7 ms·

Outbreak – playable simulations of a disease outbreak

355 points by gringoDan 7y ago

etiam 7y ago
Anybody know an open source version of something like Plague Inc: Evolved ? I sure as hell am not playing computer games now. I'm going to get my crisis preparedness up properly and try to help my community. But it would be an interesting thing to have for the quarantine phase...
- veeralpatel979 7y ago
  I'm a fan of Plague Inc on iOS and have unlocked all the pathogens...what's the difference between Plague Inc and Plague Inc Evolved? Is the latter worth buying and playing? Also: if there's a design doc out there for Plague Inc or a similar game, I'd love to see it.
  - etiam 7y ago
    Cool. I covered all the pathogens too, though I think I had quite a few genes left to unlock. I've never played the original Plague Inc, so I can't tell you the difference from experience, but according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc:_Evolved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc:_Evolved , isn't it amazing that it has its own Wikipedia page?): The core game of Plague Inc: Evolved is the same as Plague Inc. - the player controls a plague which has infected patient zero. The player must infect and kill the whole world population by evolving the plague and adapting to various environments. However, there is a time pressure to complete the game before humans, the opponent, develop a cure for the plague. [...] It also includes all of the expansion packs from the original Plague Inc. game Great game concept, though still with some untapped potential in my opinion. I keep getting inspired to replay it by the news right now, but we really have much, much more urgent things to attend to. Prepare, and help out, but stay safe!
  - MasterOTheTiger 7y ago
    A "design doc" would be the virtual lab where you can design your own scenario for Plague Inc Evolved. It is included in the Plague Inc Evolved game itself.
Swizec 7y ago
Heh I published something very similar this morning. Looks like everyone has the same idea https://reactfordataviz.com/articles/corona-simulation/ https://reactfordataviz.com/articles/corona-simulation/
- pmontra 7y ago
  Interesting simulation but very slow at showing any effect. After 3500+ iterations (several minutes) there were still only 5 deaths in the first simulator (without distancing), all in the first iterations. I suggest to find a way to make it clear when it's done or speed it up to get to the point in one minute max.
  - Swizec 7y ago
    That's weird, I get many deaths in just a few iterations. What were you running on? You seem to have found a bug. Here's a video of when I run these: https://twitter.com/Swizec/status/1239599601537015808 https://twitter.com/Swizec/status/1239599601537015808
    - pedrosorio 7y ago
      Parent is probably referring to the "Covid19 with distancing" simulation. Some feedback: these are very simplistic simulations and obviously not aiming for accuracy but please consider changing the default 20% "reinfectability" parameter. All evidence and medical knowledge indicates that reports of reinfection are either: - issues with testing (false positives/negatives) - extremely rare https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covid-19-reinfection/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covid-19-reinfection/
      - hyperpallium 7y ago
        It's scary enough without reinfection. Seems unlikely. > the 30,000-letter genetic code of the virus changes by one letter every 15 days [from link] But could be like the common cold and flu, with new strains each year - but more contagious and deadly. Even then, we could still have new vaccines each year, and better treatment methods.
nabla9 7y ago
Remember pandemic2 flash game? It was almost impossible to kill all humans without starting the infection from Madagascar. If you started from somewhere else Madagascar always had time to close the borders. Lo and behold: Madagascar is one of the few countries without infections in Global Cases tracker. https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
- Ntrails 7y ago
  And greenland as I recall? But yeah - thikn the trick was low mortality so they took too long to respond
  - jaxn 7y ago
    Long incubation period, start in southeast Asia, airborne, create delays for the scientists...
- Aardwolf 7y ago
  Still playable so long as flash still exists: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/448950 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/448950
- james_s_tayler 7y ago
  I remember that game so well. Your get so far and then Madagascar closes it's borders and it's game over for you. Turns out it's true.
- muzani 7y ago
  The other takeaway from that game was that stealth symptoms with low fatality does the best out of any pandemic.
  - ImaCake 7y ago
    Well everyone gets the common cold!
- 7y ago
wiz21c 7y ago
How can I model the type of interaction between people. For example :is school a stronger vector of propagation than workplace ? I ask because everybody in my country talks about what to stop (restaurants, culture,...) but never explain why working is considered less of a problem... (I have my little idea but well, ain't sure)
- baq 7y ago
  when economy shuts down, more people die of malnutrition than of the virus.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Covid19 doesn't seem deadly enough to get us to that stage, thankfully. Unlike MERS/SARS/Ebola.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  School is a bigger issues because children are usually are much closer together, are in the same room with far more people, and have far more interaction that adults at a typical job.
- brigandish 7y ago
  Tell a child to stop touching things and see how many things they touch, where they put their fingers, how many times they pick their nose etc and then you'll know. It'll only take a few minutes.
