How To Make An Anti-Matrix

[Spacescifi]

After watching the latest movie in the franchise it had me thinking.... unlike the Matrix, what if a simulation was designed for you to want to leave at some point?

The Scenario: Matrix-like simulation except it is designed and run for entertainment by a human company. As such players 'jacked in' cannot play all day because they have jobs and lives. Government regulations require the simulation to be designed so as to encourage the player to NOT spend all their time there.

How would you go about that? I would do the following:

 

1. Human players would not eat in the traditional sense in the simulation. They would 'eat' simply touching relavent food making it disappear and their game health or strength being updated by it until it maxes out. If uninjured a player would not need to 'eat'. Thus no player would stay indefinitely as they need to eat in the real world and the sim-world does not have any food to eat.

2. NPC's who inhabit the simulation would be more realistic, eating, sleeping, and getting injured normally, unlike the human players who are clearly overpowered by comparison. Human players do not sleep while playing, nor do they have to eat unless injured.

3. In order to not get sued by significant others, games with average content ratings would not allow one to be able to touch NPC's, only inanimate objects which they could use to touch an NPC with.  Otherwise a player could simply walk straight through an NPC like a ghost. This restriction would prevent.... obvious romantic interactions with NPC's for the most part which could and would infuriate real world significant others.

4. Games that DID allow one to get up close and touch NPC's would not be rated for children and would be expensive to rent to play for obvious reasons.

 

What are your ideas?

 

Edited January 2, 2022 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

The player character sits in the virtual call office and must do 300 voice calls and respond to incoming calls.
All calls are redirected to/from the real reality. All finanical transactions and customers are real.

***

The player character sits in the virtual office and has to clean every cubicle and every corner with a virtual cloth by mouse.
What stays unwashed by mouse, should be rewashed by hands till the workday end.

***

No need to restrict the NPC touching, its enough to disable their colliders.

[MKI]

On 1/2/2022 at 9:03 AM, Spacescifi said:

what if a simulation was designed for you to want to leave at some point?

Government regulations require the simulation to be designed so as to encourage the player to NOT spend all their time there.

How would you go about that?

There are actually a few games that are designed with the well being of their players in mind. Games that remind you to "get up and stretch", are easy to implement. Some games could even go further and limit what you can do, and how long you can play, or disrupt your game to remind you to focus on your well being, rather than continuing to grind for hours on end.

I'm not sure if this should be laws, if it is in the future I wouldn't be surprised though. Simply adding a "time-limit" to prevent people from spending unhealthy amounts of time "in the simulation" or game should be good enough.

 

However, even today there aren't too many cases of people who play so much they literally hurt themselves due to ignoring their actual needs. There is a scale however, and a limit to how much a game/simulation can actually do. Its one thing to remind people to get up a stretch, or eat some food, its another to keep them from ignoring loved ones, and limiting social activity (especially in today's day an age) in the real world.

 

 

[Arugela]

You find it's mother in law and watch it make it's own antimatrix.

You don't. Everything you said should be avoided. Particularly the government anything. There is no need to ask. We already know how to make one(at least we used to.). We just don't have the hardware. what you want would do the opposite by it's definition. Literally, the matrix is a living simulation where people spend their entire lives. Don't listen to Chinese propaganda. they are the worst game makers on the planet.

Literally the question to any answer is if you don't know and need to ask you don't have the info to think it out. And if you did gain that info it would be different than anything you thought lacking that info. So, the answer is not the question. It's the missing information. If you need to ask you don't know how to do it.

Also all movies and creative arts are fundamentally dumb. they are world building like role playing. They are simple and building up. Anything the opposite is starting with reality and working down. Never listen to a movie about the real world. It will put you in the worst position possibly. Unless you mean to directly put it in a video game which is also world building. But then actors and writers are not a good start unless you want something on that level purposely. There are more complex things that could be done. they are an old decrepit industry that is unfortunately bringing the newer down to it's level for it's own gain in a desperate attempt to keep it afloat. Which is because the lack the knowledge to do their own jobs already and it's getting worse. Avoid the sinking person. They will drown you also.

Unless I'm missing something our main problem is people are not maximizing what coudl be done currently enough. They seem like they are blindly stabbing at ideas and building up i the current game/engines. Design is fundamentally forethought. If they dont' already know that before starting you know where the problem lies. The suck at their job. No matter how much they will tell you otherwise. If you really wanted to do better you could design everything on the most complex level and do it thoroughly enough and then build down to your engine for balance purposes. Throwing out or keeping things as you need. This is basically automation. The actual natural progression for things in life. What has not happened is things like Adventure games and other older things were not automated to make things like auto quests and other things you are hinting at. Always start with the most complex start and work your way down. Either the more you can think out ahead of time the more problems you save yourself. If you can't do that you can't do anything. Or you must break eggs learning which cost time and money. That you want to minimize avoid.

Automation, which is the same as everything else, is a matter of thoroughness or definition. when done you have either a hardware problem or definition problem. If you are missing something that you thought should be there you have not defined it. If you have defined it all you can automate it. If you can't you have a hardware problem or definition problem and did not really define it all. That which you can define is the limit of what you can do. The actual limit of your ability to apply something. There is nothing more to anything.

