Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive • Hacker News Board

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#31

Post by ckolderup » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 10:32 AM UTC

thret wrote: post #24

ckolderup wrote: post #8

It's interesting that Rohrer played around with the idea of taking Chain World online-- when I heard about Chain World, the first bit of sacrilege that came to my mind was "well, why should this be restricted to a USB stick? There's no reason a multiplayer server couldn't be governed to do this." I wrote Lonecraft as a way of replicating the Chain World idea, but using an Amazon EC2 instance as a multiplayer server w…

Could you make it so that the longer someone plays, the harder it is to stay alive? Armour provides progressively less protection, you require more food, there are more monsters, monsters are more powerful, lightning more frequent etc...

It was something I had discussed with some friends who were testing it, but the combination of "would require more work" (although not necessarily too much-- there are various mods based around "survival" concepts that I could theoretically use) plus "gets away from the basic concept of out-of-the-box Minecraft" left me unmotivated to continue.

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#32

Post by Tomis » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 10:51 AM UTC

ckolderup wrote: post #16

AdamTReineke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the game was driven by a countdown clock? For example, you only have 60 minutes?

I considered it, but to me part of the impact of the meaning of your "life" in the game being a "life" would mean that it would have to last long enough for you to carry out some meaningful work before you die of "natural causes" (i.e. a timer running out). In that case, the timer would probably be long, on the order of months, and I was just hoping that something else could be done to make the game harder to survive…

24 hours sounds about right.

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#33

Post by Fargren » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 12:56 PM UTC

extension wrote: post #17

Games are usually not profound and thought provoking for the same reason food is usually not profound and thought provoking. That's just not the path to enjoyment that the medium is naturally inclined toward. Food, above all else, must be tasty . Likewise, games, above all else, must be fun to play -- or more precisely, must provide unusually fulfilling analogs of the plights and labours of real life. If you manage t…

Couldn't the same point be made about cinema, though? Specially in the early years of the medium, it's easy to say that movies must be entertaining to watch. And yet we got fantastic works of art in cinema.

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#34

Post by mrcharles » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 1:38 PM UTC

ckolderup wrote: post #8

It's interesting that Rohrer played around with the idea of taking Chain World online-- when I heard about Chain World, the first bit of sacrilege that came to my mind was "well, why should this be restricted to a USB stick? There's no reason a multiplayer server couldn't be governed to do this." I wrote Lonecraft as a way of replicating the Chain World idea, but using an Amazon EC2 instance as a multiplayer server w…

Game designer here.

Why not put in a time limit, but wrap it up in some kind of imminent death? "You have 30 days left to live." (Game days, of course).

It might be really interesting to see what comes from it, as people start with grand aspirations, but eventually flip to frantically trying to complete something.

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#35

Post by mrcharles » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 1:40 PM UTC

woodall wrote: post #18

jbri wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact it's not "just another game" is part of the point, really.

How so?

Did you read the article?

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#36

Post by TerraHertz » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 2:56 PM UTC

a3_nm wrote: post #25

TerraHertz wrote: post #21

If someone wanted to extend this concept a bit further, how about a one-play-only game that could only be passed on as a bequest. That is, no one else gets to play it until you are dead, for real. Bit of a technical challenge, to ensure the game data structures and code could always be run, no matter how much time passed. Also, to use a storage medium with a reliable lifetime of centuries - which Flash isn't. Some pe…

> you only get one go at it Sadly, I don't see how you could hope to enforce this constraint... The idea of a game seat is nice, though -- a collaborative time capsule of sorts.

Easy. Any biometric sensor. Fingerprints for instance. If the machine detects the same person trying to play again, it just refuses to run. Or... (if I was designing this) kills them where they sit. Next person that reaches the game's remote location gets to remove the skeleton from the chair. Good incentive to not cheat. (I'm assuming some kind of real-world post-apocalyptic scenario, in which 'legal ramifications' don't exist.)

Actually, if there was some decently functional strong AI in the game, this could get very mythological. Quest to visit the Oracle - you have to get to the site then play the game in order to reach the Oracle in the gameworld. If you die in-game before then - well tough.

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#37

Post by TerraHertz » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 3:06 PM UTC

zacharycohn wrote: post #26

So... to add a little bit more to this story. I have a copy of Chain World. I was having lunch with a friend of mine in NYC a few weeks ago, and he was telling me about all this. He said that he was talking with his friend who got the USB drive from Rohrer (I assume this is Ji) and that before Ji sold it, he bootlegged a copy of it. A copy that my friend emailed to me. I have yet to play (I haven't played Minecraft b…

This Ji person turned out to be quite the allegory of the present moral state of humankind, didn't he? Is there any aspect of the original concept he didn't corrupt?

What's the bet he either didn't actually play the game, or played several times?

One kind of signposts the gameworld should have. Gravestones. Enter your name to play; when you die the game's graveyard gets a new headstone. Would show up... Ah! (slaps forehead) no - of course cheaters would use a different name each time. But still... a graveyard would at least show how many times the game had been played. Maybe the epitaphs could record the manner and time of death?

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#38

Post by mentat » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 3:30 PM UTC

ckolderup wrote: post #16

AdamTReineke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the game was driven by a countdown clock? For example, you only have 60 minutes?

I considered it, but to me part of the impact of the meaning of your "life" in the game being a "life" would mean that it would have to last long enough for you to carry out some meaningful work before you die of "natural causes" (i.e. a timer running out). In that case, the timer would probably be long, on the order of months, and I was just hoping that something else could be done to make the game harder to survive…

The amount of maximum time should probably be random ideally with some distribution. It might also be good if people didn't quite know how long they had to live but had some signs the time was running out.

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#39

Post by mentat » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 3:34 PM UTC

a3_nm wrote: post #9

Something along those lines that I'd really like to see (or maybe create someday) would be a decentralized virtual universe. Minecraft and such games are usually run on a server which is under someone's control; it would be funny to have a consensus-based distributed world (drawing inspiration from Freenet and possibly Bitcoin for the technical implementation) which would exist in the network of the players, be the s…

Wow, this is a pretty interesting idea. Have you given any thought on how you'd establish consensus on an ongoing basis? It seems like a hard but very interesting problem.

Re: Chain World: a game that exists on a unique USB flash drive

#40

Post by woodall » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

mrcharles wrote: post #35

woodall wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

Did you read the article?

I did, however, I am not the one making claims that it is "not just another game". I'm pretty sure you have never laid eyes nor hands on it, so I would like to know what you are basing your opinions on.