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    My friend was in an airport recently. A mother dutifully used hand sanitizer on her 3 year old's hands. Within one minute the child had put their hands on every surface within a meter: arm rests, seat cushions, under the seat where the boogers and gum are, the floor, etc.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  This https://www.pnas.org/content/116/27/13174 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/27/13174 is a good paper, it gives numbers from actual school closures (in Russia), compares with areas where schools weren't closed, creates models for some scenarios too. It would be interesting, possibly instructive to take a SIMS town and use it to model an epidemic.
40four 7y ago
This stuff drives me crazy. I know the author of this (and of the linked Washington Post article) are trying to help people gain clarity, but it worries me that it only serves to accelerate fear and panic. These articles are making it sound as if the exponential part of the curve will just continue on forever until it consumes the whole population. The (self-admittedly) overly simplified simulations aren't helping either. Front this article > And here's the kicker: even if we manage to "flatten the curve" enough to meaningfully space out the case load, we're still positioned to lose millions and millions of lives. From the WaPo article > This so-called exponential curve has experts worried. If the number of cases were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred million cases in the United States by May. Still, without any measures to slow it down, covid-19 will continue to spread exponentially for months. To understand why, it is instructive to simulate the spread of a fake disease through a population. It will continue to spread exponentially for months!? Millions & millions of cases & or deaths? These are really sloppy and dangerous ideas to put in peoples head. They are just plain wrong, and not how pandemics play out in reality. Here is what the CDC says about how pandemics spread (Under the 'COVID-19 Now a Pandemic' heading) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summary.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fsummary.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summ... Pandemics of respiratory disease follow a certain progression outlined in a “Pandemic Intervals Framework.” Pandemics begin with an investigation phase, followed by recognition, initiation, and acceleration phases. The peak of illnesses occurs at the end of the acceleration phase, which is followed by a deceleration phase, during which there is a decrease in illnesses. Different countries can be in different phases of the pandemic at any point in time and different parts of the same country can also be in different phases of a pandemic. Different parts of the country are seeing different levels of COVID-19 activity. The United States nationally is currently in the initiation phases, but states where community spread is occurring are in the acceleration phase. The duration and severity of each phase can vary depending on the characteristics of the virus and the public health response. So no, it will NOT continue exponentially for months. Especially given the amount of isolation/ quarantine measures and canceling of large events taking place. I think it is reasonable to expect these measures will help us progress through to the deceleration phase faster. Further-more, there is more and more evidence coming out suggesting the in China where it started, they have already entered the deceleration phase. This should be encouraging news for us in USA where it is just beginning. https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/newsfeed/2020/03/big-drop-china-coronavirus-infections-200316110905999.html https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/newsfeed/2020/03/big-dr...
xwdv 7y ago
This is missing a couple things: 1) Cells should have random demographics such as male/female and age, and a virus could respond differently to them 2) The virus should have some capability for mutation as it spreads. (probability of changing variables from the initial configuration by some percent)
ISNIT 7y ago
You should totally add this to https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/ https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/
gambler 7y ago
If we're talking about disease-based games, I highly recommend Pathologic 2. Nothing realistic there in terms of modeling disease spread or cure mechanics, it's a very artistic and somewhat abstract game, but it conveys certain social realities of being in a contagion zone really well. Among other things, it show the importance of not collectively freaking out.
- feu 7y ago
  I second this recommendation. I'm currently playing through Pathologic 2 for the first time. Playing through the game in the wider context of a pandemic makes for a very powerful experience.
DonHopkins 7y ago
Bullfrog's classic game "Theme Hospital" had really great emergent vomit cascades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y69QTjTvp1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y69QTjTvp1w
- simcop2387 7y ago
  Two Point Hospital does fantastically as a spiritual successor to Theme Hospital. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlaOYMU8qA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlaOYMU8qA
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Cool, thank you! I'll check in and check it out. (Installing it now!) Does it have a "Bloaty Head" treatment? ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M I played a LOT of Theme Hospital when working on The Sims 1, and aspired to make the Sims editing tools as easy to use and "clicky" as Theme Hospital was. That and some of Peter Molyneux's older games like Dungeon Keeper, with architectural editing and a lot of independent characters running around at the same time, had a lot of influence on The Sims.
