What about a situation where the player is bored and the next event wouldn''t happen until a month. And the player doesn''t know it. He would just stop playing.
Even assuming that the player knows it will be in a month, what can he do? Is there an option to fast-forward (really *fast* fast-forward so that the player doesn''t have to sit and wait). How will events during this fast-forward take place?

The player would have enough to do hopeful that they wouldn''t get bored... But there would be an advance time button. With which they could advance time for a few hours upto 21 days. This advance time would simply jump ahead to that time, calcualting any events that have transpired in the meantime. This time advance would be halted should somethiing happen to the character during the advance. Such as being attacked or running out food.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

There still seems to be alot of anti active time sentiment going around, I''m not sure why I think it makes great way to play an RPG. I always hated having infinite time, espically since there is no reason for other then to level game. Sure some of you will say you have to the chance to explore, but all most every rpg i''ve played has almost nothing extra to explore until the player reached end game time.

So I did a few quick calculations and based on my current design here are some statitisics:

> To travel from the north most point to the southern most, takes 21 days walking, 3 days by blimp, and 1 day by train.

> To travel from across the width of the continent takes 14 days walking, 2 days by blimp, and 16 hours by train.

> 1 hour of play times is equal to 1 day of game time(without any acceleration or advance time events.

>assuming that a hardcore player will want to use 12 games hours of every single day, that means over the course of the 4 game years. The player has potiently 584 hours of play time. Now can anyone give me a good reason why you would need more then 584 hours to complete a single game?

So are there any other reason why I shouldn''t use an active time system. So far I''ve heard 1)"I need to complete every quest", 2)"I might run out of time" and 3)"It would make things to hard".

1)Well, that wouldn''t be possible in my design and it goes along with story, the player will not be able to do everything that means that bad or good things will happen that player can''t stop, But then part of the overall story deals with the limitaions of single indivuial, that you can impact the world but ultimatily its to massive an entity for you to completely control.

2)Don''t worry you won''t you''ll have plenty of time to finish the game. The final events are almost all triggered by player actions. Except for the climax.

3)Whats wrong with an RPG beign hard? Maybe its just me but I haven''t played a hard RPG in a long time. Most of the ones I play these days, you can go from start to finish without having to do any level building at all. Most of them in fact I find that if you do the sidequests your characters can kill most enemies in one or two hits.... Not like Final Fantasy 1 now that was a hard RPG I still remeber playing it on my nintendo I was a runner in that game, I basically ran from most of the battles. My fighter was tank he fought all four fiends by himself and won. Got all the way to the final dungeon but never manged to beat the game mainly because it got deleted by my friends nintendo....

Now where was I oh right RPG''s being hard. If you''ve taken a quick look at my design you''ll notice that its a leveless system. people will probably do skill training to improve skills but thats okay because you''ll have plenty of time.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

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Original post by TechnoGoth
So are there any other reason why I shouldn''t use an active time system. So far I''ve heard 1)"I need to complete every quest", 2)"I might run out of time" and 3)"It would make things to hard".

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Mind if I respond to those, before we look at your responses? I like to make sure we''re all on the same page. 1) Take a look back at my previous statements--I never said that I need to complete every quest. (In fact, I suggested a branching tree event structure, which would make it impossible to complete all of the quests in one play-through.) I said that I like to explore, take my time, and poke into every corner, to make sure I''m not missing something. Not really the same thing. 2) Well, that''s the nature of time limits; I don''t think I ever complained about that. (Please, correct me if I''m wrong.) 3) I think you''re misconstruing my argument--I''m concerned that imposing time constraints hampers beginning/weak players by making them feel rushed/unable to keep up, while at the same time hurting power gamers by making them loiter around. Allowing time to speed up helps the latter, but not the former.

Ok, now for your points:

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Original post by TechnoGoth
1)Well, that wouldn''t be possible in my design and it goes along with story, the player will not be able to do everything that means that bad or good things will happen that player can''t stop, But then part of the overall story deals with the limitaions of single indivuial, that you can impact the world but ultimatily its to massive an entity for you to completely control.

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Again, I think that this can also be created with a large branching tree event structure. And it''s something I''m in favor of, since it''d help give RPGs some (much needed) replay value.

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Original post by TechnoGoth
2)Don''t worry you won''t you''ll have plenty of time to finish the game. The final events are almost all triggered by player actions. Except for the climax.

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I think I''ve responded to this sufficiently in my introduction above, so I''ll just leave this.

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Original post by TechnoGoth
3)Whats wrong with an RPG beign hard? Maybe its just me but I haven''t played a hard RPG in a long time. Most of the ones I play these days, you can go from start to finish without having to do any level building at all. Most of them in fact I find that if you do the sidequests your characters can kill most enemies in one or two hits.... Not like Final Fantasy 1 now that was a hard RPG I still remeber playing it on my nintendo I was a runner in that game, I basically ran from most of the battles. My fighter was tank he fought all four fiends by himself and won. Got all the way to the final dungeon but never manged to beat the game mainly because it got deleted by my friends nintendo....

