Do you tend to build Games or Simulations?

Note that these two aspects are orthogonal and in theory should be placed as a G and S axis on graph paper.

For me the difference is...

Game: Focuses on the player, and what they can see and do at that moment in time. Or nothing in the world exists Until the player can see or interact with it.

Pros: Optimised for fun, all computing resources focused on fun experience.
Cons: Tend towards fixed structures and patterns that require lots of design.​

Simulation: Some level of world is 'active'* at all times, regardless of where the player/view is and what they do.

Pros: Potential for emergent systems to provide a fun experience for the player.
Cons: Can use up a lot of computing resources that can make optimisation harder.
​

* Could be turn based or run to a different time scale to the player.

Q1: So do you tend towards making Games or Simulations?
Q2: What games/sims do you hold up as great examples?

I think I tend towards simulations, there is something about building up a set of rules to run a world and seeing if emergent behaviour can be generated or simulating some aspect of the real world.

Q3: Or have you considered a problem that would be complex to solve analytically, yet could be simulated in Unity?

I always thought the Zombie movie scenario wasn't very realistic, get modern troops with modern weapons lined up against any size of horde and I think the horde would lose.

My thinking is the Zombies are acting out Roman era march to melee combat tactics against modern weapons and tactics.

I even wrote a simple Unity sim/squad FPS to test the theory...

https://arowx.itch.io/hold-the-line

 

I think the industry is going more in the Simulation direction for any game that has moderate scope and could take advantage that type of design.

UnityECS is coming soon and it's basically geared to support designing simulation type data structures. Tons of games already use a simulation style approach to their architecture - especially RTS and building games or really anything with advanced AI. I think in a few years it's going to start becoming a lot more common to see simulation type structure in games and the lines are going to blur. It's not so much about making real life simulation, but running a simulation in the application for whatever applies.

If you haven't already looked into how to do this, start now!

 

Mostly games, since I happen to be hired for that type of thing more often.

 

I think both has place in the industry, but with the rising popularity of the open world games (or at least free roaming ones) the weight is moving towards the simulation somewhat.
I personally don't think it is a bad thing, I really like emergent things, which can be used on fun ways. And personally I don't like the cut scenes. At all (I only hate the QTEs much more).
These are the opposite ends on the same line in my book.

 

Interesting question. I clicked thinking that you meant Simulation like something that might be used in city planning to improve traffic congestion, which is something that Unity might actually be good at.

The first game I published is a "game", but my current project is a simulation as well as all other projects I have planned for afterwards. Most of my favorite games would qualify as simulations (Eve Online, Europa Universalis IV, Crusader Kings II, Civiilization series, even PUBG). Most large multiplayer games would actually qualify as simulations under this definition, as well as most 4X or grand strategy games.

It is interesting that desktop platform is really where the simulations are most concentrated. Consoles would seem to have a good mix, and mobile platforms are heavily in the "game" category. (this all based on my completely non-scientific survey of my own opinion )

 

I don't see games and simulations as orthogonal to eachother. Maybe at the extremes. For my game, I am tending toward a very specific form of simulation. Namely, a simulation that is stripped of everything that doesn't serve the player experience. I'll call it a semi-simulation.

Not to get too philosophical, but in my opinion semi-simulations of reality are the most constructive, positive and substantial space that a game can occupy in the life of a player. I think that, like stories, games are most powerful when they serve to bring to the players attention some aspect of reality in a dramatised and simplified way. Unlike stories however, a semi-simulation can also give the opportunity to interact with that reality, via a set of rules driven by a logic that is not completely subjective and which therefore can give a player something substantial to think about and take away from the experience.

The other thing is that I think, funnily enough, it's much easier to create a game that's a semi-simulation. Any formula that can produce a consistently useful output is pretty much a simulation of something, and so games that tend toward simulation tend to be easier to 'grow' from a small input using formulas. Procedurally and semi-procedurally generated games are much easier to create, and break down less, when the parameter space of the formulas are small, which can mean that they are more likely to be logically driven and you might say are more simulatory in nature.

