The Natural Philosophy of ONI

[Ceos]

TL/DR - Awesome game which is fun for it's emergent systems.

 

Being a long time reader of ONI forums both here and on Reddit I have seen a couple of recurring strains of thought that I don't fully agree with but did not realize why until recent spaceship design, testing and playing.  I know these are a bit divisive issues here on the forum so I ask for your patience and kindness as my goal is to probe a bit why this game has entertained me for 1000+ hours not to judge why it is fun to others.

 

Strain 1 - ONI is not realistic and should be more so

Strain 2 - Certain in game things are exploits and should be removed or condemned when used

 

I think the reason this game has sunk it's hooks quite so deeply in my brain is precisely that it is not realistic.  I will admit that I work in science and I have always had a nostalgia for the early days of Natural Philosophy.  Modern science was born from the idea that looking deeply at the world to find the laws of nature was the way to progress.  Often the "why" of these took another century to figure out but how to apply it happened right away.  As an example Carnot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_L%C3%A9onard_Sadi_Carnot) spent a huge amount of time figuring out how steam engines worked and how to make them better and came up with some amazing rules to make new engines.  It was not for decades after that the laws of thermodynamics were codified and even later that the molecular nature of the laws was "fully" understood.

 

I have always lived in a world where answers to most any question I have can be found in a book.  Somebody has always noticed this or that odd thing and then fully described it far better than I will be able to.   Even if I do find something interesting or unusual in the tiny area of science I am working on, it might be years or decades away from making any real contribution to a machine or system.  ONI is one of the first games where I have ever felt like the early Natural Philosophers.  I can be *the* person to discover a bit more about how Morbs work (as a random example ) and share it and then have the deeper why discussed in the comments.  

 

The two strains of thought above I think are related in the way that they both seem to reduce the specific joy of discovery that I find in ONI.  In the first one having a physics that is off from ours but still accessible is amazing.  I don't know exactly why you can't have 2 materials in the same area but you can't and so that has some crazy implications (liquid locks, Escher falls, drowned electrolyzers).  In the real world I don't know "why" you can't have 2 identical spin electrons in the same orbital but you can't and that has all sorts of crazy implications (absorption spectra, molecular bonding).  In the ONI case though I can figure out new and interesting ways to exploit the crazy physics.

 

This brings me to the second strain of thought that certain things are or are not exploits.  In my mind if you are having fun it's not an exploit but creative use of physics.  If one feels like infinite storage is against fun then by all means stay away from it but I tend to look at that in much the same way I look at people who refuse to get a GPS and instead use maps.  If paper maps are your thing by all means enjoy but don't look too far down at those who exploit relativity and orbital mechanics to way-find in a different way.

 

I would wager that there are a number of builds that even the developers were surprised by... I have no doubt that "wait you can do what!?" has been said within Klei's walls (possibly with some swearing and voodoo poking of certain avatars).  There is an emergent system based on rules that makes for fascinating discovery.  I realize the answer to many "why" questions comes down to "because it was the easiest / best way for the developers" but in true ONI fan-fic style it does not have to be... what strange quantum rules prevent multiple things from coexisting in the same volume? Why does space seem to be divided into quantized sections? (BTW those questions are both ONI and real world questions... look up plank length and degeneracy pressure)

 

So, to all you ONI Natural Philosophers and crazy engineers out there I salute you... please keep posting the crazy infinite duplications, flaking, waterfalls and Tardis spaceship builds (you fit what into a spaceship!?).  It might be a game but it is one where we are discovering fundamental rules and interactions of a universe.

 

To Klei (shorthand for all the individual ONI developers) I can't thank you enough, no other game I have ever played has had the same feeling of deep discovery that I have found in ONI.  I know there are many base building games out there but the ability to go so completely off-script and discover new physics interactions (and then exploit them for the greater good of the Dupes) has been (and will keep being) a true joy.

