By Jim Rossignol on March 27th, 2009 at 1:30 pm.
Things you can’t do in an RTS generally include: attacking your opponent in the past, undoing the future actions of your units, building things in the future and sending the back to a previous point in a game. These are all things you can do in Achron. The developers, who unveiled their idea at the 2009 GDC Experimental Gameplay Sessions explain it thus: “Achron is the world’s first meta-time strategy game, a real-time strategy game where players and units can jump to and play at different times simultaneously and independently.” It’s a game that takes the impossible notions of cross-time war that we see juggled so cleverly in time-travel science fiction, and turns them into a practical gaming model. This is seriously smart game design, and, potentially, it provides a model for “real-time” time travel in all kinds of games, not just strategy games. An explanatory trailer and press release await you below, and believe me, you are going to want to watch this.
Yeah. Yeah. There’s some more videos on the developer’s site. This one is particularly interesting:
“When my opponent is.”
Thanks to Quinns for the link on this one.
Press Release
March 26, 2009 – Hazardous Software� unveiled Achron, the world’s first meta-time strategy game, at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California. The next revolution in time travel gameplay was demonstrated at the Experimental Gameplay Session.
Designed to reinvent the real-time strategy genre by allowing all players to travel through time, Achron is a futuristic science fiction game. Players and units have the ability to jump to and play at different times simultaneously and independently. Time travel is free and unlimited but it costs energy to change the time line. Players will be challenged to invent new strategies in a world where it is possible for them and their opponents to undo mistakes, change a strategy after committing to it, and alter the outcome of past battles.
Time travel transforms the strategy game landscape, stated Christopher Hazard, president and cofounder of Hazardous Software. It opens up new dimensions of strategies and gameplay. For example, imagine being able to see when and where your opponents are going to attack before they do.
Achron features both a captivating single player campaign and an online multiplayer mode. In addition to being able to build, expand, and attack as in typical RTS games, new mechanisms such as command hierarchy and smart-idling ease the management of a complex time travel environment. An intuitive user interface depicts events in the past and future allowing the player to navigate the time line.
Achron signifies the creation of a brand new sub-genre of video games that utilize gimmick-free time travel as one of the core gameplay mechanisms, said Mike Resnick, lead developer and cofounder of Hazardous Software. �The popular type of time travel abundant in science fiction is now available to the gaming community.
Further information about the game will be released in the upcoming months. To learn more about Achron, please visit the official web site at www.achrongame.com.
About Hazardous Software
Hazardous Software was incorporated in June 2007 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina near Research Triangle Park. The company was founded to address the gamer�s desire for more innovative games in the marketplace. Hazardous Software believes games should challenge players minds while being entertaining and engaging.
Copyright 2008-2009 Hazardous Software Inc.
27/03/2009 at 13:32 jon_hill987 says:
Can you send robots back in time to kill the mother of the leader of the resistance? That is what I need to know.
27/03/2009 at 13:39 Kieron Gillen says:
I just imagine the end of Bill and Ted 2 with this.
KG
27/03/2009 at 13:41 Meat Circus says:
This seems to be some new definition of the word ‘explained’ I was previously unfamiliar with.
27/03/2009 at 13:41 Okami says:
My brain hurts..
27/03/2009 at 13:43 schizoslayer says:
Amazing and yet incredibly confusing at the same time.
27/03/2009 at 13:44 Serenegoose says:
@jon_hill, 1: That was exactly what I needed to know too.
27/03/2009 at 13:47 minipixel says:
my… head.. is… *SPLOTCH*
27/03/2009 at 13:48 roBurky says:
Oooh.
So can you send units 5 minutes back in time, then go back in time 1 minute, and send those same units 4 minutes back in time, then go back in time 1 min, then send those same units 3 minutes back in time, then go back in time 1 minute, then send those same units 2 minutes back in time, then go back in time 1 minute, then send those same units 1 minute back in time, then go back in time 1 minute, and have a hell of a lot of units?
27/03/2009 at 13:48 cyrenic says:
Anybody able to travel forward in time and tell us if they can actually pull off such a complex mechanic?
27/03/2009 at 13:56 schizoslayer says:
@ roBurky yes but if any of those units touch the universe implodes.
27/03/2009 at 13:56 Persus-9 says:
Well the game play looks pretty cool but I don’t agree with the model of time travel involved.
@ jon_hill987 On the above model you could kill the mother of the leader of the resistance, this is very much the back to the future model where everything, past present and future is up for grabs and subject to change.
I suspect this is wrong and you shouldn’t be able to change the future or the past. If someone goes back in time and arrives back in 1955 then it’s because they always apeared in 1955. There shouldn’t be any clean time travel free past that runs first before getting overwritten by the actions of a time traveller.
This is the view of David Lewis, one of the greatest philosophers of all time and I think he got it right. His paper “The Paradoxes of Time Travel” http://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/merlinos/Paradoxes%20of%20Time%20Travel.pdf is definitely worth a read for a really good explanation of how time travel should work.
27/03/2009 at 13:56 Trip SkyWay says:
Sounds cool but not sure I understand it.
27/03/2009 at 14:02 jon_hill987 says:
@ Persus-9: Thank you, but I was already completely aware that Terminator is nonsense. :P
27/03/2009 at 14:06 roBurky says:
Persus-9, I don’t think this is a documentary.
