The Atomic Object System is a design pattern that allows for the creation of novel and composable objects while maintaining the overall balance of the world. Each object in the world is composed of a small group of basic particles, whose characteristics or statistics are inherited from these constituent atoms. Unlike traditional game worlds where objects are specified by designers, the residents of these worlds can create entirely new objects with new properties.
In traditional game worlds, there are usually a set of predefined items because designers prioritize player enjoyment over player autonomy. Providing reliable and enjoyable experiences for players requires balancing various systems to ensure they get the right items at the right time. Powerful or valuable items often require a large expenditure of money or are limited by skill trees and upgrade paths to prevent the imbalance of gameplay. Designers carefully adjust these systems to optimize player experience while maintaining a sense of challenge and reward.
This is particularly challenging in multiplayer games. Single-player games can be adjusted based on the player’s individual progress and skills, quietly changing the rules of the game world, but multiplayer games cannot easily change one player’s reality without causing frustration for another player. A shared space that allows players to interact across skill levels requires a more normal functioning economic system, which has historically been difficult to achieve. Allowing players to create new items without proper restrictions may lead to a large number of items “breaking” the gaming experience for other players, or even themselves.
Part of the appeal of autonomous worlds is that residents can freely collaborate to design, build, and create entirely new things. To achieve this, we cannot rely on game designers to carefully refine the mechanisms when new objects are added to the world. Manual balancing of systems is costly, and with the addition of new objects, the cost of testing the interactions between objects increases exponentially. Instead, autonomous worlds rely on explicit narrative rules or digital physical laws, which limit what can happen in the world based on the laws of physics. Good digital physical laws should be able to provide a variety of possible objects without requiring game designers to manually balance each object.
The “Atomic Object System” is a digital physical form that provides a mechanism for easy-to-understand and self-balancing compositability. Players are free to invent new objects of any power level, but they must first obtain the required atoms by destroying existing objects. By treating basic atoms as building blocks, players can invent objects beyond the restrictions of hardcoded crafting trees. At the same time, the effort required to obtain these atoms in the game world is balanced in proportion to the complexity of the created object.
In the development of Downstream, we conceived the Atomic Object System. The game consists of player-controlled units that live on a hexagonally tiled map, with every state change being a chain transaction. Units use buildings to craft items, each consisting of a specific set of basic particles represented by different colored viscous substances. The basic crafting process includes:
– Collecting viscous material from extractors
– Using buildings to craft items
– Adding items to the player’s inventory
The functionality of extractors is akin to a faucet for viscous materials. They dispense basic items: droplets composed entirely of pure red, blue, or green viscous substances. Buildings allow for crafting, taking multiple items as input to output new items composed of viscous substances. Some viscous substances are burned as an absorbent during the crafting process. The most common use of items is to enhance the attributes of units, with the number of viscous atoms in the items determining the type and quantity of attribute enhancement. Red viscous increases strength, blue viscous increases defense, and green viscous increases vitality.
Players can also use the “Building Manufacturing Machine” to construct new buildings, which in turn produce new items. The creation of items does not require unique atomic compositions. Therefore, players can use their friend’s building to output the same item with the same atomic composition. Crafting recipes can also include items made by any player, enabling the development of a wide range of technology trees.
Downstream uses a node graph architecture, representing all entities (players, buildings, etc.) as contracts with their own addresses, and representing items as ERC-1155 with names and balances, which can be assigned to these entity addresses. The basic atomic composition of each object is encoded as metadata, allowing contracts to check the required composition materials.
The most widely used application of the compositability system in virtual worlds is in-game crafting mechanisms. However, it is important to note that many games with crafting mechanisms have already distinguished between the game and the living world.
There are numerous alternative approaches to this design pattern, primarily differing in their handling of digital physical laws. The depth and granularity of digital physical laws in a world can vary, affecting the richness of the content that can be built upon it. On one hand, a world can have more deep or granular digital physical laws, tending towards simulation and emergence. On the other hand, a world can have shallower or coarser digital physics, tending towards realism and immersion.
One way to expand the system is to add atomic types. The Atomic Object System in Downstream currently has three atomic types, but plans are to add at least two or three more. Another possibility is that atoms not only affect combat data but also other aspects of the game. This is theoretically possible, as players can use custom logic to create buildings and components, utilizing atomic values in different ways. However, additional player actions and features truly hooked into the atomic system are needed for this to be attractive.
These are just some of the ways in which the Atomic Object System is implemented in Downstream. The system is still being developed and expanded, and there are many exciting possibilities for its future development.