 

-Ceos

 

P.S. When the world fractured it re-wrote physics into a quantized 2D film structure where everything was compressed to a number of single molecular layers.  Much like an inertial frame of reference all the (now mono-layer) tools (and Dupes) read as if they are measuring volume  but we as outside observers know they are measuring area of an infinitesimally thin membrane.  Geysers are 3D protrusions into the 2D film world so it's not infinite but nearly so for all intents and purposes.  - Excerpted from my (joke) upcoming paper - Quantized Structure and Phase Exclusion in Quasi-2D Environment

[Gurgel]

I agree to all of that. I too find it quite fascinating what the "insane contraptions" crowd comes up with all the time. My personal approach is usually KISS because I am an engineer, but I also have a deep respect for anything that works and this being a game, there are no moral constraints.

That said, Strain 1 and Strain 2 really are a bit "anti fun" in their approach. As long as they limit that to themselves, that is perfectly fine.

The ones I cannot stand are the ones that come in all self-righteous and morally superior and try to push the mind-set that _nobody_ should use those clearly evil "exploits" (one went so far as to call it "seduced by the exploits" as if this was somehow the same as going over to the dark side). These are the people that try to tell others what to think, what to believe, how to live their life, what is moral and what not (according to them) and what acceptable fun is and that obviously all non-acceptable (to them) fun must be banned, outlawed and, ideally, punished severely. Ultimately, as a group (typically called "authoritarians"), these people are probably responsible for more misery and suffering than any other group in the human race and I really do not like them. Of course, here in the forum they are easy to ignore and the damage they can do is quite limited.

The second group is the "realism fetishists", who are mostly just annoying. These people apparently cannot deal with a work of fiction that uses some elements of physical reality as inspiration. But what annoys me mostly is that they universally have limited insights and claim nonsensical things. For example, they want realistic flow mechanics, but completely miss that ONI is 2D and you cannot have realistic flow mechanics in 2D as flow in liquids and gasses is very much something you need 3 dimensions for. The fact of the matter is that absolutely nothing in ONI is "realistic", but some things are to a degree inspired by real Physics. These people then seem to mistake ONI for a Physics simulator for standard Physics and claim that of course the devs should fix this one tiny aspect that their limited view tells them is not in line with standard Physics, basically complaining about the splinter and not seeing the beam (sort of, both are in their own eye here). I wonder sometimes how these people read or watch a work of fiction and whether they are even able to do so without significant discomfort.

I too find exploring a Physics simulation for an _alternate_ Physics (like ONI) quite enjoyable, because of all the things you find and all the rules you can discover and then build on. Science and engineering is in no way restricted to ye old boring "standard Physics". Non-standard models have been used in science and technology for ages. The most obvious are models and simulations with limited accuracy, for example the ones used in weather prediction. Then there are environments where you do not only simplify, you remove aspects of reality and replace them with other mechanisms and constructs. This happens, for example, when optimizing, say, traffic flow in a warehouse via simulation. There, lots of aspects get replaces by an idealized version and you usually go down to 2D. Of course, the real-world purpose in ONI is entertainment and some education (tactical and strategic planning, actions and consequences, using automation to solve problems permanently, etc.) so there is no direct concrete problem that it solves or so it seems to some people. But it is completely in line with what is generally done in the modelling and simulation communities. "Realism" is just one potential goal and it is not only optional, it is often undesirable.

[mathmanican]

11 hours ago, Gurgel said:

"seduced by the exploits" as if this was somehow the same as going over to the dark side

The dark side is quite refreshing. 

20 hours ago, Ceos said:

It might be a game but it is one where we are discovering fundamental rules and interactions of a universe.

Amen. That, along with a journal (the forums) as a place to publish discoveries, has made this game seem like a miniature version of academia. It's been a wonderful diversion from my actual job (in academia).  Nothing like more work to occupy my recreation time.

