On humanity + engineering games

[calibayzone]

Can STEM and humanities ever mix? Yes!

But it's rare for a game to be both engineering-heavy as well as having in-depth characters we build relations with. Factorio is the former: it's all about production and ratios and not about nurture at al. Engineering: 10/10. Nurture: 0/10. Animal crossing is the latter: Their isn't much in the way in the design but it's all about the characters. Engineering: 0/10. Nurture: 10/10

ONI does a pretty good job of both: You have hum and animal characters with expressive emotions, interactions, etc. Individual characters can be clicked on, and you can see their mood and status, following them around. On top of that you have a very complex semi-realistic physics system with heat, pipes, electricity, logic, and more; with plenty of tables to consult specific thermal properties. They interact: characters will "make a mess" when plumbing fails and respond to failures in oxygen.  Engineering: 8/10. Nurture: 8/10

ONI seems to be the best hybrid game I that has both, but lets look at some runners-up:

Rim-world: Broadly similar to ONI but the character "pawns" aren't nearly as expressive. There is more combat, at the expense of the heat-transfer mechanics that help make ONI challenging. Engineering: 7/10. Nurture: 6/10.

Dwarf fortress: Minecraft-like engineering and detailed character needs and mechanics. However, it is hidden behind a layer of ascii text. No body language to connect with. Engineering: 7/10. Nurture: 6/10.

Minecraft: Engineering with it's "redstone" logic system and enemy spawning mechanics. Open sandbox. Characters with the occasional emoji (such as hearts when you breed animals). But the characters are no where near as expressive as ONI. Engineering: 7/10. Nurture: 3/10.

Planet coaster: Physics of roller coasters, park logistics. It leans toward "creative mode" even in survival mode. The characters are far more expressive and detailed than in previous theme-park games. You can zoom to see individuals although you don't foster connections with them to the level of ONI. However, you have much more in the way of scenery to build to almost a 3d modeling program level. Engineering: 8/10. Nurture: 7/10.

Little big planet: A rich storyline and playable characters. However you don't have this same variety in terms of NPC's reacting to their environment. Complex physics and mechanics, which you can exploit in the level editor to build contraptions, though survival-mode isn't nearly as creative as it in ONI or Minecraft. Engineering: 6/10. Nurture: 7/10. (It is a platform game, which is valuable in it's own merit).

Cities skylines: A complex city builder game. Logistics, traffic flow model, economics, terrain, pollution, energy, and many more mechanics. Unusually rewarding to fix problems with real challenges, but information isn't easily accessible for debugging. Characters exist but they are much more distant from the player than in planet coaster let alone ONI.  Engineering: 8/10. Nurture: 3/10. 

Ok my scores aren't perfect, but ONI has done a great job combining the human side of things and the cold (or overheating?) equations and numbers of engineering. Even with it's problems and bugs, the DEVS pulled off an amazing feat here. 

What are some other games with such a combination? What could we learn from those games?

 

[Meltdown]

I guess Surviving Mars is kind of related to the topic. It's a base-builder with it's own mechanics, and each colonist is a character with their needs, preferences, health and morale values. What we can learn from that game is how needs and morale could be done wrong. Colonists have the same level of expectations about their life on Mars thoughout the game. It is illogical and immersion-breaking to have your first wave of colonists that arrive to a young unfinished colony expect a functioning luxury shop inside the only dome on the planet's surface. And it also lacks any kind of progression in that area - a young martianborn in midgame would expect the same quallity of life as a senior speciallist just arrived from the Earth in the early game.

ONI took step into right direction. I really loved the morale system when I just started playing the game. Tying morale expectations to professional growth creates a reallistic mechanic which is easy to understand and to work with.

The difficulty of matching those expectations is another story, thought. I wish keeping dupes with fully upgraded excavation skill tree happy could be a bit harder task for the early game. But this is more related to balance and content rather than to an approach itself.

[Gurgel]

Sorry, but this is all engineering to me. 

[Oozinator]

15 hours ago, calibayzone said:

 What could we learn from those games?

Depends on your IQ.
 

[meepmoop]

31 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

Depends on your IQ.
 

what do you mean

[fifty_ducks]

Space Station 13 uses engineering ideas & principles when it comes to power generation, atmospheric simulation, fire, temperature. But the entire draw of the game is the theatrics and roleplaying. It does focus more on the more realistic side of humanity though, with trolling, pranks, skits, and gimmicks.

