I think we've all wondered at one point or another "Who would win a fight between X and Y?". Universal Combat is a computer game that simulates a fight between any two combatants*
The game is text-based. The player can select from a number of pre-defined combatants or add new ones by filling out a simple form.
The form consists of the following questions:
* Name
* Pronoun (how they announcer will refer to them if not by name)
* How strong are they compared to an average human?
* How smart are they compared to an average human?
* How emotional are they compared to an average human?
* Are they an inanimate object?
* When were they born/created?
* List some of their parts (optional)
Some of this is self-explanatory but I'll go into detail about a few of them.
The "stats" (strength, smarts and emotion) are expressed as a multiple of the combatants traits compared to an average human. For example, an average human has a strength of 1, so a heavyweight boxer might have a strength of 1.8 or 2. A human's level of emotion is 1, a brick's level of emotion is maybe -10. These are not intended to be precise and the person adding the combatant to the game shouldn't stress over it too much. If all else fails use the weight of the new combatant relative to the weight of an average human for its strength.
Combatants can be inanimate objects just as in real life you can fight a brick. The brick won't fight back, but if you keep punching it you'll certainly get hurt, and if you keep going, chances are you won't win.
Parts is a list of parts that will be used to describe the fight in more detail. It's entirely optional as the announcer can simply say "Joan Rivers punches the chair", but it's more fun if to say "Joan Rivers uses her hand to hit the chair on the seat".
I'll point out that these fights are entirely hand-to-hand and while you could certainly add something like a Sherman Tank as a combatant, it will just sit there and do nothing since you can't combine it with a tank pilot to make it do something. You can also create an Army Sniper combatant but during the fight they will not be a thousand yards away with a rifle but standing next to their opponent in the arena with little more than perhaps gloved hands.
As you may have gathered the fight is described blow-by-blow in a way that resembles a radio broadcast of a boxing match or football game. Combat happens second-by-second and the action of the combatants happens simultaneously as in a real fight (as opposed to turn-based with some sort of initiative determining who goes first). The combat algorythm determines who strikes when and how and what the effects are. A fight ends when one combatant is physically destroyed or so emotionally devastated that they loose the will to fight.
The algorithm is not random and the outcome of each fight is deterministic, but not necessarily predictable. I'm not going to give it all away yet because I don't want to spoil the fun, but what I'll say is that it doesn't involve "rolling dice" like other simulations and uses something that I think it unique in the realm of combat simulation or role playing games.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026
* ...and maybe more?