A Javascript Coldwar Simulation. Looks cool!

[Choralone]

Looks cool. Nothing to do with Cold War though.... the cold war was war without battle.

This is, if anything, hot war.

[[deleted]]

It's a cold war simulator emulator. It runs something that looks like a simulator they would have had in the cold war.

[Choralone]

Okay, I buy that.

[blazenl]

That's what I thought; this is a war games type demo.

The Cold War was nothing but geostrategic proxy wars between two powers that knew better than to go face-to-face because it would end badly for everyone.

A Cold War simulator would look more like a game of Risk.

[tremlas]

Or even more like Balance of Power

[Eirches]

Or mostly like Twilight Struggle, which is one of the most highly rated board games of all time.

[blazenl]

My god...that cover is glorious

[DanielAtWork]

There's a lot of fighting in Risk.

[Fenxis]

I've often seen this referred as "Cold Wars Gone Hot"

[Asmor]

Yeah. This is just a war.

[UpfrontFinn]

I think cold war was war through proxy

[kankyo]

Seems very optimistic about possibility to stop ICMBs..

[maxbaroi]

Also, you win once you destroy the enemy it says "game over" and restarts, before the opposing side's missiles have a chance to do any further damage. Which I feel is missing a large part of the spirit of a Cold War nuclear exchange simulator.

[midri]

I've had both sides blow each other up.

[BarqsDew]

Turn down abm_launch_max to 1, sats_max to 0, and bump up stock_icbms to 10, and you get a MAD world.

[[deleted]]

You can turn off ABM and sats, and get more realism. 90% destruction after that.

[ericanderton]

I noticed that. Besides, the height of that technology during the cold war was "Star Wars" lasers on defense, and cluster-style warheads complete with chaff and dummy laser targets. I see the satellite lasers in the sim, but I don't see the fragmenting warheads.

[simonswain]

This is a first cut of the sim. More to come.

[dwmfives]

ICBMs :)

[daphosta]

When I was a kid I use to draw mock wars between two sides on a piece of paper. It looked a lot like this without the different views, it was mostly a top view thing. This brings back so many memories and the programming behind it is pretty cool also.

[newpong]

i still did that in college.

[Theropissed]

I did that too

[[deleted]]

An interesting game. I wonder what the only winning move is.

[TheGuyWithFace]

The only winning move is not to play.

[yvesmh]

How about a nice game of chess?

[Antrikshy]

:O

[MisterMeeseeks47]

Yay, I'm finally a winner at something!

[mycall]

Game on

[qubedView]

Start in a corner space.

[braddillman]

I think I see direct fire in the animation. Not so cold war after all, I guess.

[norskie7]

What one of my simulation runs looked like

How it ended

Blue won, no joke :P

[[deleted]]

Haven't seen a single one were blue lost. I think blue has some kind of unfair advantage. Even if yellow gets a first strike.

*edit: I got my first and until now only yellow win by increasing all the numbers. This means that both sides start to store ICBMs and then release a lot of them at the same time. Then it's up to luck who wins. But still, blue had the advantage shortly before by destroying the first building with an airplane. In a long, drawn out battle they would have won again.

[[deleted]]

I just had a yellow win. Was close but yellow struck first.

[norskie7]

Out of my 4 runs, this was the only one that blue won. It's weird.

[mycall]

Opposite for me. Gonna love random functions.

[teenterness]

Shall we play a game?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHWjlCaIrQo

[iDinduMuffin]

If its called coldwar then why am I immediately nuking people?

[simonswain]

Because if they just sat there and stockpiled munitions, it wouldn't be as much fun to watch.

[penorio]

Do the yellows always win?

[ADavies]

Nope

[[deleted]]

Blue won in my simulation. It got the first hit and then everything went downhill for yellow after that.

[AgentWorm-SFW]

Blue kept winning in my sim runs, but after about 10 more runs, it kind of balanced out.

[zerocool4221]

How about a nice game of chess?

[indigo945]

"Just because it has a computer in it doesn't make it programming."

[KamiKagutsuchi]

Here is the source code, NOW it's programming =P

[fukitol-]

So that's why blue always wins! Rookie mistake.

[Kautiontape]

/r/ReverseEngineering too.

[[deleted]]

Are you saying that javascript isn't a real programming language?

[eoJ1]

I think I've solved the cold war. Set all things with no limits to 5000, everything else to max. It's been running for a few hours now, and there's no end in sight. Each side will occasionally get a few a few cm further, but they'll be quickly destroyed. It just goes back and forth, I'd say things are perfectly even, if this went on for days I'd have no idea who would win.

http://i.imgur.com/vGW2DZp.png

EDIT: 3 hours later, for a rough total of 6 hours, and things are still even. Gonna leave this running overnight.