The problem of course is that when you simulate something, it can often be very boring compared to a hand-crafted pleasure experience. That's why I go with the idea of a semi-simulation - something where you take reality, simplify it and add sugar - but always using some kind of reality as the starting point and then asking yourself "what do I need to do to make this fun and satisfying".

 

I have always liked the simulation take on shooters like early Rainbow Six, Operation Flashpoint etc. So it was a no brainer that our game wen the sim route

edit: We simulate operating the weapon as close as we can, bullet drop, damage, range etc are strictly balanced for fun game play

edit2: ops read your post too quickly. But we are still a sim, we simulate the weapons like the bolt action is actually worked on and the bullet is indexed from magazine to the chamber etc

 

simulation. It's far more interesting to me personally to simulate certain behaviors as closely as I can than to try to create "fun gameplay". Not that I've never made any "games" (I've made a few) but I tend to mostly lean towards simulation.

I was able to start my business ages ago from profit generated by working on train and flight sims (with a heavy focus on weather simulation). That lead (naturally, hah!) to simulating sex in an effort to evoke certain, uhm, responses from players. Human simulation and emotional/physical response has always been an interest of mine. Androids, replicants, mannequins, etc. Super cool.

Anyway, yeah, simulation. It's just the thing I like to do.

 

This is an interesting question. For me it's both, but mostly simulation. Part of it may be that I prefer simulations, but I'm not completely sure about that. I think a significant part of it is something Billy4184 alludes to: it's easier to build a simulation, in a sense, that to author lots of meaningful content.

I don't have buckets of cash to pay people, or a great deal of proficiency in modelling or stuff like that. But building the code for simulations is fairly trivial, and the main difficulty is getting something that responds to input in interesting ways that the player enjoys interacting with. More of a design problem than anything.

 

Unless it's explicitly intended for non-entertainment purposes, there's no point to classifying something a simulator. The only thing it really means is that there is a large portion of the game logic that isn't directly and immediately related to the player's interaction. Like, any change to the game state that isn't directly caused by the player is simulation, so what's the point of delineating whether it's a game or simulation?

 

Games. Because I don't know how to make a simulation interesting enough. And if you make a simulation people will just ask for a "game mode" anyway.

Well, I take that back. I do make little simulations. But just for fun.

 

Real simulation games try to simulate the reality. Ever played a combat flight simulation and a combat flight game?

Games use ridiculous flight “simulations“ and the controls are in “easy mode“. As a result n00bs who try a simulation game usually complain about how S***ty the game is because the flight controls does not work correctly.

In the few good multiplayer sims you might experience long flights (like 2 hours) as an fighter escort to protect bombers. This is absolutely boring for most people because except flying zick zack above your buddies while keeping an eye on the temperature of your engine and listen to the radio and watch out for enemy aircraft nothing will happen most of the time and then after a long time the enemy appears and it just takes a few minutes till the action is over. Who survived tries to make it home, low on fuel and possibly damaged.
But there are people who love this because it is absolutely thrilling. When playing a real sim you will always feel adrenalin when you are on someones 6, because it takes a long time to finally come to this moment.

People playing simulations are often older (mid 30s to late 50s). And they are patient, it is part of the game style they love. For my subsim I have customers asking me to add celestial navigation. There are people who play those games in real time over many weeks (although the games have time compression, they don’t use it) they run it on a dedicated machine and submerge when they go to work.

One thing you will notice is that people don’t care about eye candy when it comes to simulations, it is nice to have but most important is the quality of the simulation itself. Of course those people also sometimes play normal games and have fun with it, but it is like a gourmet who was hungry and bought a snickers.

 

The ideal goal of a flight simulator is to have your skills and experience fully transferable to the real counterparts. They serve a utility beyond "I wanna play with in the whirly-bird."

A game can simulate and model something in detail, but the line I'm drawing is that a simulation builds skills that are transferable to reality. The "realism" of it doesn't matter. Things like the depth of the control scheme or the scale of play (both spacial and temporal) are inconsequential when they are designed the same, built the same, and ultimately played the same.