27/03/2009 at 14:10 Heliocentric says:
‘Already’ play(ing/ed) Achron 4, it’s worth ‘waiting’ for.
27/03/2009 at 14:10 Jahkaivah says:
Oh man I am going to bribe so many architects……
27/03/2009 at 14:12 Ixtab says:
I want this game… It sounds beautifully complicated and confusing.
27/03/2009 at 14:12 Ian says:
i think my headbrain are soar.
27/03/2009 at 14:19 mandrill says:
Interesting, but W.T.F?
Brain meltingly complicated, butt may bcome more self-explanaotry when played. At the moment I can’t get my head around it.
27/03/2009 at 14:20 Cooper says:
@roBurky
I don’t think so, that seems to be what the ‘time waves’ are for – to stop you being all over the place with hundreds of units – you have to wait for the time wave to catch up with whatever point you’re at.
I’m not a fan of RTS games because of the amazing amount of twitchy playing they involve. This seems like a fantastic dynamic, but I imagine it’ll just be far too confusing for most people in multiplayer…
27/03/2009 at 14:22 Xercies says:
So if there was a war and you went back in time to stop his war that means that there was no war which means you wouldn’t send your units back in time makign a paradox.
Yay for paradoxes, and no I don’think anyone who has made a time travel story has made an intelligent get around of a paradox.
27/03/2009 at 14:24 Ixtab says:
Xercies: There are options such as you can’t change it because it’s already happened, whatever you do is already part of the past. There’s also the multiple timeline option where the units you sent back to end the war come from a different timeline to the one you end up going into without the war.
Of course all of this time travel goes against conservation of energy and momentum.
27/03/2009 at 14:28 HidesHisEyes says:
Looks more Groundhog Day to me than Primer :/
27/03/2009 at 14:29 Cabbs says:
@roBurky
As I undestand it, you’re tied to a ‘present time’, so you can spend some time in the past, but you have to return to the present when the relevant resource runs out. So presumably, any vast force you accumulate will have to kill your opponent off mostly without you there. AND because this is so far back in the past of the game, and you’ve just sent your entire force, the enemy could wipe you out before your I-win change propogates. risky. And of course the investment of resources and time (lol) to make that force is time not spent fighting your oponent in the present time.
Time time time time time. Now my headhurts too.
And is it just me, or does that look a it like the Spring Engine?
27/03/2009 at 14:32 kikito says:
If there are going to be hero units, one of them should be Dr Manhattan.
27/03/2009 at 14:34 jotajota says:
I wanted this game tomorrow. I feel dizzy.
27/03/2009 at 14:34 schizoslayer says:
I prefer the Back to the Future / trousers of time theory that if you go back in time and change something then travelling forwards in time will propel you along the new timeline. The old one still exists in parallel to the “new one” it’s just that you no longer exist in it after the point where you went back in time.
So you can go back in time and kill your grandfather which will propel you down a timeline in which you weren’t born however because you never originated from that timeline/universe it’s all ok as there is a timeline in which you didn’t kill your grandfather.
It may not stand up to physics but so long as it lets me have cool sci-fi stuff to watch or read I’m happy.
27/03/2009 at 14:34 grey_painter says:
This is the sort of mechanic I’m glad someone is producing because it sounds really interesting and I wish it well. I don’t think I’ll end up buying it though because it looks so complicated. If they release a demo that lets me play with time travel a bit to see if it is manageable by my simple linear brain they’ll have a better chance of getting my money.
27/03/2009 at 14:37 Lunaran says:
sweet, they named it after the coolest city in ohio
27/03/2009 at 14:41 Senethro says:
That is so goddamn nuts. If I understood it correctly, it would be possible to screw up by accidentally undoing a successful defense in the past, which when the timeline catches up with the present might lead to the creation of a large angry army in your base.
27/03/2009 at 14:41 Gap Gen says:
This looks like being very complicated and potentially very awesome. Reminds me a bit of the increasingly obfuscated time mechanics in MS Paint Adventures.
27/03/2009 at 14:45 Theory says:
Their demo had better be damn good.
27/03/2009 at 14:54 Down Rodeo says:
That looks a bit insane. Nice to see that they have the time-travel backend sorted; this game would be lovely with some polish. Not that I wouldn’t play it right now. I’d play the hell out of it.
27/03/2009 at 14:56 Gap Gen says:
Yeah, so there are two models of time travel. One is that paradoxes exist and the universe is unchanged due to time travel. Another is that time travel creates alternate universes that are separate from the unchanged universe you left.
Of course, actual physics is in reality batshit insane (quantum physics, black holes, relativity, etc), so who knows what happens if time travel is possible.
27/03/2009 at 15:00 MeestaNob! says:
This is one of very few games where your PC crashing spectacularly would be understandable.
27/03/2009 at 15:00 GibletHead2000 says:
This looks to be something that might actually rekindle my love for RTS games, if they pull it off. Incidentally, for those of you struggling with the philosophy of time travel, go watch Primer. :-)
27/03/2009 at 15:00 The_B says:
Theory: Their demo was out yesterday, but jumped into the future in order to finish development in the past. If you know what I mean…
27/03/2009 at 15:01 Gap Gen says:
Yeah, if it’s not released bug-free then the time travel aspect obviously doesn’t work.
