A bad chemistry simulator?

[kasper747]

Hej Guys,

What is this game? Is a bad chemistry simulator or underdeveloped survival simulator?

I think the game is great! It helps to understand some of the basic physics lows and basic concepts of physics and chemical industry. Most important for me – the game highlights crucial straggles in chemical and mining industry. I like also the graphics and the doups – makes me care about chemistry. I was very surprised to discover this game and was even thinking first that is quite nice for educational purposes. 

But from other side the game lakes some of the other basic concepts of chemistry and physics. And in other aspect completely counter intuitive. For example one of them really bugs me!

Any of the power generators in the game is consuming O2 but one. And it is funny that this exception is the doups in the dynamo wheal as they do consume oxygen!

No other electricity generator consumes O2 - Oxygen not included. And this leads to such ridicules concepts as generating power from the H2 that comes from hydrolase process that is being powered by the same hydrogen generator. And it is even possible to get more energy that is being put into the system!

I understand that it is a game. But it is a some sort of a simulator. And a simulator is only as good as the simulation. In shooters – realistic guns, survival games – food and water, social games – moods and karma, racing – realistic cars. Of cause it is impossible to simulate everything. But some chemical processes are quite simple. The process like hydrogenises and hydrolysis are the basics in chemistry. To fail to set these concepts correctly is like fail by introducing plants watering in a farming simulator. Especially today energy generation is a very hot topic in the society. So it is something that people or even kids are mildly aware of and it is often a point of discussions. If kids will learn something in the game and then speak with the teachers and educated parents they will lough at them.

So do you guys see it as a problem or you are happy as it is? Would be also interesting to know, what the devs made these design decisions.

[brummbar7]

I would consider the game more of an HVAC simulator than chemistry or physics.  It's just impossible for them to simulate such complex things as chemistry and physics well, I think, and still make a game out of it, with progression, and have it playable on 'normal' computers.  Some odd choices have to be made for game balance.  But also remember it's early access and probably things will change. 

On the chemistry/metallurgy side, I was very surprised to find that gold amalgam - composed of probably the two best-known low-melting-point materials irl - one of which is not even solid at room temperature - in the game gives a *higher* melting point tolerance.  Despite that they had iron available at the same time, which would have made TONS more sense.   Right now I'm trying to assume that when we get refined metals, steel and others will give the high-temp bonus, and gold amalgam with be refined into gold, in turn used for high decor bonuses, and will hopefully give a temperature *penalty* - if allowed at all - for machinery. 

So for me there's kind of two levels of transgression - stuff that's not true to RL, but is clearly changed for game balance or keeping the simulation able to run on typical computers, and then stuff that makes no logical sense, and there's perfectly more sensible alternatives already available that would not change the simulation load.  The latter cases bug me, the former do not.

[Kasuha]

8 hours ago, kasper747 said:

What is this game? Is a bad chemistry simulator or underdeveloped survival simulator?

Survival simulator in early access. The physics and chemistry of the game started with some great plans and good intentions but CPU power and playability took their toll. It's definitely not an educational tool.

[brummbar7]

7 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

It's definitely not an educational tool.

That's true, but if a person is young (still in grade school) and enjoys this game a lot, they should probably strongly consider some sort of HVAC/Electrical/Process engineering career path, because that's basically what this game is - process engineering/HVAC design.  I love this, because if someone had ever consulted me and said 'do you think an HVAC simluator game is a good idea?', I'd have laughed at them.  But then, I'd have laughed 10X as much if someone had asked if I thought a game about checking immigration papers would be popular.  I love being wrong about these things.

[asmallrabbit]

I hate posts like this. People complaining about realism in games is ridiculous. For a game to be labeled as a simulator, it doesn't mean it has to be as realistic as possible. Some games go for that, but the whole point of most games is that you can do things that wouldn't be possible or probably in real life. I don't know where the heck you get that this game highlights crucial struggles in the chemical and mining industry from and you sound like someone trying to sound smart and impressive while your post is littered with grammatical and spelling errors.