 

That is just your opinion.

Where does that start?

And who decides that a simulation has to build skills that are transferable to reality? You could create a simulator of something that does not exist or something you could never use in real life. By definition a simulator simulates something – that’s all.

In my game I simulate the ballast tanks of the submarine based on a scientific paper about computer controlled ballast tanks. Even details like if the velocity of the air at the nozzle of the pressurized air flasks is subsonic or supersonic are taken into account. The other parts of the simulation got the same amount of love. When it comes to acceleration, turning etc. the (tactical relevant) behavior of the boat matches to the real world test results in all situations by at least 90%. (without any attempt to tweak the settings. It works just by entering the correct data of the vessel)

It clearly is a simulation but it will be used for a simple purpose: having fun
If I would take the same code to use it for a simulation for training then it would be “serious“ but it still would be the same simulation.

 

A game is a simulation? .... Any kind of game is a simulation if it uses a physics system and colliders to simulation bumping into objects and walls.

 

My game has many simulations within it.

 

When you simulate an arcade game in a 3rd person shooter then you clearly have a full scale simulator inside your game which “builds skills that are transferable to reality“.

 

Then all games are simulations since it's inevitable that their ruleset matches to something else. Hell, there's probably no equation out there that can't be used to model something. So what's the point of delineating between game and simulator again?

 

Of course they are, at least if they simulate something. But not all games simulate something. Pac-Man for example does not and a (analogue) pinball machine does not too
The difference between simple games (that simulate something badly) and simulation (games) is that the CORE ELEMENT of the latter is to try to simulate things correctly. Hence you call the first ones games and the other ones simulations.

 

There is none.... A game is inherently a simulation. It is built upon rules to simulate inputs and outputs which is the foundation of any simulation.

Take what im working on. It is both a "game" and a "simulation".

It's going to be a game anyway, for now im prototyping all of the basic mechanics to prove a "star citizen" style game is possible. Only similiar to star citizen in the fact that you can walk on moving ships and seamlessly transition to other ships. This is more of a 4x strategy game/ fleet combat simulator in the works.

 

Of course they simulate something lol.... They simulate a pacman moving around in a maze with a goal to avoid ghosts and what not. It is definitely a simulation.

 

Simulation:
noun
1.
imitation or enactment, as of something anticipated or in testing.
2.
the act or process of pretending; feigning.
3.
an assumption or imitation of a particular appearance or form; counterfeit; sham.
4.
Psychiatry. a conscious attempt to feign some mental or physical disorder to escape punishment or to gain a desired objective.
5.
the representation of the behavior or characteristics of one system through the use of another system, especially a computer program designed for the purpose.

"the representation of the behavior or characteristics of one system through the use of another system, especially a computer program designed for the purpose."

this states all computerized video games are simulations. I can use this definition to make the argument that pac man and pinball even 2d are in fact simulations.

A board game like "risk" or "Monopoly" is not a simulation.

 

No, it does not simulate something. Pac-Man is as real like a pinball machine is. It is a moving bunch of pixels on a screen, it wasn’t existent before the game. It is like tetris, which is not a simulation too.

 

Being "Realistic" has nothing to do with whether something is defined as a simulation or not.

Yes Pac Man was one of the first video game simulations. Telling you, read the definition of simulation. Technically even a board game can be considered a simulation. Since you are pretending to practice real-estate management in monopoly, you are "pretending" to do so.. even though it is not realistic, does not make it not a simulation according to the definition.

"the representation of the behavior or characteristics of one system through the use of another system, especially a computer program designed for the purpose."

Pac Man is a computer program, designed with a programming language for the purpose of simulating a maze and the ability to navigate it with simple inputs.

 

Now here's the kicker: what does it matter in play? What does it matter to a player that one game has a more accurate model of something to it?

