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Original post by ParadigmShift
I think it can be done. Take two epochs as an example. A single set of players (playing different characters in different generations) are playing in the two time periods concurrently. In the first time period, there is nothing. It''s barren. There is no history. In the second time period, there is a big city, and some small towns.

The goal of the CHARACTERS in the first time period is to do their best to create the future world. The PLAYERS would be able to do as much research as they want into the past using their CHARACTERS in the future world. Future details and artifacts can be added as various stories are played in the Past - a particular house for instanct must be in a particular place but who knows who built it or owned it? When these details are played out in the Past, artifacts show up in the future.

Comments? Problems?

-ParadigmShift

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Well, what if I decide to build a castle on a hill where, having played in the future epoch, I know a castle will be, but I intentionally rotate the entire building, say, ninety degrees. Obviously, there''s no reason in the past epoch I can''t do this, but then the game needs to step in and create some explanation for the castle being destroyed and rebuilt/the poles of the earth shifting/something else, because we know what the castle needs to end up looking like, and it clearly does not match the way it was built in the past. Rewarding players for getting stuff right (your artifacts) is a good idea, but you need to have some system to handle when they get things wrong (which some''ll do by accident, while others will do rather willfully...)

A more extreme example would be to find a landmark in the future which had to exist prior to the past epoch (a standing stone, really old tree, mountain, etc.) and then destroy it in the past. How do you handle that? You could just mark it as immutable, but if you''re going to allow people to build castles & such, they''re going to need to be able to clear forests, dig, etc., so making some things immutable would break the illusion. Or, what if I dug a cave in a mountain in the past, even though I knew there was no cave (or evidence thereof) in the future?

I have to agree with others--I can''t see how you can have time travel in a MMO setting. The single player games which have tried to use it have struggled enough with paradoxes and such(Shadow of Destiny is another example, which managed to succeed for the most part by keeping its scope very limited). Allowing even 1000 people to muck around in a single past epoch is going to produce massive continuity issues in the present one.

-Odd the Hermit

Guess you guys have never played Chrono Trigger eh?

Scripting + events + unlockable features of the world = time travel goodness.

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Original post by Penance
Guess you guys have never played Chrono Trigger eh?

Scripting + events + unlockable features of the world = time travel goodness.

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Problem. Chrono Trigger is not MMO. You don''t have 500 other people mucking around with the space-time continuum.

Josh
vertexnormal AT linuxmail DOT org

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Check out Golem at:
My cheapass website

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ParadigmShift suggests: The goal of the CHARACTERS in the first time period is to do their best to create the future world.

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This in itself might make for an interesting game (albeit without actual "time travel").

Suppose your game is faction-based, and every week there is a generation shift. During a week, you build, study, prepare, etc. Then there''s the update. Next week, you''re a descendant of your last character (possibly you can choose a mate in the previous week, thus selecting for attributes). Continue.

(yeah, it''s not time travel... sorry...)

I''m still laughing about what Pext said and telefragging someone with your house... That''s hilarious.

~Wave

What happens if you don''t play during a week? is your family line wiped out because you had other things to do? And how much can you do in game if you have to start from scratch every week?


All in all at first I though this was a bad idea. but now the more i think about the better the idea seems. Here my thinking instead of having diffrent areas to vist you have diffrent eras. Lets say the entire game takes place in one town. However you travel through time to diffrent eras i hopes preventing the destruction of your civiilzation. Each era would have diffrent theme and the city would be diffrent but you would be able to see the familiar locations. There would be things only available in one era that player may need in your current one. For instance inn the dark ages silver is needed to create weapons to battle the undead. But the silver mine isn''t discover until 200 hundread years from now so the player would have to travel to future to gather silver to make weapons. Or travel back in time to find a creature that became extinct.

There could also be item aging if an item rest undesturbed for 24 hours its ages and moves ahead one era. Some item have persish over time. But this can also be used to create new items. For instance sap hidden away for 7 eras turns into Amber. Of course that takes a week and the player would have to find a good hidding place or else someone else migh come along and steal the sap some where along the way.

Also the player shouldn''t be able to travel to every era at the start. In order to travel to an era should require some rare item, Maybe times keys or something once you have a time key it unlock travel to certain era. For instance the medival key allows the player to travel to the medival era.




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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 VertexNormal
So, basically, you contrive some artificial means of eliminating any possible benefits of time travel. You come up with any number of "convenient" tricks to keep disaster at bay. In other words, negate whatever purpose time travel would serve. How many "catastrophes" in how many areas will the players swallow before they decide that something they do in the past actually has no effect on the future, so why bother?

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That was one example. All video games are composed of "conveniant tricks". That's their NATURE. I also said players have an effect on the future, just not ones that would result in paradox. Have you ever played an MMOG? They don't emulate the real world, they're still games that follow the programmers rules. If it causes too much insanity to have fifteen players building crap that occupies the same space then DON'T LET THEM DO IT.

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Say, you found a nice little hidey hole, perfect for stashing a backpack full of goodies. You put your backpack in the hole, and skip ahead to the present to retrieve it, only to realize that somebody else had put THEIR backpack in the hidey hole before you put it there. That is in our "real" time, they put their backpack in the hole in the "present" era, then five minutes later, you put your backpack in the hole in the "past" era. The other player's backpack wouldn't be in the hole in the past when you put your's in, as objects can not travel backward in time, so it would be perfectly valid for you to do so; but when you skip ahead and look in the hole, all of a sudden your backpack and his backpack will be occupying the same space--a patent absurdity in real life, and one with tricky implications in the game itself.