 

[Odeen]

Personally, since it's a single player game, I feel like any choice to use or not use mechanics is valid. However, I tend to avoid things that I feel are probably not intended. For example, infinite energy from constantly launching and landing rockets for no fuel cost. It just didn't feel right to me (and in fact recently got changed). But again, to each their own.

[suicide commando]

A very nicely written post. One I wholeheartedly agree with. ONI's physics might not be 'real world' physics, but they are physics all on their own. Trying to force the 'real world' into this is not only impossible, as this would require more computing power than all the super computers combined, but also undesirable. A game is a fantasy, as such, while it can be a reflection of reality, it shouldn't be a 100% mirror.

What makes ONI so much fun is exploring all those emergent behaviours and utilising them for various purposes.

[babba]

On 9/21/2021 at 11:01 PM, mathmanican said:

The dark side is quite refreshing. 

Amen. That, along with a journal (the forums) as a place to publish discoveries, has made this game seem like a miniature version of academia. It's been a wonderful diversion from my actual job (in academia).  Nothing like more work to occupy my recreation time.

Me: Walking up a building stairway in real life thinking "Oh, a wood side bar - Low heat transmission".

Me: Seeing someone walking down the street in flip flops "Mhhh, plastic - Good insulator, but melts fast in to Naptha !".

Me: Visiting a neighbour who has a fire place in the living room...

"Ahhhh, nice fireplace - Where do you get the Arbor tree`s from? Have you got your own plantation "

[Jann5s]

ONI has made me develop a sense of sustainability. “This contraption that I’m building, how many cycles will it last?” It made me appreciate our planet more.

[ZombieDupe]

I understand a lot of real life physics concepts much better thanks to ONI. This is why I support these sorts of ideas. The better the simulation the more you can learn and understand for real. I would go so far as to say that this game, given enough design polishing and with enough design philosophy like this applied in practice (there is a lot that would still need to be tweaked and outright reworked to achieve this, mind you) could provide a mode dedicated for educational purposes, so if you're a student studying physics, or some other scientific field this would be a must-have game to put a decent amount of hours into along-side your studies. Heck, universities could even begin to suggest some games or basic simulations to play around with in order to understand a subject better. I mentioned some approaches that ONI could take to make this simulation stuff work better, which would be concepts that some future DLC could explore as well.

Of course this does not apply to fictional creatures and some sci-fi buildings and objects like the way the geysers work or the existence of Neural Vacillator, Skill Scrubber and AETN. We need those for other balance reasons and fun. But given better and more realistic simulation, a mode that takes some of those out but accommodates colony progression that is both more realistic while educational could be incredibly powerful. Could be seen as hard mode if anything as well.

It could also provide more people with a better understanding of problems we face today such as global warming as a result of CO2 build-up (would require better mass and thermal calculations, a better radiation simulation and gas/liquid concentration mechanics to explain this better however). Now if you put the 2 and 2 together, why do you think I thought Cool Steam Vents were terrible and why heat was such a problem in the game? If people can't get into the game because of dumb and boring stuff happening at a certain point they can't be bothered with, all this potentially educational material is just wasted beyond that point for way too many people.

[Sasza22]

The game made me aware how much energy we use on a daily basis for stuff that seems obvious in our world like heating water. When you start struggling with cooling your base beacause of 40 C water then you realize how much energy is used to have a hot bath.

[Ceos]

2 hours ago, babba said:

Me: Walking up a building stairway in real life thinking "Oh, a wood side bar - Low heat transmission".

Me: Seeing someone walking down the street in flip flops "Mhhh, plastic - Good insulator, but melts fast in to Naptha !".

Me: Visiting a neighbour who has a fire place in the living room...

"Ahhhh, nice fireplace - Where do you get the Arbor tree`s from? Have you got your own plantation "

If this is not a thread it should be... the glory is yours to claim @babba.

Me watching the neighbors get a new AC unit - "I hope you are going to be energy efficient and pee in those lines to charge the system"