27/03/2009 at 15:23 The_B says:
They should totally have a DRM that will give you back activations the longer you play.
27/03/2009 at 15:23 James Allen says:
I am confused, mystified, and slightly aroused.
27/03/2009 at 15:30 PC Monster says:
This game scares me. I fear it may be too smart for me to properly get, like some Ian Banks novels. Hopefully it will have the MOTHER of all tutorials when it ships.
27/03/2009 at 15:33 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
Installing patches will be a bitch. When you go back in time too far, you have to take into account that there are different game rules…
27/03/2009 at 15:35 Rosti says:
The future of gaming?
/gets coat.
27/03/2009 at 15:35 Filipe says:
Oh, the possibilities! If this lives up to half its promise, it’s going to take all the skills we’ve learned playing RTSs and flip ‘em on its head. Rushes are out of the playbook altogether, you buy all the time you need to prepare.
27/03/2009 at 15:37 Rei Onryou says:
It hasn’t quite demonstrated the effects of the time distortion catching up after a big fight, for example.
I.E. In the second video, when the battle in the past was occurring and in the present, he was building more units to send back in time, if the past enemy destroyed the factories, then would the presently built units be destroyed as they could never have existed? *head asplodes*
27/03/2009 at 15:37 AndrewC says:
Primer is awesome!
And this seems to play out as a puzzle game – or at least that’s the only possible way I can understand it.
Too many enemies at time ‘y’? So get a load of units from time ‘z’ and bring them back to time ‘x’ and then wipe them out!
Enemies move to control bottleneck? send a bunch of units to the other side of it in the past and then pincer in the present!
But if it isn’t pre-set challenges, and the enemy is using real tactics and, horror, using time too, then my brain will asplode.
But if it’s to C&C as Braid is to Super Mario, then what the hell, why not? Now all I need to do is go back in time and develop my giving a shit about RTSs.
27/03/2009 at 15:39 AndrewC says:
Rei: that’s why there are time ‘waves’. you have to get them back before the next wave commits the changes to the time-line. Or something. I think.
27/03/2009 at 15:43 Tei says:
On 2002 I remeber writting a standard for a enhancement of the Quake protocol to support dimensional travel. It was elegant and easy, and powerfull.. but never got implement, so was a bunch of hot air.
Theres no reason why “Instacing” (in the MMORPG sense) sould be binary. You can “merge” dimensions and timelines. You can even make a car race where the car moves not only forward, but backward in time. He… BACK TO THE FUTURE movie did that on the 80′s, avoiding a collision (with a pinne) going back in time.
27/03/2009 at 15:48 AndrewC says:
Didn’t GRID just do that?
27/03/2009 at 15:50 Tei says:
I think the latest WoW expansion have some of these ideas. Where you live in your “private instance”-ish features, so you can “see” a building destroyed, where other people see the building is ok.
27/03/2009 at 15:51 AlexW says:
This is the best thread I’ve seen in a long time.
27/03/2009 at 15:52 DMJ says:
Can I have this game yesterday?
27/03/2009 at 15:53 AndrewC says:
Don’t be an arse, Kieron.
27/03/2009 at 15:55 Tei says:
Re: “GRID”
Quoting wikipedia:
“This game is made by Codemasters, the creators of the TOCA/Race Driver series. GRID is a hybrid between arcade and simulator of mainly tarmac racing that consists of 43 cars. The game features an instant replay feature which allows the player to rewind time by up to 10 seconds. While the instant replay can be used as many times as the player wants, the Flashback feature can only be used a limited number of times, determined by the difficulty setting.”
Anyway the most obvious reference sould be Braid,… that is about to show in Steam sooner or later.
27/03/2009 at 15:58 Severian says:
All your base [were/will] belong to us.
27/03/2009 at 16:08 Lorc says:
I wonder whether Squidi’s going to get irate over this.
27/03/2009 at 16:28 Ian says:
@ Tei: That’d be phasing. And what’s more, it’s muchly splendid.
27/03/2009 at 17:00 Professor says:
This is probably one of the most fascinating and innovative ideas I’ve seen in gaming. I doubt they’ll be able to make this game intuitively playable, but this the first of many, to be sure. Good for these guys, this is an awesome concept.
27/03/2009 at 17:01 mrrobsa says:
This looks amazing, I hope it’s as fun as it is interesting. I also secretly wish that time travel becomes the industry’s new co-op gaming and is crowbarred into everything.
Time Travel Tomb Raider please, where you plant ‘relics’ to be dug up by yourself 2,000 years later.
27/03/2009 at 17:02 FhnuZoag says:
Man, forget GTA and Manhunt. I get the feeling this game will actually drive people completely insane.
27/03/2009 at 17:07 Nero says:
Aw, I thought it was something about a new Archon (loved that C64 game). But this concept sounds interesting.
27/03/2009 at 17:17 Quirk says:
@Persus-9:
Firstly, the paper you cite ends on “branching time”, in essence the Back To The Future model where there is a clean time travel free past, but it’s running in parallel.
Secondly, do you not see anything wrong with quoting a paper by a philosopher on what is, essentially, a physics problem?