Twenty years ago you could have gotten away with saying that simulators were deeper games with more complexity, but any major game today is made up of thousands of moving parts with dozens of interwoven systems that end up contributing to a significantly more enriched play experience. No game is simple anymore, and few are devoid of any system that doesn't rely on realism (or at least common sensibilities) to be intuitive.

These days the simulation genre goes from Dwarf Fortress to Euro Truck Sim, so what value is there in calling anything a simulation?

 

Correct, but it can’t be a simulation if it doesn’t simulate anything. Pac-Man is the real thing. Just because it uses a 2D maze does not mean it simulates something.

 

Well, it is obvious that you have no experience with the simulation scene at all.

 

Oh yes it does.

It simulates
A:
Pathfinding System (one of the first ever invented)

B: Maze

C: Character controller moving on a path

D: Sound effects when you hit a ghost and die..

E: Death.. Game Over Man...

Not sure if you know this but im building an extremely complex simulation... right now.... probably one of the most complex simulations you can build in a video game engine.

Simulated fully functional star ships with full interiors, the ability to traverse a galaxy, the ability to seamless transition off the ship via on-board craft and escape pods. The ability to land on other vessles seamlessly and get out and walk around on them from the first person perspective and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

None of this is a simulation:

A: It USES a pathfinding system. (it does not simulate it. It is a real pathfinding system)
B: It USES a 2D Maze (it does not simulate it. It is a real 2D maze)
C: It USES a character controller to move the Pac-Man on the possible routes. It does not simulate it. Because it does not simulate somethign which was existent before.
D: It plays real sound effects (it uses real synthesizer sounds which were created for Pac-Man, not samples or other recordings which are used to simulate real sounds). It is not a simulation just because the sound plays when you hit a ghost. It is a rule. Is it a simulation when you hoot the car horn, just because it is artificial?

This is the only simulation:

E: Death

It is like when missing a ball in a pinball game, then the ball ist “lost“ (which is not true, it is still there, this is just the rule). So this does not count as a real simulation. Unless you think pinball is a simulation. But then Tennis and any other "real“ game would be a simulation too because of the set of rules.


But games like Donkey Kong are simulations.

 

I could list examples, but I doubt you would know about them since they would have come after 1999.

 

Uses? That fits within the definition of "simulation" unless you are arguing with the "dictionaries" definition of "simulation".
Again no where in the definition does it say something has to be *real or *realistic to be considered a simulation.

Anything that "uses" a pathfinding system IS* a simulation according to the definition of what a simulation IS.

I think you just need to accept that Pac-Man is a simulation. It may not be the most realistic simulation, but it sure was a fun one for it's time. I'm sure countless people pretended to be the pac man back in the day running for their lives. It was easy to suspend disbelief back before the days of the Atari and all of our minds were warped with current tech.

 

As you wrote: “the representation of the behavior or characteristics of one system through the use of another system“

Pac-Man has no real world counterpart, the entire game is the real thing. It is the original system, just because it runs on a computer does not change this fact. If Pac-Man would be a horse and the ghosts would be cowboys then it would be a simulation. It is a super tiny but important difference.

It has to be at least a simulation on purpose. I said: “The difference between simple games (that simulate something badly) and simulation (games) is that the CORE ELEMENT of the latter is to try to simulate things correctly. Hence you call the first ones games and the other ones simulations.“

Nonsense. It is a solution for a given problem. You think it is simulating the movement of something through a maze.
Is a self steering machine a simulation? Possibly, but not always.

Were aqueducts simulation of rivers? Is the modern water suppy a simulation of rivers? No. How would a primitive simulation of rivers look like? Possibly like aqueducts, uups. The freely chosen definition and the intended use of something makes the difference.

We will never agree because this is philosophy and we should stop here.

The question was: what is the difference between a simulation game and a non simulation game? The core element of a simulation game is the simulation of something. The core element of a game is fun. As soon as the simulation reaches a certain level of quality people call the game a simulation.

