offere an alternative like the author of one of the articles I read earlier this week did tcp that is more configurable than inetd. Ship the distros with ssh and scp and have these as the default installs rather than telnet and ftp. (This goes for windows also as there is a new windows bus in telnet). WE need to get on the software makers to make it there priorities to make the distributions securer. THis goes for ALL software makers including M$, Linux distros, and Mac etc.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Simcity always made me mad, because I would fill up that stupid tiny little city square, and then look enviously at the neighboring cities, which would only have like 1000 people. And then I would get a military base, but they wouldn't let me use it to conquor the neighboring cities! WTF!
--
Communication is only possible between equals
I always sorta felt that they should do something like this but combine all the sim games together and get them to interact. Say for instance everyone starts out as a regular sim in an apartment. As you gain money/fame/whatever you could open up a SimTower for an office building or a Sim Theme Park. For those of us who liked it (I'm one of them, Yea I know the shame) You could set up a SimAnt colony in someone's backyard and have your problems all be real-time interlinked to that guys The Sims back yard. The basic codes are all there but the connecting code would be a pain in the donkey.
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
Making an online version of The Sims. This is MUDding at it's finest. MUDding with much, much better graphics. Thank god I'm out of school...
--trb