It does neatly encapsulate one of the major problems I see in many modern pop philosophers, however, which is a rather charming refusal to acknowledge the existence of the scientific method and the many people working tirelessly away on collecting empirical evidence that bears on any theories in the area and trying to square it with Occam’s Razor. Carrying on a philosophical tradition passed down since Aristotle is all very well, but Aristotle’s methodology didn’t even manage to work out that men and women have the same number of teeth.
27/03/2009 at 17:17 Cooper says:
@Rei: “I.E. In the second video, when the battle in the past was occurring and in the present, he was building more units to send back in time, if the past enemy destroyed the factories, then would the presently built units be destroyed as they could never have existed? *head asplodes*”
Yes and no. As far as it seems to me, you would be able to build those units in ‘the present’ and send them back, up until the point the ‘time wave’ during which the opponent destroyed your factory caught up with the present.
I guess it would go something like this:
-> Opponent sends units back in time to attack your base. During this attack, he destroys your factory.
-> Factory is still standing in this present time, so you build units and send them back to meet his attack. If you don’t do it fast enough, the ‘time wave’ catches up and said factory and units are no more.
-> If you manage to send those units back before the time wave reaches you and counter his attack, you save that factory, the time wave doesn’t take the factory with it.
However:
Said opponent could go back to before he sent those units back in time to attack you factory and, instead, send them to the point after which you send the counterattack back in time, attacking you in the present with the units he had previously sent to the past. Now, your factory was never attacked in the past but rather in the present, without defence because you’ve sent those units to the past, so you have to counter-counter-counter attack…
That hurt my head.
The more I think about it, the more this game could be fantastic. It seems like it’ll be full of attacks and counter attacks, but where you have to anticipate an opponent’s move across a whole extra dimension.
Then again, it could just be so confusing no one can get their head round it…
27/03/2009 at 17:25 Dan Harris says:
The graphics are wank, so I’m not going to play it.
27/03/2009 at 17:36 Spanish Technophobe says:
I see this appealing to a hard core of strategy nuts who wipe the floor with everybody else, which is the case with a lot of games, to be sure, but there’s so goddamn much to pay attention to that casual players will only have a couple of laughable and easily understood tactics on hand as they fumble around, while the fanatics will apparently play with the help of some kind of humiliating Satanic magic.
27/03/2009 at 17:47 Azhrarn says:
cue one Janeway style time-travel headache, but it sounds quite fun, complicated, but fun. :)
Sounds like a nice challenge tbh, since you’re opponent can literally strike at any time. :D
27/03/2009 at 17:50 Acidburns says:
It’s an alpha Dan you dummy
27/03/2009 at 17:53 Azhrarn says:
Btw, you should go watch the 3rd video, it’s even more confusing, since it speaks of reinforcing units with themselves by travelling back in time and what happens when you create temporal paradoxes. Also, Chrono-fragging sounds like fun. :D
27/03/2009 at 17:54 MrFake says:
Er… bibbledy?
In short, they managed to get around the paradox by having past actions propagate to the present? As bizarro as that seems, it opens up such a wealth of strategic options. If they keep this up, and don’t pull a Spore, we’ll see a refreshing take on a desperate genre.
God help me if it’s another alien sci-fi RTS, though. Time traveling techno dinosaurs, goddammit!
27/03/2009 at 18:04 elias says:
Makes sense to me, and it’s a really awesome idea.
From the videos I doubt they have it up to running a very complex map/high number of units yet, and also the way it was described it seems like it’s just a contest of who go the furthest back in time to attack (so that the other player won’t be able to go back further and undo it–it seems like you can just go back about 5 minutes or so max). In that case it devolves into a normal RTS for the most part.
Maybe they will make the energy cost for that sort of thing prohibitively expensive or something… it will be interesting to see what they do to try to keep people playing within the time playground they’ve set. I guess that is the point of the energy thing in the first place. I suppose what Cooper said would be incentive to go back and play in the present a bit also; the ones you sent to the past are no longer there to defend in the present… cool.
27/03/2009 at 18:08 Styngent says:
Woah, and here’s me still getting over age advancements in Age of Empires. Although having said that, it’s about as much time travel as is probably safe to use in an RTS. Aside from the fact this game seems to rest quite heavily on the whole time concept, its seems to me that once you;re over the whole novelty of time travel you are left with a very confusing, limited and possibley flawed strategy experience…
But I’m also quite cynical.
27/03/2009 at 18:27 DigitalSignalX says:
One police call box vs. everything. Cue Also Sprach Zarathrustra.
27/03/2009 at 18:33 NoahApples says:
Very interesting. My first worries: Like elias mentioned above, it seems like the obvious strategy is to turtle unceasingly and then play a game of chicken as to who will go further back when. Also, it seems like there will have to be some pretty strict limits on map size and complexity.
That said, it looks like a lot of what they have going on is pretty awesome. If it works out well, I’ll be thrilled.
27/03/2009 at 18:35 Styngent says:
“gimmick free time travel”? Can anyone say paradox?
FYI, I’d have gone back and added that to my last post but I was out of chrono energy! :(
27/03/2009 at 18:51 Biz says:
looks like a micro war after you understand how time travel works
27/03/2009 at 18:53 EyeMessiah says:
Quirk : “Secondly, do you not see anything wrong with quoting a paper by a philosopher on what is, essentially, a physics problem?”
