This is 1.2.many, a prototype Confluence simulation game. Please view on a desktop with mouse and keyboard, not a tablet or phone. Scroll down for instructions.

How to play 1.2.many

The circles are interactors. They might be anything: viruses, animals, people, groups, communities, corporations, countries, space-faring civilizations.

The squares are patches of resources: berry bushes, fishing spots, forests, arable land, ore/mineral/oil deposits, customers, markets, asteroid belts. There are always five kinds of resources.

The lines are barriers. They get in the way of movement. Dashed barriers are easier to climb over.

When an interactor gathers 100 resources of each type, it creates a clone. Interactors can also die of starvation or old age. In this way the population changes over time.

You are the interactor with the thick border. Look around and find yourself.

To watch the simulation run:

• Move the simulation forward with the +1, +10, or +50 buttons, or with the number keys (1-5, or control-# for 10-50).
• Zoom in and out by control-mouse-wheel scrolling (or with the + and - keys). Pan with click and drag (or with the arrow keys).
• Type z to zoom all the way out. Type c to zoom in and center the view on yourself.
• Look above the map and to the right of each colored box (labeled 1 through 5). See the number there? That's how much you have of that resource. You need to get to 100 of each resource to create a clone. Everybody else is trying to do the same thing.

To interact with the simulation:

• To move around in the space, first type c to center the view on you, then use the w a s d keys to indicate the location you want to move to on the next day. On the next day of the simulation, you will move to that spot.
• On every simulated day, you can move as far as your "movement distance" parameter allows, and you can see as far as your "awareness radius" parameter allows. (The larger circle around you is your awareness circle.) To change these and (many) other parameters that govern your default behavior, click Change your parameters.
• To manually initiate a trade with any interactor that is (at least partly) inside your awareness circle:
  1. Type c to center the view on you.
  2. Use the WASD keys to move your cursor to the interactor you want to trade with.
  3. Press t to start building a trade offer.
  4. On the popup dialog, type your offer. Write it as "offer-amount of offer-category for request-amount of request-category." For example, if you write "8 of 1 for 9 of 2," you are offering to give the other interactor 8 units of resource category one if they give you 9 units of resource category two. Take your time and think through what you want and what they might want in return. When you are ready, click OK.
  5. Type 1 (or press the +1 button) to move the simulation forward a day. That's all you can do on that day: make the trade offer you set up.
  6. Now advance to the next day. Another popup will tell you whether your trade offer was accepted or rejected.
• You may find that you are automatically making some trade offers. These are driven by your parameters. If you don't want to make any trade offers (even when your parameters say you should), where it says "Make offers," select "make no offers."
• From time to time, other interactors will make trade offers to you. If you want to review each one, where it says "Take offers," choose "ask me." The default option is to automate those decisions using your parameters. You can also accept the best incoming offer each day or refuse all offers.
• Once you have some clones, you can edit their parameters as well as your own. This will increase your influence on the simulation. To find your clones, look for orange circles drawn around interactors.
• You can back up the simulation to a local file as you play the game. Later, if you change your mind about a decision, you can restore the simulation to the way it was when you saved it.

When you're ready to play a game with the simulation:

• Choose a scenario for your game. Each scenario presents opportunities and difficulties to the interactors in it, including you.
• Choose a goal for your game. You can pretend the interactors are helpful things and try to increase their number, or you can pretend they are harmful things and try to decrease their number. Or you might choose a more modest goal, like to generate a few clones. Or you might notice a pattern you want to change. You can also decide on a time frame, like maybe you want to achieve your goal by day 500 or 2000.

