Achron

[Latro]

Someone posted this on INTJf and I was interested. It's basically an RTS with a time travel mechanic. I've watched the first 3 (of apparently 6) alpha videos; when I went to watch the 4th youtube died on me. Link to the first one:
YouTube- Achron Alpha Demo 1 - Time Travel Explained

 

[SEPKA]

I wonder if all the time paradox apply.
For example, what happened if you attack the enemy in the past, destroyed them, then attack them in the present before the 'time wave' propagate the battle result to the present?

 

[Latro]

I wonder if all the time paradox apply.
For example, what happened if you attack the enemy in the past, destroyed them, then attack them in the present before the 'time wave' propagate the battle result to the present?

By my understanding, if the time waves haven't propagated yet, it hasn't happened. Which has some interesting implications for time waves propagating in the middle of battle; in particular you could imagine your opponent's building mysteriously vanishing mid fight or something similar.

Basically the time wave mechanic provides an answer to the question "did x happen?" at each instant, which resolves the issue of paradoxes. In other words, you could do something like go back and kill your grandfather and then return to the present, and after a little while you would just cease to exist, if I'm understanding this correctly.

Also, when he said in one of these videos "you can see when your opponent is" I got a huge headache, lol.

 

[SEPKA]

I think the "time wave" mechanics help avoided some time travel paradox, but it did not solve all of them. Would love to see it get release to see how they handle that.
For example:
Scenario 1: you build a building in the past. You go back to present and build a different building at the exact location. What happened when the time wave reached present?
Scenario 2: you destroy their miner house and some unit of them to take over a mine. You exploit the mine and use that resource to build the time travel building, then send all the unit you just used to take the mine back in time, and use these to take over the exact same mine in the past, then started exploiting the mine from the past. What is the state of the mine and your amount of resource when time wave reach present?
Scenario 3: A go back to the beginning and wipe out B, but lose all his unit in the process. B attack A in present and wipe out A. Who win?
Scenario 4: A go back to a far away past and wipe out B. B go back to a near past and build up his fortress to make it very strong before the time wave reach it. What happen in the near past when the time wave from far past reach it?

Wow, I can make up even more scenario. I hope the game can handle these.

 

[Latro]

Scenario 1: This is covered in one of the videos with the chronoporter or whatever it was called. Basically the resulting unit or building becomes very badly damaged (they had a word for this but I don't remember what it was) when that happens.
Scenario 2: I think this will vary depending on how long various things in the middle take.
Scenario 3: You assume that B wipes out A before the time wave propagates, so B wins.
Scenario 4: ...Now this one I'm not sure about in part because I don't know what the victory conditions are. If the victory condition is "destroy all your enemy's buildings" for instance, does that mean destroy them in the present or at ANY time? Clearly this can be resolved by a choice, but the choice has to be made, and I don't know what they've chosen.

I am definitely going to need to try this game out, I must say.

 

[Artifice Orisit]

That's just scary.

Of course anyone playing this game will quickly forget about the whole "time" thing and just focus on making strategic choices, i.e. making units fight beside their past selves will quickly get labelled "replication" or something similar and the restrictions of this replication will just get accepted by the player as-is, thus the novelty is lost.

I wonder if other dimensions could be introduced...
Imagine interdimensional warfare between different realities with different physics.

 

[Latro]

That's just scary.

Of course anyone playing this game will quickly forget about the whole "time" thing and just focus on making strategic choices, i.e. making units fight beside their past selves will quickly get labelled "replication" or something similar and the restrictions of this replication will just get accepted by the player as-is, thus the novelty is lost.

I wonder if other dimensions could be introduced...
Imagine interdimensional warfare between different realities with different physics.

I know this should be taken with a grain of salt due to obvious bias, but their FAQ doesn't seem to indicate that the novelty gets lost. They seem to still enjoy it and still be coming up with new tactics as they go even after a lot of playtesting. Really the amount of metagame that is possible in a situation like this is staggering, especially when you consider the amount of metagame that a simplistic RTS like Starcraft has already. One thing that might pull away from the metagame somewhat is the ability to know "when" your opponent is, i.e. what part of the timeline (s)he is looking at; by knowing that you've removed a variable and thus weakened the metagame a bit. Might be necessary to make any accurate predictions of your opponent's behavior EVER, though.

I can see how the novelty might die if the restrictions are too stringent, but I think the time wave mechanic is stringent enough to avoid paradoxes but still flexible enough to allow for a lot of interesting dynamics.

Interesting thing from the FAQ as well on paradoxes: if you do trigger a paradox (say, build a tank, move it into the past, then destroy the factory that built it) the situation will oscillate back and forth until the time wave "falls off", which will then lead to a non-paradox (e.g. the factory is destroyed and the tank is not there in the present or the factory persists and the tank is there in the present). This is apparently dictated primarily by timing. (Note that these situations are apparently uncommon in real games and pretty much only happen if you do them on purpose).

 

[Artifice Orisit]

By the loss of novelty I meant the weirdness of manipulating time, the actual game itself and the strategic possibilities involved would probably take hours to learn and weeks to master, there's certainly no lack of appeal.

I'm just saying players would get busy playing and the initial shock value of "wow, we can manipulate time" would be lost, like how when one initially plays the Zerg in Starcraft it actually feels quite odd to be ordering around what is essentially a hive organism rather than a standing army of dedicated-role units, of course the shock value wears off and one eventually sees them as just units.

 

[Latro]

By the loss of novelty I meant the weirdness of manipulating time, the actual game itself and the strategic possibilities involved would probably take hours to learn and weeks to master, there's certainly no lack of appeal.

I'm just saying players would get busy playing and the initial shock value of "wow, we can manipulate time" would be lost, like how when one initially plays the Zerg in Starcraft it actually feels quite odd to be ordering around what is essentially a hive organism rather than a standing army of dedicated-role units, of course the shock value wears off and one eventually sees them as just units.

Ah, yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, once you have an implementation that is practical like this the novelty of "holy shit, I'm doing x" does kinda go away pretty quickly. Still really appealing I think though.

 

[SEPKA]

build a tank, move it into the past, then destroy the factory that built it

I was thinking about a similar paradox but then I guess they would just make sure you cannot destroy your own building using your own unit.

However, although I think that this time manipulation might seems fun at first, from a mathematical point of view you are just using another dimension. It is just like a 2D strategy game get upgraded to 3D (by the look of it that game is still 3D so you are essentially just make it 3D by having a time manipulation). That means once you get past the initial awe what you see 'time' in the game would be merely another position on the map, rather than 'time' being something different from 'displacement'.

Hope they have a free version. I will definitely try this out.

 

[GarmGarf]

I wonder if other dimensions could be introduced...
Imagine interdimensional warfare between different realities with different physics.

Actually, in the past, I briefly thought of that same idea. The example I used myself to get me started on some game design was the idea of our world (if it were to be included in the game) being the only world with the principle of the conservation of energy.

I never developed the idea any further than that, ha (P-ness).

 

[del]

By the loss of novelty I meant the weirdness of manipulating time, the actual game itself and the strategic possibilities involved would probably take hours to learn and weeks to master, there's certainly no lack of appeal.

I'm just saying players would get busy playing and the initial shock value of "wow, we can manipulate time" would be lost, like how when one initially plays the Zerg in Starcraft it actually feels quite odd to be ordering around what is essentially a hive organism rather than a standing army of dedicated-role units, of course the shock value wears off and one eventually sees them as just units.

Yeah, the same thing happened with Portal.

At first I was like, "... wait, what?" all the time because it was a bit mind bending, but after awhile the novelty was gone.

Still, Achron looks like a cool game.