- jointpdf 7y ago
  “emergent vomit cascades” gave me the laugh I needed today.
DonHopkins 7y ago
One of the first downloadable objects for The Sims 1 was a pet guinea pig, which literally had a downloadable computer virus. If you neglected to feed and care for your guinea pig properly, it would bite you and give you a deadly contagious virus, which you could spread to other Sims by not following proper hygiene and getting enough rest, and even die from. Kids who downloaded the binary Sims object from the internet and installed in their game were horrified that their beloved Sims dropped dead unexpectedly, but they learned a useful lesson. Now deadly infectious guinea pigs are a tradition continued in later versions of The Sims! The Sims Pie Menus https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-menus-49ca02a74da3#d06b https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-menus-49ca02a74d... >Viruses >You can download this guinea pig object, and if you don’t care for it it will make this secret hidden virus object that gives you a cold, and has with it the animations and sounds of coughing and going (cough cough). >Every once in a while it will just interrupt what you do and cough, and it will be bad for your health. And if you don’t get enough sleep, you have to get sleep to get rid of it. This little program is literally a virus that runs and lives in your household and in your characters, and your characters can spread them to the neighbors, and they’ll bring them home to their families. >Programmable Plug-In Objects >Anyway, there’s quite a lot of interesting potential for what new plug-ins additions can do because of this programming languages. >SimAntics Visual Programming Language >There’s a built-in visual programming language called SimAntics, that is a control flow decision tree type of language. So the “Come and See” object, we’ll look at that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs&t=12m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs&t=12m23s Something Is Killing the Sims, and It's No Accident. By John Markoff, April 27, 2000. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/technology/something-is-killing-the-sims-and-it-s-no-accident.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/technology/something-is-k... Lethal guinea pig kills virtual people http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/746700.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/746700.stm The Sims 1: Guinea Pig Disease https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O5cgXuqhnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O5cgXuqhnA The Sims / Illness / Guinea Pig Disease https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness How to Get and Treat Guinea Pig Disease https://sims-online.com/how-to-get-treat-guinea-pig-disease/ https://sims-online.com/how-to-get-treat-guinea-pig-disease/ The Sims 4 My First Pet: SimGuruGraham Talks “Guinea Pig” Disease https://simsvip.com/2018/03/07/the-sims-4-my-first-pet-simgurugraham-talks-guinea-pig-disease/ https://simsvip.com/2018/03/07/the-sims-4-my-first-pet-simgu...
AlexDanger 7y ago
Great work. Is the code available to look at? I see its a Creative Commons license but I cant find a link to a code repo.
boxfire 7y ago
Super fun: In the full model { 5%, 3%, 5, 3, 0.25, 5, 14 } led to a walking sprawl of disease in a healthy population that lasted a long time, turning down the incubation days by 2 made it slower. The rate of new infections eventually eventually tapered off because the virus encountered its own sprawl like a growing structure in Go. Seems like a STD.
daenz 7y ago
Very cool. Shouldn't the input transmission rate also be fixed for the last "test" ? It says to try to flatten the curve to reduce the % dead, but being able to control the transmission rate is cheating.
olliej 7y ago
I want to be able to tailor survival rate according to availability of hospital support - it seems like an obvious thing to include. e.g. say that there are X hospital beds, and an X% survival rate for critical patients if they can get a bed.
and0rsk 7y ago
We had a small demo to simulate pandemic outbreak at malls. The simulation was mostly for demonstration purposes to illustrate how distancing impacts spread, and potentially some ways to help mitigate it. http://socialdistance.ai/ http://socialdistance.ai/
- paraboul 7y ago
  Much less visual than yours though, I also made a tool to highlight the exponential effect of social distancing. Exponential growth is often counter-intuitive and lot of people don't seem to get it. https://www.spreadsim.com/ https://www.spreadsim.com/
  - drited 7y ago
    This is cool but your hospital beds figure needs to be reduced dramatically because I believe you have taken the number of total hospital beds, not intensive care beds for the critically ill. In my country, the number of total beds is about 48 times the number of intensive care beds.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
oceanofsolaris 7y ago
I am not a huge fan of this (or the WaPo) simulator, since I they seem to have chosen their models for the nice look (regular grid, bouncing balls) instead of for their accuracy. While you can give people a rough idea of how different containment efforts will work, the models are so far removed from reality that I don't think that it really helps very much. Especially the WaPos'comparison' between different containment measures is IMHO borderline negligent without putting huge caveats in front of them.
- shanusmagnus 7y ago
  Given how much normal people know about these issues (nothing whatsoever, or even less than nothing, somehow) I think the shortcomings of their model, vs. full physical simulation, is of no importance. It's a fantastic intuition-builder.

