Achron - real-time strategy with real time travel

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  • chasehatesbearschasehatesbears Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    This wasn't mentioned in the videos, but I'm assuming each copy comes with a few hits of acid?

    chasehatesbears on
  • durandal4532durandal4532 Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    I thought this would be amazing in a multiplayer FPS.

    Imagine the hectic wondrous confusion that would come of 16 people independently altering the past.

    durandal4532 on
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  • PolloDiabloPolloDiablo Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    This is the best idea for an RTS.

    PolloDiablo on
  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    I think the interesting thing here will be people trying to exploit the temporal 'high ground', that is, units become more valuable the further you can send them back into the past. Clearly the strategy here will be to fight a delaying action in the present and near past, until you can accumulate enough units in the present and near future and enough energy to send them all back into the past before they existed. Then you can use your units with far greater effect in the far past, undo your defeat in the present and near past and force your opponent to operate even further into the past to have a chance of victory.

    The key will be balancing the amount of bonus achieved by being in the past with the increased cost and difficulty of operating there. It will be incredibly easy to end up with a 'past rush' situation where whomever is in a position to go back first and destroy a certain structure then will always win.

    Although I suppose if you send too many units into the past, then your opponent may overwhelm you in the present, meaning that although you hold a temporal advantage he can use his control of the future to build an even larger force before your dominant time wave arrives and send it back to defeat you in the time wave where you are dominant before you can arrive at the time where he is winning and erase him.

    tbloxham on
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  • ShujaaShujaa Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    This is badass.

    Imagine this - the enemy builds up a shitload of time travel power to go back to the start of the game, and wipes out your base.

    However you're currently 3 hours into the game in the present, so it's gonna take 3 minutes for the time-waves to catch up to you. You have 3 minutes to take your army back in time to a point in front of the incoming time waves, where you must destroy his forces, before they can be sent into the past. Your troops are not just fighting for you, they're fighting to preserve their own existence.

    Biggest question is how will paradoxes resolve themselves...

    Shujaa on
  • Kris_xKKris_xK Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Sounds fascinating, but I have no idea how this would work for multiplayer.

    Single player would be a blast tho, assuming your head doesnt explode.

    Kris_xK on
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  • mxmarksmxmarks Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Shujaa wrote: »
    This is badass.

    Imagine this - the enemy builds up a shitload of time travel power to go back to the start of the game, and wipes out your base.

    However you're currently 3 hours into the game in the present, so it's gonna take 3 minutes for the time-waves to catch up to you. You have 3 minutes to take your army back in time to a point in front of the incoming time waves, where you must destroy his forces, before they can be sent into the past. Your troops are not just fighting for you, they're fighting to preserve their own existence.

    Biggest question is how will paradoxes resolve themselves...

    In 4 pages I didnt understand how this works until this post, and now I need this game. That is fucking awesome.

    Can they ever create a situation where you can't get back to before a time wave hits?

    This also needs a watch replay feature more than any other game ever. Like EndWar has, where you just save the whole battle start to finish. I need to be able to start and watch how the whole thing played out in chronological order.

    mxmarks on
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  • TaminTamin Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    eheheh... which chronological order?

    Tamin on
  • mxmarksmxmarks Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Tamin wrote: »
    eheheh... which chronological order?

    Haha the universe's. Whatever the final time wave thing resulted in.

    I'd love a match that lasted 3 hours, in a replay, last about 15 seconds.

    Game begins. You roll out your guys.
    Bright flash. Other team's giant weapons appear in front of your base, blowing it up.
    Game over.

    Little will the world ever know that there was hours that led to being able to go back in time and end it before any of that even HAPPENED. SO AWESOME.

    mxmarks on
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  • TaminTamin Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Someone seriously needs to put a stop to the movie tie-in of Terminator: Salvation and co-opt this developer to make it. But with, you know, funding and artists.

    Tamin on
  • AiranAiran Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Never has the :psyduck: emote been more usable.

    EmperorSeth, you tell your friend to program this full time. Right now. Or 2 hours in the past if you prefer. After they secure a publishing deal of course, 2 months in the future.

    Airan on
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  • DarmakDarmak RAGE vympyvvhyc vyctyvyRegistered User regular
    edited March 2009
    mxmarks wrote: »
    Shujaa wrote: »
    This is badass.

    Imagine this - the enemy builds up a shitload of time travel power to go back to the start of the game, and wipes out your base.

