Achron - Time Travel RTS

[Acidburns]

I saw this highlighted on Rock, Paper, Shotgun today and it's one of the most confusing and exciting RTS concepts I've seen for a while. Here's the press release:

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 http://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 gamers 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.

I recommend you watch their alpha videos to get an idea of the stuff you can do:

Basic Time Travel
Multiplayer Timetravel
Sending units through time

It seems all players are bound to the present; every order you give in the past costs energy, and it cost's more energy the further back you go. This puts an eventual limit on how many time-travel counters each player can make. The time wave thing gives you a chance to respond and change the past before it effects the present. It looks like this will lead to all sorts of amazing time-travel shenanigans and the fact it works in multiplayer is awesome. I don't know how popular it's going to be, I think it's going to depend on how good their tutorials are. In fact their tutorials better be fucking amazing cause this is some crazy shit. The interface seems well thought out so far at least. I assume the actual units and combat will be simpler and less micromanagement heavy than other contemporary games are; your going to be very busy watching the timeline. The graphics and animations are shit, but I guess that's because it's still in alpha stage.

As I understand it you'll be able to do stuff like this:

Example 1

You currently don't have enough units to beat your opponent at point in time A. So you build a factory which is completed at point B, and it completes 10 tanks at point in time C. You send those tanks from time C to time A and attack your opponent in the past. This starts a timewave that will eventually effect the present. Your opponent see on the timeline that you just fucked him over at time A, and goes back to time B and orders his army to attack you before you built your tanks at time C and blows up the factory that was going to build your tanks. If he's fast enough his timewave from point B will be ahead of your timewave from time A and will reach reach time C before you timewave from time A hits point B and thus your tanks never were never built and your timewave from point A stops.

Example 2

Your opponent has just completed a building some supertanks from a newly constructed factory that will easily crush your current forces. So what you can do is send your army back in time to kill his factory before it's built. This starts a timewave that will take a certain amount of time before it effects the present. The factory and the supertanks are still standing in the present, so your opponent sends his supertanks back in time to defend the factory that is going to build them. If he wins in the past the first timewave will stop and the factory stays standing. You could then go back in time to before you sent your units back in time and stop them; this would start a timewave that would quickly hit the present and they would fade back into the present (I assume they disappear from the past you sent them to, so his tanks go back in time and just sit there). You could then send you army to attack his factory in the present because his uber tanks are in the past, not the present.

Interestingly looking at their videos, if you chose to go back in time and cancel your order to send the army back in time, and instead immediately attack his base from the near-past you could arrive at a point where he had built his supertanks, but before he sent them back in time to stop the attack in the past you didn't make, which means that there would be twice as many supertanks; the ones from the past and the ones that just rolled out the factory but have not went back in time. *head explodes*

[Shinova]

Ambitious is an understatement. But it sounds really, really crazy, and the guys are really, really crazy to attempt this and I hope they succeed cause it sounds really, really, crazily fun.

[White Haven]

Wow.

Wow...

Oh holy hell that sounds awesome and also like the biggest headfuck in the history of gaming to date.

[Sarevok]

One shot gimmicks are usually also the source of well balanced games.

Seriously, a game advertising itself solely on cool trick of the month usually always ends up being horribly unbalanced crud no one remembers after the hype goes away.

[Formless]

The same could be said of portal. Look how popular that is. If the gimmick is game changing enough, can you really call it a gimmick? I mean, it looks like if you don't use the time travel mechanics in the game, you will be at a serious disadvantage to someone who does. No, it would be a gimmick if they were advertising around something like the ability to set command lines (to use another feature apparently included in this game). It doesn't really change the strategy any, and its not really that innovative since its just another way of commanding your troops en mass with more efficiency. By contrast, even if you couldn't send troops back in time, just being able to undo commands would make most players rethink their tactics, because you could safely take more risks that you could undo later if they didn't pan out.

[General Zod]

The same could be said of portal. Look how popular that is. If the gimmick is game changing enough, can you really call it a gimmick? I mean, it looks like if you don't use the time travel mechanics in the game, you will be at a serious disadvantage to someone who does. No, it would be a gimmick if they were advertising around something like the ability to set command lines (to use another feature apparently included in this game). It doesn't really change the strategy any, and its not really that innovative since its just another way of commanding your troops en mass with more efficiency. By contrast, even if you couldn't send troops back in time, just being able to undo commands would make most players rethink their tactics, because you could safely take more risks that you could undo later if they didn't pan out.

Turns out popularity has no bearing on whether or not something sucks ass? Who talks about Portal anymore anyways?

[Formless]

Turns out popularity has no bearing on whether or not something sucks ass? Who talks about Portal anymore anyways?