Nope, should we?
Game looks incredible though. I hope development goes well and somebody gives these people a ton of money with no strings attached. I’m looking forward to wrapping my head around it.
27/03/2009 at 19:22 Darkelp says:
Are you Sarah Connor?
*BLAM*
All your base are belong to us!
Neat idea, can’t wait to give it a go! But I do hope they boost the graphics alittle.
27/03/2009 at 20:12 Kanamit says:
Looks interesting. Though probably impossibly complex.
27/03/2009 at 20:42 TCM says:
First post.
27/03/2009 at 21:03 Abi79 says:
How in the world could they come up with all those mechanics? There must be some interesting flaws hidden in their logic.
27/03/2009 at 21:28 David says:
O, M, G. Let’s see how the Koreans handle THIS.
27/03/2009 at 22:50 Aftershock says:
wat.
27/03/2009 at 22:52 Aftershock says:
On the topic of more intelligent comments, this looks epic.
Only thing is, is that i see people losing a battle, sending reinforcements back in time to stop the battle from occuring, then the enemy sending reinforcements further back in time, and then you send them even FURTHER, and i doesn’t end until someone gives up and attacks you in the present.
27/03/2009 at 23:25 Yargh says:
I think that’s where the chrono-energy comes in. Add that to the mechanism the keeps the present moving forwards at a fixed rate and you can end up quite limited in what you can do in the past or the future.
I like the idea as that could mean planning and strategy beat reaction times, at least a little.
27/03/2009 at 23:56 sinister agent says:
This looks like something that couldn’t possibly be truly grasped until you sit down and play it. Also it looks fucking amazing. It must be tumour-inducingly stressful to programme a game like this, but if they get it even mostly right, it’ll surely be astonishing, and far more interesting than goddamn bullet time yet again. Good luck to them, I say. I can only imagine the laughter there would be with a few mates playing this.
28/03/2009 at 00:33 Junior says:
So, will/has/is there an Ai for us to play against?
I can’t imagine how you’d go about programing it to understand that kind of thing, especially since we’re all having so much trouble.
28/03/2009 at 00:39 Arathain says:
I like it when developers realise that, to your PC, time and space are whatever you tell it they are. It’s very liberating and exciting, in a head hurty kind of way.
28/03/2009 at 01:15 Vincent Avatar says:
This game looks like one of the most intriguing and unique ideas that I have ever had the pleasure to have given myself a headache trying to understand.
28/03/2009 at 02:02 Max says:
@Lorc
Hahaha, yeah I immediately thought of Squidi when I read about this.
Squidi had almost this exact idea as one of his 300 game mechanics: http://www.squidi.net/three/index.php
28/03/2009 at 02:29 MeestaNob! says:
I imagine bases and armies wont be much bigger than what is shown in the video, as I just dont think it would be playable otherwise. Two good players could quite literally be at this forever.
Furthermore: TCM wins post of the decade. It’s impossibly brilliant and I wish I’d thought of it.
28/03/2009 at 04:26 TCM says:
What’s even more hilarious is that my name stands for “TheChronoMaster” to begin with.
But thanks. >_>
On a seriously serious note, this game looks incredibly epic to play. It’s actually simple if you wrap your brain around the concept, but it also means you can be defeated in the present before time waves catch up…Which I guess means you either take the risk of mucking about in the past a ton, but risking the present, or focusing on the present, then suddenly losing half of everything you have when the time wave hits. Ideally, you follow a combination of both, but this is genre-breaking for an RTS…Yeah, this’ll be very interesting. I wonder how rushing will work. >_>
28/03/2009 at 04:40 squidi says:
This isn’t anything like any of my ideas. The closest one to this is a case of saying, your tank just blew up and this door is open because in the future, I’m going to go back in time and sabotage your tank and unlock the door. So after the game is over, you go back to the beginning again as a spy who cannot change the outcome of the battle, but must make sure the tank is sabotaged and the door is unlocked some time before those events happened (will happen?). The trick is to not over promise what your spy can actually deliver. It’s more of a Commandos-like puzzle/stealth game where the puzzles are self imposed.
Anyway, this seems more like an honest attempt at modeling time travel. I’m not sure that it would make a particularly good game, but it would make a wonderful toy to explore the practicalities of time travel. Wish it wasn’t wrapped in a real time strategy game, though. What a waste…
28/03/2009 at 05:28 PoisonedV says:
So they combined the tedium of video editing with the micromanaging of the rts
28/03/2009 at 06:22 Resin says:
uhh….not an RTS guy but if I were this would be epic. Seems pretty cool.
28/03/2009 at 12:29 Neut says:
So when the guy went back in time and issued the one order to his units and then went back to the present, did that mean that the new timeline will play out with only that one order being issued? Put it in another way: in the present you had a bunch of units that you sent to scout the south side of the map, and when the present became the past your opponent travels back in time and attacks you from the north, would this new timeline play out with your units continuing to scout the south with those orders that you gave as if nothing had happened, or would there be a past version of yourself that reacts to this new attack from the north? I presume there’s only one version of your “intellligence”/floating mouse cursor that’s tied to the present then?
