Dev Diary: Deep Simulation
Hi! Lucas here.
This will be another more general dev diary.
I am currently making a lot of fast iterating on the design of Historia Realis, and as such I don’t want to ‘commit’ to those design decisions by writing about them. It somehow feels like I would be obligated to stick to a design if I share it on a dev diary, even though this is not really the case, as games change a lot, especially these days with patches and updates. However, these dev diaries are basically the only way for you to know more about how the game works, and I wouldn’t want to mislead you by saying something only to change it later.
One solution might be to write ‘design exploration’ dev diaries where I make it clear that what I’m talking about might change. I’ll try that sometime and see how it goes.
For today, though, let’s talk about the next design pillar of Historia Realis. There are 3:
Pillars
Last time I covered Emergent Stories. Today is Deep Simulation day!
Deep Simulation
These are two words that I find hard to explain if I try. That said, you know
exactly what I mean when I say “deep simulation”, and so it is at my own peril that I will now try to explain the concept, like trying to explain a joke. We’ll see if it’s still funny by the end.
Depth vs Complexity
This is a common discussion when talking about depth. I’ve seen complexity described as
the price you pay for getting depth. Generally, we want complexity as low as possible and depth as high as possible. This would mean that there’s a third ingredient to this formula, since they’re not an exact correlation.
So what’s the element that turns a little complexity into a lot of depth?
That’s a much harder question than it seems. I believe it’s
good game design, the elusive Holy Grail. And that's a whole other thing! I don’t believe it’s worth it trying to elaborate on how to achieve that here. Theories and generalities won’t help; one can only make a good game in practice.
Stay tuned for upcoming dev diaries where I talk more about specific design implementations! I'm sure there's a Follow button somewhere.
Yes, the Romans did their exercise in the Campus Martius either naked or wearing very little!
Simulation vs Player-Centrism
To me, a simulation game has two necessary elements:
- The representation of some aspect of reality.
- Interactions between elements: the representation is systemic.
Of course, you might argue that
all games have those things. I would agree. It’s just a matter of intensity. To the degree that a game tries to be
more of a representation of some aspect of reality, it is
more of a simulation. And, to the degree that a game has
more interactions between elements (that is, it is more systemic), it is also
more of a simulation.
There are also more static, player-centric games which are still called ‘Simulations’: flight, driving and farming simulators, ‘life sims’, ‘immersive sims’ and so on. These games try to simulate an experiece from one point of view only, that of the player. The result is that, while the player might still get a very fun experience, NPCs feel very flat.
NPC Agency
There is a critical element missing from those games: multiple sources of input. In them, the player is the only one pushing the buttons, making changes to the state of the game. The kind of simulation I like is one where even if the player is static, you still get interesting results. You could watch the simulation play out and still feel surprised, curious and engaged.
However, like many things in games, this is illusory. In a single-player game, there can be no
real multiple sources of input. Luckily, we don’t need real ones. Fake ones will do: NPCs. They’re actually just yet another piece of the simulation, responding as required by the rules of the simulation. But the player’s human brain
sees them as agents, as sources of input. In reality, they're just more simulation, more code, more algorithms.
But we give them life. We, as humans, can't help but look at characters in a simulation as agents. It's through this beautiful illusion that we can get immersion and personification. There's nothing special about Historia Realis in this sense, though — all games with NPC agents share this same illusion.
What I'm trying to do to make Historia Realis stand out from other games is to strengthen that illusion. To make NPCs more and more believable as 'independent' agents, even though that is an impossibility. But I believe that the player's mind is a magical place, if you feed their thoughts right. It's not so much about having 'good AI' (whatever that means) as much as creating the conditions for personification to happen.
One design choice that reinforces this is allowing NPCs to do everything the player can do.
Personification of NPCs
Historia Realis simulates people more than anything. Their outer and inner conflicts, how they relate to others and themselves, how they grow and change. For example:
- When a character opposes you in an action (see Action System), and makes you fail, it's only natural to blame them. The game recognizes this human tendency mechanically and gives you a Grudge with the NPC. More on Grudges and Favors in a future diary!
- Similarly, when they help you achieve something, you might feel grateful! And the game systematizes this too, making you owe them a Favor.
- Characters act according to their traits, feelings, memories, etc. This gives them a consistency that makes them seem like agents or people. And, when they act contrary to those inner aspects, this is not only surprising, but recognized by the game itself, with mechanical consequences.
There is a lot more I could talk about, but I will leave it for next time.
Screenshots
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