355 points by gringoDan 7y ago

Anybody know an open source version of something like Plague Inc: Evolved ? I sure as hell am not playing computer games now. I'm going to get my crisis preparedness up properly and try to help my community. But it would be an interesting thing to have for the quarantine phase...

veeralpatel979 7y ago
I'm a fan of Plague Inc on iOS and have unlocked all the pathogens...what's the difference between Plague Inc and Plague Inc Evolved? Is the latter worth buying and playing? Also: if there's a design doc out there for Plague Inc or a similar game, I'd love to see it.
- etiam 7y ago
  Cool. I covered all the pathogens too, though I think I had quite a few genes left to unlock. I've never played the original Plague Inc, so I can't tell you the difference from experience, but according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc:_Evolved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Inc:_Evolved , isn't it amazing that it has its own Wikipedia page?): The core game of Plague Inc: Evolved is the same as Plague Inc. - the player controls a plague which has infected patient zero. The player must infect and kill the whole world population by evolving the plague and adapting to various environments. However, there is a time pressure to complete the game before humans, the opponent, develop a cure for the plague. [...] It also includes all of the expansion packs from the original Plague Inc. game Great game concept, though still with some untapped potential in my opinion. I keep getting inspired to replay it by the news right now, but we really have much, much more urgent things to attend to. Prepare, and help out, but stay safe!
- MasterOTheTiger 7y ago
  A "design doc" would be the virtual lab where you can design your own scenario for Plague Inc Evolved. It is included in the Plague Inc Evolved game itself.