28/03/2009 at 14:09 Ziv says:
this is pretty f***ing complex…. I’m not sure I would play such a game for a lot of time.
aside from that I want all RTSs from now on (and back in the past) to have this command chain feature, I hate it when you have to scroll the entire screen to choose you entire platoon.
28/03/2009 at 17:35 BallisticsFood says:
!!!!!
This is one of my game designs! THEY ARE STEALING MY THOUGHTS!!!!
Although seriously, for the last three years I have been saying how unutterably awesome a game like this would be, and lo and behold, it is!
Want. Now. Maybe they can send it back from when it’s released?
29/03/2009 at 11:28 Iain says:
@ Gap Gen:
Of course, actual physics is in reality batshit insane (quantum physics, black holes, relativity, etc), so who knows what happens if time travel is possible.
In Physics, the question of time travel is less to do with paradoxes, and more to do with the model of how you perceive time as a dimension.
If you believe time is a continuum (that is, the past and future all exist simultaneously like an axis on a graph) then time travel into the past and the future is possible. But most humans have an innate philosophical difficulty with that, since if the future already exists, but we can only perceive the present, then there’s no such thing as free will. Essentially, we’re all puppets with the ability to think.
So most people prefer the concept of a mutable future (i.e. time beyond the present is not predictable and does not exist until it is experienced), since it gives people assurance that they have the ability to think and act for themselves. Though this does naturally preclude the concept of time travel into the future, since how can you travel somewhere if you can’t be certain that you have a place (and time) to arrive in? Time travel to the past in this model is permissible, but any changes you make would be manifested in an alternative universe, since there is absolutely no way that you can travel back to where you came from.
So take your pick… I’m with Doctor Manhattan when it comes to time – some of us can see the strings, some of us can’t.
29/03/2009 at 12:12 Calistas says:
Primer! That’s the name of the cool film I saw a while ago that I was trying to tell someone about. Thanks for reminding me. Really, very good. Do get.
29/03/2009 at 12:49 randomnine says:
You’ve got about five games running in parallel, and can send units back from older games to newer, younger games. The “present” periodically switches to a younger game, and a new game is birthed at the start of the timeline from the history of the youngest. That’s a pretty interesting model, and one that could only work in the RTS.
I don’t think this fundamentally changes the RTS, though. You’ll get the same kind of mass-power-tech balance and intel game. I reckon amateur players will spend their chrono energy undoing their mistakes in the past, recovering from tactical or scouting failures; more competent players will spend it bulking out their present forces from the future, so time travel will give them a further advantage.
I just hope the ability to go back in time and fix things means the game can better teach new players to avoid mistakes.
30/03/2009 at 10:38 Sean Mirrsen says:
The time travel really adds depth to the 3d environment.
I, personally, think it’s brilliant. And not all that high-tech if you think about it. All they have is a real-time replay recording, with players able to affect things along the timeline. You do the same thing if you’re making a large 3D movie scene, with keyframes.
Some tactics I can see:
The enemy attacks your base when it’s undefended in the present. You jump to the future and order several units, so that they are built before the enemy arrives. He alters his plans, including a few more artillery pieces, and you counter by conducting a feint attack on his base in the past that forces him to divert his attention.
You see the enemy amass a large amount of troops to attack you in the present. You order a cluster of defence guns to be built at some point in the past, and the next timewave suddenly surrounds the enemy with blazing death. The enemy undoes his plans to prevent the losses, and you undo the turret placement in response.
It’ll probably be interesting and very confusing at first.
30/03/2009 at 18:45 Paradox4 says:
One question:
If you die in the “present” then is it game over?
If not, BLAM Grandfather Bombing will be the only strategy that counts.
01/04/2009 at 23:49 Serondal says:
Multiplayer will most certainly be interesting and confusing, however single player will probably be a lot of fun. This will give them the chance to work in all the tricks ect they want you to be able to do by teaching you through scripted events and missions set up to exploit the time travel system. This can show you just how much power you actually HAVE over the past and make you think about it in the way they do.
So single player will be training for multiplayer or at the very least will give you the chance to do all the cool things you want to do without having the krazy F@#$@ Korean you’re playing against online thwart you at every turn!
15/04/2009 at 20:19 CrystalShadow says:
Lol. Good luck to them on actually implementing it.
Though on a personal level it hurts to see someone else successfully pulling off an idea you have been trying to work out for more than 10 years.
(I could prove it to you, but what’s the point? – Being the first to have an idea is worth very little compared to being the first to actually implement it…)
15/04/2009 at 23:55 sacridshadow says:
so, if you destroy the building that creates a unit, and send that unit to destroy the building that created it, wouldn’t both the unit and building be gone in the present? cause the building can’t come back unless someone either destroyed the unit or replaced it.
If you kill your grandfather in the past (child, not old man), then you wouldn’t exist in the present. cause your dad wouldn’t have been born then. dead people don’t come back like that, and neither do buildings.
16/04/2009 at 00:10 Serondal says:
That my friend is the time travel paradox that as far as I know can only be solved by the creation of an alternate time line. In other words both things happened, but in alternate time lines. Your grand father lived to have your father and your father you, then you went back in time and kill your grand father creating a diffrent time line where you were never born. You’ll be stuck there instead of just disappearing since you’re from a time line where , obviously, you were born and your grand father wasn’t killed.
