Topic: Passing the time

[LucasUP]

I think considering how old this topic is, and the fact that the other topic has a bit of a different different premise/introduction, that this topic should not have been bumped. Some topics should be able to have fresh starts, just because some topic some time last year has the same title doesnt mean it should be necro-bumped and continued on.
In fact, I hardly see /ANY/ situation were a year old topic should be revised... unless it was something like a certain question or concern thats being asked again or something   like that.

[LucasUP]

Hydro (and not trying to pick on you, this is directed to everyone), don't be so quick to attempt to merge all like topics from all times together, sometimes its a good idea to /reference/ to an old topic, like when a question or concern comes up another time, or something like that. But Its confusing and annoying to go into a topic, read a bunch of it, notice something is really off about it, and then realise the post is over a year old. Also not to mention that sometimes a second-comming of the same sort of topic sometimes brings completly different discussion, or is discussing the same thing but in a different way, or /whatever/... it sometimes doesnt make sense when topics are merged, or topic creators forced to continue on an old topic. People read the OP, then when they get to the merged part, the discussion completly veers off another way, and is re-introduced.

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Anyways, I plan on getting HL2- EP1, I also want to get God of War.
I really want to get a Wii and a PS3, but It will completly depend on WHEN THE GAMES I WANT ARE RELEASED. (Like MGS4). I have a birthday this august, so Ill probably come into some more money (I have about $600 saved up right now). Im thinking I probably will end up getting a Wii first, if only because Im hopefull the the PS3 will have a price drop by the time games like MGS4 come out; or at least get bugs in the early release of the console sorted out.

[QReaper]

For the space part, I'd look into a game called "Master of Orion 3".

Everything else...well, I'm not so sure.

[QReaper]

Waste the best years of my life rotting my eyeballs out of my head and sitting on my lazy bum.

[jarnomiedema]

Personally, I've been keeping myself busy with Call of Duty 2, Civ IV, Rome: Total War and Barbarian Invasion, Hearts of Iron II and every now and then a little bit of Simcity 4. At the moment I look forward to the expansion pack to Civ IV (which will keep me occupied for some time) and in the fall, Medieval II: Total War, which I hope will keep me playing long enough to see Spore coming out.. 

All in all, there's still plenty to do before Spore comes out.. Also, I've noticed that time passes a lot faster if I don't stop by here every day so see all the new topics (without really adding anything new).. I basically just check on a weekly basis now and it definitely seems as though time is moving faster! 

[LadyM]

Topics merged...

If a post is relevant to an older topic, its okay to post in the thread and revive it. It sometimes promotes new discussion into an old topic. It also keeps the boards cleaner.

It is not okay to bump an old topic just for the sake of annoying other people by using "bump" or "necrobump".

[Axelgear]

I have a question sort of related. What if there is a part of Spore that you just have to wait for? I mean, I know that's unlikely, but imagine if you didn't have faster than light drive and tried to reach the other side of the galaxy? What'd you do then?

[ChristianSkunk]

I got the feeling that you wouldn't be able to.  Notice how Will "backs up" to go from planet to system, then system to galaxy, then galaxy to universe.  From what he said when he bought the spaceship, you wouldn't be able to zoom out of the planet to see the system until you had the UFO.  It's probably the same thing, you have to get FTL drive to leave your system...  Then I don't know... maybe that's all you need, or maybe a better engine to leave your galaxy.

Edit:  I guess what I'm saying is I think there's limits of scope.  I.E., Cell, you're stuck in that little drop of water in a 2D world, Creature, you're limited to the area around your creature, Tribal, city, civ might be similar, although I think again, their scopes will grow larger, And then space, which (seems odd to me now that I write this) may be split into system (stellar), galaxy, and universe.  At this time however, I'm not sure we can really say there are such splits in Space, except for the fact of WW talking about having to get an interstellar drive...  The point is, the area available to you depends on your level of advancement, so I don't think you'll be able to tell your UFO to go to stars you don't have the technology to reach.

[Axelgear]

This raises the obvious question about Telescopes then. Can you use a SETI/Telescope system to look out into the Stars and see/hear/send messages to planets you're not going to be reaching for quite some time? It's just a simple question really, I mean, how limited will we be in the stages past Creature?

[ChristianSkunk]

Hmmm.  Of course I'm not sure...  The problem with Telescopes and listening devices is the time difference.  If you don't have FTL, the best you can do is lightspeed, which is still a long time.  Sorry for not looking this up to make sure I'm right, but isn't it like, 17 minutes for light from the sun to reach earth?  Conversations are doable but difficult with 17 minute lags... but then consider the distances involved when you're talking about communication from different stars.  (I'd like some real numbers on these, if someone wants to take the trouble of looking them up).  So even if you're only in the system phase and could listen to other systems, anything you heard would be hopelessly out of date.  A species could come into being and die out before their first broadcasts reach you.  Also, something that bothers me, is that searching for radio signals doesn't locate intelligent species, it only locates species that use radio signals to communicate (of course, finding one of those would still be a big deal for SETI  ), so there could be other species that we wouldn't know about because they have a different way, or never bothered to communicate in such ways.

Edit: This is, of course, dependant upon WW doing this part realistically.  From the demo (If I remember correctly, he only showed this in the GDC'05 demo, not E³, so I'm wondering if it's still there) it seemed that there was only static/unintelligible noises which he said were an alien language.  So the best you could get out of a SETI type thing pre-FTL is to know someone's out there.  Unless they let you do some kind of Contact-Math-Is-A-Universal-Language type deals, you wouldn't get anything more meaningful out of it.

