A Relatively Hard Game

[OcularGold]

Discuss A Relatively Hard Game here.

link to puzzle

enjoy!

[Mgm]

Invizzed answer below
Wouldn't that mean this game would be in real time, or at least very slow when it comes to vessel movement and things? If you take into account relativety wouldn't that mean it takes a few hours to get your spaceship into space in the first place and that an attack would literally take hours to complete?[/spoiler]

[casinopete]

I think the greater problem lies in the fact that he intends to make the game multiplayer. You can't simulate relativistic effects for two viewpoints at the same time.

[Chuck]

Players could communicate outside the game, such as by phone or instant messenger service, which would allow faster than light communications for game purposes.

[Chuck]

And if you can signal faster than light you can have time travel paradoxes.

[Chuck]

Basically, the program can't impose relativistic effects on the players. I suppose all of the players can be kept on earth and must signal their forces from there.

[dnwq]

If he can find a computer fast enough to play that, I want one too!
_________________
+---

[Celt_]

The relativistic components would still be possible in multiplayer-mode so long as it was on a client/server architecture. The server would know everything and each player's client would only show the universe as it would appear from that user's perspective. For example, PlayerA shoots a photon blast at close to the speed of light in the direction of PlayerB and informs the server. The server, sends this information to PlayerB's client. The client does not display this information however as it knows that the light from the blast is not yet visible.
I'd say the big drawback with realistic battles in space would be that explosions would be silent.

[Chuck]

The players would have to be trusted not to cheat by communicating outside the game. They could send messages to each other through the server which would deliver them on schedule but a phone call would beat the speed of light limitation.

[ralphmerridew]

The game can't appropriately handle time dilation for multiple players. Suppose two people start at the same place. A moves far away at .99c, then returns at the same speed, while B moves very slowly. With time dilation, this might appear as a minute to A, but could appear to take hours for B. As a result, to know where A will see B's ship, the program has to know what moves B will make, hours before B makes them.

[Speeder]

That's pretty much what I was thinking Ralph.

Speeder.

[EGRESS]

The description of the game is that of an observer. Someone that is not moving at the speed of light.
If you were a player, it would not matter how fast you were going if everything in the game is set at the same speed. RELATIVITY
The game would be no different than any other.
_________________
Have a Wonderful Day!

[fritfrat]

First off, there are many flaws in this idea, such as if you move at almost the speed of light you would not be able to see or hear anything that happens to you, but overall I believe that what Ralph said makes this game unmakable.

Since this is only a game, true relativity cannot be applied. If you were ACTUALLY moving almost the speed of light and the opponaunt was going slowly, "time would go by slower" for the person who was moving slower (I don't know how else to term that ). Controlling someone moving this fast would be completely different; since both people are simplying controlling it not moving at their computers, they cannot reach the relativity that one person has time moving quicker for them than the other.


Either that or I am not even close to the actual answer . I try, lol
[edit: Please use the spoiler tags to hide answers -Antrax]

[fritfrat]

Also, I forgot to mention how I believe casino was right too. If it was single player, then the computer could just have the actions thought up for what the computer WOULD do over a certain period of time.

Also, could it theoretically work if in multiplayer relativity was applied but all ships could only move at exactly the same speeds the entire time, and you had a server with information of where all the ships and missles were (since this is just a game)?

[Celt]

I'd solve the problem by altering server response times dependant on your relative speed, so that the faster you go the slower your server response is. If you were not moving while others were moving close to c then you would observe planet rotation appear to speed up etc. Of course this would not be in real-time, but that was not one of the pre-requisites. Also, just because we are limited by the speed of light does not mean we have the ability to travel fast.
I'm currently limited by the speed of light and if I run really fast towards you I will appear blue only if it's cold.

[GH]

[mathgeek]

I support Celt's idea: the faster you command your ship to go, the slower will the "game time" clock run, just as in many computer games you can set the speed to "slow", "fast", and so on... Plus the character's age will be subject to the relativity aging fluke, there's no need for the player to feel it on himself/herself. It's just a game.

[Chuck]

But two players traveling at high speed relative to each other would each have to see each other's game clock running more slowly than his own.

There's still the problem of players communicating faster than light by talking to each other outside the game.

[mathgeek]

i always hated advanced physics, so you've lost me there. How would they be flying relative to each other: going away, running parallel, or trying to crash into each other? And why would each get to see the other's clock slower than his own?