Your whole post reeks of judgmental criticism and negative opinions without offering anything constructive whatsoever. A few minutes of effort answers your question that its an EARLY ACCESS game still in development, and you sound like you just want to be argumentative and seek attention on purpose rather then have any kind of meaningful discussion about the game.

[Whispershade]

Would you feel better if you thought of it as the Mario Kart of Survival Chemistry Sims rather than the Forza?

Not all games strive for accuracy to real life like your post implies. In fact very few have little more than a tangential relationship.

[JoeW]

41 minutes ago, asmallrabbit said:

Your whole post reeks of judgmental criticism and negative opinions without offering anything constructive whatsoever. A few minutes of effort answers your question that its an EARLY ACCESS game still in development, and you sound like you just want to be argumentative and seek attention on purpose rather then have any kind of meaningful discussion about the game.

People are allowed to be critical as long as they are constructive and polite. You may not have read the original post as being constructive, but they state their issue, how they feel about it, cite examples, offer alternative ideas and end with a question to open discussion. 

I think English may not be the OPs first language, and perhaps you are reading the tone in a way that sounds rough to you. However, and maybe I am wrong here, I do believe they were trying to be constructive and polite. 

[Lumina]

32 minutes ago, asmallrabbit said:

 

I hate posts like this. People complaining about realism in games is ridiculous.

 

Depend of the game. A complain about realism in a realistic train simulator or flight simulator is perfectly understandable because it's why people are searching, so it's a legitimate complain.

 

A complain about realism in a game like OnI, when the game preview don't really focus on realism (you are inside an asteroid, and you play duplicant), is less legitimate, but still understandable, as long as the understanding goes both ways (people understanding why people could expect realism, people understanding why game can not provide this realism (because of CPU power, playability, as said before, and others reasons).

 

And sometimes someone asking for realism could provide good ideas or suggestions.

[Xadhoom]

2 hours ago, brummbar7 said:

gold amalgam with be refined into gold

actually, i managed to transform a liquid tepidizer from gold amalgam to gold... for some reason it started to heat up without beeing in water and REALLY overheated, i ended up with a solid chunk of gold.

[Masterpintsman]

I think the issue with reality would be reduced by not using real life units and materials, as these fuel the expectation of a connection to reality.

Look at the fridges which are advertised as generating 5 (10?, whateve in RL completely irrelevant number) watts of heat, you'll apply your everyday knowledge and dismiss their impact on the world as in RL that amount would be neglible and woldn't change anything, but in the game they have the potential of messing with your plan.

Thus I voted some days back to either get rid of RL units (by replacing them with fictional units) to gain creative space to mess with how stuff behaves -or- to stick with the reality units but then make them behave as in RL...

[Lumina]

Real life names are giving some reference points. Oxygen is good for breathing, gold is a metal, ice could melt... Also would be strange to have no oxygen at all in a game with this title.

It's not necessary true for all the real life names, i guess it could change for some units names...

[Xadhoom]

17 minutes ago, Masterpintsman said:

Look at the fridges which are advertised as generating 5 (10?, whateve in RL completely irrelevant number) watts of heat, you'll apply your everyday knowledge and dismiss their impact on the world as in RL that amount would be neglible and woldn't change anything, but in the game they have the potential of messing with your plan.

hmm, i'm not so sure. if the heat had nowhere to go and there was no way for the heat to be removed, 2.5w of heat would start to be a problem. but then the duplicants themselfs should be a problem too as a person output something around 80w of heat iirc.

if i understood correctly, a day is 600s, 2.5w would be 1.5kJ a day, and if we are heating just 1 kg of oxygen it would increase temp of that by about 1.5 degrees, add a few days and you would start to heat up the area its in, but it would be slow.

[rezecib]

@Masterpintsman @Xadhoom The issue with building heat is more in that the UI is lying to us than that the game isn't being realistic. Buildings actually have 1/5 the mass they say they have, and the watts are actually kilowatts * 5. Accounting for both (1000/5 * 5), you can multiply the reported heat output by 1000 and get correct calculations for how much the building heats up.

Fixing the display to show kilowatts is easy, but I'm not sure how you'd go about communicating that the building has 20% of the mass. You could have it list 20% of the mass, but when you build it and deconstruct it, you get the full mass back out, which would be weird-- although I still think that's preferable to the current situation.