    However you're currently 3 hours into the game in the present, so it's gonna take 3 minutes for the time-waves to catch up to you. You have 3 minutes to take your army back in time to a point in front of the incoming time waves, where you must destroy his forces, before they can be sent into the past. Your troops are not just fighting for you, they're fighting to preserve their own existence.

    Biggest question is how will paradoxes resolve themselves...

    In 4 pages I didnt understand how this works until this post, and now I need this game. That is fucking awesome.

    Can they ever create a situation where you can't get back to before a time wave hits?

    This also needs a watch replay feature more than any other game ever. Like EndWar has, where you just save the whole battle start to finish. I need to be able to start and watch how the whole thing played out in chronological order.

    Of course there are situations you can't go back to, you can't go back farther than 400 seconds in the past. That means that after so long you can't even go back to the beginning of the match. Also, I don't think you can accumulate chrono power, that you only have a set amount and you spend it whenever you give orders in the past or future, or send units back. The only way to regenerate the chrono energy is to be in the present time. So there's definitely limitations to the power, but those should make it interesting.

    Darmak on
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  • DomhnallDomhnall Minty D. Vision! ScotlandRegistered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Gaaaaaaaah, this is confusing. Hopefully it does somewhat decently but Lord knows I'm not going to touch it. I'd be useless.

    'I destroyed your base with my mechs thirty-five minutes ago.'

    edit:

    Buggery, someone already made the joke.

    Domhnall on
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  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    the idea that these are basically half a dozen rts games going on at once, affecting each other by various rules, is easier to undertstand

    but that's a lot of processing power. i'm impressed they could get this running at all.

    edit:

    "Chris used a neat strategy against me in a memorable free-for-all game between him, Konrad, and myself. I launched a massive surprise attack on Chris's mining base, so he traveled back in time, prepared a large fleet to counter my attack and succeeded. However, in the present I acquired nukes and sent a nuke back to the end of the battle that destroyed his remaining fleet. Before it was over, he jumped back further in time, moved his mining base and undid his counter attack. Since his fleet had left the area and my army had conquered it, my nuclear blast from the future decimated my own forces! Right at that time, Konrad came at me with his forces, so I didn't have time to undo my nuclear blast. "

    HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS AWESOME

    Evil Multifarious on
  • RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    There is a graphic novel of the terminator series that shows Skynet trying to deal with the temporal changes its made and that the humans have made and has a time traveling terminator assassinating other terminators. This makes me think of that.

    Bishop vs. Cabel

    A Sound of Thunder

    That one episode of the outer limits

    the episodes of 7 days and SG1 with the repeating day......that might be a mission, but isn't that every game, you repeat the same day over and over until you get it perfect?

    RoyceSraphim on
  • EmperorSethEmperorSeth Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Airan wrote: »
    Never has the :psyduck: emote been more usable.

    EmperorSeth, you tell your friend to program this full time. Right now. Or 2 hours in the past if you prefer. After they secure a publishing deal of course, 2 months in the future.

    That's what they're working on right now. They're hoping to break into consoles. But money doesn't grow on trees. Though it might IN THE FUTURE!

    EmperorSeth on
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  • KhavallKhavall British ColumbiaRegistered User regular
    edited March 2009
    I wonder if you can reverse a loss with time travel.

    "What's that I lost? Not 30 seconds from now I didn't"

    Khavall on
  • GoombaGoomba __BANNED USERS regular
    edited March 2009
    The base will probably have to be gone for all, what, six? cycles for the game to be over.

    Goomba on
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  • JurgJurg In a TeacupRegistered User regular
    edited March 2009
    This is one of the craziest ideas I have ever heard for a game.

    I must have it.

    Jurg on
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  • randombattlerandombattle Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Airan wrote: »
    Never has the :psyduck: emote been more usable.

    EmperorSeth, you tell your friend to program this full time. Right now. Or 2 hours in the past if you prefer. After they secure a publishing deal of course, 2 months in the future.

    That's what they're working on right now. They're hoping to break into consoles. But money doesn't grow on trees. Though it might IN THE FUTURE!
    Why doesn't he just have his future self fund it himself!

    randombattle on
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  • ArkanArkan Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Khavall wrote: »
    I wonder if you can reverse a loss with time travel.

