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TIme travel in games.
Author
I just had one abstract idea... It''s not really developed yet, but I hope you guys will feed the fire.
Normally the case comes before an effect. Why don''t we change that? Say in an RPG, all of a sudden the players wisdom goes down, he''s like "wtf?!!!", and in a couple of minutes he finds himself killing a newbie (say in this system this causes wisdom to go down). I''m not sure how to implement it(where''s the gurantee that the player will kill the newbie), but I''m sure with some thought in it, it could be done very well, and be very interesting.
What do u think?
what you''re saying is that the player gets things added to him before he does an action.. not realistic. perhaps something more along the true lines of time-travel.. hehe. He comes to a spot to find dead bodies of creatures.. torn and broken. And then he wonders a little farther and finds some cave.. steops inside and comes out the other end to find himself back at that place, with living creatures.. he has traveled back and kills them before he arrives there.
To make this viable in a game.. have it be comething like in Bill and Ted''s where they vow to do something in the future relating to the past. Assuming the character has this ability.. then his effect should be instaneous. This means the character essentially says "i''m too weak to fight now, but in the future i will return to fight them. Then he sees them all die. This isn''t always the case, as diverging futures CAN exist. hehe. let''s say he comes back and actually dies at that point instead of winning. The game will suck him back to the main timeline.. which he had diverged from by saying "i will kill them". He''s drawn back to where he was, except now instead of seeing them all dead, he sees his dead body there. He''s forced to reconsider.. and in this way he''s given a second chance at life..
That way he technically will never die as long as he diverges from the main timeline.
it''s like an autosave feature with some freaky outcomes. perhaps the guy had done a LOT after promising to kill them. By dying, he''s just erased all that has been done. Well, that sucks, right? wrong. Instead.. you know that you died there in 4 months. You have to powermax yourself and kill them before those 4 months expire.. hehe. Technically, this means limited time-travel. If it''s unlimited, then you can assume you''ll never lose a fight because if you always go back tothe main timeline, then you can always powermax and kill them before you show up later. Perhaps even showing up twice at the same time in one location to have yourself multiplied hehe. This could be one MESSED UP game.. but cool.
As you learn new things, you could even say "i will come back here when i get 20 strength" or something to that effect.. when you can bench-press 400 lbs ;p or kill a goblin in 10 seconds flat or something. And then you, from the future, appear with yourself. You fight the fight.. and win. And your other self goes off. Well, now once you hit that level, you go back and you fight the fight again.. with your old self. You can''t let your old self die.. hehe
It''d require some complex coding or limited teleporting back and forth into the future.. hehe but it''d be cool. You''d also have to keep track of the time-line divergencies. Plus what happened at every battle that you teleported back to.. that way you could accurately reproduce the fight and what happened. it''d be near-impossible to have the fights go the same way twice, but you could choose to run the second time around as a video sequence of the both of you fighting.. and not actually have it be interactive, since you know you already won that fight. That i think would be pretty cool
Just some info for ya.. hehe. Prolly a lot more than ya expected. BTW, where in NY are you? I''m up on LI quite a bit.
J
To make this viable in a game.. have it be comething like in Bill and Ted''s where they vow to do something in the future relating to the past. Assuming the character has this ability.. then his effect should be instaneous. This means the character essentially says "i''m too weak to fight now, but in the future i will return to fight them. Then he sees them all die. This isn''t always the case, as diverging futures CAN exist. hehe. let''s say he comes back and actually dies at that point instead of winning. The game will suck him back to the main timeline.. which he had diverged from by saying "i will kill them". He''s drawn back to where he was, except now instead of seeing them all dead, he sees his dead body there. He''s forced to reconsider.. and in this way he''s given a second chance at life..
That way he technically will never die as long as he diverges from the main timeline.it''s like an autosave feature with some freaky outcomes. perhaps the guy had done a LOT after promising to kill them. By dying, he''s just erased all that has been done. Well, that sucks, right? wrong. Instead.. you know that you died there in 4 months. You have to powermax yourself and kill them before those 4 months expire.. hehe. Technically, this means limited time-travel. If it''s unlimited, then you can assume you''ll never lose a fight because if you always go back tothe main timeline, then you can always powermax and kill them before you show up later. Perhaps even showing up twice at the same time in one location to have yourself multiplied
hehe. This could be one MESSED UP game.. but cool.As you learn new things, you could even say "i will come back here when i get 20 strength" or something to that effect.. when you can bench-press 400 lbs ;p or kill a goblin in 10 seconds flat or something. And then you, from the future, appear with yourself. You fight the fight.. and win. And your other self goes off. Well, now once you hit that level, you go back and you fight the fight again.. with your old self. You can''t let your old self die.. hehe
It''d require some complex coding or limited teleporting back and forth into the future.. hehe
but it''d be cool. You''d also have to keep track of the time-line divergencies. Plus what happened at every battle that you teleported back to.. that way you could accurately reproduce the fight and what happened. it''d be near-impossible to have the fights go the same way twice, but you could choose to run the second time around as a video sequence of the both of you fighting.. and not actually have it be interactive, since you know you already won that fight. That i think would be pretty cool Just some info for ya.. hehe. Prolly a lot more than ya expected. BTW, where in NY are you? I''m up on LI quite a bit.