Now where was I oh right RPG''s being hard. If you''ve taken a quick look at my design you''ll notice that its a leveless system. people will probably do skill training to improve skills but thats okay because you''ll have plenty of time.

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I''m not against hard RPGs. (Incidentally, FF was my first RPG; I still remember when I finally beat CHAOS...) And yes, I feel that modern RPGs are nowhere near the challenge that the "old school" ones were, and that this is not a good thing. However, to my mind, the main issue between event-driven RPGs and time-driven RPGs is one of balance. Event-driven RPGs automatically balance themselves; if a fast player is playing, things move quickly; if a slower player is in control, things slow down. (If someone''s trying to play a solo white mage through FF, things slow way down...) Time-driven RPGs require much more work to balance, since fast players will tend to feel bored, while slower players will feel rushed. If you make sure that the action is fast enough to satisfy the hyper gamer, the slower gamer will be overwhelmed; if, on the other hand, you slow things down so the slower gamer feels comfortable, the hyper gamer is going to be constantly reaching for the "Fast Forward Feature", and muttering about the slow pace of the game.

There may be some viable middle ground, but that could be hard to find; having the game dynamically adjust the flow of time to match the player''s style has potential, but could be tricky to create (without going to an event-driven setup); and, of course, there may well be other possibilities.

As I said before, if you feel that you can make a time-driven RPG work without sacrificing (balanced) gameplay, then by all means, do so. I''d love to see it, despite my sceptisism. Still, I believe that event-driven games can give you all of the benefits of time-driven games, with much less hassle. Feel free to prove me wrong.

-Odd the Hermit

I don''t know why everyone''s bitching so much about this idea, I think it''s kinda neat.

I think perhaps the people that are talking about how they want all events in the game world to be started in motion by the player are thinking primarily of people who don''t like to get absorbed in a good story. And why would someone who doesn''t wanna get absorbed in a good story even bother playing an RPG to begin with? I''m sick of all these RPG''s where no one seems to be able to pick their nose without you, the hero. I''d far much rather watch people do things and see how it affects the world than know that in order for anything at all to change, I was the one who had to do it. I''d love it if just when I thought I was done with a town and it was therefore boring, something interesting happened to draw me back there to play around with something I didn''t know existed.

(Side note: I believe at some point there was an argument about why games don''t allow you access to later parts of the gameworld from the beginning. Well let''s put it this way: would YOU wanna run around in early areas of the game with high powered weapons from later on, being able to kill everything before it had a chance to sneeze? Where''s the challenge in that?)

Here''s an idea that might possibly satisfy everyone in regards to this idea. How about if you give the player the ability to determine the game time to real time ratio? A player new to RPG''s or who likes to explore a lot could set it to the Easy setting and have plenty of time to blunder around, whereas a pro could set it to Hard and challenge themselves to get everything done that needs doing within the time allowed. Perhaps you could make it so they could change the time ratio at any point during the game, so that if your newbie player gets better at some point he can make things go faster without having to wade through the whole game first. Also, I think you''d want to make it so while you were on the status screen or whatever, time doesn''t pass, so people can go take a leak or make a sandwich without worrying that they''re gonna miss the next event.

If a squirrel is chasing you, drop your nuts and run.

No one is bitching about the idea, merely using constructive criticism to analyze the idea for potential pitfalls. I am unfortunagtely in the middle on this issue, as I tend to have trouble making up my mind

I did remember a time-based rpg that worked really well, the Harvest moon series. In the first one, you had to make sure to get everything done, but the day didn''t advance until you slept. The ps/n64 version (which I don''t like as much) let you stay up all night. The different jobs you do and trying to get everything done in time, for once, actually worked as planned and made things exciting rather than frustrating. Forget to feed the chickens and you don''t get eggs for three days, rainy days you don''t have to water the crops you can spend time doing other stuff, if you have time give your lady a present. Still, it''s a small gameworld, I think time-based is easier to pull off in a small gameworld. Also, if you didn''t have anything to do you one day you could go to bed when you want and its the next day.

I think your game might work TechnoGoth, just analyze it and make sure you''re idea is designed from the player''s perspective, if it works for fast and slow players, then it might be a winner.

The only things we have an issue with are that the possibility might be you are doing this because it''s cool to design something like this. Not accusing you but in this business it''s easy to make this mistake. Also it will be hard to balance for more players without limiting yourself to the hardcore market. If you want to limit yourself to a certain group it''s easier, but generally you want to try to design your game for a large market rather than a small one. More appeal will make it easier for players to like the game because they don''t have to defend it to their friends who think its too complex/slow/fast/stupid/big/small

Heh. If you can balance it, it won''t be too fast or too slow for different types of players, if the decision to go this route is for players and not for designer, then by all means do it. I think it could work, and I like the idea of things happening when I, the player, am not around. Event based games can make stuff happen when you''re not there, which is great, and I love event based games because I can play around in the town as long as I want. Think zelda: ocarina of time - event based, but it had day and night cycle. But in a town or dungeon time stands still.