My belief at this time is that the game will only be concerned with the scope you're in...  Meaning that "others" don't exist until they need to.  Creatures don't exist while you're a cell, tribes don't exist until you're in a tribe, cities, and so on...  So planets in your system may not have AI controlled life until you're able to reach them, and planets in other systems won't have AI life until you get FTL.  I think this mainly because until you can visit a planet or contact a race, it doesn't need to exist (or rather, be loaded in memory and running through algorithms)...  Another example...  If you're on your own planet, there's not some carnivore on a planet around a distant star in another section of the universe eating a prey animal (that is, CPU time isn't doing that; you can always have your own story in your head).

[Axelgear]

Actually, Will Wright has shown that communication happens at Faster than Light speed. It'd take decades for even a laser-based message to reach even the closest extra-solar planet, if not centuries, but this is not the case for Spore. Will Wright clearly shows that messages are recieved instantly over any distance. As for Radio Signals being a sign of intelligent life, I think any species that can build a radio transmitter/reciever would be at least slightly advanced. Radio Signals do not go that far that fast though, another sign WW is not keeping with true-to-life factoids in this area.

As to lack of meaningful stuff, it's one of those "GASP! THERE IS LIFE OUT THERE!" moments. You could probably only check for life within your system, but it'd still be interesting if you found it. You could initiate first contact before you actually HAD first contact. That alone would be interesting.

And yes, that last little fact is obvious, but just because you can see and hear these planets doesn't mean any "Action" is going on. They're just there, and may or may not have a sapient species. You could contact a race in your own solar system and that'd be interesting enough. Maybe even launch a probe/satellite of some sort to inspect the planet. You have a sort of timer of how long you have until it gets there (A few minutes, ranging in amount based on your level of development), and this thing basically lets you examine the planet and send messages but not interract. It'd be fun.

[ChristianSkunk]

... I think any species that can build a radio transmitter/reciever would be at least slightly advanced.

Well yes, I wasn't arguing that.  Radio as communication implies at least a somewhat technologically advanced race, but my point is that I believe even (or perhaps especially) a technologically advanced race does not imply radio communication.

... As to lack of meaningful stuff, it's one of those "GASP! THERE IS LIFE OUT THERE!" moments. You could probably only check for life within your system, but it'd still be interesting if you found it. You could initiate first contact before you actually HAD first contact. That alone would be interesting.

I meant besides that.  Because of the time delay, you couldn't talk back and forth.  You'd just have a bunch of random noises with no context.  In addition, there's the issue of possible encoding, such as video.  There's no way of knowing how other species might do that, or if they even would.  So even ignoring the speed of light limitations on communications pre-FTL, I find it hard to believe anything useful would come of it.  If you had a HAM radio and started talking to someone who only spoke a language you've never heard of (and couldn't look up translation dictionaries), how long do you think it'd take before you could impart any information, let alone exchange complex ideas and treaties.   

[Chickenman297]

Sorry for not looking this up to make sure I'm right, but isn't it like, 17 minutes for light from the sun to reach earth?

8.333 mins  http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/ast99/ast99431.htm

In addition, there's the issue of possible encoding, such as video.

It's actually more complicated than this.  Current theory says radio signals opperate through self propergating electromagnetic waves on different frequencies that travel at the speed of light.  To convey intelligence on a radio wave, it must have some kind of modulation at the send site and an equivalent demodulation at the recieving site.  To further complicate matters, there are many forms of modulation such as amplitude modulation (AM), frequence modulation (FM), pulse code modulation (PCM) etc...  Further more each type of modulation can be applied in different ways e.g. SSB and DSB for AM.  Then finally on top of all that comes the encoding.  So it's actually a huge issue

[ChristianSkunk]

I'm so bored I looked it up myself...  Closest Star is Alpha Centauri (a set of three stars, actually).  They're about 4.27 light-years away.  So while "conversations" at light-speed with species there would be rather cumbersome, they'd be possible...  At least a message could go out and a response come back before the person who first sent it died.   

Learning is fun, because knowledge is power!

Edit:  I guess Proxima Centauri is closest right now, at 4.21 light-years.

But see, this is in another thread, but this is what I'd like to see in Spore.  Alpha Centauri A and B are the primaries, similar to our own sun.  They orbit around their common center of mass (I wonder what the conditions are at that location).  The third star, Proxima Centauri, orbits the pair.  It takes one and a half million years to complete an orbit, so it should be the closest to us of the three for quite a while yet.

[Axelgear]

I hate to use the sacred book of Roddenberry here but I have to. As I mentioned earlier, this would ONLY be capable with planets within your system. I mean, how pathetic would it be if a species didn't know how many planets were within its system by the modern age? We knew almost how many around 300 years ago (Except for Pluto which was too far away). That's why Telescopes make sense. Now onto why communications make sense:

Radio waves can transmit within a system with some delay but I doubt this would be included in the game, as demonstrated SEVERAL times already. With that, my argument becomes a LOT more sensible. As to the problem of scanning radio bands, you merely have to send one on as many types of radio signals as you can send without turning them into another type of energy wavelength. In other words, you keep sending until they recieve, and as soon as you get a message back, you suddenly have a common wavelength.

Now onto a "How-to-talk" manual. There are basic ways to establish talking. You start out with basic numbers. While it is very hard to do this without some sort of visual communication, you know they exist, and that they are sufficiently advanced to have radio communication. Eventually you could get basic words such as one, two, three, etc. And once you have that, you can assign values to these things. Once again, hard without visuals, but it lets you make first contact. You know you have a neighbour, a good thing at pre-space age. It might help unify your planet.