Achron - First ever temporal RTS

ríomhaire

I hope this hasn't been posted already. Achron, (site and blog here) is an RTS currently in development in which players can freely (give or take) travel to both the past and future and make changes as one pleases. Your base just got steamrolled by an enemy tank force? Go back two minutes in time and start building anti-tank defences in the direction they attacked from. You can even send your surviving units back in time to assist in the battle in the past. Resulting in you having more units in a better condition in the present, which you can then send back in time to assist in the defence. This game is multiplayer where all players can do this.

There are limits to this, of course, or people's brains (and computers) would melt while trying to play this game. You have a limited supply of "chrono energy". Every time you issue an order to a unit in the past or future you use chrono energy, the further displaced in time you are, the more energy used. There is a window of eight minutes. You can't go back in time any further than that. You can view events in the past or future as much as you like; that doesn't drain energy. Energy is regenerated while you're in the present. You can also send units back in time using a certain building.

Changes made in the past won't affect the present instantly, it takes a bit to catch up, as it were. Causaility waves will carry the events on to the present (hard to explain, watch the videos on the site). What I find very intereting is how the game will handle various things, eg, the grandfather paradox. For those that don't know, this is the idea that you go back in time and kill your grandfather, thus stopping you from having been born, thus stopping you from going back in time and killing your grandfather. In the game you can send a unit back in time and have it destroy the factory that created it. This causes a grandfather paradox. The games time waves will then propigate these changes and the factory will disappear and the unit will still be there. But then the next time wave hitting will change this and the factory will be back and the unit gone. Then when the next timeline hits the factory will be gone and the unit back. The two timelines will keep occilating until the 8 minute threshold is hit and one timeline takes precidence over the other.

This game is going to be insane.



tl;dr: An RTS where all players can travel backwards and forwards through time as they wish, altering events.

Ardscoil Ris

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/602/alreadythere.jpg

Didn't look very hard

I think the gameplay is interesting, but the game itself looks dirt.

ríomhaire

Of course the graphics aren't up to scratch, they're only in alpha/pre-alpha developement stages. Even then, it's pretty likely someone will make some sort of high definition mod once it's out.

Ardscoil Ris

It's not the graphics I'm concerned about. The gameplay looks very dated. Doesn't look like any real strategy. I think after the time gimmick gets old the game could become a real stinker.

Ivan

You're joking?

Normal attacks and secondary attacks, nukes and 8 minute time-line manipulation. This game has better and more creative gameplay than I've ever seen and still has all the usual trimmings.

The "gimmick" as you put it, gives even the smallest skirmish the potential to drastically change the outcome of the game, if it's rewritten enough. That alone gives it more replay enjoyment than any other FPS out there.

The graphics look dull, and the animations too. I'm assuming this is why you think the gameplay is outdated, but honestly if you give the concept designs a brief once over the whole thing sounds too good to be true, especially once you factor in the fact that they have already put a shítload of the concepts into practice.

Ardscoil Ris

Ivan wrote: »

You're joking?

Nope

Ivan wrote: »

Normal attacks and secondary attacks, nukes and 8 minute time-line manipulation. This game has better and more creative gameplay than I've ever seen and still has all the usual trimmings.

Normal and secondary attack? I think nearly every single strategy game of the last ten years has that. It looked a pointless clickfest from the video. He just made the units and rushed the enemy. Didn't look like much strategy there. His version of time travel looked like a fancy way of reloading the game after you have made a mistake. (I understand it's a lot more than that :pac:, but I can manipulate time in Supreme Commander by reloading the game)

Ivan wrote: »

The "gimmick" as you put it, gives even the smallest skirmish the potential to drastically change the outcome of the game, if it's rewritten enough. That alone gives it more replay enjoyment than any other FPS out there.

That logic could be applied to any game. Lets say we are talking about Crysis and I'm saying the suit looks like a gimmick you reply with "The "gimmick" as you put it, gives even the smallest skirmish the potential to drastically change the outcome of the game, if it's rewritten enough. That alone gives it more replay enjoyment than any other FPS out there."

I'm not saying the game is going to be bad, but you're basing your assumptions on the game's unique selling point of time travel. If I purchased the game or was reviewing it then I would be thinking "Right, there's time travel. What else?" Not much by the looks of it.

Ivan wrote: »

The graphics look dull, and the animations too. I'm assuming this is why you think the gameplay is outdated...

No, that's wrong. I understand the graphics are bad, but that's because the game is a alpha build. I base the opinion on the fact it looked like their was no battlefield strategy and that it was relying on time travel to compensate for that.

(You should note the tone of my post is lighthearted and I'm not having a go at you )

Ivan

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

Nope

It was rhetorical, but fair enough

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

Normal and secondary attack? I think nearly every single strategy game of the last ten years has that.

That was precisely my point. If the game already contains the game-play style of most modern RTS' and a shiny time-travel "gimmick" then it seems crazy to me to say the gameplay looks dated.

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

It looked a pointless clickfest from the video. He just made the units and rushed the enemy.

Same could be said for every RTS game out there currently.

