Planet Simulator Advice (HP-55)

[snoman003]

Hello again, friends. The newbie here back with another thread. This time, I have a cool idea for a little time waster game but no real grasp on a good starting point-- I'm a big fan of the Maxis "Sim" games (SimCity and SimEarth) and so I got the idea to make a simple number game where you could adjust and tweak a planet all on my HP-55. Essentially, the game would be about adjusting the oxygen levels in the atmosphere which in turn effect the development of sentience and diseases. The goal is to get your planet to an overall number or level, with the sentience level adding to the planet level and disease subtracting from it.

Being that I'm on an HP-55, I'm limited to only 49 steps, which makes this concept an extra challenge (I've never been one to pick up something new and start off easy, I kinda like to jump in the deep end and figure things out from there). However, I believe that this basic idea should be possible to implement because of the Lunar Lander game I found (http://www.rskey.org/gene/calcmuseum/55lander.htm), which in some respects works similarly and is equally complex for the system.

How would O2 affect the other two numbers? How would disease and sentience in turn affect the overall planet level? How do I even code any of it? I'm really not sure... that's definitely what I need help with. Hopefully that'll be the fun part, and hopefully I'll learn a little too. Better yet, someone who needs help in the future will have one more thread to look to.

[snoman003]

Here's a starting idea for how disease and sentience are calculated, though I do see some flaws with this:
Bacteria = 0.60(20%)×(O2 input)×(-50)
Sentience = 0.75 (25%)×(O2 input)×(80)
Sentience would be stored in register 1 as worth 100 and bacteria in register 2 as -50 (so they can add/subtract from the total planet level respectively). The question is how those values would even be coded in. Even if they are, that doesn't change the fact that the system itself would be kind of broken. If all the game did were these sterile calculations to figure out sen. and bac., then getting the planet to the proper level would be as easy as raising the oxygen input high enough... yeah, this whole thing sort of fell apart. I'm just not sure how these values could be calculated. I'll keep working on it.

[[kby]]

Back in my days as an OS developer [for TOPS-10; A story for another time and place, although DEC did eventually become part of HP],
I always used to say that the hardest lines of code to right were the first and the last: The first because you don’t know where to start and the last because the last bug is never fixed. Give me a program that does nothing but exit and I used to be able to debug it. Into doing anything you wanted (although in retrospect that was more true of the debugging system of the DECSYSTEM-10).

Figure out what you want the program to do first and mostly forget you’re writing it for an HP-55. Then, when you know what you want to do, we can talk about if it’s feasible or not implementationally.

[snoman003]

Sigh... definitely good advice. This was a situation where I started a thread with an idea for how it could all work but the idea slowly fell apart in my head after posting. That was my bad for being too eager, but I did have some a flowchart and some rules down. Learning experience, I guess. I'm still working on it, if anyone has an idea for how the basic system could work, I'm all ears. I'll continue to think about it as well, and further develop the idea...

[snoman003]

Thanks for the advice though, kby! I appreciate the input.

[Dave Britten]

If you want inspiration, start by looking at some old simulation "games" in BASIC (Lemonade Stand, Hamurabi, etc.). If they're part of an old book of BASIC programs, then they'll probably be accompanied by an explanation of their inner workings and/or flowcharts. Then consider how you might implement similar feedback engines, and the calculations that would apply to what you're trying to simulate. Predator-prey models are a classic example.

[snoman003]

Hey, thanks! I'll do some searching around, I know I came across some basic stuff while looking for HP programs. I've got some initial code written down right now, but I'm not gonna post it yet since it doesn't work and it's kind of a first draft. Maybe looking at some basic games will give me some inspiration to improve the game though

[Gamo]

Hello snoman003

Good idea on trying to implement about the Planet Simulator.

This bring back to my post awhile back about "Populations Simulator"

of the Rabbits VS Foxes. That program was from the promotional ad

for the HP-25 which got limited program steps as HP-55

This might get an idea for your program.

Here is the link to that thread:

https://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-11...ght=rabbit


Gamo