A flight simulation game and a game where you can use an aircraft can be very different. Let’s take X-Plane for example which got FAA-Certified for training. http://www.x-plane.com/pro/certified/

It is totally ridiculous to say there is no difference between a normal game and what is usually called a simulation game or to say games can’t be simulations.

?

 

"Pac-Man has no real world counterpart"

Can you prove this? I mean with a multiverse of infinite universes and all.. seems unlikely. Define Real - World? Some scientists believe we live - in a simulation.

If that's the case.. you wouldn't even be able to "define" what "real-world" is, since we live in a simulation.

I understand your point of view. It really does not matter anyway.. I just have too much spare time on my hands waiting on this bake lol.

 

No, and I don’t need to do that because in this case the rules of science are that you have to prove your claim. Just because I can’t prove the non-existence of something doesn't make it existent.

 

The definition of real-world inside the simulation equals to the definition of the real-world outside the simulation. Which could be a simulation too. But actually to think about all this isn’t really important because you all are just products of my own imagination and I could start dreaming about something else any time, I hope you can finish your bake before.

 

Lol ive moved on to programming the seamless transition controllers so that I can fly the shuttle out of the ship. The ships share the same controllers Autopilot, Pathfinding/Collision Avoidance, PilotAgent.. there are about 10 controllers so far.. like the FlightController.

Anyway to cut down on code duplication, all ships share the same controllers so i can transition between a single "PilotAgent" when the player changes ships. Anyway in about 2 days im going to post a vid of me flying the shuttle out of the ship, flying around the solar system, coming back to and landing on it. After that, Ill land on a space station seamlessly.

Just like star citizen but better! my station will be moving have to one up star citizen right ?

There is a conundrum though, for the player to leave the ship seamlessly I have 2 options.

1: have a navigation "autopilot" pilot the ship out of the launch bay which will allow for launching while the ship is moving at any speed or rotation. (another one up on star citizen!) They do not have this functionality. There would also be an autopilot docking system (like x3). Get within X range of the capital ship and you can initiate autopilot docking.

2. Allow the player to launch manually controlling the fighter/shuttle. The problem with this is the player may rub again the interior of the capital ship and cause problems and have a difficult time launching. Also with this method i have to do alot more work to make the convex colliers "perfect" around the launch bay entrances.

 

This was the way I was thinking of the orthogonality of Simulation and Game complexity, you can have complex games that are not complex simulations.

So open or sandbox worlds are more complex simulations than on the rails or linear games.

 

Source for the image?

 

My own creation, what do you think of my approach to rating games, is my 'heuristic' accurate?

What other games would be standout additions and where should they go on the graph?

What about the Sim games e.g. Sim City, open world multiplayer sandbox games like PUBG or Sports games?

 

I would actually put Bethesda games like Fallout 3 or 4 or the Elder Scrolls series to the right of GTA, because they have persistence. NPCs actually exist in the world irrespective of whether the player is near or not.

Sports games I'd say are pretty simmy. Many of them can run without the player playing at all.

Something like PUBG doesn't seem like it has any "sim" features at all, honestly. Pretty much all interaction that happens in the game is between a player and the game (or a player and another player).

Sim games probably depend on which one you're talking about. I'd put SimCity 4 pretty far into the sim side of things, but Sim Societies or maybe the new one would be a step back. As would Cities Skylines - it's less of a sim that Sim City (similar situation for Planet Coaster and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 or 3). I'm not even thinking for the moment about other SIm games--SimCopter, SimTower, etc.


I do see one problem though: defining the "amount" of sim in a game is relatively straightforward. But how do you define the amount of "game" in a game? What puts tetris lower on the scale than Mario or Metal Gear?

 

If the game presents a simulated physical sandbox that the players can interact in is it not more of a simulation than a multiplayer turn based game.

The scales are just indications of complexity, something Tetris has very little of and RPG style games like Fallout or Dwarf Fortress can have a lot of game complexity e.g. rules/systems/items/information but be less of a simulation of reality.