You're right, but on the other hand, it does go to show that a complicated *edit* "gimmick" */edit* game can still be fun to a wide audience of gamers.

[General Zod]

Turns out popularity has no bearing on whether or not something sucks ass? Who talks about Portal anymore anyways?

You're right, but on the other hand, it does go to show that a complicated *edit* "gimmick" */edit* game can still be fun to a wide audience of gamers.

Or it just has good marketing and its fans didn't really put a lot of thought into why they liked or hated it. (ps - I hear we have Strikethrough now).

[Formless]

Or it just has good marketing and its fans didn't really put a lot of thought into why they liked or hated it. (ps - I hear we have Strikethrough now).

Right, all those reviewers, fans, and myself (hey, guess what, I played Portal! I know why I liked it!) were wrong because... you say so?

Anyway, I think you missed the point entirely. All I was saying was two things:

1. Portal, another "gimmick" game proved to be an entertaining, well balanced game popular among the unclean masses,

2. "gimmick" is a misnomer because the mechanics being advertised actually are innovative, and greatly change the gameplay.

Why are you so hung up over that first point?

[General Zod]

Right, all those reviewers, fans, and myself (hey, guess what, I played Portal! I know why I liked it!) were wrong because... you say so?

I tend to find reviewers utterly worthless. They'll either try and give something resembling an honest review, then give it an obscenely high rating anyway, or they'll ignore any kind of honest analysis of the game and rant on and on about how it's the best thing evar!111! As far as I'm concerned the game review industry lost credibility years ago. As far as fanboys. . . .well, most of them are morons that mindlessly act as echo-chambers for the marketing behind a game.

1. Portal, another "gimmick" game proved to be an entertaining, well balanced game popular among the unclean masses,

2. "gimmick" is a misnomer because the mechanics being advertised actually are innovative, and greatly change the gameplay.

Why are you so hung up over that first point?

I'm not saying they can't be entertaining. I'm saying that people tend to buy into hype and marketing far too easily without bothering to rate the game honestly. As far as point 2. . . .turns out being innovative don't necessarily make a game good?

[Formless]

I tend to find reviewers utterly worthless. They'll either try and give something resembling an honest review, then give it an obscenely high rating anyway, or they'll ignore any kind of honest analysis of the game and rant on and on about how it's the best thing evar!111! As far as I'm concerned the game review industry lost credibility years ago. As far as fanboys. . . .well, most of them are morons that mindlessly act as echo-chambers for the marketing behind a game.

Usually true, but about the point where even Yahtzee Croshaw was agreeing with the general consensus, I decided to give it a shot. What do you know! Sometimes there's truth to the hype.

I'm not saying they can't be entertaining. I'm saying that people tend to buy into hype and marketing far too easily without bothering to rate the game honestly.

Fair enough. However, so far the only criticism I'm seeing of this game is that its complicated, and guess what? A good strategy game should be. That it actually takes a mechanic as confusing as fucking TIME TRAVEL and makes it work is impressive enough. I'm on board.

[General Zod]

Usually true, but about the point where even Yahtzee Croshaw was agreeing with the general consensus, I decided to give it a shot. What do you know! Sometimes there's truth to the hype.

You're seriously citing Yahtzee? You know he's paid by the gaming industry right?

Fair enough. However, so far the only criticism I'm seeing of this game is that its complicated, and guess what? A good strategy game should be. That it actually takes a mechanic as confusing as fucking TIME TRAVEL and makes it work is impressive enough. I'm on board.

I don't believe I've said anything specific regarding this game. But most developers generally wind up falling drastically short of all the features they promise in early development, so trying to praise it as innovative at this stage until we see how it's actually implemented is retarded. Does anyone else remember all of Spore's promises?

[Formless]

You're seriously citing Yahtzee? You know he's paid by the gaming industry right?

Well aware, thank you. He also regularly proves his honesty, and as such, I give him more credit for it.

I don't believe I've said anything specific regarding this game. But most developers generally wind up falling drastically short of all the features they promise in early development, so trying to praise it as innovative at this stage until we see how it's actually implemented is retarded. Does anyone else remember all of Spore's promises?

Watch the tech demo. They explained the way it works just fine. The only thing we don't know for sure at this point is how it will play out in a game. I don't see any reason for the premature pessimism here. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see, eh?

[General Zod]

Watch the tech demo. They explained the way it works just fine. The only thing we don't know for sure at this point is how it will play out in a game. I don't see any reason for the premature pessimism here. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see, eh?

Spore's tech-demo worked just fine too. I generally take the "cynical until proven otherwise" approach to gaming simply because of the industry's history of so many developers inevitably falling short on their promises, or not delivering at all.

