Milky Way: Cosmic Playground/ storm of stars (game)

[Worldtree]

the main article draft  this post stems from is a (in progress) draft for “storm of storms” a series of virtual worlds obsessed with fluid dynamics and dueling hurricanes on the surface of a virtual gas giant… but then the “sequel” would involve star formation and dueling solar storms within stars, or something like that. 

1. Worldtree (Dfleymmes) 

anyway, 

https://scixp.itch.io/milkyway

It turns out there is an Actual storm of stars game!!! which is why i'm posting it now

Milky Way: Cosmic Playground
What it would be like to combine the interactive gameplay of Universe Sandbox 2 with the stunning graphics of Space Engine? A new game that brings together the best of both worlds has arrived!

In this game, you're a typical star that wants to become the most massive one in the galaxy. To achieve this goal, you need to merge with other small ones. While avoiding collision with massive rivals.

the rest of this  is notes taken from discord conversations several months ago.

[Worldtree]

the rest of this post is notes taken from discord conversations last year - may 31, 2022

I’m just making this a thread in case people have other conversations they want to have while @Trolligi and I are brainstorming So to somehow turn a binary pair of blue giants into a game… or any other kind of ritual, I’m assuming there has to be some kind of imbalance that could work out either way..
“The game dynamics are incomprehensible because the minds are very nonhuman” is a good excuse if we can’t come up with precise dynamics


What is this game made for
Worldtree (Dfleymmes) — Yesterday at 3:41 PM“Zamn some time ago I tried to make a card game like that, I think this would be interesting” yeah or some kind of game of life … but for stars.
[*]rolligi — Yesterday at 3:41 PM
What I meant by that is who would play it
[*]Worldtree (Dfleymmes) — Yesterday at 3:42 PM
The reason? For.. fun gaming? For a religious ritual? For art? All of the above?
[*]

[3:42 PM]

Various virtual / uploaded minds who are obsessed with star formation? (edited)
rolligi — Yesterday at 3:42 PM
So not normal people
[*]otree (Dfleymmes) — Yesterday at 3:43 PM
+ a version for embodied people
[*]Trolligi — Yesterday at 3:43 PM
[*]But it’s “more limited” because “their minds can’t redesign themselves to manipulate the magnetic field of an entire Star”


[*]Worldtree (Dfleymmes) — Yesterday at 3:44 PM
I’ll have to think about how this could become more than a game too
[*]

[3:46 PM]

(Also I’ll point out that these virtuals could see inside the stars all at once/volumetrically because it’s a virtual world.. see Greg Egans diaspora ..
[*]

[3:46 PM]

I’m just throwing out ideas here
[*]

[3:48 PM]

And maybe some of these games are actually useful because they actually simulate starlifting or finding appropriate ways to colonize around particular stars… but made gamified
[*]

[3:48 PM]

Ok I’ll be back in an hour or so
[*]rolligi — Yesterday at 3:48 PM
ok
[*]Rynn Y11K — Yesterday at 3:58 PM
Define “normal people” lol
That’s hard enough to do in real life
[*]In OA a virtual game where you play with the fluid dynamics of stars is certainly something near baselines could partake in. It could even be the equivalent of an educational school activity
Worldtree (Dfleymmes) — Yesterday at 4:13 PM
Also - possibly modosophonts /various levels of minds lower than s2 try to build or simulate a godstar or various computing methods with…Star plasma or however that would work. They don’t even have to succeed - they just all decide to become obsessed with simulating and thinking about blue giant star formation and Star weather - most of them replacing their core motives of reproduction to “think about how blue giants work” …or something like that. Or a transapient decides to provolve alife organisms that were previously … Star simulation software.. leading to an entire culture obsessed with the Star Rigel or something (edited)
If you need a “practical reason” Their original purpose was “figure out starlifting without asking a s2? s3 transapient for help because there’s none nearby” … and they evolve from there (edited)
Worldtree (Dfleymmes) — Yesterday at 4:22 PM
Or the “story” is a culture that independently (re) invents starlifting or Star mining
Rynn Y11K — Yesterday at 4:23 PM
To throw out another option; there is no practical use[4:24 PM]
It’s simply an aesthetic choice to inhabit a virtual world characterised by stars crashing into each other. Plenty of options grand and mundane to be had 



The corpse clock / the vot clock- 

originally built as a memorial of the version war of billions of backups , constructed into a huge virtual society sim of vots who repeatedly and cyclically go through the motions of a society right before the version war , briefly achieve full sophonce, and then collapse back into a massive Chinese room of zombies. The megastructure was discovered in 7998 in the cinder system of x when the version war concluded. Built by ahuman AIs or non aligned AIs, either as a warning or a trap … or maybe built in the surreal rash. A giant mechanical clock of a vot society. Was it a memorial? A warning? A trap? 

The society was recorded, documented,  and then destroyed by transapient probe members for violating ethical constraints. however a purely vot imitation remains. 


possibilities: 

The Known Net is vast on a scale that - in a sense - dwarfs all of embodied Terragen civ. There could be all kinds of weird and wonderful and terrifying things running around inside it. 

For a bit of rumor that just came to me: It is rumored that - over the thousands of years that Terragens have been expanding and encountering ancient xenosophont ruins and artifacts - they have come into contact with multiple xeno-computer networks containing all sorts of alien software - which has made its way into the KN and is running around in it doing who (or what) knows what. Given that the Godweb operates at least semi-autonomously in terms of its expansion and maintenance, it might even have come into contact with alien tech/software without the archai or other Terragens knowing about it. So 'virtual Cthulhu' could actually exist in the Net and be driving the occasional user mad.