RTS with Time manipulation

[spelk]

Watch the vid, it messes with your mind!
http://sugarfreegamer.com/?p=356

[x4000]

Oh yeah, someone pointed me to some videos of that a while back.  I don't think the mechanics in it are going to become the new RTS standard any more than the mechanics of AI War will, but I think it's another inventive and very clever RTS offshoot that will hopefully spark a new subgenre.  I don't know if I personally will play it much since it seems so very pvp-oriented (from the last videos I looked at), but the concept alone is brilliant (plus their implementation seems like it makes the gameplay pretty clear, which must have been an amazing design challenge).  Anyway, I definitely agree it's one to watch.

[Echo35]

::Clicks Link expecting to see Achron::

Yep, there it is. Been following it pretty heavily. Its in super early Alpha now (That you can get access to when you pre-order) but the game mechanics are so different and its nearly a year from completion, I think I want to wait on it and play it when it's fresh.

EDIT: Though for some seriously brain bending videos, check their blog. They have a series of demo videos where they put some various paradoxes through it and see how the game handles it (Yes, they do the grandfather paradox and yes, the game engine handles it).

[eRe4s3r]

The winning strategy of this game

Travel the farthest time back possible with your super attack force, wipe out the enemy HQ before defenses existed, win.

Alternatively, if both players do this, then they would never win or lose a game.

The idea is awesome, but what is the game goal? How is winning and losing defined? If you know how it is defined, your only goal in time travel is to trigger that script event as first.

I understand why they did that with the time propagation delay, if they would not do that, there would be impossible to defend against situations. And by introducing time propagation they are creating a paradox themselves which they can not possibly solve.

The game END State can only be 1 or 0 - If a player looses, its 1. That means the other player is in state 0. At that point in time, the game is over. because one side has won. It doesn't even matter that this event has to propagate, at SOME point the game has to end.

Thus.... The one who gets the state first has won, and even if the other player then manages to defend against the attack (by traveling further back) he has lost anyway because the game state would propagate in a wave.

[x4000]

Well, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt on that to a certain extent.  If the game was that broken, it wouldn't be gaining much traction with anyone.  My assumption is that they must have found ways around some of those paradoxes and such, though I don't know what precisely those solutions are -- though I suspect it has to do with the Chronium, or whatever it was they call their time-travel resource.

[eRe4s3r]

I am guessing so as well, but no matter what, either it'll be extremely strict (Losing in the present means loss globally) in which case time travel is at best a gimmick, or extremely loose, in which case parties would never end.

Also.. I would strongly oppose the idea of a "present" after you time traveled thats not where you are in that moment - the only present is the time you are in, because time is relative.. to you. That means where you are, is the present.

And if we go by that logic, the present you left is now a possible future, that means the game time bar is actually incorrect in calling the state you traveled from the present... Present means the "here and now" - just saying

[Kjara]

Well their definition of the "present" is that its harder(more costly) to effect events the further events are from the "present", so in that sense the idea of having a present works.

[eRe4s3r]

But the present would be where you are after you traveled back.. the only reason they added the cost is because they want to prevent the logic paradox that time travel creates, that is that the future you left is just a possible future and doesn't actually exist until you travel there (again). And the only present would be the one you are in, because any action from that on would change the future.

Which is what defines present.

By the way, if they apply such a restriction on time travel its not time travel If they would actually have considered the logical fallacy beyond "we want to make a game with time as element" then there is a game logic bug right there. The winning strategy is to travel back in time, where your opponent didn't exist yet, and kill his parents.

Which is why time travel can never exist in reality. If it would, someone from the future would make it stop to exist... And if you think about that too long, you will get headaches

[x4000]

You know, anything that has time travel has to use some sort of artificial restrictions, so I won't begrudge them that.  I am a huge fan of the Back to the Future series, but they continually used various gimmicks.  For example, if Marty had given himself more than 10 minutes of time to help future Doc in the first movie, the climax would have been uninteresting.  Then you have a time machine that is constantly malfunctioning or unavailable, and you have characters acting as if they couldn't simply fail once, then go back in time and fix that if they really needed to -- as if they only had one shot at getting the Almanac back, or whatever.

There is one particular scene in the second movie where Marty stands on the edge of the building, considering jumping off, where Biff is about to shoot him.  Then Doc shows up (unseen), and Marty jumps off onto the Delorean.  How did Doc know to show up there?  This seems on the surface to be yet another of the coincidences that the movie trades in so heavily, but I like to imagine it differently (and this fits): Doc knew where to show up because Marty died, Doc saw this in the future, and then came back to rescue him.  I find that much more compelling.