This game doesn’t have alernate time lines as far as I can tell. I’m guessing if you create a unit, then go back and time and use that unit to destroy the factory that created it the game will probably explode your computer when the time wave catches up the present :P OR when the time wave reaches the point where you created the unit the unit won’t be created and hence can’ be sent back and time so the building would reappear without the unit , that’s probably what would happen.
16/04/2009 at 04:50 Tricky Dick says:
I bet with a mechanic as complicated as this, this game is absolutely RIFE with exploits and bugs….and exploitable bugs…
Delicious.
16/04/2009 at 07:37 Poody says:
@Sean Mirrsen
ok.. For 1st tactic: I assume you mean past, not future, or else how would units get there before? That’s just an endless battle to see who kills the other first. Which doesn’t necessitate time travel in the first place…
For 2nd tactic: By placing turret construction before a time wave in the past in order to instantaneously defend in the present works. But the time wave makes those constructs permanent. You can’t undo the past after the wave hits the action.
@CrystalShadow
Wouldn’t they have had the idea before they implemented it? If we look at your separate timelines measured not in seconds but in the progress from abstracting the idea to the point of realizing it, they traveled to the future while you stayed in the past.
But if we look at the progress towards any and everything each one of you have done, isn’t that the true value of a second?
@roBurky
I think you’re on to something! If you continued to send units into the path of a time wave (like bodyguards and bullets), then they would continue to resolve themselves in the present. The wave isn’t limited to actualizing something one time, right?
@_everyone_
This seems very Back to the Future.. Where he stops himself from being born, so he starts fading (right when those chrono-waves would be closing in), but he can still take action to correct his mistakes.
16/04/2009 at 15:49 CrystalShadow says:
Lol. Yes. When I look back at their site, they’ve been working on this idea for about 10 years, and it’s been in development for at least 4. So… I guess we can say I had the idea around the same time they did, but they actually found a way to get it to work in that time, whereas for me it never got beyond the idea stage.
All I can say to them, is well done. (Just so long as nobody accuses me of stealing their ideas if I ever implement anything remotely like it. XD)
Regarding the ‘grandfather paradox’ – Their own website explains how it’s resolved in the game.
Every time a time wave reaches the present, the timeline changes to reflect the most recent alterations to the past.
What precisely happens depends on the timing.
But if you create a unit, send it back in time and destroy the factory that created it, here’s how the game resolves the it (as far as I can tell):
Initial timeline (from the unit’s perspective)
Event 1: Factory creates unit.
Event 2: Unit travels back in time
Event 3: Unit reaches past
Event 4: Unit destroys factory.
Initial timeline (from a chronological perspective)
Event 1: Unit arrives from future
Event 2: Unit destroys factory
Event 3*: Factory creates unit
Event 4*: Unit travels back in time.
Keep in mind that events 3 and 4 remain in effect until the next timewave propagates forward.
Now then. Assuming this sequence of events, the results are as follows:
Timeline 1 with effects of timewave (Chronological perspective)
event 1: Unit arrives in past.
Timewave reaches event 1: Next timeline will contain event 1.
Event 2: Unit destroys factory
Timewave reaches event 2: Next timeline will contain event 2
Event 3*: Factory creates unit:
Timewave reaches event 3: Event 3 is erased from the timeline as the timewave reaches this point, and the next timeline will not contain it.
Event 4: Unit travels back in time
Timewave reaches event 4: Event 4 no longer happens since the unit no longer exists when the timewave reaches this point. Because this is a time-travel event, it is linked to the arrival of the unit in the past. Hence, when event 4 ceases, event 1 can no longer happen either, since they are the same event, essentially.
Timeline 2 (chronological perspective:
Event 1: Unit arrives in past
Event 2: Unit destroys factory.
Timeline 3 (Chronological perspective:
Event 1: Factory creates unit
Event 2: Unit travels into the past
It gets really tricky thinking through how exactly this is implemented. It is obviously crucially dependent on the time travel events itself. My guess is the two end points temporarily exist in disjoint realities (timelines 2 & 3). Every time a timewave reaches a given point, the ‘current’ reality is overwritten with the results of one of the two timelines.
(in one, only the factory exists, in the other, only the unit it produced)
This continues until all of the events are so far in the past that they dissappear off the end of the timeline. When that happens, one of the two realities permanently becomes the only one. Which one it is, depends on the timing.
You can see their video of it here:
16/04/2009 at 15:52 CrystalShadow says:
Ahem. Their video (Since it’s not showing up in my last post):
16/04/2009 at 15:53 CrystalShadow says:
Ahh! Stupid links. I guess you’ll just have to find it for yourself.
it’s called: Achron Alpha Demo 4 Grandfather Paradox
It should be at this address (if it shows up this time):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTVsXbWQXp0&feature=channel
16/04/2009 at 16:31 Xavier says:
To anyone familiar with time travel theories, or shows that deal with it [Star Trek, Doctor Who, etc] This game looks amazingly cool. Like Journeyman, only not lame.
To those that aren’t familiar, this probably is like trying to teach calculus to a 3rd grader. The theories are simple enough, it’s just the logic that most have problems comprehending. Ironically enough, most will get it in time.