J
As i understand this, you must be talking about having the most extremely linear of linear games in order to accomplish this.
I love Game Design and it loves me back.
Our Goal is "Fun"!
I love Game Design and it loves me back.
Our Goal is "Fun"!
quote: Original post by Paul Cunningham
As i understand this, you must be talking about having the most extremely linear of linear games in order to accomplish this.
I love Game Design and it loves me back.
Our Goal is "Fun"!
Not really. You just have to have the ability to store info about all the past battles you''ve "gone back to" and such.. it could actually make a wicked game. you could simply do something like "i''ll return with X key and give it to myself now." And then you could play a lil subquest to get the key, and then time travel back to give it to yourself, then take over yourself from the point of getting the key.. since the other you is on a divergant time-line and doesn''t exist anymore.. hehe. This would be good if you needed a key to get into the dungeon and you had 24 hours to rescue the maiden.. getting the key would take too long, ya see?
Then you simply bring the key to yourself later and it makes a self-perpetuating time line that''s real. Technically you never went to get the key, but you have it to give to the next you. If you don''t give it, then that you has to go and get the key once more.. hehe. It''s a very wild thing.. but assuming no consiquences from time-travel.. well.. it could be interesting J
Author
I''m from Brooklyn.
That''d be a hell of a game, let me tell ya that. Probably would take 10 years to design and another 10 years to code
That''d be a hell of a game, let me tell ya that. Probably would take 10 years to design and another 10 years to code
Watch out for wicked time paradoxes: Once you have grown in power you travel back into time to help yourself fight a battle in the past. Unfortunately one of your fireball spells go a little havoc and kills your weaker self. Uhh, what happends now???
Regards
nicba
Regards
nicba
Brooklyn, eh? You talk funny, too?
As far as things like killing yourself in the past.. that''s why i said the second time around you have it just shown as a reply of what happened.. since you already know you won and how hehe.
But if you allowed them to do things, and you killed yourself, then you''d get sucked back to the begining of the fight. Think about it.. if you got killed, then you died and couldn''t be there, but since you couldn''t be there.. you can''t die. it''s a paradox that forces you to know that you will not fail or it would not have happened.
J
As far as things like killing yourself in the past.. that''s why i said the second time around you have it just shown as a reply of what happened.. since you already know you won and how
hehe.But if you allowed them to do things, and you killed yourself, then you''d get sucked back to the begining of the fight. Think about it.. if you got killed, then you died and couldn''t be there, but since you couldn''t be there.. you can''t die. it''s a paradox that forces you to know that you will not fail or it would not have happened.
J
Actually,
The goblins could still (by some luck) kill the weaker self, you wouldn't have to do it.
The trick would have to be to not allow the player to be in the same spot in time as the his or her other selves. What I mean is this.
You present 'you' needs a key. You resolve that you when this is over, you will go on and find the key and leave it under the unwelcome mat of the dungeon. That is, the future you will travel back in time, before the present you arrives to the dungeon and hides the key. The present you, when he arrives to the dungeon and finds it locked, will find the key under the mat.
In this case the future you and the present you never meet, they are not allowed to. That way, you can't do something silly like killing yourself.
The problem is that if you are battling some monsters and they kick your butt, and you die, you can't say "Well, when this is over, I'll travel back in time 2 years and train myself." You can't cause you are dead.
Now, I definately agree that being able to get an army of yourselves would simple be too cool for words. Lets face it. Why pattle the final boss with 3 20-level characters when you could just as easily have 300 or 3000 or even 3 million versions of you give the nasty a royal beatdown... That could get confusing very fast.... especially if the bad guy can do the same thing >
I think that the only feasable way time travel can be done and still be cool is that certain strict rules have to be put in place. Now since none of us has time traveled yet, we don't really know what the real rules are, so some experimenting is probably in order.
