The creator of upcoming life sim Inzoi says he was "recklessly brave to even think about creating a game of this scale"
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"Now, I understand why so few companies have attempted to develop a life simulation game. The challenge isn't just additive the more you try to build—it's exponential. At a certain point, finding bugs in this vast world we've created feels like playing tag with invisible ghosts."
He's not bragging; it's honesty. I'm thankful he is sharing the experience. I know totally what he's talking about. I remember trying to make a simulation of reality in the wc3 map editor in elementary school. Add the weather so the plants grow. Tie growth variables also in to deer eating them. wolves eat the deer. So everything needs hunger variables. But already we start having the 'exponential growth' he is talking about: because what about the Weather and the Deer? And the Weather and Wolves? Add aspect of the world for one type of object (weather for plants), and suddenly you have to figure out how or whether it relates to everything else you have (Deer and Wolves). Now let's say we add villagers and Structures. Every time we add something, we have more nodes to consider the interrelations of.
It's easy when there are few systems and few types of things (like a cardgame of creatures with atk and def), but it escalates quick and does exactly what he's saying the more systems you try to accurately include and farther toward 'full life sim'.
So im just a noob, but I see clearly this is what he is conveying to us. (probably cuz i tried a similar path in elementary school. if i remember correctly i ran in to this same issue, scale was too big too big project and i switched to something else. it exponentialed quick; just like he says)
edit: i bet he wasnt brave as much as did not forsee the exponentialness aspect and wanting to aim high caused him to fall in to it
Hey another kid who grew up wc3 modding! I did a ton of that too.
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Hey another kid who grew up wc3 modding! I did a ton of that too.
I made a tower defense map in the Starcraft map editor when I was a kid , but it was based off of anti air rather than anti ground like the other TD maps at the time. I got it working pretty damn well (at least IMO) but I didn't have internet at the time and that was on my dads work laptop so it sadly got lost.
I don't think I could recreate that now if I tried, crazy what you can do as a bored kid with too much time.
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What is amazing is how our universe and existence seems to be governed by a few physics laws (which we don't fully understand).
Reminds me of Rimworld and the fact that, if there is no other accessible entities on the map with a nutrition stat, children and animals will b-line for booze that raiders drop and get hammered. I can't count the number of Muffalo, dogs, and cats that I have had which end up with an alcohol tolerance hedif out of nowhere.
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Bravery is doing a thing that scares the hell out of you. The reckless part is being brave when it's foolish. He's saying he was foolhardy. Probably doesn't know the word exists.
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LOL, forgot about that tacky bastard.
He sucks, but it was such a good set-up for a shitty Dice Man style joke, I couldn't resist.
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This video series sounds like it might be up your alley. Guy documents his attempts to simulate a goblin society and ecosystem.
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I respect the hustle, but as a professional gameplay programmer : the fuck did you expect ? Piling systems upon systems does indeed increase the game logic's complexity exponentially. Probably a big reason why there are so few (good) immersive sims even though it's quite the popular genre.
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I made a tower defense map in the Starcraft map editor when I was a kid , but it was based off of anti air rather than anti ground like the other TD maps at the time. I got it working pretty damn well (at least IMO) but I didn't have internet at the time and that was on my dads work laptop so it sadly got lost.
I don't think I could recreate that now if I tried, crazy what you can do as a bored kid with too much time.
That's cool! I made tons of stuff but most of it never got finished or released cause I just kept starting the next thing. Probably the wildest thing I ever made was a prototype for a sidescrolling platformer in wc3. It had keyboard movement and ability usage, jumping, a heart counter in the top left, enemies, powerups... It was kind of janky but it worked surprisingly well considering what I built it in.
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That's cool! I made tons of stuff but most of it never got finished or released cause I just kept starting the next thing. Probably the wildest thing I ever made was a prototype for a sidescrolling platformer in wc3. It had keyboard movement and ability usage, jumping, a heart counter in the top left, enemies, powerups... It was kind of janky but it worked surprisingly well considering what I built it in.
o the memories lol.
both of u. I was Pixie_Tails on US east and west and in one of the big mapmaking guilds on east. I look back and think wc3 was the mentally healthiest part of my childhood. My most fun thing was a game like dota but with a huge natural map and a minute at the start for everyone to choose their castle locations. Like you could choose to be on a hill, along a river, etc. Then there were diff biomes to choose your hero from and the hero choices spawned like pkmn and there were rares. and choosing base unit types. then it became like dota where units spawned at castles and attackmoved to other castles. Was epic.My weakness was unit and ability balancing since it didnt interest me so i never did it.
anyway, we thought up and made these as kids. i think that's the coolest thing
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That's cool! I made tons of stuff but most of it never got finished or released cause I just kept starting the next thing. Probably the wildest thing I ever made was a prototype for a sidescrolling platformer in wc3. It had keyboard movement and ability usage, jumping, a heart counter in the top left, enemies, powerups... It was kind of janky but it worked surprisingly well considering what I built it in.
God damn, that sounds awesome! Those map editors were seriously impressive for their time, so many cool things you could do with them. I also liked making "campaign" maps but with hero units and harder AI (SC base ai was too easy but you could set it to be harder through the map editor) or those "maze" maps where you have to keep the units you start out with alive through a bunch of different encounters.
Ahh good times!
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o the memories lol.
both of u. I was Pixie_Tails on US east and west and in one of the big mapmaking guilds on east. I look back and think wc3 was the mentally healthiest part of my childhood. My most fun thing was a game like dota but with a huge natural map and a minute at the start for everyone to choose their castle locations. Like you could choose to be on a hill, along a river, etc. Then there were diff biomes to choose your hero from and the hero choices spawned like pkmn and there were rares. and choosing base unit types. then it became like dota where units spawned at castles and attackmoved to other castles. Was epic.My weakness was unit and ability balancing since it didnt interest me so i never did it.
anyway, we thought up and made these as kids. i think that's the coolest thing
That's so cool sounding too! I made so many half baked ideas honestly. Tower defenses, single player campaigns (way too ambitious ones), and so many more. It really taught me a lot about proper game dev honestly.
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God damn, that sounds awesome! Those map editors were seriously impressive for their time, so many cool things you could do with them. I also liked making "campaign" maps but with hero units and harder AI (SC base ai was too easy but you could set it to be harder through the map editor) or those "maze" maps where you have to keep the units you start out with alive through a bunch of different encounters.
Ahh good times!
For real. I had a project to make two full since player campaigns and it was waaaaaay too ambitious. I've always been hopelessly ambitious with game dev stuff and I still am honestly
So fun to hear everyone chiming about doing this back then.
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