[Chuck]

If I moved past you at high speed you'd see my clock running slower than yours. But relative to me you're the one who's moving at high speed so I'd see your clock running slower than mine. It's because there's no universal frame of reference. It's all relative.

[Celt]

[mathgeek]

And if the players don't really know each other so they can't share contact data (multiplayer doesn't necessarily means for a group of people), then FTL comm isn't even possible, so it's not a problem.

[ralphmerridew]

At light speed it will take 6 hours from the point of view of a person fixed on earth, but, due to time dilation, no time at all from the POV of the passenger.

[Speeder]

I think that Celt's solution to the time dilation problem is wrong (i.e. slowing down server response times for faster speeds.)

For example, if player 1 (travelling close to the speed of light) was to circle around player 2 (stationary) and fire 4 missiles when at 0,90,180,270 degrees to player 2 then this should appear to happen pretty quickly to player 2. But if the server response time was slowed down for player 1, then player 2 would not see this happening quickly - it would be impossible for the server to plot the course of player 1 and fire the missiles because the server would still not have recieved the instruction to fire any missiles.

Ralph Merridew already explained this earlier to tell you the truth.

Also, I think that communicating outside the game is irrelevant because the game can't work anyway.

Speeder.

[lostdummy]

hm...I dont think real problem is in long time needed to simulate events. Nowhere in problem it was stated how high acceleration you can achieve. Imagine that we are talking about some super-spaceship that can have incredibly high acceleration without killing passengers...then you could speed up from 0 to near-c and back in short time. Maybe not very probable, but for game purposes it will work.

I think real problem here is in RELATIVITY of 'SAME TIME' concept. Meaning that when we apply relativity , we can not ensure that two observers will see two events happening at same time. Imagine player A fireing ship guns at player B ship .... and seeing on his screen that he hit other ship. At same time player B sees missile going well ahead or behind his ship - all possible situations in relativity scenario.

And you would hardly solve this problem for multiplayer game, where one player will claim he made hit while other player will claim he was missed.....

[Somebody]

I don't think any of the postings above touched on the fundamental problem:

According to the theory of relativity, an observer might be able to observe the EFFECT of an event before they have observed the event itself. A computer can never simulate this, ever, because such a simulation requires knowledge of the future.

For example, in some situations, a player should see an opponent ship blow up BEFORE that player had fired at it. Good luck simulating this one!

[Celt]

[Celt]

[Lintu89]

There is no return address on the idea. you couldn't seend the chek to him.

[guest(loiterer)]

How would you deal with the Car and Garage paradox? while the garage should think that nothing happened, The car would have to think that the door was slammed before he was thru... how would you show this? (well, I don't really know what this would look like in real life but...)

[Burning]

[Burning]

[dave10000]

[ralphmerridew]

The problem with modeling relativistic effects is that the players have control over their games, and that under some circumstances A can see the effect of B's actions (in A's reference frame), before B chooses those actions (in B's reference frame).

[dave10000]

ralphmerridew --

I don't see how that could ever be the case. Could you give a specific example of a situation in which that would occur?

[Chuck]

I read somewhere that general relativity doesn't rule out time travel. It would be hard for the computer simulate time travel without being able to actually do it. If a player traveled back through time the computer could put everything back where it was at that time in the past but couldn't do anything about the other players' memories of what would become future events.

[dave10000]

Although, "not ruling out" backward time travel is not the same thing as "predicts that backward time travel is possible." Newtonian mechanics does not "rule out" backward time travel, bit no one would fault a game that modeled Newtonian mechanics for leaving out the possibility of backward time travel.

[Chuck]

If this game ruled out backward time travel then it wouldn't be an accurate simulation since general relativity doesn't rule out backward time travel. This is supposed to be a realistic game.

[Celt]

We are talking about a game that is supposed to be realistic, so the edge cases that are being discussed here are not in the slightest bit relevant. The idea of propelling a heavy spaceship at close to the speed of light is simply preposterous. There are no "realistic" relativistic effects that would be significant enough to cause any difficulty to simulate in a multi-player game. Also, only virtual player's timelines need be effected. It is not necessary to affect any change in the real world. At this stage, the only difficulty I foresee is the incredible amount of computing power required to calculate the minor relativistic corrections that need to be applied during game-play.

[Chuck]

The computer should be able to simulate reality but the actual players aren't part of its program and can't be controlled by it.