Global Warming and Environmental Disasters

It's happening now, so why can't it happen in-game? Discussion on how this could be implemented and if it should. I'd say more, but it's bedtime. o.0
-Waap.

Waap wrote:

It's happening now, so why can't it happen in-game? Discussion on how this could be implemented and if it should. I'd say more, but it's bedtime. o.0
-Waap.

Well as far as global warming goes, we just have to program in CO2's effects on the atmosphere, and physics should take care of the rest.

Atmospheric gas levels can be easily coded. Disasters can happen pretty much randomly, but earthquakes are going to happen on the fault lines between plates and such. Earthquake by the sea riggers tsunami, etc.

and when 2 plates colide magma gets pushed up the surface and cools, forming a volcano which in the future could eru- wait is waap talking about natural disasters or disasters caused by us (ie: that big oil spill that happened recently)?

I beleive she is talking about natural disasters, which woukd really just be controlled by physics.



"Man"-made disasters will be a different matter entirely.

InvaderZim wrote:

I beleive she is talking about natural disasters, which woukd really just be controlled by physics.



"Man"-made disasters will be a different matter entirely.

well then why did she call it environmental disasters anyway?
well it doesn't matter, we got are general idea.

I was thinking about environmental disasters with pollution and such. Natural disasters are also important for the game, but that's not the topic.
Would this sort of thing really be that easy to code(For a coder)? I'd never expect that, but hey, I couldn't get my head around the first two paragraphs of an introduction page of a coding manual. I was just like
-Waap.

Waap wrote:

I was thinking about environmental disasters with pollution and such. Natural disasters are also important for the game, but that's not the topic.
Would this sort of thing really be that easy to code(For a coder)? I'd never expect that, but hey, I couldn't get my head around the first two paragraphs of an introduction page of a coding manual. I was just like
-Waap.

i figured that was it. though i have no clue how it will be put in game since you don't see things make mistakes in games.

We could program a bit of chemistry into the game in the case of environmental disasters. Hey Bashi, how difficult would that be?

I think, global warming would basically be simulated by raising the water level at the same rate that ice formations 'shrink'. The area around the sun might gain a brighter, warmer (red) tint, even if the sky was a cool (blue, green, purple, etc.) color, giving off the appearance of a hotter atmosphere and the average tempurature would be recorded as higher, if your species has discovered thermometers which would require mercury.

Which reminds me, we're going to have to be able to simulate liquids accurately in fairly large portions (I.E. a small pond or bathtub) without dropping framerates by the dozen in order to do this and many other things in-game and, not being a programmer, I don't know how we can do that.

Poisson wrote:

We could program a bit of chemistry into the game in the case of environmental disasters. Hey Bashi, how difficult would that be?

You need to be more specific.

Bashinerox wrote:

Poisson wrote:

We could program a bit of chemistry into the game in the case of environmental disasters. Hey Bashi, how difficult would that be?

You need to be more specific.

How in difficult would it be to give different properties to different elements and compounds?
Example: Carbon dioxide
Greenhouse gas
Biproduct of respiration in O2 atmosphere
Not reactive
Density: (whatever the density is)
Etc.

Poisson wrote:

Bashinerox wrote:

Poisson wrote:

We could program a bit of chemistry into the game in the case of environmental disasters. Hey Bashi, how difficult would that be?

You need to be more specific.

How in difficult would it be to give different properties to different elements and compounds?
Example: Carbon dioxide
Greenhouse gas
Biproduct of respiration in O2 atmosphere
Not reactive
Density: (whatever the density is)
Etc.

well thats the global warming. but how exactly do you program oil spills and other environmental disasters since that would have to be on accident. do things ever happen on accident in gameplay? i don't think its ever been done.

Accidents don't exist, remember that.
I think we should take a simpler approach to all of this and bypass the chemistry. For instance for global warming, we need only assign "greenhouse gases" as byproducts of certain things that are happening. For every coal burning power plant, you would have an output of X greenhouse gases, as well as other factories, cars, machines, etc. the outputs are all added together and that is taken into account. Let's say plants take Y amount of greenhouse gases out of the air, and Z is taken in by oceans and other things. That leaves X-Y-Z amount of greenhouse gases still released into the atmosphere. That amount will be "A" Now depending on how large this is, this may or may not have a direct effect on the climate at a certain time, but as long as "A" is not taken in by anything, it'll stay up there.

That may seem complicated or confusing, but it's a lot easier than having the computer figure out how the chemicals actually work together.

global warming is a natural process and i don't consider it as a part from environmental disasters. those are not caused on purpose and are do to mistakes, global warming is the easier part, causing oil spills to happen within the game without the aid of a player is seemingly difficult as computer creatures don't make mistakes in any other program.

koiboi59 wrote:

global warming is a natural process and i don't consider it as a part from environmental disasters. those are not caused on purpose and are do to mistakes, global warming is the easier part, causing oil spills to happen within the game without the aid of a player is seemingly difficult as computer creatures don't make mistakes in any other program.

"Mistakes" is a bad word for it. If we program the culture right, and the game is chaotic enough, it will be odd to see things like that NOT happening.

~sciocont wrote:

koiboi59 wrote:

global warming is a natural process and i don't consider it as a part from environmental disasters. those are not caused on purpose and are do to mistakes, global warming is the easier part, causing oil spills to happen within the game without the aid of a player is seemingly difficult as computer creatures don't make mistakes in any other program.

"Mistakes" is a bad word for it. If we program the culture right, and the game is chaotic enough, it will be odd to see things like that NOT happening.

well how exactly is that going to be programmed? it sounds like it would be crazy hard.

koiboi59 wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

koiboi59 wrote:

global warming is a natural process and i don't consider it as a part from environmental disasters. those are not caused on purpose and are do to mistakes, global warming is the easier part, causing oil spills to happen within the game without the aid of a player is seemingly difficult as computer creatures don't make mistakes in any other program.