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That was a poor example. Like I said, I was rambling. The solution would be to have banks where each player has a unique safety deposit box (probably something physical, unlike current MMOGs) wherre you can store items. This way they're totally secure. The player's apartment/house would also work.

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I'm not saying time travel is a bad idea, I'm just saying you should think things through to their full conclusion before you pop off at the mouth with insults.

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Insults? All I said is you people have no imagination. I realize that was a bit harsh now. I should have focused that comment on you specifically. Perhaps instead of tearing apart peoples ideas without fully comprehending them you should think about how they could be implemented successfully. Hint: MMOGs - The G stands for GAME, not VIRTUAL WORLD.

[edited by - mumboi on August 25, 2003 11:57:20 PM]

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Original post by mumboi

That was one example. All video games are composed of "conveniant tricks". That''s their NATURE. I also said players have an effect on the future, just not ones that would result in paradox. Have you ever played an MMOG? They don''t emulate the real world, they''re still games that follow the programmers rules. If it causes too much insanity to have fifteen players building crap that occupies the same space then DON''T LET THEM DO IT.

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So, exactly what sorts of things COULD they be allowed to do, that wouldn''t cause paradox, yet would still convey the feeling of being in a time-travelling environment? The very soul of time travelling IS paradox, and I''m just curious how one would expect to realistically implement this. Despite what folks seem to think, the time travelling in Zelda/Chrono Trigger is nowhere near an accurate or realistic emulation of time travel--nor is it meant to be.

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That was a poor example. Like I said, I was rambling. The solution would be to have banks where each player has a unique safety deposit box (probably something physical, unlike current MMOGs) wherre you can store items. This way they''re totally secure. The player''s apartment/house would also work.

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What does this have to do with time travel, and how does it validate the idea? Diablo 2 already implements this or something like it, but it does not claim any time travel aspects. I fail to see how a safety deposit box makes the whole time travel idea possible.

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Insults? All I said is you people have no imagination. I realize that was a bit harsh now. I should have focused that comment on you specifically. Perhaps instead of tearing apart peoples ideas without fully comprehending them you should think about how they could be implemented successfully. Hint: MMOGs - The G stands for GAME, not VIRTUAL WORLD.

[edited by - mumboi on August 25, 2003 11:57:20 PM]

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Playing Devil''s Advocate, and bringing up possible problems, doesn''t mean I am "tearing apart" somebody''s idea, and if that is how I came across, then I apologize. That doesn''t mean, though, that I am wrong. It''s just that, if someone were to try this, they WOULD have to think about these kind of things, and not just blindly wander in without a clue. If the OP figures out how to make it work, I''ll be the first one in line to play the game and congratulate him.

Josh
vertexnormal AT linuxmail DOT org

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Check out Golem at:
My cheapass website

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Original post by Penance
Guess you guys have never played Chrono Trigger eh?

Scripting + events + unlockable features of the world = time travel goodness.
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Problem. Chrono Trigger is not MMO. You don't have 500 other people mucking around with the space-time continuum.

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you never play chrono trigger? play before talking
chrono trigger has not mmo player but has a set of idea that sounds good and help


i have come with an idea of only two periods has an example but it can be chain to have more

someone come with that the present should be deterministic, there is a kind of FATE which made is shape from the past inevitable. all the purpose of the player is to discover hints from the past in order to going forward in the present and alter the present in minor way

chrono trigger has lockable item/place that you must discover the reason in the past to unlock them in the present

imagine, in the past there is a magic pendant which can open magic sealed door, it the normal way the pendant is BEHIND the door (without time travel) but the player doesn't know that (it's the normal setting without time travel), he goes to the past and retreive the pendant then he can unlock the door

keeping the player with small influance on the past (scripting)with a gameplay built with quest (events) in order to unlock things in the present, the game must have npc and a story for the past when the present is a more open game, the more the player know the past the more powerful and knowledgeble he is in the present.

some item can be pass through time by lock chest in the present, you have to lock in the past and then unlock from present (only one time?? time travel is paradoxe why not chest paradoxe! these chest can be made in a magic time distorsion way in the setting)

well chest could be like a ressource in the game, having one key for one chest, the one who have the key control the chest and it's content
[edited by - Neoshaman on August 26, 3558 after second impact 3:57:00 AM]

[edited by - Neoshaman on August 26, 2003 4:01:20 AM]

Well, as the OP i guess I should chime in here with some more thoughts. The time travel thought is not supposed to be very realistic. (sorry its more for enjoyment) Besides, there IS NO realistic time travel yet, merely different theories on how to work it. Some theories are multiple dimensions, where if you went to the past you wouldn''t actually change the future, but really spawn an alternate dimension where the change you caused happened. Then there is the whole temporal anomaly thought...very confusing. Then there are different ideas that are used in movies and fiction. One is the "master timeline" idea, where time travel is possible, but everything is already scripted...This idea offers no free will, and in such would not make a very good game...see the gargoyles cartoons for this idea. I prefer to use something similar to the model used in the movie Frequency, or even Back to the Future. The main way to change things would be through Quests. Maybe dynamic Camps would be interesting....if you clean out a camp in the past the occupants randomly change in the present. But yeah the idea is to use something similar to the ideas in Zelda and Chrono Trigger.