Anyway, my point is that of course the time travel is a gimmick in some way.  Pure, unfettered time travel is far too powerful to make for an interesting narrative, let alone an interesting game.  What will be the deciding factor for this game, or any other piece of entertainment featuring time travel, is if the gimmick is fun and interesting, and if it survives the suspension of disbelief to a certain extent.

Yeah, this was a big tangent...

[Kjara]

Well, are you actually at any time except the present, or are you just observing/affecting other times (semantics I know)?  One can argue that you as the player never actually leave the present.

[eRe4s3r]

Then you are never time traveling either, though If you yourself never time travel, you could never affect the future in the past. (because your present would be someone elses possible future.. )

Ah, this is a nice discussion, i haven't had one of these for a long time...

to x4000, hah   To my shame, i never really watched these movies with much interest.. when i did i already understood the basic idea that time travel can not exist. (Because of obvious flaw in the theory, energy is not unlimited and entropy exists, if we apply this to Time the obvious answer is that we can never travel foward or backwards in time. The only usable energy state of time is the "here and now" so to speak...

I think i will just never be able to suspend my disbelief when games try too hard on the time element, time as element needs to be fun so heres hoping they can do that.. and heres hoping they add someone who can model better 3d models too ,p)

[Echo35]

The winning strategy of this game

Travel the farthest time back possible with your super attack force, wipe out the enemy HQ before defenses existed, win.

Alternatively, if both players do this, then they would never win or lose a game.

The idea is awesome, but what is the game goal? How is winning and losing defined? If you know how it is defined, your only goal in time travel is to trigger that script event as first.

Not sure how many of the videos you've seen, but basically, you can only travel back 8 minutes (And forward 4 I think). Doing things in the past or future costs energy for each action (So going back 8 minutes and trying to make a big army wouldn't work too well). Even then, actions you take effect the time line in waves, so even if you managed to destroy your opponents HQ, it would take a few minutes to propagate to current time, which is plenty of time for your opponent to counter attack. Or counter your counter. Or just go forward and do the same to you. This is how the game engine can actually handle the grandfather paradox. Because of time propagation, you'll either have the units or the factory that made them at any given time, and when the 8 minute clock runs out, you'll be in whatever state they were in last. It's also possible to mass produce armies by manipulating time, but it's costly and easy to counter.

[eRe4s3r]

So its a gimmick, 8 minutes isn't even fast food time.. hell my pizza takes 12! Why not 12 hours max? Heck, just thinking about something like that in AI war makes me giggle.. it would be so much more awesome in a long game as in AI war than in a 3D rts thats got 20minute long skirmishes.. and AI War could afford to actually create much more variability because the AI could interact with it...

Just saying.. as a online game this will (maybe) not work properly... 8 minutes becomes more a game of reaction than anything tactical.. maybe against AI and if they increase the time to infinity.. ie from game start onwards , and with much much much quicker time propagation

Besides, i think its a really bad idea to try to design such a game around a 3D-Engine... Indy devs and 3D Engines are a recipe for disaster

[Kjara]

As to why 8(12) minutes, most competitive online rts games are intended so that most games can be played in an hour or less.  8(12) minutes of this is a significant chunk, and enough to create interesting situations.  This is a game intended to appeal to the DoW/SC/WC crowd I'm sure.  I haven't seen enough to be sure, but its current implement is promising in the sense that its a tool, but not the only tool you have (and can't be relied for everything).  How it will handle in multiplayer will be interesting though.  I really worry about lots of little tweaks making it the micro required crazy though.

indy +3d doesn't have to be fail.  At least some of the spring games are decent (even if many of them are some form of remake of TA).  Graphically this seems to be catering to that crowd.

Heck almost every game I play has time travel.  I'm not sure if I can remember the last one that didn't have a save/load feature (and you have some interesting ones like BoF:dragon quarter where you can quit and go back to a previous save with some of what you have obtained or even back to the start of the game).  This is just going in different direction with it.

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah.. i guess i am too much realist as to think this game will ever be released as a.. feature rich 3d-rts. Since i work freelance i have seen many good ideas fail because devs have no idea how to coordinate 3d art creation properly (Animation/Texture/Model) or what they can / can't do. (here is an idea, if you are Indy dev and want to make a MMO or FPS ... don't). I worked on some things that i uniquely wanted to play and they never materialized beyond alpha stage.

I am just too pessimistic that they'll find the funding needed to create the art assets (Units/Building/effects) And the maps, and the art assets of the maps..)

Spring is a nice engine.. if only they would stop making TA Clones...