Building Physics: Practical Considerations for Designing Virtual Worlds

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As creators of virtual worlds, our goal is to create engaging, fun environments for our users. This means designingDigital laws of physics that allow complex and unexpected behavior to emergeandEnsure that the available infrastructure can support these activitiesTo do this, we must consider three main dimensions of the laws of digital physics:Time, the form of its laws, and the scope of their application.

usThe passage of time in the virtual world is called the iterative application of the physical laws of the virtual world to itself.Each discrete application is a "moment" in the flow of world time. One way to design world time is to have it continuously advance along with external time.existBlockchainIn the virtual world implemented on the Internet, each block corresponds to a certain number of moments that have passed in the world., regardless of what transactions are included in the block. This is called "synced" time. This approach can make the world more interesting to users because it allows them to see the consequences (impact) of their actions in real time. In addition, it causes time to pass within the world, and the world is constantly updated, which promotes the emergence of interesting behavior.

However, this approach also has disadvantages.Longer time spans generally require more computing resources, which can quickly exceed the capacity of the chain or the server.In the routineBlockchainIt may also be difficult to implement this system on-chain, as all on-chain changes must be initiated by transactions from external users..

The alternative to synchronized time is unsynchronized time.Under this scheme, the passage of time in the world does not necessarily advance as external time advances.Instead, time moves forward based on certain events (usually user actions). Traditional board games that don’t involve timers fall into a similar category. Asynchronous time is easier to implement on-chain because it complies withBlockchainHowever, it also sacrifices some features that could make the world more interesting.

The world builder must also decide,Do the mathematical laws that govern virtual worlds follow an open or closed form?. Closed form expressions have a fixed number of operations. However,For open form (or recursive) expressions, the number of operations increases according to the given variables.In open form, future states of the world can only be computed by repeatedly applying the laws of the world to known states. Complex real-time environments such as Dwarf Fortress often fall into this category. On the other hand,The closed form expression allows any future state to be computed in constant time based on past states and the time elapsed between them.(assuming no future user actions will change the state), like pieces falling in a game of Tetris.

Open expression can make the virtual world more interesting, because just like in the real world,They are all finitely predictablePredicting the future state of the world requires increasing amounts of time and computational resources. Moreover, unexpected macro behaviors can emerge from simple micro interactions. In a world governed by closed expressions, these emergent behaviors typically occur only externally, through the actions of users (whose own actions act like open expressions), rather than within the physical confines of the world itself.

This trade-off between open and closed form expressions involves a similar balance as with time. Closed form expressions may make the world less potentially interesting, but they also make it more computationally efficient. Closed form expressions can be used with either synchronized or asynchronous time.当在Blockchain上实施时，当时间同步时，它们比开放形式表达式具有显着优势Since the cost of any length of time is constant, the world can be designed so that the on-chain state is updated only when a user sends a transaction, but it is set to the state after the time has passed since the last update.

In the real world, time passes simultaneously across a potentially infinite universe (with some relativistic complications). But in the virtual world, this is not the case.

First, virtual worlds can be obviously limited. As they get bigger, the possibilities for interestingness tend to increase.In a world of two billion galaxies, more interesting things will happen than in a world of two atoms, but the computational cost will also increase.Both of these relationships are closely related to the two trade-offs mentioned earlier:The passage of time and the form of physical laws.

Second, time in a virtual world does not have to be ubiquitous.To reduce the computational burden of the world, the world can be divided into discrete regions where time passes differently.For example, more complex and expensive physics laws can be used in areas with user activity, while simpler physics laws can be used in areas without activity. The disadvantages of this approach are twofold:It makes the world look inconsistent and lacking in integrity, which also limits the design space of the world's laws, and puts the burden on world builders to avoid confusing users;It also constrains how causal relationships are propagated in the world., because if the space between one area and another is frozen in time, then actions between them will have no effect on the other area.The size of the region where the laws of physics apply is a major design consideration, which will affect the resources the world requires and the level of fun it can achieve.

To create an interesting and engaging virtual world, computational efficiency and fun must be carefully balanced.This includes deciding the type of time to use (synchronous or asynchronous), and evaluating the form of the physical laws that will govern the world.The size of the physical applicable area is another key factor.By making these choices carefully, world builders can achieve interestingXiaobai NavigationIt can also create an extremely rich creative foundation for other developers.

The article comes from the Internet:Building Physics: Practical Considerations for Designing Virtual Worlds

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