Hmm...

[Thetaris]

Society Simulator they call it, yet you can pull some recently purified iron and steel out of an oven, grab a screw driver, and some glass, and hey-presto you have a car.

Discuss?

[the_antisocial_hermit]

It is not and cannot be a true society simulator... anyway, the society is more built by the personalities of the characters and their relationships to each other, whether it be friendship, business, enemies, etc... At least, IMO.

[The Industriallist]

Society Simulator they call it, yet you can pull some recently purified iron and steel out of an oven, grab a screw driver, and some glass, and hey-presto you have a car.

You omitted rubber...

But I don't actually see what the two have to do with each other. A society simulator doesn't have to simulate the real world, and shouldn't try to. A cantr where anyone could kill you in less than 30 seconds with a bone knife if you weren't awake wouldn't be of much interest to anyone. There doesn't seem to be a basic problem with not needing any more items to make a car than a sword.

[Thetaris]

Put it this way.

If you have a walk around your street, you see things you take for granted (for the sake of this debate, accept it ). Lights, for example, are an invention. (I'm getting somewhere).

Chuck 100 people on a deserted island, with, sure, materials needed to start a society. They couldn't do it! They could not replicate today's world. Possibly, in years and years, they could...

Take a look at a car. It is quite a very amazing piece of technology. It has about 1,000+ inventions developed over the span of human existance. It has the wheel, for easy movement. It has the light. It has the motor. All invented... Glass, the shape of the seats, seatbelts.

It isn't just a bit of hematite, coal, limestone and sand thrown together in the period of a couple of weeks... It has so many seperate inventions that no society of any size could figure out any time soon.

It required flukes- yes flukes- inventions that happened by accident in many cases. You'd need a Germany to invent one part of it, and an America to invent another part. The chance of inventing so many parts is so minimal you'd need billions of people to increase the chance of it being discovered.

Perhaps my mind's load would be lightened if we had to create a motor for the car first, then a door, (which has a hinge which is an invention, along with a door handle), and paint (which is an invention too, believe it or not).

I mean, even a bike isn't as easy as it should be to make... If I was with, say, 500 people on a deserted island, I am sure we wouldn't be building bikes within the first 2 years... Hell, even within the first 10 years I'd doubt it.

I mean, in Cantr, it's a bunch of homeless farmers, really, there's no need for homes unless you want to store some materials that exceed your 15,000 gram holding limit!!

[Thetaris]

You omitted rubber...

So I did... nonetheless it's still a bit odd.

[The Industriallist]

Ah. You're going for the 'technology development' point again? I've never seen a good idea in that direction...every suggestion about it has had huge problems.

This doesn't actually effect it being a society simulator. Everyone in the Cantr world has innate knowledge of how to build a huge assortment of items, and is incapable of deliberately learning new ones. That makes yet another difference between the environment in Cantr and the environment IRL. It doesn't at all mean Cantr isn't simulating some sort of society...

[Thetaris]

No, what I'm saying is, the iron and steel that comes out of the ovens is basically like raw. You screw it together with steel, glass and rubber and this odd-looking piece of junk is a car...

[Schme]

Theatris, like is said, it is not trying to immitate real life. If it were, the game would suck. All that we're trying to do with it create fake societies with the little characters. If the world in which the little people are allows them to, without harm, grab things out of ovens without hurting themselves, then the society of course evolve taking that into consideration.

[formerly known as hf]

Chuck 100 people on a deserted island, with, sure, materials needed to start a society. They couldn't do it! They could not replicate today's world. Possibly, in years and years, they could...

People on small islands have been forming societies for centuries - just because it's not anything like a western society, doesn't mean it's not a society...

If you want 'today's world' (and by your post, I assume 'today's world' for you means 'today's western, capital-centric world' - which is hardly the whole story of 'today's world') then, go and be part of the most varied, exciting, interesting and engaging massively-multiplayer society similar ever - get a life...

Cantr never will and never has planned to replicate reality - if you want to study the real world, it's there already.

What Cantr does is produce it's own world, which develops in its own way. The fact that we live in the real world (and the western world for most players) can never be fully hidden from the game, and most players, even if they don't realise it, bring numerous assumptions, traits, opinions to their characters based on their own life-view. Hence, the way characters and societies develop in Cantr can be a very interesting reflection upon ourselves.

By stripping the production processes, the food processes, violence, travel etc. down to (unrealistic) very simplistic systems, the focus can be on the interaction - which, I think it is fair to say, is what Cantr is all about. The interaction between characters, between groups of characters, is the society-simulation part of the game, and it produces very interesting, and very fun, results.

Without the unrealistic and simplistic technology, production, food, manufacturing, violence, travel, etc. than it would be much harder to focus on the 'society' part of the simulator.

[Schme]

Also, it's just a damn game.

And right on about the island thing.

What the hel.l people talking about, "a hundred people on an island can't have a society".

What the hel.l's that? Crazy.

[Seeker]

It already simulates a society, we have transport, food, shelter, and people. We can see how people react to different circumstances in this society, it doesn't need to be completely realistic. That would make it a boring society...

[Schme]

Exactly.

People have discussed this thing tons of times before, too.

[Bowser]

You forgot to mention that the new radio in my car doesn't pick up any classic rock stations, it only gets the Colonel's Station. I hope someday to build knobs, not to change the station but to turn up the volume.... wait, I have no speakers! Why did I build a car radio with no speakers? I'm such an idiot. I wish I would have thought of all the things I needed to do to build a car from scratch and gathered those items together before building such a incomplete piece of crap.

[Thetaris]

lol, had to laugh at that Bowser...

[Floris]

No, what I'm saying is, the iron and steel that comes out of the ovens is basically like raw. You screw it together with steel, glass and rubber and this odd-looking piece of junk is a car...

Actually it could be.

What's essential in a car to make it a car?

Windows? No
Wheels? Yes
Engine? Yes
Seats? Not really, you just need to be able to be in the car behind the steering wheel.
Steering wheel? Yes
Gear? Actually not
Brakes? No



If actually think that basicly, the essentials of the car are the engine, some of the cablery and wires, steering wheel, a full frame and four wheels. Maybe I do forget one or two things.

I think that mostly the essentials of a car can be logically made from the resources that are currently used.

The most striking issue to me would be weight, manufacturing a van with 15000 grams of resources is rather odd, since most modern cars weigh a ton or more.

But then, weight is not an issue. That's the same with the buildings. As for strange resources used to make it. That comes back with other products in cantr as well.

With the in-game resources that we currently have, I think that the cars are rather well modelled and balanced.

Final point: don't look at this car as the new Volkswagen, Peugeot or Ford(and totally forget your favorite sports car ), it is a piece of junk. A metal cabin, with four wheels and an engine to make the wheels rotate.

Hmm, and actually cars were invented by Leonardo da Vinci, but in his time there were no possibilities to make cars. I bet he would have loved to live in Cantr.