Edit: @Kasuha Re-thinking this, W->kW and 0.2x kg should result in a factor of 5000 instead of 200 (1000x the heat actually produced, and 1/5 the mass to absorb it, so it will raise 5x as much)? Doing a test with a ceiling lamp, my calculated temperature difference was off by 1000x rather than 200x. Delving into the code, it lists the kW as 0.5, and using this for the calculations along with the 50kg -> 10kg matches observed temperature changes. I see that the code for converting this 0.5 kW to 2.5 W at the front end multiplies the kW by 1000*0.005 = 5 (and then lists it with W instead of kW). Maybe this was changed since you did your experiment?

[Food136]

I know asking for perfect realism not entirely constructive and gameplay must be prioritized but there are things that REALLY bother me especially the electrolysis thing. The fact that the electrolyzer makes less hydrogen than oxygen really annoys me cause in real life you get an oxygen to hydrogen ratio of 1:2 and it wouldn't be too hard to implement! 

[Xadhoom]

3 minutes ago, Food136 said:

I know asking for perfect realism not entirely constructive and gameplay must be prioritized but there are things that REALLY bother me especially the electrolysis thing. The fact that the electrolyzer makes less hydrogen than oxygen really annoys me cause in real life you get an oxygen to hydrogen ratio of 1:2 and it wouldn't be too hard to implement! 

actually, i think that is correct, its measured in KG. 1 mol of hydrogen = 1 gram, 1 mol Oxygen = 16 gram. so 2 mol hyrdogen  = 2 gram, 1 mol oxygen = 16 gram. so 1:8 ration, same as electrolyzer has.

[Kasuha]

43 minutes ago, rezecib said:

Re-thinking this, W->kW and 0.2x kg should result in a factor of 5000 instead of 200

Here's the post with the data I got and the experiment can be inferred from it:

It's way too late for me to repeat the experiment now but maybe you could give it a try. Or check the math.

[rezecib]

17 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

It's way too late for me to repeat the experiment now but maybe you could give it a try. Or check the math.

I think your factor of 200 is right, it's just that the kW to W conversion wasn't as straightforward as I expected. It displays kW * 5 as W, which is off by a factor of 200.

But I was wrong about the building mass being part of that factor of 200, which is why for a ceiling lamp (with no exhaust to account for), it comes out as off by 1000 if you calculate with the in-game values (producing 200x the heat, being absorbed by 1/5 the mass, for 200*5).

[Kasuha]

5 hours ago, rezecib said:

But I was wrong about the building mass being part of that factor of 200

I think it is meant as such. A M/5 kg building heats up with X W of heat exactly as much as M kg building with X*5 W of heat. So if we're producing X W of heat and want to hide the fact that the building only weighs M/5 kg, we must multiply the produced heat by the building mass reduction factor.

Your post related to it is here:

 

[kasper747]

 

14 hours ago, rezecib said:

@Masterpintsman @Xadhoom The issue with building heat is more in that the UI is lying to us than that the game isn't being realistic. Buildings actually have 1/5 the mass they say they have, and the watts are actually kilowatts * 5. Accounting for both (1000/5 * 5), you can multiply the reported heat output by 1000 and get correct calculations for how much the building heats up.

Fixing the display to show kilowatts is easy, but I'm not sure how you'd go about communicating that the building has 20% of the mass. You could have it list 20% of the mass, but when you build it and deconstruct it, you get the full mass back out, which would be weird-- although I still think that's preferable to the current situation.

Edit: @Kasuha Re-thinking this, W->kW and 0.2x kg should result in a factor of 5000 instead of 200 (1000x the heat actually produced, and 1/5 the mass to absorb it, so it will raise 5x as much)? Doing a test with a ceiling lamp, my calculated temperature difference was off by 1000x rather than 200x. Delving into the code, it lists the kW as 0.5, and using this for the calculations along with the 50kg -> 10kg matches observed temperature changes. I see that the code for converting this 0.5 kW to 2.5 W at the front end multiplies the kW by 1000*0.005 = 5 (and then lists it with W instead of kW). Maybe this was changed since you did your experiment?