Games are simulations. That is all they are. They just vary in complexity. What you mentioned are all basic implementation of fairly simple features. The core of the game is more the simulation side. That is accounting for as much of reality in the design as possible. All other issue fall with that as you figure that out. You will know what way and be dictated by other issues once you figure out the base.

BTW, all abusive things in games come from the simplification of aspects of the game. If you want to make it abusive you simply implement it in the simplest way possible. Anything like government regulation will exponentially increase those issues. You never solve things with laws. Nothing on it's own face is abusive either. The more complex the game the more rich aspect of the game making it the opposite and making it worth while. Our current problem is a bunch of people making games simply to do things the abusive way increasingly and on purpose. That is just an education issue. No education no people at the top outdoing these things or causing others to learn enough to slow down or stop that. All ethics is a byproduct of of knowledge. Low levels creates abusive behaviors as those making things do things for themselves while they learn and more of the sale is on one side vs the other(in this case the seller). More ability/knowledge puts more on the buyers side making it better for the players. That is the ideal.

The moment laws are passed on something it will make it exponentially worse. And it will likely never get better. In fact it will solidify it for the abusive people the law is oriented towards.

Actually, I think there were some games doing time limits at one point. It was horrendous. You can't predict the realities of a person. So limiting things is stupid. There may be reason to play all day you can't think out. Limiting anything requires full forethought of all reasons to do so. Or it doesn't work. If you do this you will quickly create problems. It's better not to treat people like children. they will know their circumstances better than you. In fact doing so correctly is basically impossible. That is why it doesn't work easily. And will take way more thought than any current game in it's entirety to do correctly. And any tiny thing you can't think out can cause massive problems. The more simplistic the game the worse problems it creates. That is basically where modern video games are atm. The more complex games become the more options create paths around the problem making it less severe for the user. Modern games are pretty linear.

The other fun thing is as the hardware gets stronger we will relatively know how to make games less well. So, we will never do as well. You want things done thoroughly as early as possible when implementing something like simulation. reality is against simulation because we are machines meant to do things ourselves. We will biologically fight against simulation to eventually do things on our own.(knowledge is sensory data intake analysed by the brain) This is part of biology to keep us learning generationally. That is why society rises and falls. Which is by the way something you could simulate! 8)

The reason to want more things it the eventual addition of more complex dynamics in games. Things are naturally connected. Think of it as a sphere made up of dots. Take the math formula for each unique set of points for unique combination. Then add on to the sphere interconnecting lines between dots in the sphere. If you take away a dot you loose the connections to other things as well as the dot. Right now we add dots one at a time with minimal connection. More complex games would have more dots with more connection simulating more realistic things and adding depth/increasing interconnectivity to the existing mechanics creating complexity. This same logic is basically a way to very simply simulate thought. Correct answer is simply all dots. When you take away dots what you can't think out is the dot and it's connections to other things in the sphere. Each subject is a different sphere(in a limited unrealistic sense within the greater sphere.). Maybe with different numbers of dots, but definitely different connects between the dots. Ultimately it's all one big sphere with dots and any smaller sphere is basically a zoom lens or a partial representation isolated from the rest of reality or the simulation. Unless the way it's calculated makes up for this somehow in application as any smaller dot is representative in nature because of natural complexity. If it's not it's coincidental it works that way or the simulation is still relatively simple in that regards.

In fact the spheres could logically simulate conversation as the nature of what we say is all a data gathering function which is predictable. We find data and state thing the other speech did not represent. This is to gather or spread data to others fundamentally.

Reason dictates itself. When all information is present. You simply have your answer. The rest is perception of if we have it or not. Or our ability to analyses it personally. Meaning if we have a lack of something we might not recognize it or understand it fully when our brains analyse something external(via sensory data) vs our internal store of data to compare it too.

I'm assuming this is all been done before many times though.

Edited January 4, 2022 by Arugela

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

This is my anti-matrix.  No coverage.  None.

Analog time!

[kerbiloid]

20 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

This is my anti-matrix.  No coverage.  None.

Got you, indeed nice simulation. 

https://www.world-creator.com

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Got you, indeed nice simulation. 

https://www.world-creator.com

Fantastic stuff!

However... I'm not looking at those pics.  I'm out breathing the air, climbing, getting cold or hot and bug bit.  Absent brain-jacking... nothing else compares

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

44 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Got you, indeed nice simulation. 

https://www.world-creator.com

The more I look at that... if it were a game; I'd play it.  Probably have to mortgage the house to get a copy - but freaking WOW!

I remember when FutureMark put this out, being amazed at the possibility of 3d art and wishing I'd made different life choices back in the 80s!

 

 

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The more I look at that... if it were a game; I'd play it.  Probably have to mortgage the house to get a copy - but freaking WOW!

I remember when FutureMark put this out, being amazed at the possibility of 3d art and wishing I'd made different life choices back in the 80s!

 

 

Things has move on, I say this is an good thing as developers can spend their time focusing on story or other elements rater than the basic. 
Although out of the box systems ten to have issues, yes the build in auto animate looks awesome but how does it work for something with 4 or 6 legs.
How well does the close in field of view work if your are in an fighter jet? 
How does it handle lots of players in an persistent world, this is an very hard one to solve but more of an server issue. 
 

[kerbiloid]

It's a pity this project hadn't succeeded much.

http://www.framsticks.com