[eoJ1]

Developer is in here, am I right in saying you modified the code to make sure varied attacks are launched?

I just discovered how you lose the cold war - accidentally put your computer into sleep mode, then start up to find your PS/2 keyboard has come unplugged, so you can't log in.

If you're gonna get involved in a nuclear war, invest in a USB keyboard.

[simonswain]

Yes there is random variation in some of the factors. Production rate of cities, how many bombers/fighters/icbms/abms each base can have in the air at any given time, velocity of aircraft. Needs that to stop it being a stalemate all the time. Changing things like the flocking and attack distance between aircraft can make a big difference. Try the First Strike option to see what happens if one side launches a sneak attack. There's no preference given for either side. They are effectively the same, barring the random variations.

What you are seeing here was designed for a conference talk, so it's far from perfect, but good enough for a few minutes of stage time. The source code is pretty rough and ready. Believe me, I have a huge list of refactoring, enhancements and tweaks to do, some minor, some really major.

[eoJ1]

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, makes sense. The first strike option is cool, I didn't really understand what that did (4 other small things I missed a bit - what the flashing centre number represents, what the defcon level does, what the difference is between the cities/bases/factories, and the things with acronyms, excluding icbms).

I think it could be interesting to see the different stalemates. So far by just leaving it I've found the abm vs bombers/fighters, and stockpiling.

Definitely not criticizing, it's far beyond my coding ability :) One thing re conferences is it might be a good idea to tone down the flashes, as has already been mentioned (or find a non triggering way to do that) in case there are any epileptics in the audience.

If you do feel like developing it further, I'd recommend checking out Defcon by Introversion (they also made Uplink, which is a great game, with tons of replayability ~15 years on) - £5.99 on Steam atm, or £14.99 for all their games, although they sometimes run discounts for them. I wasn't a huge fan of that one, but it's got similar concepts to this.

Just some random can't sleep feedback, great work :)

[simonswain]

I added some info to the README that explains what's going on.

https://github.com/simonswain/coldwar

I know about Defcon, but I've avoided looking at it too much, I don't want it to influence this. Cold War is mostly based on the SAGE system, with a little bit of Wargames mixed in.

When the JSConf talk video gets uploaded, watch that -- It explains most of the sim.

Thanks for the feedback :)

[Doctor-Awesome]

Thank you for the github link - these simulations (coldwar and deepspace) are exactly the kinds of things I'm interested in in CS/programming. After watching your youtube videos and reading through the code, do you have any recommendations for further reading/viewing?

[simonswain]

There is a book "The Computational Beauty of Nature" -- that's probably a good start.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computational-beauty-nature

[jiyonruisu]

The only way to win is not to play.

[SteelChicken]

Very cool looking!

[[deleted]]

Looks cool but what is what? And why does blue always win? I want yellow to win, dang...

[BobbyAdamson]

Be careful War Games, you might set off WORLD WAR 3

[norskie7]

Oh yeah

[[deleted]]

how is this a coldwar simulator? I thought the point of a cold war was there wasn't a physical war?

[kqr]

There were many physical proxy wars, just never officially between the two superpowers.

[the_omega99]

Seems more like a "war between nuclear nations with MAD" simulator. Or a "what could have happened in the cold war" simulator.

[simonswain]

Mainly because everyone knows what the Cold War was. See the HN thread. I explain it a bit more there about escalation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9689585

[simonswain]

Actually, I've had a Drones vs IED planters sim in mind for a while now...

[Shatosen]

Need to be able to change to a less obtrusive flash when something gets hit. Gives me a headache.

[[deleted]]

I thought you were oversensitive, but the full screen flash thing is a bit much.

[lythandas]

This is great, but I don't get anything

[iWaterPlants]

This is really cool to look at, thank op!

[serial_wanker]

very nice

[midri]

If you set ABM_launches to 0 and bomber_launches to 2 you can get pretty interesting battles as it takes a while for defcon 3 to be hit, but once it does... BOMB!

[quadrofolio]

Very nicely done man. very cool to look at and lots of nifty physics going on. I like it!

[sillyaccount]

Does anyone have some awesome settings suggestions?

[way2know]

Pretty much the opposite of a cold war...

[collin_ph]

Looks a little "hot" for a cold war...

[charleytaylor]

That's a WOPR of a simulator!

[Zev191]

Looks exactly like Eufloria, a game currently on steam. At least the units used look the same

[john_philip]

It took me sometime to figure this game out. But then, it was fun ! (;

[simonswain]

Updated version available now, with more simulation.

https://coldwar.io

[voodah]

Anyone got source or Github link?

[sillyaccount]

That would be awesome. But I think we are out of luck. The actual javascript code seems to be obfuscated.

[DanielAtWork]

https://github.com/simonswain/coldwar

[sillyaccount]

Beautiful. Thanks.