Obviously I am not going to explain exactly how this works to the one group of people who have the ability to instantly run away with it. Rube is, when it comes down too it, how I make games. That's what Rube really is, how my mind makes games. It will either be revealed through my games or it will die with me.

And your industry does not have anything remotely similar too this. That is certain, there is no doubt about that at all. For one thing, none of you have the pre-requisite knowledge to arrive at Rube in the first place. Second, all of the games you are making would be obsolete if Rube existed. It's certainly not something that would be put on a shelf and not used, and would be blatantly obvious if it were in use. Even my most primitive form of Rube in the Cold War game is "indistinguishable from game design magic" from the perspective of the modern game industry. You are quite a bit far away from this, and not getting how well I understand what you call "game design".

This conversation will always want to go in this direction, and I really am just seriously looking for advice with what you do with such an important and unbelievable discovery because I have had no luck with that so far and know how bad I am at it. I have already got some very helpful advice, and hopefully can get some more. But this will happen through my games or not at all.

Hmm, so it's kind of like the global timeline that quests happen on combined with the simulation loops where NPCs do A at X time of day and B at Y time of day and switch for a different loop after key event Q happens...?

Hodgman: I wanted to add that I completely sympathize with you. Like I said, it really did take me 2 or 3 weeks to get over this myself. The thing for me is, I KNOW that it works. It is actually VERY SIMPLE in it's most basic form, which is why I can't begin to go too much into it because even "the first thing" about it is very easy to understand, very powerful, and at the core of what it is about my games that I wouldn't want to see anyone else doing first. This is my whole problem. That it IS so unbelievable, and even crazy sounding, combined with my long proven inability to actually get a game made. In fact, the computer game industry and I have always been fundamentally incompatible. Originally my universe was a "double trilogy", it grew over the years to "complete the time loop". But even at a 6-game "Big Three Era"-style game universe... who would "hire" me to do that? That is not how your industry functions. You only do that by funding the entire operation yourself and, like most people, I can come nowhere near to affording that. So I have 3 strikes against me... 1) It sounds so crazy most people will dismiss it within the first paragraph, 2) I am inherently incompatible with how the computer game industry functions, and 3) I may very well be the absolute worst business/salesman in the history of mankind. This is why I am here, trying to find some way because this has been my entire life's work and at 48 this is definitely going to be the last try at this. So I understand your position, it is quite rational which is a big part of my problem here. I do realize that.

sunandshadow: It can be used in many ways, I make 11 very different games out of it as it is. And my only game that doesn't have Rube in it... I am going to "wave Rube over it", now that I understand Rube, and vastly enhance a few aspects of it that are already there. It gives you control over time and the future of every "living thing" in its universe or world. It is also a very advanced form of AI form this perspective. My universe is actually a "broken timeline" that I created just conceptually from an image in my mind of a broken Rube "spinning off dead timelines" and that led me to this interesting "broken timeline" that I wound up re-writing a lot of the old story around in really cool ways. The end result is that an overall story arc is determining which timeline of the many you will encounter is the "real one", and because of this "trick" I created it with... I'll just say it's not actually possible to ever answer that question <snickers> But, yes, it could be used like you suggest.

Another example might be that one I mentioned before with the sneeze. If you were a character in the "Cold War Rube I" world of the first Rube game I would make there would be "Event Cards". If I threw an Event Card that says you will sneeze 5 hours from now, then 5 hours from now you will be summoned into existence to sneeze, and then cease to exist... unless instructed to stay for some reason, maybe to do something else in a moment. If I threw that card 1 second before the moment you were supposed to sneeze... no difference. If it were an "Ultimate Infinity Rube" and I told threw in a card that said you would sneeze 2,325,768 years from now... Yep, than that is what would happen 2,325,768 years from now. "A functioning scientific modeling simulation of a god".

Of course, Nypren, that is common in many board games as well. An un-played card with instructions to be executed during a future phase is that same thing happening in a board game.