Swizec 7y ago

Heh I published something very similar this morning. Looks like everyone has the same idea https://reactfordataviz.com/articles/corona-simulation/ https://reactfordataviz.com/articles/corona-simulation/

pmontra 7y ago
Interesting simulation but very slow at showing any effect. After 3500+ iterations (several minutes) there were still only 5 deaths in the first simulator (without distancing), all in the first iterations. I suggest to find a way to make it clear when it's done or speed it up to get to the point in one minute max.
- Swizec 7y ago
  That's weird, I get many deaths in just a few iterations. What were you running on? You seem to have found a bug. Here's a video of when I run these: https://twitter.com/Swizec/status/1239599601537015808 https://twitter.com/Swizec/status/1239599601537015808
  - pedrosorio 7y ago
    Parent is probably referring to the "Covid19 with distancing" simulation. Some feedback: these are very simplistic simulations and obviously not aiming for accuracy but please consider changing the default 20% "reinfectability" parameter. All evidence and medical knowledge indicates that reports of reinfection are either: - issues with testing (false positives/negatives) - extremely rare https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covid-19-reinfection/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/covid-19-reinfection/
    - hyperpallium 7y ago
      It's scary enough without reinfection. Seems unlikely. > the 30,000-letter genetic code of the virus changes by one letter every 15 days [from link] But could be like the common cold and flu, with new strains each year - but more contagious and deadly. Even then, we could still have new vaccines each year, and better treatment methods.

nabla9 7y ago

Remember pandemic2 flash game? It was almost impossible to kill all humans without starting the infection from Madagascar. If you started from somewhere else Madagascar always had time to close the borders. Lo and behold: Madagascar is one of the few countries without infections in Global Cases tracker. https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

Ntrails 7y ago
And greenland as I recall? But yeah - thikn the trick was low mortality so they took too long to respond
- jaxn 7y ago
  Long incubation period, start in southeast Asia, airborne, create delays for the scientists...
Aardwolf 7y ago
Still playable so long as flash still exists: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/448950 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/448950
james_s_tayler 7y ago
I remember that game so well. Your get so far and then Madagascar closes it's borders and it's game over for you. Turns out it's true.
muzani 7y ago
The other takeaway from that game was that stealth symptoms with low fatality does the best out of any pandemic.
- ImaCake 7y ago
  Well everyone gets the common cold!
7y ago

wiz21c 7y ago

How can I model the type of interaction between people. For example :is school a stronger vector of propagation than workplace ? I ask because everybody in my country talks about what to stop (restaurants, culture,...) but never explain why working is considered less of a problem... (I have my little idea but well, ain't sure)

baq 7y ago
when economy shuts down, more people die of malnutrition than of the virus.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Covid19 doesn't seem deadly enough to get us to that stage, thankfully. Unlike MERS/SARS/Ebola.
JamesBarney 7y ago
School is a bigger issues because children are usually are much closer together, are in the same room with far more people, and have far more interaction that adults at a typical job.
brigandish 7y ago
Tell a child to stop touching things and see how many things they touch, where they put their fingers, how many times they pick their nose etc and then you'll know. It'll only take a few minutes.
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  My friend was in an airport recently. A mother dutifully used hand sanitizer on her 3 year old's hands. Within one minute the child had put their hands on every surface within a meter: arm rests, seat cushions, under the seat where the boogers and gum are, the floor, etc.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
This https://www.pnas.org/content/116/27/13174 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/27/13174 is a good paper, it gives numbers from actual school closures (in Russia), compares with areas where schools weren't closed, creates models for some scenarios too. It would be interesting, possibly instructive to take a SIMS town and use it to model an epidemic.