When you're ready for more depth:

• All of the scenarios have barriers that constrain the movements of interactors. You can change these barriers. But you can only change them before the simulation begins. Click "Edit barriers" to start. You can move, lengthen, shorten, or delete the existing barriers, and you can create new barriers. You will have a line-length budget to work with. You can also change the parameters that determine how each barrier changes over time.
• Once you have started to edit barriers, you can set new goals. Maybe you'll remove all of the barriers from a scenario and build your own set of barriers that support a different outcome (and then see if you can get to that outcome sooner).
• Another way to influence the simulation is to give stuff away. Type c to center the view on you, then WASD your cursor over to an interactor or patch and type g. In the popup dialog that appears, enter the resource amount you want to give to the interactor or patch, then click OK. This can be a good way to help out your clones or any dying interactors you want to save. Just be careful not to give away too much! (Also note that you may have to move quickly away from any patch to which you have just given resources. If you stick around, you will probably eat them again.)

Tips and tricks

• This is prototype software (version 0.1.0). There will be bugs. Please tell me about them.
• You can fine-tune your WASD movements by holding down the Shift key when you type the w, a, s, or d key.
• When your awareness circle disappears, it means you are eating.
• Another reason to create some clones (besides increasing your influence on the simulation) is that when you die (of starvation or old age), you can transfer your consciousness into one of your clones. If you don't have any, you will have to start the simulation all over again.
• On any day in which you make a trade offer, you cannot move or eat. This is also true for all of the other interactors in the simulation. Accepting a trade offer does not take up a day, but making one does.
• Some of your parameters might seem like they offer an easy win, but watch out, because they might also cause other things to happen that are less wonderful. Read the parameter descriptions (especially the tips) to find out what will happen when you change each parameter.
• Scenarios represent environmental conditions. Each scenario has its own parameters that determine how much it costs to live, move, climb, and look around you. So you might find yourself living under different conditions in the different scenarios. (They get harder as you move down the list.)
• Some things are constant across all scenarios: how much of each resource you need to reproduce (100), how little of any resource will cause you to starve (2), how much you can trade on any day (20, unless you are trading manually), and how long your natural lifespan will be (1000 days).
• If you advance the simulation using the +1 button, you have to click it once per day. If you advance the simulation using the 1 key, you can keep holding the key down, and the simulation will keep advancing.
• Behind you is a "move trail" that shows where and why you have recently moved. You can study it to see how your parameter changes have affected your behavior. Its length also shows you how many memories you have (of patches and trades, including gossips, which are passed on after successful trades). The move-trail colors are as follows:
  • Gray -------- You moved at random.
  • Black -------- You bounced off a barrier or the edge of the world.
  • Purple -------- You climbed over a barrier.
  • Green -------- You moved toward a patch.
  • Blue -------- You moved toward a memory of a patch.
  • Aquamarine -------- You moved toward somebody else's memory of a patch.
  • Dashed orange - - - - You completed a trade with an interactor on the other end of the line.
  • Orange -------- You moved toward a memory of a trade.
  • Pink -------- You moved toward somebody else's memory of a trade.
• There are also lines that show you what you are sensing as you move around in the space. The sensing colors are as follows:
  • Green -------- You sensed a patch.
  • Orange -------- You sensed an interactor.
  • Black -------- You sensed a barrier, or you can't see a patch or interactor through a barrier.
• You can climb over barriers (WASD over them), but it will cost you some resources. How much it will cost will depend on the height of the barrier plus your size and age. Some barriers fluctuate in height (as shown by their dashedness), so you might want to pick a good moment to climb over them. You can also control how much automatic climbing you do by changing your parameters. Be careful not to climb too many barriers!
• You are likely to notice that most of the scenarios have more than one type of interactor in them. You can't tell these types apart visually, but you might be able to tell them apart by how they act and move around. That's part of the challenge of the game: watching things move around, guessing at why they are doing what they are doing, and guessing how you can use what you see to make the change you want to make.
• An exported barrier type or distribution can be used with any scenario.
• If you're still reading this, congratulations! You have unlocked access to the nerd's eye view of the simulation. Type Control-d to enter detail mode. In this mode you can do a few extra things:
  • Click on any interactor to select it. Doing this will show its move trail as well as your own. You will also see the selected interactor's resource amounts (above the map) instead of your own. (The "s" is to remind you that these are not your resources.) You may have to zoom in to select the interactor you want. Click in a space without any interactors to unselect.
  • Type p and enter the name of a parameter to see its value displayed just below each interactor. (You can copy and paste the parameter name from the "Change your parameters" panel.)
  • Type v to advance the simulation by one day in verbose mode. Now every interactor will show its awareness distance, move trail, and lines of detection. You will also see trade memories, which look like orange diamonds. The sizes of the diamonds show how much food interactors remember receiving in those places. Emergent trading "hubs" usually appear (and disappear) as the simulation goes on. But some scenarios have a lot more trading than others. It depends on the parameters of the interactor types.

