FreeOrion

A little quote out of a recent thread

You are kidding me. The whole game is based on realism, otherwise all ships could/would be uberstyle, possibly there were god beings all around and pi would be 29 or something and not 3.14 . In short words, without a certain part of realism the game wouldn't work. I only brought up examples how things are run in our real life that could be "transferred"/implemented 1:1 into the simulation. I didn't say, this is realism, you need to do that. I only said, I got an idea and realism kind of backs me up, so implement it or not but I'd like it to be in. Is that so hard to understand?

Having a look at realism sometimes helps in making the game feels more natural to the user, as for example with the water planets and ideas of people to make them uninhabitable for humans. It would be totally contradicting common sense so people might find it weird, especially when there are ways to circumvent those problems like for example putting such uninhabitable early-type water planets to the inferno class where they actually belong (in star trek we have the G-class planets for that). In any way, getting away from a certain degree of realism here even hurts since players can't be sure if colonization works on certain types of planets and I was asking if that was wanted.

I'm not a newb either . Now let's get back to normal and let me backup my ideas with what I understand about how "my" freeorion universe should work. I'm not saying it should be yours but I'm entitled to present my view of things and if it happens to coincide with what might be called realism, what does that matter?

What this whole discussion should be useful for in the end is to clear up if realism arguments have some sort of benefit worth keeping. In my eyes those would be:

- kind of "familiar" environment for the/all players later on
- some kind of "learning" about physics, science and stuff is involved for the mostly younger player
- could stir more interest since most scifi universes are loved for their scientific debatable correctness so it brings up topics to talk and debate about later on in game forums hence fun for those loving to do that

Goodmorning M4IV,

I for one would like to congratulate you on the depth and clarity with which you explained the physics of colour vision,

I unfortunately agree with the moderators that for the game changing the colour of each star for each race on account of the home world race is overly 'real' for the game, in short, the user uses the colour of the stars to guess at the types of planets found there. . . having the distributions of colour change every time you change your home race would be unnecessarily confusing. In actuality(real life not game) the stars 'colour' would be a numeric description of it's temperature, radius, and mass, but the for the users we simplify it, and since the users are human, (for now) we stick to Human norms from time to time.

That being said, I think the whole thing was handled poorly.

Your right that there are realistic aspects of the game, the realism is necessary for the users to make the game fun. having Pi of 27, would not add fun-ness (unless you like non euclidean geometry [where pi can be whatever you like]).

I agree that people are far to fast to pull the 'it's a realism argument' line; which wouldn't be so much of a problem if it was done with tact. "Shut up your being too realistic" definitely lacks tact.

I should hope we can all learn from the realism fiasco, from the linked thread.

If i might suggest a model for instead of "shut up. . . ", "your probably correct ______ is seen in real life . . . but we don't attach much value to realism only arguments, could you perhaps provide a fun based reason as well?" or something else that acknowledges what they wrote, where they were coming from, and invites them to further defend their idea, IF they can find a game play reason.


Please try to keep the peace :- ) (I acknowledge that I'm not the worlds best at this, but I'm not the worst on the forum either.)

Best wishes all.
Robbie Price

right.

Two funny things that always/commonly occur in realism implementation debates are for once that realism counterarguments are most likely gladly accepted and second realism already led to the current way a feature is implemented.

Let's look at this screenie:



No green stars there, ain't it? Now, why's that? Could be fun to have green stars, green's a nice color after all . Ah, now it comes, green stars aren't realistic. Funny, isn't it.

In that specific case, I'd liked to have a deeper debate about if we should implement it or not. As for being too complicated/confusing, well, I don't know if you actually visualized it. It only exchanges two colors with each race's UI. It doesn't permute wildly all kinds of colors. Only with some race, red is exchanged with green with respect to human race, with others it's purple with green. You see, it's pretty easily implemented. Loading a different set of graphics for each race's UI must be implemented either way since ship and buildings graphics are different for example and so on. It might even look really cool if a race's UI skin is more greenish and stars on the map have green colors too. Makes the player feel like envisioning the world/universe with that race's eyes literally. Also, it might fit the UI better in the overall picture. There are at least a few artistic arguments and benefits with that idea worth discussing in my opinion.

that linked thread ain't helping here. The KISS concept isn't violated either since a clever child probably has problems understanding why there aren't any green stars, not why there are some now. Of course it's the dev's choice what to do but I was never a stickler at being realistic, it's just that I'm taking my source of ideas from what I think is realistic and try to convince others by the fun/coherence/innovation it would make to have, not by its realism. If realism supports those three points in specific cases, then so be it.

