Java game development

My Java game development notes.

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Economics in games

I've always had an interest in games that have a realistic feel to them. A game's economic system is just one part of that experience. A great economic system can make games more interactive. I want to create immersive environments for players where players can make a difference.

I ran across an article titled BazaarBot an Open Source Economics Engine with a link to a LARC technical report entitled Emergent Economies for Role Playing Games (EE4RPGs) that basically outlines a basic free-market system. I found the EE4RPGs paper interesting and decided to write a pure Java implementation with EE4RPGs as a guide.

My game economic engine (EE)

My initial design thoughts

• Use EE4RPG as a basic guide
• Write a pure Java implementation
• Very low computational footprint
• Multi-threaded or "thread safe"
• Agents can be separated by time/distance
• Agents within a market have access to instant communications
• Support 1+n markets
• I'd like to support two types of agent life cycle, one is perpetual (never dying) and one is dynamic (agents can be created/eliminated)

After stand alone testing of the EE I would like to do more extensive testing. Maybe I will drop EE into a large chunk of space then I'll design a system of handling transportation of goods/services (commodities) in space. Initially I thought of using a Earthly-based simulation but why limit myself to one galactic object known as Earth? So a "space hauling simulation" sounds like a good test bed.

My initial design thoughts on the space hauling simulation

• Write pure Java implementation
• dedicated server option
• 1+n client/player support
• Create a freight market (basically a bulletin board showing all open commodities to be shipped, accepted on contract basis)
  • open commodity shows
    • buyer basic information (at least name, maybe some other data like political/economic affiliations)
    • buyer location of commodity drop-off basic information (at least address, maybe security level of destination or other tidbits)
    • buyer contract offer (transportation price)
    • distance between pick-up and drop-off (shortest route, maybe option for shortest/safest)
    • seller location of commodity pick-up basic information (at least address, maybe other tidbits)
    • any other detail that facilitate the acceptance of hauling contracts
• Create freight haulers (freight space ships)
• Create freight companies (collection of many freight haulers)
• Create pilots
  • pilots are human / alien
  • pilots age, have personalities, change over time, morale, lifestyles, eating habits, and many other factors
• Create a pilot market (basically a bulletin board showing all pilots for hire)
• Easy option to enable logging to disk of game data for export
  • support export data to text in HTML or SQL.
  • support export of a player pilot
  • support export of a player freight hauler
  • support export of a player freight company
• random space events
• add immersive relationship model
• add space positioning system for system addressing
• create randomly generated galaxies (seed based to share those cool galaxies) full of space objects
• add ship to ship combat
• add customization of ships
• add leader boards (different metrics)
• add retirement options (game ends voluntarily by player or retirement age addressed)
• add RPG elements (pilots grow and age)

That's my initial thoughts, with family and other priorities let me see how far I can get on spare time here and there.