Hodgman: I wanted to add that I completely sympathize with you. Like I said, it really did take me 2 or 3 weeks to get over this myself. ... This is my whole problem. That it IS so unbelievable, and even crazy sounding

I don't know if it's crazy sounding or not, because you have not told us what it is... The only thing that's crazy sounding is your silly descriptions -- "The Matrix" and "A god" are not useful descriptions. Those words mean something different to me than they do to you, because they're extremely subjective. I still don't know if the core idea is crazy or not.

Another example might be that one I mentioned before with the sneeze. If you were a character in the "Cold War Rube I" world of the first Rube game I would make there would be "Event Cards". If I threw an Event Card that says you will sneeze 5 hours from now, then 5 hours from now you will be summoned into existence to sneeze, and then cease to exist... unless instructed to stay for some reason, maybe to do something else in a moment. If I threw that card 1 second before the moment you were supposed to sneeze... no difference. If it were an "Ultimate Infinity Rube" and I told threw in a card that said you would sneeze 2,325,768 years from now... Yep, than that is what would happen 2,325,768 years from now.

This sounds completely sane and boring. It's what we learned in first year computer science when making a simulation. e.g. We had an assignment to simulate a bank's flow of customers. You'd sample a poisson distribute to generate some future events, e.g. a customer will walk through the door at 9am, 9:02am, 9:10am, and 9:15am. If there's no events "right now", you'd instantly skip ahead in time to the next event occurance, at which point a customer would be "summoned into existance" for as long as required. This would generate some more events, e.g. the customer takes a deposit slip at 9:01am, or approaches a teller at 9:01am, or the customer turns around and leaves (at which point they cease to exist), etc, etc...

You can even create branching chains of events, with their own speculative futures that can either become true/canon, or be cancelled before they occur. e.g. I might generate a sequence of events in one go, as a speculative future timeline:
(1)"Customer A" enters the bank at 9am
(2)"Customer A" talks to a teller at 9:01am
(3a) money is deposited at 9:02am
I also might introduce a second speculative time, branching at (2):
(3b) "Customer A" finds their wallet missing at 9:02, and on the spur of the moment, a bank robbery occurs

Now, while the simulation is sitting here at 8am, I've got two potential futures mapped out, which may come true, depending on the state of the bank at 9:02 am.

If I assume that every customer has money in their wallet by default, then I can speculate for now that future starting from (3a) is the most likely, and I can go on adding even more future events to that timeline, even though it's still 8am.
However, maybe I decide to insert a new event:
(0) At 8:45am, "Customer A" is pickpocketed of their wallet.
Now, the future branch beginning at (3b) is more likely to come true, so I should spend more computation time preparing that future, and potentially mapping out future events along that timeline.
When 9:02am rolls around in the simulation, it will pick either (3a) or (3b) depending on whether "Customer A" has their wallet or not, and the other branch of history will suddenly disappear.

So, if that's the kind of thing you're thinking of, it's not crazy at all. But stop calling it a god :P

Exactly, Hodgman, that is exactly what I am talking about. What you are describing, where that originates, is Avalon Hill's phased turn system. That is what you are actually describing there. And that is the "first generation" of only the core foundation of how Rube operates. The "third generation" of what you are describing is the "treadmill of time" being used at the core of this system. And your understanding is exactly of how careful i need to be with this audience, you already have some of the core knowledge that leads to this. A very experienced scientist, a relative, who works with advanced electronics does not understand this as well as you do. It is not entirely foreign to your industry, Avalon Hill and SFB have been immensely influential on you in indirect ways, so this is the one audience who has the knowledge to understand this as you have just demonstrated.

This really is my life's work that I don't want to see others using before I get to. I have met programmers in your industry who would fly by me in their knowledge and understanding of Rube within their world in under two weeks once they understood it. It's not like I think you are all idiots, it is in fact the exact opposite. There are those among you who are far more qualified to take what I know much father than I can, and very quickly, too. I really have one last chance here that I don't want to become a disaster of just seeing my style of game design emerge and I am still not making games. That should be pretty easy to understand.

You definitely understand what I am talking about. What you describe is the "first generation" of the core of it. Only one "component" of Rube, but the "cardio-vascular" system of it. Or, as I mentioned before, the "third generation" way of phrasing it... "moments of time containing reality".