For example, having green stars dependant on which race I play, is a quite unique and innovative idea and btw. really easy to implement and does not collide with anything. It's a surplus thing to have, a mere extension of galaxy map appearance with possible eye-candy effects (in combination with unique race UI skins on game screenshots later on and of course the in-game graphical looks) and more.

I can understand that you had probably had large and also unnecessary realism debates and discussions in the past that went on everyone's nerves by time, but I want to make clear that I'm not into those and hate them too. It just does not make me refrain from considering those arguments when they seem fit for various reasons.


Again, the implementation goes as follows: White is green for humans when talking about star color (since sun is green). For other races with other sun color, that color is white while the sun in the earth system for example looks green as it is for that race hence earth system has a green star showing on map and all stars with the same color as the homeworld of that race are shown white and that color is therefore vanished on map. Any difficulties there?

Welcome to the board, I am impressed by your activity and think it is fun to hear you bounce ideas around. Don't get discouraged just realize this one thing.

We are lazy. If it is harder to do something we won't do it

Seriously now, I am relatively new as well but this seems to be the general breakdown or order of operations as you would.

Simplicity will always be considered before realism. If it is harder to make the game realistic and doesn't add anything new or important it won't be done.

With that said, we don't strive for un-realistic things either. For example you green stars, it just means 2 more hours for the graphics team and 2 more hours for the programming team. The pay off wouldn't be worth it; hence no green stars. So they aren't attacking you or your realism arguement, they are attacking the idea of having work that may not be necessary. For example try and make an uncessary unrealistic suggestion and we will tell you that it isn't realistic so we won't put it into the game. It is just our code of saying, I would rather watch a movie with my friends than code that suggestion or draw that graphic.

So again whenever someone tells you not to make a realistic arguement they really are not trying to be abrasive. They are just being "efficient" Keep up your participation, the more the merrier!

One last thing, some aliens won't even see color, I have suggested an alien race that sees sound. So imagine coding that.

I know .

But if it even was 2 hours for the graphic team. Changing colors of a given bitmap is a thing of 2-3 seconds, even nil seconds if you got a color changing filter implemented in your graphic loading class programming-wise, which btw. has nice effects on user-customizability of UI skins and all kinds of graphics if implemented. But that's a whole other idea isn't it.

Programming-wise it's a thing of 2 minutes to quickly exchange graphic file names in your galaxy map function where graphics are loaded. Just another "if race1"-"then load star graphic green for earth class stars and star graphic white for type XY star".

Of course I wouldn't implement things that gain nothing purely for the sake of realism but when I think it further down the line, I get to graphical improvements by this idea like I mentioned above with the UI skins and the looks of the different galaxy map under those.

There has actually been a post about different colored user interface, and I think we are just waiting for someone to design a really slick user interface. So that will have multiple color choices.

Don't quote me on this though.

No, we are waiting for the game to be finished(0.9), before putting any effort in polishing the UI. This includes the possible use of "skins".

So I was right, we are just waiting for someone to make the UI.

(redcap re-reads post)

So I was right, we are waiting till v.9 to make UI in which case their might possibly be skins.

Gee, lets see... here's a game with extremely rapid travel between the 500 or fewer stars of the galaxy, but there is absolutely not travel in "normal space" between stars. All intelligent species eat the same substance known only as "food". Battles occur over an entire solar system, but relativistic effects and inertia is totally ignored. Each empire has instant communication with all ships and planets at all points in the galaxy. There will also be "monsters" that live in the vacuum off space and can travel the star-lanes.
Nope, not based on realism.


This is an entirely different issue. We do try to make things intuitive for the player, i.e. so that his first assumption about how things work are usually right. However realism may be very different from what the player expects. There are lots of space game and general pulp science fiction conventions which we happily use even when they are extremely unrealistic.



You are a newb here. Do you really think a hundred versions of this realism vs non-realism discussion hasn't taken place already? You can't be expected to know the past history of this forum, but you might believe us when we tell you how things work around here instead of insisting you already know, and that it's different than we describe.



There are no green stars but there are purple stars. And black holes are visible.

The fact that green stars (to human perception) don't exist is irrelevant. The fact that green stars to most people would "look funny" since they aren't used to seeing them does however have a little weight. There were enough easily distinguished colors without using green, so we didn't.


EDIT: Bleh, i wasted my time. This link says what needs to be said.

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it's realism when we have round planets in-game, just like robbie said, in a pure fictional universe, even the slightest derivation of pi would make all circles look like weird geometric objects, so we are based on realism for the most part.