Questions about 1.2.many

What is the point of this game? It's about the intermingling and interacting of complexity (emergent patterns) and complication (intentional plans), as described in my book Confluence.

How is this about that? In the game, you are an organizer, because you have intention (a goal), awareness (a global view), and access (things you can do, like move barriers around). But you are also an interactor, so when the simulation is running, you can only see and move and act on a local scale. That's what Confluence is about: making sense of complex patterns you can see and influence but not interrupt or control.

Why would I want to play this game? Because you want to explore the concepts described in Confluence.

Why would I want to explore those concepts? Because it's useful. We all need to make sense of a world in which our intentional plans are thwarted by emergent patterns we can't control. And because it's fascinating. Emergent patterns are fun to think about, and thinking about the ways in which they intermingle and interact with intentional plans is even more fun.

Why did you write this game? Where did you get the idea for it? I explain my motivations and inspirations in this blog post.

Where did the name "1.2.many" come from? From four places:

• One, two, many: A joke my brother used to tell when we were little. He would point to one thing, say "one," point to another thing, say "two," and then gesture broadly and say "many." The first time I read about how people have trouble making sense of complex patterns, that old joke sprang into my mind, and it has been my personal shorthand for "people dealing with complexity" ever since.
• One to many: Your relationship to the other interactors in the simulation. There are many of them and one of you.
• One too many: How the other interactors in the simulation might feel about you, since you (and your progeny) are not following their rules.
• One.two.many: A reference to semantic versioning, and a comment on how our responses to emergent patterns are often to try one thing, then tweak it a few times, then try many smaller tweaks to our first tweaks - without ever stepping back and changing our major-version approach.

Why is there no predation or coercion? Why can I give but not take? I have not yet implemented predation for two reasons:

1. There are many possible responses to predation. There's the whole fight-flight-freeze-fawn complex, to begin with, plus bluffing, mimicry, masting, squirting jets of ink into the water, and many other deceptive and distractive strategies. Plus there's the whole array of not-quite-predation mixes. It's all fascinating, and I'd love to explore all of it. But it's too much for this small effort, at least right now.
2. The more layers you add to a simulation, the harder it gets to make sense of the patterns you are seeing. So I have to think not just "What would be cool to add?" but "How can I create patterns that players can see and understand?" That's a more difficult question.

What do you hope people do with this game? I have no idea. I'm just throwing it out into the world to see what will happen.

What would you like to do next? I have two other games I would like to write, both on the same topic but with different dynamics among interactors. Let's see if and when I can find the time to build them. Encouragement would help! If you like this game, let me know.

What permissions do you give for the use of this game? This is not an open-source project. This game (its source code and everything I have written about it) is Copyright © Cynthia F. Kurtz 2026. You can play the game for free on this web page (as long as it is available), but you cannot copy or redistribute it. At this moment I can make no promises as to when and whether this web page will be available, or when and whether I will fix any bugs. It's a prototype, a concept demonstrator (to myself as much as to anyone else). I'd like to make something more out of it someday, but we'll see.

Do you want feedback and bug reports on the game? Oh yes. Please send emails to cfkurtz@cfkurtz.com.