40four 7y ago

This stuff drives me crazy. I know the author of this (and of the linked Washington Post article) are trying to help people gain clarity, but it worries me that it only serves to accelerate fear and panic. These articles are making it sound as if the exponential part of the curve will just continue on forever until it consumes the whole population. The (self-admittedly) overly simplified simulations aren't helping either. Front this article > And here's the kicker: even if we manage to "flatten the curve" enough to meaningfully space out the case load, we're still positioned to lose millions and millions of lives. From the WaPo article > This so-called exponential curve has experts worried. If the number of cases were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred million cases in the United States by May. Still, without any measures to slow it down, covid-19 will continue to spread exponentially for months. To understand why, it is instructive to simulate the spread of a fake disease through a population. It will continue to spread exponentially for months!? Millions & millions of cases & or deaths? These are really sloppy and dangerous ideas to put in peoples head. They are just plain wrong, and not how pandemics play out in reality. Here is what the CDC says about how pandemics spread (Under the 'COVID-19 Now a Pandemic' heading) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summary.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fsummary.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summ... Pandemics of respiratory disease follow a certain progression outlined in a “Pandemic Intervals Framework.” Pandemics begin with an investigation phase, followed by recognition, initiation, and acceleration phases. The peak of illnesses occurs at the end of the acceleration phase, which is followed by a deceleration phase, during which there is a decrease in illnesses. Different countries can be in different phases of the pandemic at any point in time and different parts of the same country can also be in different phases of a pandemic. Different parts of the country are seeing different levels of COVID-19 activity. The United States nationally is currently in the initiation phases, but states where community spread is occurring are in the acceleration phase. The duration and severity of each phase can vary depending on the characteristics of the virus and the public health response. So no, it will NOT continue exponentially for months. Especially given the amount of isolation/ quarantine measures and canceling of large events taking place. I think it is reasonable to expect these measures will help us progress through to the deceleration phase faster. Further-more, there is more and more evidence coming out suggesting the in China where it started, they have already entered the deceleration phase. This should be encouraging news for us in USA where it is just beginning. https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/newsfeed/2020/03/big-drop-china-coronavirus-infections-200316110905999.html https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/newsfeed/2020/03/big-dr...

xwdv 7y ago

This is missing a couple things: 1) Cells should have random demographics such as male/female and age, and a virus could respond differently to them 2) The virus should have some capability for mutation as it spreads. (probability of changing variables from the initial configuration by some percent)

ISNIT 7y ago

You should totally add this to https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/ https://coronavirustechhandbook.com/

gambler 7y ago

If we're talking about disease-based games, I highly recommend Pathologic 2. Nothing realistic there in terms of modeling disease spread or cure mechanics, it's a very artistic and somewhat abstract game, but it conveys certain social realities of being in a contagion zone really well. Among other things, it show the importance of not collectively freaking out.

feu 7y ago
I second this recommendation. I'm currently playing through Pathologic 2 for the first time. Playing through the game in the wider context of a pandemic makes for a very powerful experience.

DonHopkins 7y ago

Bullfrog's classic game "Theme Hospital" had really great emergent vomit cascades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y69QTjTvp1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y69QTjTvp1w

simcop2387 7y ago
Two Point Hospital does fantastically as a spiritual successor to Theme Hospital. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlaOYMU8qA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlaOYMU8qA
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Cool, thank you! I'll check in and check it out. (Installing it now!) Does it have a "Bloaty Head" treatment? ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_znuXcP2M I played a LOT of Theme Hospital when working on The Sims 1, and aspired to make the Sims editing tools as easy to use and "clicky" as Theme Hospital was. That and some of Peter Molyneux's older games like Dungeon Keeper, with architectural editing and a lot of independent characters running around at the same time, had a lot of influence on The Sims.
jointpdf 7y ago
“emergent vomit cascades” gave me the laugh I needed today.