"Mistakes" is a bad word for it. If we program the culture right, and the game is chaotic enough, it will be odd to see things like that NOT happening.

well how exactly is that going to be programmed? it sounds like it would be crazy hard.

Because of all of the different things going on in the game, it will be a pretty complex environment, and we can probably program a margin of error into a population's culture, which will lead to an even more chaotic and dangerous environment because things will be done randomly within a given set of parameters. For instance, If someone is supposed to drive a car to someplace and be there in thirty minutes, and their margin of error is 10%, they could get there anywhere in between 27 and 33 minutes. That kind of thing won't be happening individually in the game, it's just an example, but you can see how little things would add up to cause huge disasters.

~sciocont wrote:

koiboi59 wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

koiboi59 wrote:

global warming is a natural process and i don't consider it as a part from environmental disasters. those are not caused on purpose and are do to mistakes, global warming is the easier part, causing oil spills to happen within the game without the aid of a player is seemingly difficult as computer creatures don't make mistakes in any other program.

"Mistakes" is a bad word for it. If we program the culture right, and the game is chaotic enough, it will be odd to see things like that NOT happening.

well how exactly is that going to be programmed? it sounds like it would be crazy hard.

Because of all of the different things going on in the game, it will be a pretty complex environment, and we can probably program a margin of error into a population's culture, which will lead to an even more chaotic and dangerous environment because things will be done randomly within a given set of parameters. For instance, If someone is supposed to drive a car to someplace and be there in thirty minutes, and their margin of error is 10%, they could get there anywhere in between 27 and 33 minutes. That kind of thing won't be happening individually in the game, it's just an example, but you can see how little things would add up to cause huge disasters.

i guess you got a point there.

~sciocont wrote:

Accidents don't exist, remember that.
I think we should take a simpler approach to all of this and bypass the chemistry. For instance for global warming, we need only assign "greenhouse gases" as byproducts of certain things that are happening. For every coal burning power plant, you would have an output of X greenhouse gases, as well as other factories, cars, machines, etc. the outputs are all added together and that is taken into account. Let's say plants take Y amount of greenhouse gases out of the air, and Z is taken in by oceans and other things. That leaves X-Y-Z amount of greenhouse gases still released into the atmosphere. That amount will be "A" Now depending on how large this is, this may or may not have a direct effect on the climate at a certain time, but as long as "A" is not taken in by anything, it'll stay up there.

That may seem complicated or confusing, but it's a lot easier than having the computer figure out how the chemicals actually work together.

I'm thinking about exposing this type of capability to scripts.
See, I'm a programmer, not a biologist, meteorologist or whatever.
Therefore, much of the algorithms the game will need, I will apply as scripts for the game to run.

In this case, it will be

class planet
{
std::list<string>planetscripts
int RunPlanetScripts()
}

The game runs RunPlanetScripts each tick, amd that runs each planet script in sequence.

Then we will have a special tool called the script manager that we use to plug various scripts in and out of the game during development.
That, during the mid stages of development, we can add more people to the team, who will come up with and tweak different scripts while Me, papergrape, and the other programmers continue to extent the engine.


It is a standoff between

Lua:
http://www.lua.org/

And FalconPL:
http://www.falconpl.org/


Basically, when you embed a scripting language into a program, you expose functions and variables to the program, and an executed script can work with those functions and variables.

So, in the planet object, i will include various variables (and add any requested variables) and expose them to the scripting language, and move any frequently used pieces of code (such as sin/cos/tan) from the scripting side to the engine in order to speed things up a bit.

Embedding Lua is the first priority after i get the State Manager (possible chaning its name to the module manager) up and running.

I'm glad that made sense to both of us Bashi.

Sorry for wanting to grab so much attention, but you did hear what I said about simulating liquids on page 1, right?

Does it deserve its own thread?

Lua, woohoo! Finally something I can code in!

Noitulove wrote:

I think, global warming would basically be simulated by raising the water level at the same rate that ice formations 'shrink'. The area around the sun might gain a brighter, warmer (red) tint, even if the sky was a cool (blue, green, purple, etc.) color, giving off the appearance of a hotter atmosphere and the average tempurature would be recorded as higher, if your species has discovered thermometers which would require mercury.

Which reminds me, we're going to have to be able to simulate liquids accurately in fairly large portions (I.E. a small pond or bathtub) without dropping framerates by the dozen in order to do this and many other things in-game and, not being a programmer, I don't know how we can do that.

I remember seeing a video of a physics engine that could accurately simulate the motions of liquids, but i think it's too complex/expensive for us to use.

~sciocont wrote:

Noitulove wrote:

I think, global warming would basically be simulated by raising the water level at the same rate that ice formations 'shrink'. The area around the sun might gain a brighter, warmer (red) tint, even if the sky was a cool (blue, green, purple, etc.) color, giving off the appearance of a hotter atmosphere and the average tempurature would be recorded as higher, if your species has discovered thermometers which would require mercury.

Which reminds me, we're going to have to be able to simulate liquids accurately in fairly large portions (I.E. a small pond or bathtub) without dropping framerates by the dozen in order to do this and many other things in-game and, not being a programmer, I don't know how we can do that.

I remember seeing a video of a physics engine that could accurately simulate the motions of liquids, but i think it's too complex/expensive for us to use.

Spore had a prototype on their site that accurately allowed water physics. Of course, they never put that prototype to good use so whatever. Anyway, we could probably get a good idea of what it takes to get a liquid physics engine running.