Where can I ask “how to make (or start making) a particular type of game”?

Question

I'm glad the help center explicitly states that "how to make (or start making) a particular type of game" is not to be asked here.

My particular question would be "Is a game like this [idea] even feasible with today's technology?" But I guess it is similar enough to the provided forbidden question, so I avoided asking. But where could I possibly ask something like that?

If you are interested: [idea] = open world realistic crafting (real time (?)) life sim where the player can do anything he likes. I'm wondering about the size of the memory in use ingame for all the entities that are found within even a normal household (I think there are 100 different things on my desk already) and the enormous CPU required to simulate everything happening at once. I'm not even taking a proper 3D model into account, text-based seems horrifying enough in terms of resource use.

Answer 1

First of all, thanks for having taken the time to read the help center before asking, and second of all, thanks for asking this in meta :)

Now to answer you question, yes, you're right, both of these are off-topic/too broad here.

We generally suggest users asking these question to come visit us in chat. Lots of game idea sharing has been going on there in the past, and some users have really found it useful. Alternatively, you can visit a site more open to discussions like GDNet.

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As a side note, the section of the help center you linked to has a starting point to help you find out how to ask these questions: take a look at the section Where can I ask subjective, discussion, and other questions not fit for this site? Although it's suggested to use Reddit too, I've never been there so I don't know about it.

Answer 2

"Is a game like this [idea] even feasible with today's technology?"

This is a yes-or-no question; these tend to be a poor fit for this site. There is almost always a follow-up question or two behind such a query. That follow-up question (which may be, for example, "Okay, then how?") is usually too broad. When it wouldn't be too broad, it's better for everybody if it were just asked directly. It gets right to the point, saving time for the asker and any future users in search of a similar question.

In the specific sense, this question is fairly time-sensitive because of the "today's technology" clause. Further, feasibility can have a lot to do with one's own abilities and resources, which makes the topic fairly subjective and thus is another strike against it being on-topic here.

But like Alexandre says, we'd be happy to discuss the topic in the chat or direct you to other places on the internet where you can get the answers you need unconstrained by StackExchange's somewhat rigid framework.

Answer 3

Asking if technical challenges are solvable can be a legitimate question. But only if the technical challenges are defined well enough that you can at least pinpoint the order of magnitude.

open world realistic crafting (real time (?)) life sim where the player can do anything he likes. I'm wondering about the size of the memory in use ingame for all the entities that are found within even a normal household (I think there are 100 different things on my desk already) and the enormous CPU required to simulate everything happening at once.

The counter-question here would be "what level of detail do you want to simulate"? This can be anything between a crude physics rigidbody simulation of some household items (was possible decades ago) to a simulation of every atomic particle in the universe (would require a second universe with even more mass and energy than our current one).

If you want us to tell you if what you want to achieve is possible on current hardware, then give us concrete numbers. Like "Render a model with X polygons" or "Simulate a physics system with X box-shaped bodies". Also make sure that your terms are properly defined. "A galaxy with 1 million stars" is not a meaningful definition unless you tell us what a "star" is in your simulation and what properties of them you do and do not want to simulate.

Then we can provide you a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the required hardware resources.