Those examples you mentioned are fiction based on real-life science (hence the term science fiction and not the term universe fiction). Realism in those examples is more like technobabble as it ain't in my example with the green stars and water planets.

Btw. I can give you a logically coherent=science-fictionally realistic solution for your problems:

Extremely rapid travel between the 500 or fewer stars of the galaxy, but absolutely no travel in "normal space" between stars can be explained by the existence of dark matter that prevents space bending or warping from taking place (space cannot be bent if no equally large "light matter" mass is available between two waypoints, i.e. the planets and stars).

All intelligent species eat the same substance known only as "food": Now that's easy, just imagine food to be what each race likes. Where's the problem in that? Agriculture can be redesigned the way you want it to be.


Battles occur over an entire solar system, but relativistic effects and inertia is totally ignored: Dampen those out. As long as you don't need uber-energy to do that as you don't since the same amount of energy for accelerating (supplied by the star ship engine) is needed to dampen it's anti-accelerating inertia effects. Quite easy to make this work while keeping game balance logically. (that's btw. the important part about all realism or logical coherence talks. It helps in preventing to unknowingly create uber-style energy sources hence possible game-balance-breaking effects/weapons/whatever plus additionally, it gives you a nice descriptive text of those features for the game's encyclopedia for free so to speak )

Each empire has instant communication with all ships and planets at all points in the galaxy: Communication requires minimum mass and energy transfered hence dark matter problem for considerably larger masses/energies like ships or even weapons(torpedoes) sent at uber-light-speed does not occur and fast travel of that information is possible (even faster than with the "massy" ships).

There will also be "monsters" that live in the vacuum off space and can travel the star-lanes: No problem, who says anything about or against biological engines? No one. It does not violate anything experienced in real-life since all kinds of life-forms including human beings are small little "reactors" producing energy all-day long.

Get to grips before wasting your time . And hiding behind that link won't help you. You still do not understand that it's not so much about realistic "arguments" but about a realistic "description" and "origin of the idea" that I'm talking about. In other words, if I hadn't explained where my green star idea was coming from and simply said: "I want green stars on the map for all non-human races", wouldn't you all call me stupid without that explanation I gave you? Yeah, you would as I would have too probably.

Btw. I bet just a handful of people know about the non-existence of green stars. Who actually has seen that many stars in real via hubble telescopes and how many would have noticed there were no green images among them? Virtually none. So your last argument about people finding that weird fails here. I'd even say they find it weird over time that there aren't any green stars on the map!

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and try within reason to help them understand this project, but as you say it's usually a waste of time, especially when the newcomer is more interesting in proving himself right than actually learning something about this project.

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I have no interest in proving myself and please don't assume everyone wants that. I'm interested in this piece of software the same way I am with the other game I'm making forum moderator for (I have my share of experience and knowledge about those kinds of realism debates as you might have noticed and I found a way that worked perfectly for me, I just hope you see the benefits too). I just cannot (under)stand if people are trying to put me into some (newb) category and reinterpreting my words the way it fits into it like you apparently do for whatever reason. And I'm just defending my views from being thrown away for the wrong reasons just like everyone else does in normal discussions because I want them to be in the game, otherwise I wouldn't say something if I won't. And I want to stress out that tzlaine and you have misinterpreted my realism descriptions as realism arguments. If I ever use them as arguments against another practical solution of a problem or feature or if I really tell page-long descriptive realism stories with no bearing at all, then you can throw that argument/rule against me, but not right now.

A simple, sorry, I misunderstood certain things would have been enough, you know.

eleazar is quite right to say that realism doesn't count at all. We are concerned with realism only as far as it affects fun and the players ability to understand the game. In other words, we care about realism as a means to and end, not as an end itself. We don't change the value of pi not because it would decrease realism, but because it would decrease comprehensibility.

eleazar has given you several examples of unrealistic things in the game. Any scientific explanation after the decision has been made is moot because realism was not taken into account when the decision was made. Your examples of realistic things only proves that we don't care whether or not it's realistic unless it affects comprehensibility. It is absurd to think that you know better than the creative team what their own policy on realism is.

And FYI, races will probably be able to trade units of the mysterious "food" that they all eat for a mysterious resource which will probably be called "money" and is also the same for all races.

r.e. your idea: it was rejected not because you provided a realism argument and background for your proposal, but because you did not provide any fun/gameplay reasons. Please do not pursue the topic of realism any further. As it is, you are not unwelcome here, but as people have pointed out, realism arguments are.

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