    "What's that I lost? Not 30 seconds from now I didn't"

    Someone described this sort of scenario earlier in the thread- a person destroys your base at the maximum extent back in time you can go (about 6 and 2/3rds minutes), which would give you however long it takes for that timewave to propagate to the present to find out when he built that army and destroy it before it kills your base (since by the time you realized he'd destroyed your base it would have been out of timetravel range).

    EDIT: I wonder if it would be possible to lose your base, but then timetravel back a bit after its destruction and rebuild everything in exactly the same spots and have the game not realize your base was destroyed.

    Arkan on
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  • CampyCampy Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    My first thoughts after seeing the videos is: holy balls, how is it going to process dozens of units independently moving in several different patches of time without choking all but the most powerful processors, but then the awesome blew my mind and I didn't care anymore.

    The time energy should negate too much time based rts micro skills, as you can only do so much in the past before running out of energy. I love the idea of the time waves, I have visions of racing the time waves, desperately attacking some manufacturing base which unleashed a legion of doom against you in the future; or maybe the past idk.

    Having a quick glance through the dev blog, it seems they've been working on this for a few years already. By the looks of things we may have a few more to wait too :cry:

    Campy on
  • PatboyXPatboyX Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    This confuses me more than Primer.

    PatboyX on
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  • ArkanArkan Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Campy wrote: »
    My first thoughts after seeing the videos is: holy balls, how is it going to process dozens of units independently moving in several different patches of time without choking all but the most powerful processors, but then the awesome blew my mind and I didn't care anymore.

    I think it would work in the same way replays do in several other RTSes (at least the blizzard ones). It doesn't save every single detail, it just saves what orders the players give to their units and extrapolates the rest.

    If I had to guess, anyway.

    Arkan on
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  • LarsLars Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Without watching the videos, would this work:

    1. You send some kind of awesome unit into the enemy base and completely wreck it. Let's call the unit Hulk Hogan.
    2. The enemy goes back in time 30 seconds and kills Hulk Hogan while he's still on his way to the base.
    3. Now the time wave is moving from 30 seconds in the past up to the present, where it will erase your Hulk Hogan and revive the enemy base.
    4. You take your present Hulk Hogan who is in the wrecked base and send him back in time 45 seconds (jumping over the time wave so it never erases him).
    5. Present Hulk Hogan kills the units that were about to kill Past Hulk Hogan, and then teams up with Past Hulk Hogan to wreck the enemy base twice as fast.

    Lars on
  • darksteeldarksteel Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Lars wrote: »
    Without watching the videos, would this work:

    1. You send some kind of awesome unit into the enemy base and completely wreck it. Let's call the unit Hulk Hogan.
    2. The enemy goes back in time 30 seconds and kills Hulk Hogan while he's still on his way to the base.
    3. Now the time wave is moving from 30 seconds in the past up to the present, where it will erase your Hulk Hogan and revive the enemy base.
    4. You take your present Hulk Hogan who is in the wrecked base and send him back in time 45 seconds (jumping over the time wave so it never erases him).
    5. Present Hulk Hogan kills the units that were about to kill Past Hulk Hogan, and then teams up with Past Hulk Hogan to wreck the enemy base twice as fast.

    Could work, if Present Hulk Hogan destroyed the units that killed Past Hulk Hogan first before the time wave reached the present. After this, Present Hulk Hogan would disappear for a while though, only to reappear in the next time wave. Then Present Hulk Hogan could team up with his past version for base killing shenanigans.

    darksteel on
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  • Mr PinkMr Pink I got cats for youRegistered User regular
    edited March 2009
    darksteel wrote: »
    Lars wrote: »
    Without watching the videos, would this work:

    1. You send some kind of awesome unit into the enemy base and completely wreck it. Let's call the unit Hulk Hogan.
    2. The enemy goes back in time 30 seconds and kills Hulk Hogan while he's still on his way to the base.
    3. Now the time wave is moving from 30 seconds in the past up to the present, where it will erase your Hulk Hogan and revive the enemy base.
    4. You take your present Hulk Hogan who is in the wrecked base and send him back in time 45 seconds (jumping over the time wave so it never erases him).
    5. Present Hulk Hogan kills the units that were about to kill Past Hulk Hogan, and then teams up with Past Hulk Hogan to wreck the enemy base twice as fast.