16/04/2009 at 19:15 Okuno says:
Holy crap! Ok, so maybe it doesn’t use closed timelike loops like any in-universe time travel would logically need to, but wow this “time wave” thing is a far more seriously interesting formal system to investigate than I used to think.
Obtainment buffering… … …
18/04/2009 at 01:39 Joe says:
Wwesome concept that looks fun.. But idiotic graphics whores and pirates will ignore anything fun and creative as usual.
18/04/2009 at 13:20 Anderson James says:
The game is still in beta-stage,don’t just fucking bitch right away.
20/04/2009 at 06:15 Joe says:
Pretty neat idea. I would take a while to get used to, but im sure it would be a very fun game.
Battle in the past, present, and future!
20/04/2009 at 10:36 Limper says:
Holy crap… I know not what to say! This just looks freaking awesome!
20/04/2009 at 17:40 mr_ewe says:
so… build 1 unit, send it back in time to when it was quied for building, wait for unit to build, send back 2 units to when unit 1 was quied for building… repeat with 3, then 4 then 5 then 6 etc etc.
the question is, will the previously time traveled units duplicate? making this an exponential growth of units rather than linear.
21/04/2009 at 06:49 Alfred says:
This has Spore’s pre-release potential to either be a phenomenal, watershed gaming experience or a staggering failure.
I’m watching.
22/04/2009 at 04:54 Erlam says:
My brain!
Seriously:
‘I’m now altering the past, but in the present, this hasn’t happened yet. Returning to the present from the past I’m moving slowly, so I speed time to return to the present faster, allowing..’ and then thought exploded.
22/04/2009 at 20:49 Syal says:
@CrystalShadow
They could avoid the whole concept by disabling friendly fire
23/04/2009 at 08:39 hamster doom says:
All right, first comment. :)
25/04/2009 at 20:12 Tim says:
Hamster doom: TMC alread-
oh wait.
04/05/2009 at 20:06 The Doctor says:
To put it simply, this is all rubbish
it’s like a big ball of stuff where one change changes it all instantly
06/05/2009 at 08:34 Watchmaker says:
A conclusion I came to when reading:
This game will not devolve into a battle of trying to strike as early as possible, simply because traveling so far back to have any real effect will be massively expensive in the time resource and leaves present time open, making it possible for the Terminators to lose in the present because all their troops are in a time wave that has yet to propagate.
I think.
I’m assuming the goal is to be victorious in the present only.
Of course, the potential for chrono-ambushes is interesting. Say you send your army ahead in time by a minute. Your opponent attacks, but your army comes out of time warp right then to smash it.
EDIT: I’ve never been here. Why do I have an avatar?
14/05/2009 at 01:40 Conor says:
Douglas Adams nailed it when he said if time travel is ever invented all the mucking around thats going to be done has been done and there’s nothing we can do about so don’t worry. Or don’t panic, I guess XD
25/06/2009 at 00:36 QVN says:
To all of you who have said that you had an idea like this before, and that the Achron got to it first: this could be your idea, only implemented by your later selves and/or your descendants who were told about your idea. They finished the whole game, & are now sending bits & pieces of it at a time to our present to simulate what we are used to with game alphas, betas, etc. to prevent themselves from being caught as “time travelers.”
@Watchmaker
Your future self found a cool avatar, set it up, & sent it back to you when you posted. Give yourself a pat on the back (eventually).
Hillary Clinton for president 2012! OH CRAP.
25/06/2009 at 00:40 Serondal says:
@watchmaker – You have a gravatar silly billy ;P They follow you around to any website that uses them. Don’t listen to QVN’s insane time traveling talk (zaps QVN with a stun llama from the future and hides him in 40,000 BC)
31/07/2009 at 16:58 Limeparadox says:
You’ve created a lime paradox! Mmm delicious lime!
21/05/2010 at 10:45 Streamlight E-Flood Firebox says:
I had received the first edition of “Make” magazine as a gift and it was really awesome…
30/06/2010 at 16:54 I am you from the future. says:
In the future that Doomsday 2012 turns out to be Y2K BS all over again. Mike Moore is deported back to Canada along with all those damn illegals go back to Mexico. America goes back to isolationism and leads the way back to the moon and mines the moon of helium 3 which starts an energy and economic revolution. The rest of the world enters the third world war starting with Iran. America ignores the plees of the rest of the world to interven citing hindsight and history is wonderful. Then Iran sends nukes at America( Iran gets nukes about a year from now) but all but a few are completely destroyed by america’s excellent SDI system, there are some isolated EMP bulses that is easily remedied in few short weeks. In response America strategicly nukes all of the rest of the world’s military bases( they were detonated a few miles above the earth to EMP the bases’ electronics. The only city that was directly nuked was iran’s capital. The president dies(the current one not good with Arabic names. Iran had atempted to nuke isreal but America helped in this one instance citing that the Jewish people did not deserve to suffer anymore at the hand of a lunatic tyrant. Isreal is thankful in act of kindness) Iran goes into anarchy. The rest of the world expected America to come out of it’s isolation. But we just continued what we’ve been doing.
There are plans to build an interstellar colony ship and send it to an earth like planet discovered in a star
system 46 light years away. Even with the WWIII humanity’s future looks bright. Also this game and it’s four sequels get triple A ratings from gaming critics.