DonHopkins 7y ago

One of the first downloadable objects for The Sims 1 was a pet guinea pig, which literally had a downloadable computer virus. If you neglected to feed and care for your guinea pig properly, it would bite you and give you a deadly contagious virus, which you could spread to other Sims by not following proper hygiene and getting enough rest, and even die from. Kids who downloaded the binary Sims object from the internet and installed in their game were horrified that their beloved Sims dropped dead unexpectedly, but they learned a useful lesson. Now deadly infectious guinea pigs are a tradition continued in later versions of The Sims! The Sims Pie Menus https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-menus-49ca02a74da3#d06b https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-sims-pie-menus-49ca02a74d... >Viruses >You can download this guinea pig object, and if you don’t care for it it will make this secret hidden virus object that gives you a cold, and has with it the animations and sounds of coughing and going (cough cough). >Every once in a while it will just interrupt what you do and cough, and it will be bad for your health. And if you don’t get enough sleep, you have to get sleep to get rid of it. This little program is literally a virus that runs and lives in your household and in your characters, and your characters can spread them to the neighbors, and they’ll bring them home to their families. >Programmable Plug-In Objects >Anyway, there’s quite a lot of interesting potential for what new plug-ins additions can do because of this programming languages. >SimAntics Visual Programming Language >There’s a built-in visual programming language called SimAntics, that is a control flow decision tree type of language. So the “Come and See” object, we’ll look at that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs&t=12m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs&t=12m23s Something Is Killing the Sims, and It's No Accident. By John Markoff, April 27, 2000. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/technology/something-is-killing-the-sims-and-it-s-no-accident.html https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/technology/something-is-k... Lethal guinea pig kills virtual people http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/746700.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/746700.stm The Sims 1: Guinea Pig Disease https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O5cgXuqhnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O5cgXuqhnA The Sims / Illness / Guinea Pig Disease https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness How to Get and Treat Guinea Pig Disease https://sims-online.com/how-to-get-treat-guinea-pig-disease/ https://sims-online.com/how-to-get-treat-guinea-pig-disease/ The Sims 4 My First Pet: SimGuruGraham Talks “Guinea Pig” Disease https://simsvip.com/2018/03/07/the-sims-4-my-first-pet-simgurugraham-talks-guinea-pig-disease/ https://simsvip.com/2018/03/07/the-sims-4-my-first-pet-simgu...

AlexDanger 7y ago

Great work. Is the code available to look at? I see its a Creative Commons license but I cant find a link to a code repo.

boxfire 7y ago

Super fun: In the full model { 5%, 3%, 5, 3, 0.25, 5, 14 } led to a walking sprawl of disease in a healthy population that lasted a long time, turning down the incubation days by 2 made it slower. The rate of new infections eventually eventually tapered off because the virus encountered its own sprawl like a growing structure in Go. Seems like a STD.

daenz 7y ago

Very cool. Shouldn't the input transmission rate also be fixed for the last "test" ? It says to try to flatten the curve to reduce the % dead, but being able to control the transmission rate is cheating.

olliej 7y ago

I want to be able to tailor survival rate according to availability of hospital support - it seems like an obvious thing to include. e.g. say that there are X hospital beds, and an X% survival rate for critical patients if they can get a bed.

and0rsk 7y ago

We had a small demo to simulate pandemic outbreak at malls. The simulation was mostly for demonstration purposes to illustrate how distancing impacts spread, and potentially some ways to help mitigate it. http://socialdistance.ai/ http://socialdistance.ai/

paraboul 7y ago
Much less visual than yours though, I also made a tool to highlight the exponential effect of social distancing. Exponential growth is often counter-intuitive and lot of people don't seem to get it. https://www.spreadsim.com/ https://www.spreadsim.com/
- drited 7y ago
  This is cool but your hospital beds figure needs to be reduced dramatically because I believe you have taken the number of total hospital beds, not intensive care beds for the critically ill. In my country, the number of total beds is about 48 times the number of intensive care beds.

deleted 7y ago

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oceanofsolaris 7y ago

I am not a huge fan of this (or the WaPo) simulator, since I they seem to have chosen their models for the nice look (regular grid, bouncing balls) instead of for their accuracy. While you can give people a rough idea of how different containment efforts will work, the models are so far removed from reality that I don't think that it really helps very much. Especially the WaPos'comparison' between different containment measures is IMHO borderline negligent without putting huge caveats in front of them.

shanusmagnus 7y ago
Given how much normal people know about these issues (nothing whatsoever, or even less than nothing, somehow) I think the shortcomings of their model, vs. full physical simulation, is of no importance. It's a fantastic intuition-builder.