Achron : Metatime strategy game

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

http://achrongame.com/index.html

This game is crazy, it's an RTS with time travel, you can go back in time and give your units orders, or even send units back in time, so units can fight along side their past selves.

Looks awesome.

[winter]

watched a couple of the youtube vids, looks really cool
probably would take me ages to grasp it properly though

[Lunatik]

looks interesting. might give this a go when iz home.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

looks interesting. might give this a go when iz home.

The game only lets you time travel in the game, not in real life.

[philo-sofa]

The game only lets you time travel in the game, not in real life.

lol

[Raped_ByA_Spoon]

The game only lets you time travel in the game, not in real life.

Lol as well.

You must spread...bla.

[Lunatik]

The game only lets you time travel in the game, not in real life.

Oh shit real? Damn. Was looking forward to going back in time.....

[MrBurNZ]

Oh shit real? Damn. Was looking forward to going back in time.....

Or were you looking backwards?......:sly::eek:

[Pyromanik]

even the concept hurts my head.
Don't think I'll try that :<

Kudos for the dev's for pulling it off though!

[Tiwaking!]

http://achrongame.com/index.html

This game is crazy, it's an RTS with time travel, you can go back in time and give your units orders, or even send units back in time, so units can fight along side their past selves.

Looks awesome.

*wracks his brain for a game which had something similar, but was terrible*

Oh its there. Dont you worry. Its there

[doob]

such a hard concept to grasp!!

[Virus.]

Yes, a hard concept to grasp but it looks like it might be a good game.

[Tiwaking!]

such a hard concept to grasp!!

Whoops! Forgot about this thread.

After much thought wrangling the only somewhat time based game concept I can remember playing is the Time-Slip device from the 4x game Stars!

It was a modded device which basically sent a vessel into any place in the game in the FUTURE. Boring game anecdote follows

Spoiler :

Essentially the device was nothing more than a teleporter with a cool-down period.
This had two major drawbacks:
1. By the time it had arrived in the designated area it was usually already obsolete. This usually meant that unless it was a super-shield ship or a ridiculously overpowered/under-engined gunship then its affect on a combat was virtually negligible.
Combine this with the incredible amount of planning and statistical knowledge required to play Stars! competently, it usually meant that any help the Time-slipped ship could give you fit comfortably within your opponents calculated margins of error.

2. Anyone who played Stars! tended to be smart enough to just send more ships instead of making an unflexible Time-Ship. Duh

HOWEVER: There were a few advantages, surprising ones:

Nuke a planet - Why waste a potentially devastatingly powerful vessel on a combat when you could hurl it away to an undefended world? This had the effect of CRIPPLING enemy empires by removing planets from their economic base

Nuke a system - Why have a battle at all? Supernova their sun. Chuckle to yourself evily you evil, evil player

Time-Travel essentially removes tech eras from a game. Why? Well....

The problem with time travel is this:

You develop time travel and its corresponding device. What do you do?

Well. If you are simple minded, you'd send back your best unit to help in some combat or rather, right?

...or, if you are me, you'll send back workers to provide resources which allow you to gain time-travel faster

Which means you'll send back workers EARLIER to provide resources which allow you to gain time travel faster

....which means you'll send back workers EVEN EARLIER to provide resources which allow you to gain time travel faster

Which means you'll send back....

Solution

Only be able to send back certain units, in certain places, to certain times. This restricts time travel to 'zones' which would basically end up being fought over.


You know. Like Dawn of War used to be

[Tiwaking!]

Interesting

http://achrongame.com/paradox.html

Q: How the game would resolve this complex example: Player A sends units back in time and destroys player B's factories. Before the timewaves reach the present, player B sends his army back in time and destroys player A's factories.
A: This is definitely a paradox. It will oscillate between these two states. If you're as good of a player as you claim, you might be able to time everything just so such that the paradox falls off the timeline in your favor. While I told the person whose head was exploding that such paradoxes aren't too common in games, they can happen much more frequently in games between advanced players (if we crank up the AI difficulty to 11, this does happen frequently).

a-HAH! Bullshit and chips I call!

Sending units back in time to create either themselves or the ability to create themselves is a grandfather paradox, true. The effect wont cause an effect on the overall timeline

.....UNLESS you specifically time it to do so. And therein we have what high-level gamers lovingly call the 'sploit'

In noob games the time-paradox wont cause too much interference. In high-level games it will. Any high-level to noob interaction will basically mean complete obliteration of the noob

Therefore the only way to advance is to exploit the system. When people exploit a system in such a way to cause unmitigated success, we call this DEGENERATE GAMEPLAY(though I think BF2 players call it 'Stat-padding' or something)

Unique Mechanic + Degenerate Gameplay = premise FAIL. Any MMO can show you that

[Pyromanik]

Time-Slip device

Slipgate?

[Tiwaking!]

Time-Slip device

Slipgate?

No. More like some kind of device that lets you travel in time.

A future-movement-inator!

[Bell]

Only a year and a half late on that one.

[Blob_ZPS]

How does this work exactly? Im super confused when you send a unit back in time does it simply recreate the circumstances that were going on say "x" amount of time ago and then you play from there?
The game cant actually travel back in time so at no point are you going to be playing and magically units pop up in your screen. You will only ever be able to view the "new" instance of the "old" time from the reference frame of the unit you have sent back - you would never be able to view units popping up magically from the future but you could view the units from the future travelling to the "past", in fact this would be a pseudopast that the game would have to recreate.

This makes my head hurt.

EDIT: it seems that in reality all events in that game happen at once and you are able to constantly manipulate them, weird.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

Wait for the public beta, then give it a go.

[Virus.]

Another epic thread revive by Tiwa. I had completely forgotten about this thread and game, didn't read the dates and then saw my post. For about seven seconds I was thinking 'what the hell? I didn't post that!'.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

Or after reading this thread, did you go back in time, and then post it?

[Spoonguard]

I don't think the time travelling mechanic would work in multiplayer. It's more akin to a savegame/reload feature intergrated as a game mechanic.

Sorta how I play RTS now - lots of pausing, and reloading for forward intelligence. I guess the whole thing is result of a intellectual excise to answer how saving and reloading must appear to your computer opponents.  

[Bell]

You sound like a cheater :p

[Tiwaking!]

Or after reading this thread, did you go back in time, and then post it?

You can download a demo of the game from their website:
http://www.achrongame.com/site/

Dunno what to say really. Its just an RTS

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

Yeah, I played the demo.

The time mechanic is cool and it works. But it lacks in every other RTS department. The graphics are pretty bad, and the units are forgettable.