[Stark]

To echo others, this is entirely dependent on whether it's a suck RTS (which statistically is quite likely). It's going to run into the problem that RTS players are dumb as shit, and their forum will be full of threads like 'time travel travels too much time' and 'the past too long ago' and 'causality causes too much'.

[Acidburns]

Yeah, and this is their company's first game so we've got no other products of theirs to compare it with. At least we can't accuse them of churning out the same-old-drek-mk2 like many other RTS developers have been doing. I really hope this succeeds, but it even if they nail the gameplay it could sell like shit because the average gamer thinks it's too "weird". Games like Perimeter come to mind, quirky, innovative, good reviews but didn't sell.

We've seen some FPS games that use time travel in a very gimmicky way; this seems like it could be the first game to offer you the ability to alter the past however you like and integrate it as a core gameplay element. I wonder if this method of resolving time-travel could be used in other game types?

[Minischoles]

It looks to be a very interesting concept, if its implemented well and the players who play it are any good, this could be a very fun and well thought out RTS. But given how the majority of RTS players actually are, its more likely to just be a giant whine fest about how people don't understand it.

[Hawkwings]

...and then a bunch of (Korean) games that can do the mental gymnastics necessary to play the game.

An RTS for the intellectually elite

In any case, this looks like an amazing concept. I've played some flash games that involve "time travel" and multiple copies of yourself to solve puzzles, but this is extremely ambitious and indescribably cool.

[Ghost Rider]

One concept, no matter how cool makes a game. How does this work without the time travel and how they balance it before they even implement the gimmick will determine whether it's one note or something that will draw an honest fanbase.

[Stark]

Does everyone who thinks this is 'holy frak what a mindfuck' realise it's just AOE? The 'timewave' mechanism appears to just make it like TS, where the effects are localised and spread, and this appears MASSIVELY sploitable (since positioning your timewave is going to be absolutely critical). I'm curious to know how they manage the different time-areas being used simultanously, because in the most ambitious approach this will really blow out resource requirement.

[Xon]

The demos honestly have shit place holder graphics, but given you can only see one timezone at once it honestly doesn't matter.

The only major thing if the game engine will need to keep state for eveything over the last couple of minutes (almost 3 minutes going by the UI), but that is simply memory which honestly hasn't been much of an issue for a very long time. The whole 'timewave' mechanism will actively reduce how much state needs to be tracked, and is probably how they keep it remotely managable.

[Stark]

If you assume they're competent, which I do not. When it comes out with giant memory leaks everywhere due to this it will not surprise me at all. The 'timewave' mechanism means they don't have to track everything constantly, but it DOES mean they'll constantly be spawning/deleting entities all over the place. Since experienced developers can't make a game without problems when it's simple, I'm pretty confident these guys are going to be just as bad.

It's just a shame that 'omg kewl concept' is enough to get so much buzz these days. Let's see them have decent game balance, then I'll give a shit.

[Xon]

If you assume they're competent, which I do not. .

Competent programmers doesn't mean competently developed applications. You need good design, Q&A and development enviroments.

Waiting for the 1st raft of patches is probably a good idea

When it comes out with giant memory leaks everywhere due to this it will not surprise me at all..

Honestly, memory management has been a solved problem for a long time. Automatic garbage collection for the win.

The 'timewave' mechanism means they don't have to track everything constantly, but it DOES mean they'll constantly be spawning/deleting entities all over the place. Since experienced developers can't make a game without problems when it's simple, I'm pretty confident these guys are going to be just as bad.

This type of thing would be next to imposible to bolt onto an existing game engine, and would be vastly easier to get right when developed from the word go to include it.

This is basicly undo functionality with history, and it requires the entire design to accommodate it or you get a really nasty, crappy mess.

[Stark]

Honestly, memory management has been a solved problem for a long time. Automatic garbage collection for the win.

No doubt; this is however unrelated to the persistence of the problem. And I know how ironic this is, since 'memory leak' is pretty much the catchcry of the OMG WTF Beta Test report.

This type of thing would be next to imposible to bolt onto an existing game engine, and would be vastly easier to get right when developed from the word go to include it.

This is basicly undo functionality with history, and it requires the entire design to accommodate it or you get a really nasty, crappy mess.

Since it's also recursive (ie it appears you can timewarp inside another timewarp, or intercept the results of a timewarp before it reaches 'now') there is serious scope for it to have problems. If it worked and has a good UI (ie, not just an RTS window but an actual TIMESCOPE (tm) interface to help the player visualise the different timezones and movements between them) it'd be great, but ambition doesn't always lead to success.

[Darth Yoshi]

It's an interesting concept, but implementation is usually what kills games. I'll wait and see how the finished product is before deciding.