 

In what way is the sandbox "simulated?" If by simulation you're referring to things like player movement being physics-based, I guess, but that seems very superficial to me personally. When I think simulation, I think interactions within the game. An increase in game-game interactions (rather than game-player) is more simmy in my eyes. I'm not really commenting on a multiplayer turn based game because I don't know what specific game you're talking about there and I have little experience with such a genre.

I gotcha. I would definitely disagree with your latter assessment however. Most RPG games probably have little simulation yes, but both Fallout and Dwarf Fortress have dozens or hundreds of independent agents in the game world acting, and that seems to be the definition of a sim to me.

Examples of RPGs with plenty of "complexity" that are not sims: anything by Bioware, the Witcher series, Obsidian games, etc.


When I saw Flight SImulator X on your image I immediately smiled and thought of another issue: FS X versus XPlane. If you've not heard of XPlane, it's another flight sim. The main difference between them, however, is that while FS X uses real-world data to define how planes behave in the world, XPlane actually does a simulation based on the shape of the plane. So you can make your own planes in XPlane, and determine if they will fly or not. Meanwhile for FS X you can only fly planes if you have a bunch of data telling the game how the plane will function.

Between the two I'd really call XPlane a simulation, but FS X isn't really as much of one.

 

There should be a LOT of space between Grand Theft Auto and the end of the simulation axis. And Microsoft Flight Simulator does not belong at the end of simulation.

 

There are a lot of semantic arguments floating around in this thread to prove that a simulation is a game and vice versa, and yeah, maybe so when you break it right down. But I think everyone knows what's a simulation or not. 'Flight Simulator' is a sim. 'Pilot Wings' isn't. If someone tells you they like to play simulators, would you assume their favorite game is 'Call of Duty'?

There's a certain point one reaches when trying to prove two things are indeed one where it turns out in the end that everything is exactly the same, and it just becomes absurd. We are all made up of quarks. If, however, you saw someone walking down the street carrying groceries and wearing a hat, I very much doubt you would describe them as "a cloud of quarks", even though essentially that is what they are.

 

The old ‘if it quarks like a duck, it’s probably a duck’ argument?

 

The counterpoint to this is people love to make asinine classifications, and then pretend like everything cleanly fits it perfectly. People see a graph of data points, draw a circle around a concentration of points, name the circle, then think it's only the things in that circle that qualify to be called by the circle's name. As far as I'm aware, everyone in the UK thinks the people in the next town over are a bunch of wankers, and that's not even getting to the north-south divide... or Wales... or Ireland... just because of a circle on a map.

Then people decide how that circle gets drawn for themselves, and none of them ever match. One group thinks most JRPG's don't count as RPG's, while another group thinks Zelda games are RPG's. One group lists twenty-some bullet-points to define a roguelike, but another groups thinks procedural death labyrinth is a stupid name, so F*** it, they're sticking with roguelike. At some point the autistic breakdown of things into base level elements does more harm than good, and it does nothing to explain what's at the heart of them.

70% chance he's got a neckbeard. That's about all saying he plays simulators tells me. Does he play Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld? Maybe he means some Paradox grand strategy games? What about the sports team management games? Those cross-country truck driving games? Kerbal Space Program? Hell, he could be meaning The Sims for all I know, so he might be enough of a filthy casual that CoD is his favorite game. Every single one of those has a completely different set of aesthetics to their gameplay, and none of them are played for the same reasons.

 

Maybe you should try some real simulation games and come back some years later.

 

Maybe shave your neckbeard, you'll get laid, and you won't think spending hours in boredom for half a minute of mild bemusement is acceptable. Seriously dude? F*** off. I'm sure even even if I did rattle off a game you thought was a true simulation while pointing to twelve other games that provide equal play experiences, you would think I didn't do it right since I didn't burn at least four grand on a setup to fully immerse myself in to get the fullest experience.

Either make a point that will make me realize that I am in fact missing something having not played a true simulator, or F*** off and leave me to to drink Jameson without the burning desire to punch condescending elitists in the face. And I always thought it was gin that made me want to hit people in the mouth.

 

whoa

 

lol