This is crazy complex. My advice is to study up on artificial life, and then try to use that to build the world. If you manually construct the map and place the objects, there's little chance that you'll put the forest where a forest can be sustained, unless you're the world's greatest ecologist. Best to define the species and their properties, and then tweak and balance until the world lasts for a few thousand game years. Then you can get to work on cities. A properly modelled world could work a bit like the Matrix, and could be sustainable. Realize, though, that you won't be building a mere game, you'll be building a world.

In all honesty, I can't imagine this working without an absolutely unprecedented amount of research. There are some things that aren't done in video games because the peple that know how to do them don't make video games. This is one of the things that doesn't appear in video games because it simply can't be done by anyone currently alive. Get a team of geologists, meteorologists, botanists, biologists, ecologists and astronomers together, and call the first few years of work on this game "scholarly research". Then steal the software, and build your game on that. Heck, if you play your cards right, you could get a fantastic game and a handful of Nobel Prizes out of the bargain.

Actually modelling so deep a world is an arrogant goal. Start off by creating the illusion of the world you describe. Instead of calculating falling seeds, have a probability of a tree sprouting within a certain range of an existing tree. Instead of tracking the motions and behaviors of every deer and fox, have population densities that determine the probability of encountering one in a given region. Game design is about what the player sees. Everything else is just wasted CPU time. 3D engines forget about polygons when they aren't on-screen. Do the same with the changes in the world.

[edited by - Iron Chef Carnage on May 12, 2003 8:56:51 PM]

if its its own os, isn''t dx out?, that requires windows i thought....

I''m afraid this isn''t possible, really. Whip out a calculator, do some math, and figure out how much memory and disk space it would take to store all of this. Also, you can''t make a new OS if you''re going to use DirectX.

On top of this, get some actual programming experience. The reason that you can''t just send an idea to a company is that most people have no clue what actually goes into games. This goal is much to ambitious for just about anyone short of a team of highly funded ecologists. It''s just not feasable, especially for someone asking how to change variables in a program.

x box uses direct x and does not have windows so no i dont needed windows

you now joe-bob I can do what I want just because you cant do it dont mean some one elsa can not.

by the way I build robots for a hobby so you know I do know A thing or to about hardware and AI

and i think i read somewehre that xbox ran a hacked win ME or osmething, its from microsoft im sure it has either some ultra hacked windows or an ultra hacked version of direct x

edit::
how owuld we know that, u just told us, plus what kind of robots do u build, ones with basic stamp, beam neuro nets, hacked cell phones, ones interfaced straight to ur worldsgreatestcandoevertyhign computer? ahah and how much of that hardware will be relavent to your game programming needs?

[edited by - honayboyz on May 12, 2003 9:31:52 PM]

Don''t get defensive, kingpinzs. You''ll never win this argument with words. Let''s see some results: A design document, a chunk of code, even some concept art would go a long way toward shutting the mouths of your detractors. Don''t say it can be done, prove it can be done. You are in a position that has been held by men who are remembered as heroes of the human race. Avogadro, Columbus, Copernicus, they were all ridiculed and abused by their contemporaries, but history gives them the credit they deserve. Except maybe Columbus. He''s getting some flak for abusing the crap out of the natives.

Of course, they were all incredible geniuses with decades of training and study under their belts. Except maybe Columbus, he was kind of a goon. But he has his own day, and no small number of cities named after him. Anyone here take Avogadro day off? Didn''t think so. I''m not even sure I spelled his name right.

Ok people I am not making it an exact sience I am doing it for fun so if the fish are swimming in the air it is not going to matter. A game is for fun not for life or death. so when I make the world it will be the way i see the world and not the way every one elsa sees it.

Do you even know how neural networks work? If you do can you explain them to me