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

Didn't look like much strategy there. His version of time travel looked like a fancy way of reloading the game after you have made a mistake. (I understand it's a lot more than that :pac:, but I can manipulate time in Supreme Commander by reloading the game)

That's not even remotely similar. If you could be in a multiplayer game of Supreme Commander and reload the game at any point back to 8 minutes before hand, then change the outcome of a fight upto 8 minutes ago while your opponent is doing his/her best to come out ahead from the same fight by sending units back or removing them from the fight altogether... and then the actual results of that had a knock-on affect on every fight after that including the present... Then you might have a point.

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

That logic could be applied to any game. Lets say we are talking about Crysis and I'm saying the suit looks like a gimmick you reply with "The "gimmick" as you put it, gives even the smallest skirmish the potential to drastically change the outcome of the game, if it's rewritten enough. That alone gives it more replay enjoyment than any other FPS out there."

No, thats not even remotely similar. I'm sorry, but if you think that then you just didnt understand my point or chose to ignore it.

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

I'm not saying the game is going to be bad, but you're basing your assumptions on the game's unique selling point of time travel. If I purchased the game or was reviewing it then I would be thinking "Right, there's time travel. What else?" Not much by the looks of it.

It has everything a modern RTS has and more. What more would you like?

Ardscoil Ris wrote: »

No, that's wrong. I understand the graphics are bad, but that's because the game is a alpha build. I base the opinion on the fact it looked like their was no battlefield strategy and that it was relying on time travel to compensate for that.

(You should note the tone of my post is lighthearted and I'm not having a go at you )

I didnt take any of this as you having a go at me oO

Ardscoil Ris

Ivan wrote: »

It was rhetorical, but fair enough

:pac:

Ivan wrote: »

That was precisely my point. If the game already contains the game-play style of most modern RTS' and a shiny time-travel "gimmick" then it seems crazy to me to say the gameplay looks dated.

I'm just saying if the time travel thing becomes boring it didn't look like it offered anything else.

Ivan wrote: »

Same could be said for every RTS game out there currently.

I don't agree there. The Total War series, Europa Universalis series and Sins of Solar Empire would disagree. With the right strategy you can easily defeat the AI or other humans based on tactics with numbers hardly coming into the equation.

Ivan wrote: »

That's not even remotely similar. If you could be in a multiplayer game of Supreme Commander and reload the game at any point back to 8 minutes before hand, then change the outcome of a fight upto 8 minutes ago while your opponent is doing his/her best to come out ahead from the same fight by sending units back or removing them from the fight altogether... and then the actual results of that had a knock-on affect on every fight after that including the present... Then you might have a point.

Ok..ok... bare with me. Imagine you're playing Supreme Commander. You play a battle and it goes badly. You wish you could go back in time to stop yourself from doing that and you can because you have a save game from eight minutes ago. You reload the game and you decide to hold back and not go into battle. One you have decided to do that the game has now completely changed, just like what happens in Achron.

Ivan wrote: »

No, thats not even remotely similar. I'm sorry, but if you think that then you just didnt understand my point or chose to ignore it.

You're right. I think we got mixed up here. I was talking about gimmicks in general and I think you were talking about time travel still. My bad.

Ivan wrote: »

It has everything a modern RTS has and more. What more would you like?

I though the game looked a little bland. I noticed in the video that units had no special abilities and it seemed that there was no tactics outside of the time traveling stuff.

Like I've said, I'm not condemning the game I'm just not as impressed by what I've so far. That could change though.

Pugsley

I think the whole time travel thing will be pretty pointless in single player, and will act much like a reload function. But for multiplayer I think it will add a huge dynamic to the game that is completely new to RTS's. Fighting several fights at the same time in different time zones over the same piece of territory could be epic, trying to prevent the enemy from expnding across the map by cutting his supply lines in the past.

If implimented right that would add a huge degree of strategic planning, but this depends largely on how bases and resources work.

ríomhaire

I think you're judging it far too harshly and prematurely seeing as we've seen next to nothing of this game other than the time travel and hierarchy systems. I don't think we can judge what this game will be like if these are removed, seeing as they haven't shown us anything else. Even if the game is nothing special otherwise, it's something very special with. I think dismissing the time-travel as a gimmick is like dismissing base-building in RTSs as a gimmick.

I also think you give the time travelling in SP far too little credit. It could be worked into the missions very well if enought thought was put into it. You could come up with some very unique mission scenarios.

Ardscoil Ris

I think you need to look up the word gimmick.

"In marketing language, a gimmick is a unique or quirky special feature that makes something "stand out" from its contemporaries."

Time Travel is unique which is a gimmick (Remember gimmick isn't always associated with negativity)

Base Building is the foundation on any RTS and therefore not a gimmick by definition.

Ivan

Initially, RTS games didnt have base building

Now it's a foundation for 90% of the RTS out there. Perhaps this could be the same thing

And Pugsley, I think the time travel system in single-player could be just as engaging as in Multiplayer, at least at first; depending on how they handle the AI for it and/or how they script the AI with it in mind.