It is an obscure reference but with the 2 current projects focused on remaking the game out of BYOND (actually showing momentum) you may see the game show up in the normie-sphere sooner than you think.

[KittenIsAGeek]

22 hours ago, meepmoop said:

what do you mean

I'm not sure that "IQ" was the appropriate word, but.. different individuals learn in different ways.  If you're artistic, then a game that encourages your creativity is going to help you learn a great deal.  If you're an engineer, then games that let you model systems will help you learn a lot.  I'm somewhat of an artist and an engineer, so those two aspects of ONI are the most beneficial to me.  I learn a lot just messing around in the game, even if I'm not attempting to do anything special at the time.

[acolyteofrocket]

I'm sorry, but ONI is a puzzle game, not a STEM game - nothing wrong with that, but if you go into STEM saying you can do it because of ONI you are headed for some serious disappointment.

[Gurgel]

8 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I'm not sure that "IQ" was the appropriate word, but.. different individuals learn in different ways.  If you're artistic, then a game that encourages your creativity is going to help you learn a great deal.  If you're an engineer, then games that let you model systems will help you learn a lot.  I'm somewhat of an artist and an engineer, so those two aspects of ONI are the most beneficial to me.  I learn a lot just messing around in the game, even if I'm not attempting to do anything special at the time.

Well, I am an engineer and scientist, but I have only minimal artistic skills

I would say messing around with technological components (for example) is quite creative as well, just that the freedom is on a different layer, less concrete than, for example, visual art. It is more on an "architecture" level than on an "implementation" level, if that makes any sense.

3 hours ago, acolyteofrocket said:

I'm sorry, but ONI is a puzzle game, not a STEM game - nothing wrong with that, but if you go into STEM saying you can do it because of ONI you are headed for some serious disappointment.

I disagree. Physics is only partially represented, but logistics, planning, using technical elements to solve technical problems, building complex systems from basic parts, optimizations, solving problems under hard constraints (dupes dying or going crazy...), etc. are all well represented. STEM is in no way limited to a concrete physical standard model.

[KittenIsAGeek]

3 hours ago, acolyteofrocket said:

I'm sorry, but ONI is a puzzle game, not a STEM game - nothing wrong with that, but if you go into STEM saying you can do it because of ONI you are headed for some serious disappointment.

I disagree completely.  STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics.  Each of those categories is represented in ONI.  If you find ONI interesting and stimulating, then you will certainly find STEM fields interesting and stimulating as well.

However, I get the sense that you're intending to suggest that "You can't use ONI as a replacement for education."  With that assumption, I do agree.  ONI is a game -- but it is a game that challenges the same sort of critical and analytic thinking that is needed to do well in a STEM field.

It is not a puzzle game.  With ONI, you need to continually solve problems by designing systems.  A well-designed system will manage the problem for quite a while.  A poorly designed one will need to be continually adjusted and modified.  If this were a puzzle game, then once you solved the problem you wouldn't need to worry about it any more because the next problem would be unlocked. 

For example, the first problem you have to solve is producing oxygen for your dupes. Depending on the particulars of your asteroid, this can be as simple as building a hamster wheel, a battery, and a algae deoxidizer.  However, this is not a permanent solution.  You will run out of algae, and you're probably going to eventually have more dupes than your simple solution can provide for. This means you need to think about your solution and consider how it will affect your future plans.  Looking at a system you've designed and considering how well it will function in the future is a form of critical thinking that is important in STEM fields.  

Another example would be thermal management.  Early on in your base design, few will consider thermal management.  Often its when your farm starts to overheat or your dupes are getting frostbite that you start considering the thermal aspects of the game. There are a wide variety of ways to solve the problem.  You could design your base so that heat producers don't affect your farms.  Or you could build a complicated counter-current heat pump to remove the heat from your base without using any electricity.  Thinking about where to place components within your base for optimum thermal management trains your brain to think about how one system affects another -- a critical part of engineering design.  Mathematics is a necessary component behind balancing a counter-current heat exchange system -- another STEM skill.

ONI requires a lot of problem-solving, which is a different skill from puzzle solving.  There are certainly overlaps between the two, since puzzles teach the brain how to look at a problem from multiple points of view.  However, ONI is not a puzzle game.  It is a problem-solving game that includes resource management, systems design, mathematics, and physics.   Is it the same thing as learning real world physics in school? No. Its a game -- but its a game that uses your brain the same way that STEM fields do.

[Tytan]

topic 7/10. forum 10/10