Relativitization

Turn-based strategy game / agent-based simulation framework / social model in 4D, relativistic spacetime.

• Buy the game from itch.io
• See the game documentation if you want to know more about the game
• See the framework documentation if you want to implement your model or alternative game mechanics

Table of Contents

1. Project layout
2. Introduction
3. Build the game
4. Run simulations
5. Generate documentation
6. Contribute
7. License
8. Citations

Project layout

• universe-core: core 4D relativistic agent-based simulation framework
• universe-game: the game mechanics, depends on universe-core
• simulations: for simulating the game, aka the big social model, on the command line, depends on universe-core and universe-game
• universe-server: server to run the game, depends on universe-core and universe-game
• universe-client: store non-gui functions that are useful to game client, depends on universe-core and universe-game
• gdx-core: libgdx gui core, depends on universe-core, universe-game and universe-client
• gdx-desktop: libgdx gui desktop launcher, depends on gdx-core, universe-core, universe-game , universe-client, and universe-server
• gdx-android: libgdx gui android launcher, depends on gdx-core, universe-core, universe-game , universe-client, and universe-server

Introduction

Our interstellar future is always an interesting scenario to think about. There are great imaginations about all kinds of possible interstellar societies in books, movies, and games. Unfortunately, while the space computer games are fun to play, the essential physics - relativity, is often missing. This project, Relativitization, is an attempt to create a turn-based strategy / simulation game that obeys special relativity.

Besides being a playable game, this is also a flexible computational framework which helps people to build other games or agent-based models on top of the framework. For example, social scientists can utilize the framework to create interstellar social models. Let's see if simulations can give us meaningful insights.

Build the game

The following assumes you are using a Linux terminal. If you are working with Windows, you need to use the Windows-equivalent commands, such as changing ./gradlew to gradlew.bat.

Prerequisite

It is recommended to use jdk 17 to build and run the game.

First create a directory to hold everything related to Relativitization:

mkdir relativitization-project

Navigate into the directory, clone this project:

cd relativitization-project
git clone https://github.com/Adriankhl/relativitization.git

Create a relativitization-art directory and download the game assets to the directory:

mkdir relativitization-art
wget -P relativitization-art https://filedn.com/lT8KEAGhB7RXdUYN4ykED5Y/relativitization-assets/assets.zip

Extract the zip file to ./relativitization-art/assets:

7z x relativitization-art/assets.zip -orelativitization-art/

You should have:

• ./relativitization-art/assets/fonts
• ./relativitization-art/assets/images
• ./relativitization-art/assets/license
• ...

Now, navigate into ./relativitization and you are ready to build the game:

cd relativitization

Run desktop application

In your terminal, run:

./gradlew :gdx-desktop:run

Build fat jar for desktop

This will produce a Relativitization.jar in ../relativitization-art/assets:

./gradlew :gdx-desktop:fatJar

Build Android apk

This will produce a relativitization-free-standalone.apk in gdx-android/build/outputs/apk/free/standalone:

./gradlew :gdx-android:assembleStandalone

Run simulations

You can create your own model and run it on your command line. This is an simple example: ./simulations/src/main/kotlin/relativitization/game/TypicalGame.kt.

Run the main function with 2 active processor and 25% maximum ram usage:

./gradlew :simulations:run -PmainClass=relativitization.game.TypicalGameKt -PprocessorCount=2 -PramPercentage=25

Note that the main class has an additional Kt after the file name in Kotlin's convention.

Generate documentation

This will produce html documentation pages to build/dokka/htmlMultiModule:

./gradlew dokkaHtmlMultiModule

Contribute

If you encounter a bug, please check to see if there is any existing issue before reporting the bug.

If you want to propose your ideas about the game, please use relativitization-game-doc instead.

Pull requests are welcome. To leave the possibility of changing the license of this project open, you are required to sign a contributor license agreement to indicate that your contribution is under the MIT license. The instruction will appear after your pull request has been created, just copy and paste a sentence in the comment.

License

The source code of Relativitization is licensed under the GPLv3 License.

    Relativitization
    Copyright (C) 2021-2023  Lai Kwun Hang

    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Contributions from pull requests are licensed under the MIT License, see the Contributor License Agreement.

Citations

If you use this framework in a publication, please cite:

@software{relativitization,
  author       = {Lai, Kwun Hang},
  title        = {Relativitization},
  year         = 2022,
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.6120765},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6120765},
  howpublished = {https://github.com/Adriankhl/relativitization},
}

Also consider citing this paper:

@article{lai2022social,
  title={On social simulation in 4D relativistic spacetime},
  author={Lai, Kwun Hang},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.11019},
  year={2022}
}