brainstorm thread for a game
right so here's a game for simulating a large scale battle. the key is to make the rules of the game as simple as possible, but also allow for complex emergent strategies/behaviors.
the board: a 1024 by 1024 square where each cell is a discrete position.
the game state: consists of several fields over the board (by field, i mean a number or a vector at each board cell)
density field: how much of each player's troops are on each cell
facing field: which way each player's troops are facing on each cell
a move consists of two fields:
movement field: how much the troops on each cell move (they can only move in the direction they are facing)
rotation field: how much the troops on each cell rotate
the mechanics are also pretty simple:
how much damage each cell recieves deals out is determined by only two things
1. how many soldiers are on that cell
2. the cohesion, which is inversely related to the variance in the facing field of a surrounding (say 5x5) neighborhood of cells
how much damage each cell recieves is then compute by summing over the damage dealt by neighboring enemies, with some multipliers such as the angle of attack, and number of troops in each cell
and that's about it, so the entire game can be summed up by about 4 different variables and 2 mechanical rules
now you are probably thinking that each move consists of something like 3*1024^2 > 3 million numbers, and you'd be right. therefore, people will be encouraged to come up with AI to play the game