Another good example is Gothic. It is somewhat event-based, but feels almost time based.

Anyway, good luck with your game, think long and hard about how time-based can affect players rather than event-based. If players are either going to be frustrated by it, or not notice the difference, you may want to rethink it as its much harder to make than an event based game.

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Original post by TechnoGoth
A lot of people seem to be worried about not having enough time. But there is no reason except poor design that would cause the player to miss key events. Afterall the plan is for the game to take place over 4 to 5 years. Key events that the player has to participate in would take place months apart.

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Then you''ve got the player waiting around with nothing to do between events.

There''s nothing in a time-driven game that can''t be implemented in an event-driven game, and time-driven games introduce a lot of unnecessary headaches for the player.

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Original post by TechnoGoth
You keep saying running out of time. But if you''ve ever played fallout 1. Which had a time limit, you would know that there was more then enought time to finish the game. I can''t imagine that the play would ever run out of time trying to beat my game. In fact I doubt players will even notice that time plays a factor in the game. Sure there will be times when they will have a week to complete a task. But the players will have enough time to finish things.

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Then there wasn''t much of a point to having the time limit in the first place, was there?

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Original post by onyxflame
Here''s an idea that might possibly satisfy everyone in regards to this idea. How about if you give the player the ability to determine the game time to real time ratio? A player new to RPG''s or who likes to explore a lot could set it to the Easy setting and have plenty of time to blunder around, whereas a pro could set it to Hard and challenge themselves to get everything done that needs doing within the time allowed. Perhaps you could make it so they could change the time ratio at any point during the game, so that if your newbie player gets better at some point he can make things go faster without having to wade through the whole game first. Also, I think you''d want to make it so while you were on the status screen or whatever, time doesn''t pass, so people can go take a leak or make a sandwich without worrying that they''re gonna miss the next event.

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That''s basically the same thing as an event-driven game, except that it forces the player to be mucking around with the settings all the time.

Its been suggested I could achive the same thing with an event based system. But I don''t see how, I think it would be far to complex to implement a system like that. Espacially since I want a chronoligical order to events. If I was use an event based system then it would mean I was putting an amount of time for each event to take. For instance under the active time system if 5 events start on same date each in a diffrent town. Depending on the player and the length of each event the player could poteintlly do from 0 to 5 of these events. However if it was an event driven system I''d have to create a rather complex system of time consumption, to figure out which events have expired based on which events the player has done. For instance okay player completed event 1, now that means they nolonger have time to do event 5. Next they do event 2, I''d have have away to deterime wether or not events 3,4 are still do able. I think it would very quickly become to complex to control and design. Espically when the circumstance of one event impacting another comes into play.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

quote:

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Original post by TechnoGoth
Its been suggested I could achive the same thing with an event based system. But I don''t see how, I think it would be far to complex to implement a system like that. Espacially since I want a chronoligical order to events. If I was use an event based system then it would mean I was putting an amount of time for each event to take. For instance under the active time system if 5 events start on same date each in a diffrent town. Depending on the player and the length of each event the player could poteintlly do from 0 to 5 of these events. However if it was an event driven system I''d have to create a rather complex system of time consumption, to figure out which events have expired based on which events the player has done. For instance okay player completed event 1, now that means they nolonger have time to do event 5. Next they do event 2, I''d have have away to deterime wether or not events 3,4 are still do able. I think it would very quickly become to complex to control and design. Espically when the circumstance of one event impacting another comes into play.

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A simple (ok, extremely basic) way to do this would be to have a "completion event", after which those five events are no longer doable. So, the player triggers the availability of the five events, all of which are available until the player hits this completion event (which could be anything--the player reaching a town, completing a quest, reaching level 13, buying a wooden stick from the bum on the street corner, walking three times counter-clockwise around town, etc., etc.); once this completion point is reached, those five events can no longer be participated in.

And, of course, you don''t need to think about it linearly--have the five events become available, each with its own disabling trigger(s). Thus, a player in the process of completing event 1 could inadvertently trigger the disabling of event 4, even before he has completed event 1, or some such.

Be creative, and don''t be afraid to sketch out the interdependencies on paper to make sure it retains coherency.

-Odd the Hermit

Its an idea but your missing a key point. How would you make possible for they player to complete as many as 5 and as few as 0 of the events. With a time system, thats easy to do by simply have a date at which the five of events come to an end. However under an event system I have to decided for the player what the possible series for those 5 events are. Do you see my point?

Then there are things like seasons, feastivles and other things that happen on certain dates. Such as a 3 hour chemisty lecture ever wednesday.



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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document