    Could work, if Present Hulk Hogan destroyed the units that killed Past Hulk Hogan first before the time wave reached the present. After this, Present Hulk Hogan would disappear for a while though, only to reappear in the next time wave. Then Present Hulk Hogan could team up with his past version for base killing shenanigans.

    aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA

    Well I'm in.

    Mr Pink on
  • DredZedDredZed Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    darksteel wrote: »
    Lars wrote: »
    Without watching the videos, would this work:

    1. You send some kind of awesome unit into the enemy base and completely wreck it. Let's call the unit Hulk Hogan.
    2. The enemy goes back in time 30 seconds and kills Hulk Hogan while he's still on his way to the base.
    3. Now the time wave is moving from 30 seconds in the past up to the present, where it will erase your Hulk Hogan and revive the enemy base.
    4. You take your present Hulk Hogan who is in the wrecked base and send him back in time 45 seconds (jumping over the time wave so it never erases him).
    5. Present Hulk Hogan kills the units that were about to kill Past Hulk Hogan, and then teams up with Past Hulk Hogan to wreck the enemy base twice as fast.

    Could work, if Present Hulk Hogan destroyed the units that killed Past Hulk Hogan first before the time wave reached the present. After this, Present Hulk Hogan would disappear for a while though, only to reappear in the next time wave. Then Present Hulk Hogan could team up with his past version for base killing shenanigans.

    Wow, I hadn't even thought of the possibility of stuff disappearing when one time hits wave only to reappear with another. This game just keeps looking better and better.

    Though I'll probably suck at it.

    DredZed on
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  • AdditionalPylonsAdditionalPylons Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    JohnDoe wrote: »
    Taramoor wrote: »
    This made my brain explode a little bit, in a good way.

    AdditionalPylons on
  • LJDouglasLJDouglas Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    They've just updated their website with an explanation of how paradoxes work.

    http://achrongame.com/paradox.html

    LJDouglas on
  • ViscountalphaViscountalpha The pen is mightier than the sword http://youtu.be/G_sBOsh-vyIRegistered User regular
    edited April 2009
    LJDouglas wrote: »
    They've just updated their website with an explanation of how paradoxes work.

    http://achrongame.com/paradox.html

    Yea. I wonder what kind of temporal mischief people could cause for each other. This is where RTS needs to go to. I want this game so bad.

    I asked what kind of hardware this will require. I figure something beastly might be needed :(

    Viscountalpha on
  • VoranthVoranth MI NOMBRE, POR CIERTO ES DONTÉ!Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    It looks like they're purposefully keeping the graphics simplistic so computers can focus on handling the immense processing power I assume this game would require. Of course, those could just be placeholders.

    Voranth on
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  • PatboyXPatboyX Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    I hope there is a demo. I suck at RTS games post-Dune 2 but I want to play it just to wrap my mind around how it works.

    PatboyX on
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  • KiTAKiTA Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Obs wrote: »
    I think any time travel RTS must always begin every game with one team's shit in smoldering ruins and the other team automatically declared the victorious.

    Then from there it falls into the format of one side trying to rewrite history and the other side defending it.

    Now THAT sounds interesting.

    KiTA on
  • Jam WarriorJam Warrior Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Bloody Hell. I fail hard enough at getting my head around normal RTS games at sufficient speed.

    I applaud this marvelous idea but would not personally touch it with a 10 foot time pole.

    Jam Warrior on
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  • RenegenRenegen Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    I love how you can change the past by building units in the future, what?

    Renegen on
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  • DrezDrez Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    Uhhhhhhh

    brain mush

    Drez on
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  • DrezDrez Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    I asked what kind of hardware this will require. I figure something beastly might be needed :(

    This game is actually designed for a Casio calculator watch.

    Drez on
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  • kedinikkedinik Captain of Industry Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    You'd have to constantly go back in time a few seconds before your enemy's latest change and un-change it, ad infinitum. It sounds like a lot of tedious, repetitive micro.

    But hey, it's just an alpha. It's an interesting concept and they have nearly 2 years to build a complete game around it.

    kedinik on
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  • chasehatesbearschasehatesbears Registered User regular
    edited April 2009
    kedinik wrote: »
    You'd have to constantly go back in time a few seconds before your enemy's latest change and un-change it, ad infinitum. It sounds like a lot of tedious, repetitive micro.

    But hey, it's just an alpha. It's an interesting concept and they have nearly 2 years to build a complete game around it.

    But the resources you use for time travel is limited, so you can't just keep spamming backwards.

    chasehatesbears on
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