I was going to email this but by the time I finished writing the forums were working again. Hope it formated correctly.
I saw your post about cultures and then shortly after the forums stopped working.
I'm not a programmer but I once saw this algorithim that seemed really good. It is
for reducing colors in an image using three dimensional volumes. I think that it
would work quite well for cultures as well. Imagine the people as colors in a 16
million color scheme (each slighly different from each other) and imagine the
cultures as colors in an optimized 256 color scheme. People naturally fall into
cultures but their individual characteristics remain. Thus if the population changes
the list of cultures updates automatically. Thus hybrids are handled automatically.
The article is at:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/visual_arts/061997/a_few_good_colors.htm
It also makes sense to use a color model. For example in a picture of some grass,
they sky, the sun and some clouds you would get a set of cultures. Imagine how the
256 colors would be assigned. The sun would probably only get 2-3, the grass
would get more. The sky would get a few but the clouds (especially where the
edges blend with the sky) would get the most. This is probably how it should be
done if you imagine the picture as a representation of the cultures. To encourage
hybrids you would have new people formed by a simple breeding process. Each
parent has a red, green, and blue chromosome. A mate would be chosen by some
sort of process, weighted towards similar chracteristics, for example an orange
person would be more inclined to breed with a yellow person than a dark blue
person. However forces (government intervention, etc..) could cause different
breeding behaviour. After every cycle of population growth cultures could be
redefined and people would be reallotted to new cultures.
Their are disadvantages to this system: no sense of cultural history, cultures can't
be easily named. However I think that with a little work these could be gotten
around. Say there was a religious war between the greenish gray and the violet.
You could grab the current color from each culture (out of 256) and find every
color (out of 16 million) that would fall with into it. So 16 million/256 colors are
affected. Do this for both sides of the conflict. Now assign a marker of some sort
at each of these colors indicating a hatred with the other side. These markers
remain for a while, at least as long as the hatred continues. To find default cultural
hatred bewtween two cultures count up the markers in each (0-256) and multiply
the two values together. Thus if the two cultures don't change and the hatred
continues you will have a hatred value of 16 million. However what happens if the
cultural boundaries move around? Let's say that violet has broken into two
subcultures. Each might contain half of the markers. Now greenish gray hates them
both but not as intensly, although continued conflict (or peace) could change it. This makes sense. Cultures with shifting borders tend not
to hold hatreds as long, on the other hand Arabs and Jews will always hate each
other. I just came up with this hatred marker idea as I wrote it so it is still a bit rough.
I saw your post about cultures and then shortly after the forums stopped working.
I'm not a programmer but I once saw this algorithim that seemed really good. It is
for reducing colors in an image using three dimensional volumes. I think that it
would work quite well for cultures as well. Imagine the people as colors in a 16
million color scheme (each slighly different from each other) and imagine the
cultures as colors in an optimized 256 color scheme. People naturally fall into
cultures but their individual characteristics remain. Thus if the population changes
the list of cultures updates automatically. Thus hybrids are handled automatically.
The article is at:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/visual_arts/061997/a_few_good_colors.htm
It also makes sense to use a color model. For example in a picture of some grass,
they sky, the sun and some clouds you would get a set of cultures. Imagine how the
256 colors would be assigned. The sun would probably only get 2-3, the grass
would get more. The sky would get a few but the clouds (especially where the
edges blend with the sky) would get the most. This is probably how it should be
done if you imagine the picture as a representation of the cultures. To encourage
hybrids you would have new people formed by a simple breeding process. Each
parent has a red, green, and blue chromosome. A mate would be chosen by some
sort of process, weighted towards similar chracteristics, for example an orange
person would be more inclined to breed with a yellow person than a dark blue
person. However forces (government intervention, etc..) could cause different
breeding behaviour. After every cycle of population growth cultures could be
redefined and people would be reallotted to new cultures.
Their are disadvantages to this system: no sense of cultural history, cultures can't
be easily named. However I think that with a little work these could be gotten
around. Say there was a religious war between the greenish gray and the violet.
You could grab the current color from each culture (out of 256) and find every
color (out of 16 million) that would fall with into it. So 16 million/256 colors are
affected. Do this for both sides of the conflict. Now assign a marker of some sort
at each of these colors indicating a hatred with the other side. These markers
remain for a while, at least as long as the hatred continues. To find default cultural
hatred bewtween two cultures count up the markers in each (0-256) and multiply
the two values together. Thus if the two cultures don't change and the hatred
continues you will have a hatred value of 16 million. However what happens if the
cultural boundaries move around? Let's say that violet has broken into two
subcultures. Each might contain half of the markers. Now greenish gray hates them
both but not as intensly, although continued conflict (or peace) could change it. This makes sense. Cultures with shifting borders tend not
to hold hatreds as long, on the other hand Arabs and Jews will always hate each
other. I just came up with this hatred marker idea as I wrote it so it is still a bit rough.
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