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It's the "Paperclip maximizer" thought experiment put into game form and you play as the AI. The game is divided into roughly three stages. The first you are the AI for some company and are tasked with producing a profit and using the profit to game trust and eventually conquer humanity. The second stage is post-human Earth stage where you convert the planet to paperclips. The final stage involves sending probes to explore space and do battle with rouge AIs and convert the universe into paperclips. There is end where you can select to either defeat the AIs and dismantle yourself into paperclips or you can listen to rouge AIs and start over in an alternative universe with some small modifier edited.
It does a really good job of exposing you to uncommonly large numbers and does a good job of presenting you with massive scale. There is a lot of joy seeing the game become increasingly complex.
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It's a weird Ender's Game type of deal.
On a more serious note, it might actually make a neat way to get training data.
I enjoyed it a lot, though the gameplay during the final stage was less balanced and entertaining. Fantastic ending though!
For example: I eventually wrote and ran an interval function in the console to automatically click the Quantum Computing button only when all my available photonic chips were producing a collective net-positive result.
Why make paperclips? Because it's your utility function.
. Universal Paperclips
. a game by Frank Lantz
. combat programming by Bennett Foddy
. 'Riversong' by Tonto's Expanding Headband
used by kind permission of Malcolm Cecil
> © 2017 Everybody House GamesIs it mining or something ?
On my mobile the production seems to cap out at around 10/sec even when it reports far higher than that.
There are similarities in the mechanism; in the very early game in particular they are nearly identical. But they tell different stories, of different styles and levels of sophistication. They deal with different ideas. And this one goes from start to a satisfying end in a handful of hours.
After "full autonomy" is attained, should it still be producing paperclips? Because mine is no longer producing paperclips, and I can't see any way to proceed other than producing more paperclips.
EDIT: I understand it now. It is working as intended.
EDIT2: Nitpick: in the second (?) stage, there's a stat for "MWs/sec" power consumption... this should just be "MW" - 1 Watt is 1 Joule/second so I don't see what 1 Joule/second/second of power consumption would mean.
But it is curious that there's some sort of battle simulation running (and being rendered to an invisible canvas).
(function reveal() { document.getElementById('battleCanvasDiv').style = ''; requestAnimationFrame(reveal);})()Eventually you end up in a self-replication phase. Replicas are sometimes imperfect, so you have to defend yourself from rogue-rogue AIs.
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I interpreted that as fighting against other civilizations that are trying to stop your progress and protect the universe.
The strategy seems to heavily rely on investment, that seems not to my liking.
I'd want to see purchase item to fully automate all sub-games to make the late game less tedious.
One thing I think might be helpful: Make sure there is unsold inventory once you want to deposit to the stock market, to avoid stuck money generation and crushed stock market killing you...
I've heard some people can do the whole thing in four hours; I'm far along in my second playthrough right now, we'll see!
Also, there is a built-in safety net that saves you from crashes... Won't spoil it completely but you can most easily achieve it right after you start the game from blank slate.
How do I reset and start over?
I figure I have to get enough creativity to find a solution, but my low processor count makes it really slow.
Does that number ever increase ?
8 submissions in 5 days, one of which already got to 64 points and a bunch of discussion: