Hi names JD Im looking into makeing a program that makes a town grow. Where each charactor in the world is played out not like in sim city where its all just formulas. What I want to do is make it so that the people in the town build on ecah other to make it run. Example: Picture a village say about 200-300 poeple live there. To keep tis village up and running it needs people, the people need food and shelter, to build the shelter they need to get wood, etc... Now the poeple in the town are people like farmers,blacksmiths,merchents etc... Now I''m thinking of making it so that it is basicly all scripted but it would be event driven. I would like to know what others think of this idea, if anyone has ever done something like it, and what other ways to go about doing it? thx P.S the end idea would be a program where you set starting conditions and Vars then the program makes a random world that then will function and grow ( not like grow in its abilty but grow as in poeple grow up and make new homes and build new towns etc so again: Now I''m thinking of making it so that it is basicly all scripted but it would be event driven. I would like to know what others think of this idea, if anyone has ever done something like it, and what other ways to go about doing it? Sorry if Im not makeing scence I have a hard time puting things to words.

Sounds like a really interesting system, but it also sounds really hard to do. Humans cna be every un predictable, so it would be interesting to see how you deal with some of the things, like what information people would share with each other.. Would people kill each other and would people try to stop people..

I think it could be a really interesting experiment.. and I wish you the best of luck

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I had an idea similar to this ages ago that I wanted to ry out but never got the chance :-( It would generate the world / a small population (a few hundred) each of which would in a similar way have a job (hunter / merchant etc...) and a bit like a gold fish bowl you could leave it running and see what happened. But... It had these wizards. Around 5 or so each in a different location. These wizards had various goals (more trees / flood areas / world dominaiton). As well as a few random animals wandering. I thought it might be cool to see how these characters try to complete their goals with this growing evolving world going on. Not sure exactly what the player would do tho'' :-)

Good luck with your idea!

What you are suggesting is almost a Sims meets Sim City sort of thing. I have thought of the approach of having each person be an autonomous agent that will perceive the state of the town, choose careers based on supply/demand and his personal skills, sell his goods, buy necessities, socialize with others, form families, etc.

Yes, this would be a large project. Yes, it would be a cast iron biatch to pull off. Having that many animats in play at once with that complex of a world is a pain in the ass to debug and balance.

Dave Mark - President and Lead Designer
Intrinsic Algorithm - "Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

took the onion design principle, start with a very simple world, with agent with simple behaviour, then run and test and then add more element to complexify the model, and in no time you will have something which roll and rule, trying to make it at once, may lead you to headache

come first with very simple simulation

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I started something like this. Build a random world and a bunch of little people with their own AI''s who build up cities and go to war with each other.

Hmm I need to get back to work on this project ( or more accurately start from scratch, since my hard drive got erased sometime afterwards).

Pretty cool concept, a living virutal world. I''m sure we''ve all dreamed of something like this. Implementation would be very diffuclt. Anyone intrested in an open sourced project ?

-ddn

Sounds similar to Settlers to me. You might want to check it out

I would suggest differently weighed neural networks and/or fuzzy logic to simulate different personalities as well as when it comes to determining influence of different events on different personalities.
Looks to me like it''s going to be a looooong project!

In the Sims, each character has needs, that slowly decline (or quickly, depending on activity :-)

Each object advertizes what needs it can provide for, within some radius.

Sims will determine what is their worst need right now, and go to the object within range which provides the best for that need. Every so often, check if other needs are more important. Repeat.

Your system would have to be a little smarter than The Sims, though, as you''d need to deal with meta-needs such as "provide food" in addition to "consume food."

You can build an entire "emergent system" on simple rules like this. Perhaps tune it like an economy; the more people want to eat for limited food, the more money there is in making food, and thus the more people will want to make food.