FreeGameDev

One of my coworkers has been discussing things to entertain our coworkers. One of his ideas is to do some sort of game. Something where everyone can specify your strategy and a program runs it to see who does the best. I know crobots and core wars do this but they are very much programming games. Something that seems less programming like would be better. Do you know of any games like this? Open source is obviously preferable. I could see doing an Oregon Trail like game this way. Specify what you buy at start and strategy for survival. It doesn't need to be a one and done. It could have multiple phases but not too many as probably some people will drop each time.

this is interesting but technically its closer to simulation (i mean mechanic-wise, its simply a simulator without user input)

so its something like this, again technically, but theres no actual gameplay or goal:
https://libregamewiki.org/Powder_Toy

also i think it will actually get quickly unpredictable / hard to reason about, if its complex enough

like if i have 10 blue units and 10 red units and set 10 red to be smart and 10 blue to be stupid and place them randomly at the 128x128 map, what will actually happen? i dont know

anon666 {l Wrote}:this is interesting but technically its closer to simulation (i mean mechanic-wise, its simply a simulator without user input)

so its something like this, again technically, but theres no actual gameplay or goal:
https://libregamewiki.org/Powder_Toy

I would argue that people playing Fantasy Football think they are playing a game. Granted that has somewhat more interaction than I'm looking for but that's the sort of thing I'm looking for. As for it being upredictable/hard to reason about, that is the challenge of this sort of game design. You need people to feel they can create meaningful choice and not have one strategy which dominates all others.

and not have one strategy which dominates all others.

they still exist as some patterns tho, i mean some are better than others



and players who want to win will use them or even abuse
without special 'balancing' such game can get pretty messy again

but overall im not against the idea (i even wanted to make such myself because i don't like micromanagement),
but gameplay-wise its hard to predict and the further it is from t=0 the harder to predict (i know it may be interesting but also you usually want some 'strategy' to have and play in some kind of style that may be hard to have, it will be more ant-colony like, you probably could simulate only macro things/effects, like make all red units emit CO2 to kill athmosphere)

to some point it is simulated in tactical games, things like Order Delay (units will not react immediately to your commands (sometimes the delay is very long)), also sometimes units will refuse to execute your orders (when under fire or low morale), also you can arrange units, unit configurations and give commands before the battle begins (including things like air support). i don't remember if Armored Brigade have unit/battle control in real time tho, maybe not, there are just too many units (or even if so you can opt-out and only leave initial orders, without interaction)
so yeah maybe it can be simulated to some extent already but Armored Brigade already gets uncontrollable and the battle results are usually random (thats somewhat close to real life tho)

you can try maybe you'll find it fun