Ok guys, it is great how excited people get about number in this game. I think it really makes people learn some math. THIS is some thing this game has already achieved. I honestly salut for it!

 

[kasper747]

13 hours ago, Xadhoom said:

actually, i think that is correct, its measured in KG. 1 mol of hydrogen = 1 gram, 1 mol Oxygen = 16 gram. so 2 mol hyrdogen  = 2 gram, 1 mol oxygen = 16 gram. so 1:8 ration, same as electrolyzer has.

It is exactly my point. You are absolutely right. On this level the chem is that simple!

Spoiler

...after you spent few hours to figure out what mol is (in this contexts it is a molecule. but should be actually atom. Molecule is H2 or O2 or H2O. But H and O are the atoms. There is also mol that is something different - a definition of a weight of a molecule.)

This game does make sense for some laws of physic. However chem makes sense only in seldom cases. Again hydrolysis, hydrogenesis or combustion processes are very simple. People have figured them out few tausends years ago. It is very simple to understand. Many kids know that they should not start a car in the garage because they may die,  it stinks or  dad kicks you. And this leads to this thing being first to call ********. Also not to forget that in many countries energy production is a hot social topic. So you can be sure the dad will have a talk with the boy about renewable energy (not joking . 

Mindcraft is a building simulator - so I would ask myself if it would be the same success without reasonable physics. Of cause physic of gases is not important there and therefor not implemented. No need to pump oxygen in the mins there. But collapse of a building without support pillars is important and was a revolutionary at that time. On the other side such abstract things like material resistance or ground setting where left aside.

And I know many people are quite young here. But do not underestimate the educational aspect of games. As it can make the decision of the parents much easier. 

Maybe there is an option for modes?

[Michi01]

13 hours ago, Food136 said:

I know asking for perfect realism not entirely constructive and gameplay must be prioritized but there are things that REALLY bother me especially the electrolysis thing. The fact that the electrolyzer makes less hydrogen than oxygen really annoys me cause in real life you get an oxygen to hydrogen ratio of 1:2 and it wouldn't be too hard to implement! 

 

13 hours ago, Xadhoom said:

actually, i think that is correct, its measured in KG. 1 mol of hydrogen = 1 gram, 1 mol Oxygen = 16 gram. so 2 mol hyrdogen  = 2 gram, 1 mol oxygen = 16 gram. so 1:8 ration, same as electrolyzer has.

To make sure this is completely understandable, that means a hydrogen atoms has 1/16 of the mass of an oxygen atom

[rezecib]

4 hours ago, kasper747 said:

after you spent few hours to figure out what mol is (in this contexts it is a molecule.

It's actually shorthand for mole :P. It's basically a specific number of atoms (Avogadro's number), the number chosen so that the total mass is the about the same number of grams as there are particles in the atomic nuclei. So a mole of water is 18 grams, because each of the two hydrogens has just one proton, and the oxygen has 8 protons and 8 neutrons, for a total of 18. (the numbers actually end up being very slightly different because it's averaging over the frequency of different isotopes, which can have extra/fewer neutrons-- in the case of oxygen it sometimes has one or two extra neutrons, but ~99.8% of the time it just has 8)

But yeah, I'm definitely having a blast with the math in this game

[absimiliard]

9 minutes ago, rezecib said:

But yeah, I'm definitely having a blast with the math in this game

Given all the help you gave me regarding the code and command line instructions when DST was first starting .... I am completely unsurprised.

 

*grin*

 

(oh, and thanks again, never forgot how helpful you were to all of us)

[Food136]

Ya sorry, I messed up my math and chemistry. I was only thinking of mole and not mass

[Whispershade]

14 hours ago, kasper747 said:

This game does make sense for some laws of physic. However chem makes sense only in seldom cases. Again hydrolysis, hydrogenesis or combustion processes are very simple.

I feel like you're assuming the hydrogen generator is burning the hydrogen. Maybe it is fusion. I mean the premise of the game is you're printing people and drilling with beam weapons.