# Space-Merchants and the future! **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [March 25, 2006, 1:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/space-merchants-and-the-future/55928 "2006-03-25T13:27:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerben_van_de_Wiel)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 1:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/space-merchants-and-the-future/55928/1 "2006-03-25T13:27:40Z")
I have been following the Thread about Ruby quiz number 71, with great intrest. I have a few question about the effort to develop some basic functionality of a space merchant game. -Has anyone already registered a project @ rubyforge -Is there some where a discussion going about how to develop the quiz results in a working game -Is there a functional basis of this game -Are there people willing to give some time to develop this concept in a real working game It would be nive if we can create some dev team to work on this game, and provide a nice functional and fun game to the ruby community. i myself was thinking about a nice way to combine OpenLaszlo and RoR to make a thin-client and make some kind of space-merchant(ruby) server. i am looking forward to your suggestions and or commentary. Yours, Gerben van de Wiel. ---
**Author:** ![Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerben_van_de_Wiel)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 2:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/space-merchants-and-the-future/55928/2 "2006-03-25T14:35:54Z")
On 25 Mar 2006, at 12:27, Gerben van de Wiel wrote: > i am looking forward to your suggestions and or commentary. 🙂 I was thinking that Ruby would be kind of neat for building a talker (or web / graphical world place) where the users are able to arbitrarily extend the world in dangerous and exciting ways, while also being able to talk to each other. mmmm - mostly just a multiuser IRB, in a way… I think IRB has workspaces? Perhaps these could be rooms? 🙂 And you could “puts” to all the people in the room? Heh - I don’t know. Sounds silly though, and fun, … and spectacularly insecure! ---
**Author:** ![Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerben_van_de_Wiel)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 5:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/space-merchants-and-the-future/55928/3 "2006-03-25T17:41:09Z")
On Mar 25, 2006, at 4:27 AM, Gerben van de Wiel wrote: > I have been following the Thread about Ruby quiz number 71, with great > intrest. > I have a few question about the effort to develop some basic > functionality > of a space merchant game. > > -Has anyone already registered a project @ rubyforge Not that I know of. I offered to register one, but never got a response, and I don’t have the time to do it all myself. > -Are there people willing to give some time to develop this concept > in a > real working game I can provide some time, but not a whole lot. Tim ---
**Author:** ![Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerben_van_de_Wiel)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 9:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/space-merchants-and-the-future/55928/4 "2006-03-26T21:57:38Z")
Another interesting spinoff of this idea would be to use real data and run the merchant AIs against that, e.g. stock data for some period of time / goods prices for some towns + transport costs. ---
**Author:** ![Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gerben\_van\_de\_Wiel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Gerben_van_de_Wiel)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2006, 10:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/space-merchants-and-the-future/55928/5 "2006-03-25T22:21:46Z")
Hi On Sat, Mar 25, 2006 at 09:27:25PM +0900, Gerben van de Wiel wrote: > I have been following the Thread about Ruby quiz number 71, with great > intrest. > I have a few question about the effort to develop some basic functionality > of a space merchant game. Well… I found the quiz very interesting. I’m at the moment a little bit frustrated about a game called X3 The Reunion. It’s also a space game, but well… it has some ‘more advanced’ abilities compared to the Space-Merchants (like 3d graphics, a story, ability to fight, etc… a full game :)). But there are some interesting similarities: What’s the easiest way to get money. In X3 you can either fly your space crafts (little fast ships, big slow transporters etc) by yourself or you can use (if you have enough (in-game) money to buy the needed extension) a computer which trades for you. The computer looks for interesting trade routes, tries to find the best balance between the available money, transporter-cargo-capacity, needed time (length of the route) and of course the profit :). Well, the game is extremely buggy, slow and so it isn’t as funny as I first thought[1]. 😕 But, X3 & S::M brought me to a whole new idea: We could improve the Space-Merchants and then give the people here the opportunity to ‘program’ (of course in ruby) their own merchant AI. There would be a whole predefined world (planets, stations, goods, whatever), perhaps other predefined stupid trades (so that there would be a big ecosystem), a limited amount of credits, a limited amount of time (so that people would have to think twice about the algorithms) etc. The aim would be to to create a good AI which tries to get most out of the situation. The server would run on a central server (so that everybody could compete against each other). Perhaps it would make sense to have regular cycles: for instance the players could upload their scripts/libs by the beginning of a week, and then the whole simulation would run for 24-48 hours (I don’t know how much in-game time this should/would be). After this time the game would stop and the current situation would be saved (which player has how much money, which ships, etc). We could download the logs, improve our scripts etc. etc. And the whole thing would start again next week. Perhaps after some time we could ‘reset’ the whole universe and start from the beginning :). Welll… to be honest, it sounds like a lot of fun, but also like a lot of work :). Kind of on-line game, but for programmers :). And, The techniques learnt and trained could also be useful in our every-day work (or not :). Well… what do you think? Interesting? Too much work :)? Regards, Reto S. 1: It isn’t that bad either, so if you like the idea and a 3d space game, take a look at the demo: [www.egosoft.com](http://www.egosoft.com)