Hey guys,
This is something I've been musing over the weekend. I won't lie, this is partly inspired by
Super Hot, of which I am a backer and I think is totally worth your money if you're into that sort of genre. They have a demo that is playable in your web browser so that you can see what it is all about if you like.
That said, I basically had a variant of the same idea back in 2008 in Shattered Haven, though Lars convinced me out of doing it because it "felt weird" to have the grays suddenly speed up when you started running, then slow back down when you stopped. My version of the idea in SH was just revolving around the ability to run, not about time in its entirety, so Super Hot has a much more natural feel since everything is controlled that way.
The thing that I was basically realizing, though, is that the ability to control the flow of time is something that TLF has in spades, but in the combat we've broken that up into turn-based chunks, and that really bothers some people. Very simply, here's an alternate combat model that has struck my fancy:
Time-Control Combat Mode1. There is no concept of "paused." If you're not doing something, then nothing happens, though.
2. There is no concept of turns.
3. Movement of YOUR ship becomes very arcade-y, like it used to be, more in a SHMUP fashion. Nothing about the enemies is changed.
4. Any time you fire your weapon or use an ability, something like 0.25 or 0.5 seconds elapses. Presuming you are just sitting there and time is not already running, anyhow.
5. You would move your ship, rather than the viewport, with WASD. While you are moving at all, time runs for all the enemies. Presuming you are not actively moving or firing at an enemy, then the game is "paused" (as noted above, and all the stuff that you currently see during "select movement mode" shows up. You can switch weapons, select abilities, look at the battlefield, whatever, at your leisure.
6. PROBABLY the ability to pan the view would need to go away again, but that certainly wasn't popular last time, so I don't know. But with this sort of control model it makes a lot of sense. Possibly the ability to pan would just move to the arrow keys, and would be one of those things that you do when you're not moving around. That's probably the better solution.
7. Abilities would no longer be shot-clearing as they are now, because that whole "you can't move and use an ability" thing would go away.
8. The autofire mode and hold fire modes would be retained as they currently are. Direct-fire mode would let you directly aim your shots, but would let you do so in realtime rather than selecting a line like you do now. This would generally be the preferred mode for expert players, in the new model. It would be a great way to deal with hypersonic pods and so forth, for instance.
9. All of the stuff that references turns presently would just shift to referencing 2.5 seconds times whatever the turn count was before, except where we feel like more or less time is more appropriate. The speed slider at the bottom of the screen would remain the same, and pretty well everything else would remain the same as well.
10. We'd have to split a lot of the keybindings (all of them) between the two modes, so that people can customize them individually. Not a crisis at all, really, but something worth noting. That way nobody using the current combat would be affected, and the new combat could be configured as is most comfortable.
I think that's about it.
Benefits1. People who are less fond of the combat complain about how it starts and then stops frequently, and this would remove that.
2. This would allow for a lot more fluidity for those (like me) who would really like it, while letting the more contemplative among us still take just as much time as they do now.
3. Player control would GREATLY be increased, because no longer would you have to have a 2.5-second "hands off" period where you can't interact with your ship and just have to watch the results of your actions.
Problems1. The game is already done, and is marketed as a turn-based combat game along with the larger strategic component. I can't imagine any sort of world in which we could remove the TBS aspect and there was not some level of uproar.
2. Because of #1, this would always have to either be an alternate mode, or else if it's popular enough, then the TBS mode would be the alternate mode (but still present).
3. Because of #2, that would mean that abilities and ships and so on -- even weapons -- would need to be balanced for two modes rather than one. That's a pretty big pain in the rear, although the modes are similar enough that it might not be too big a deal. Maybe keeping it so that abilities continue to work the same (only working when stationary, and doing the shot-clearing) would be a good compromise that would keep the two modes from getting too divorced from one another.
Thoughts From You?Is this something that anyone else would be interested in, or is it just me? Also, let's keep this discussion to just this specific issue, and not a wider-ranging discussion about combat and enemy flight patterns and so on. There is... some stuff in the works on that front that will please you, so no worries.
Final Thought From Me For NowPart of what had me thinking about all this was that those sorts of fancier shot/enemy movement patterns will be vastly easier to deal with as a player if you don't have that 2.5 seconds of "hands off" time every turn. Complex shot patterns require you to have much more fine-tuned input than that. There's no time to react, otherwise. In fact, really expanding the combat to include that sort of thing pretty much necessitates a shift to that sort of system like what I describe above, or something very like it. The turn-based model would technically still work, but I think it would be incredibly frustrating in that context.