What I propose is this:
Allow for split timestreams. So that if the level 1 version of me dies when the level 40 version of me is there, the later version does not die... rather the timestream is split in two: one where the level 40 me never fought (because I died at level 1) and one where I still exist, because I survived. For fun, even allow the player to traverse through all these timelines (that would be cool). However there is a downside.
As more and more bifurcations are made, the timestream is plunged further and further towards chaos. What does this mean? Anything you'd want it to mean. Basically there are way too many timelines in this universe... Something is going to give and I'd hate to be there when it happens. Literally the end of time.
One last thing about the multiple yous. Personally I love the ideas of several of my character helping each other out. Maybe there it can be done but there is alimit to the number of duplicate entities that the timestream can support.
I have hundreds of more ideas but I don't want to write a tome on this forum
Anyway, that is my little blurb
One last thing... Sorry I could not resist...
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Edited by - OberonZ on July 10, 2000 9:45:49 PM
The goblins could still (by some luck) kill the weaker self, you wouldn't have to do it.
The trick would have to be to not allow the player to be in the same spot in time as the his or her other selves. What I mean is this.
You present 'you' needs a key. You resolve that you when this is over, you will go on and find the key and leave it under the unwelcome mat of the dungeon. That is, the future you will travel back in time, before the present you arrives to the dungeon and hides the key. The present you, when he arrives to the dungeon and finds it locked, will find the key under the mat.
In this case the future you and the present you never meet, they are not allowed to. That way, you can't do something silly like killing yourself.
The problem is that if you are battling some monsters and they kick your butt, and you die, you can't say "Well, when this is over, I'll travel back in time 2 years and train myself." You can't cause you are dead.
Now, I definately agree that being able to get an army of yourselves would simple be too cool for words. Lets face it. Why pattle the final boss with 3 20-level characters when you could just as easily have 300 or 3000 or even 3 million versions of you give the nasty a royal beatdown... That could get confusing very fast.... especially if the bad guy can do the same thing >
I think that the only feasable way time travel can be done and still be cool is that certain strict rules have to be put in place. Now since none of us has time traveled yet, we don't really know what the real rules are, so some experimenting is probably in order.
What I propose is this:
Allow for split timestreams. So that if the level 1 version of me dies when the level 40 version of me is there, the later version does not die... rather the timestream is split in two: one where the level 40 me never fought (because I died at level 1) and one where I still exist, because I survived. For fun, even allow the player to traverse through all these timelines (that would be cool). However there is a downside.
As more and more bifurcations are made, the timestream is plunged further and further towards chaos. What does this mean? Anything you'd want it to mean. Basically there are way too many timelines in this universe... Something is going to give and I'd hate to be there when it happens. Literally the end of time.
One last thing about the multiple yous. Personally I love the ideas of several of my character helping each other out. Maybe there it can be done but there is alimit to the number of duplicate entities that the timestream can support.
I have hundreds of more ideas but I don't want to write a tome on this forum
Anyway, that is my little blurb
One last thing... Sorry I could not resist...
#include <tstream>void main (){ tstream ts; tstream::iterator it = ts.begin (); while (it != ts.chaos ()) { &it.travel (); it++; }} ---
PAGE FAULT: Please insert "Swap File, Disk 2"
and press any key to continue.
Edited by - OberonZ on July 10, 2000 9:45:49 PM
twenty years ago the father robbed a bank
he became rich, married and had a son, Jack
twenty years later, the son goes back in time and prevents his father from robbing the bank
thus the father marries another woman and has another son, John
where did Jack come from ?
he became rich, married and had a son, Jack
twenty years later, the son goes back in time and prevents his father from robbing the bank
thus the father marries another woman and has another son, John
where did Jack come from ?
In that instance, a split timeline forms... think of it as an alternate universe in the context of our own universe. In one timeline Jack exists because he didn''t stop his father, in the other he never existed.
That is one popular opinion. One that would work in games.
Alternatively Jack could have gone back in time to stop his father but "things," "coincicenes" would have happened to make it so that his father would rob the bank and history would have remained the same.
That one is not so great in games since it forces you to play linearly.
Anyway,
cya
-OberonZ
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That is one popular opinion. One that would work in games.
Alternatively Jack could have gone back in time to stop his father but "things," "coincicenes" would have happened to make it so that his father would rob the bank and history would have remained the same.
That one is not so great in games since it forces you to play linearly.
Anyway,
cya
-OberonZ
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PAGE FAULT: Please insert "Swap File, Disk 2"
and press any key to continue.
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