To kind of sum up what Vertex was saying, as applicable to chrono trigger and zelda... In those games, you travel back in time, do something (say, plant a seed), then go back forward in time, and there is a tree there. In those games, when you go back to the present, all the NPCs act like the tree was there all along "Oh, it''s so great that the Life Tree has been in this garden! What would we have done without it?" Now, this works fine in a single player game. If it''s MMO, you''ll have 3 guys walking around in the original bad garden, then all of a sudden the happy garden with the tree will pop into existence when a player on the back-in-time zone plants the seed. All the NPCs will immediately start acting like the tree''s been there all along, but the three players will be saying "D00d, WTF?!", "My char is stuck in teh tree!!", and "Stoopid lag when the present resets itself!!"

-msw

well i have talking of certain aspect of the mechanism of chronotrigger, NOT ALL (for myself)
that can actually work in a setting because there is no time update, it''s much more like quest in the past to trigger (chrono?) the present.

you can''t go here if you don''t have this stuff from the past

but we are arguing in time like a general theory when in the game it''s rely on setting and gameplay specification

we can ended not with a whole theory but a chain of little possibility which can not been compatible with each others

well trying to find THE most general is still ok but it''s more an design issue than a real problem

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There seem to be several different possible interpretations of the OP.

First, and certainly within current tech is having entirely causally separated settings which players can choose between.

Secondly you could have multiple times with free movement of characters and information (and objects) between them but no direct causal link.

Thirdly you could have restricted causal effects (doing certain things in the past triggers certain events in the present) which means that the change has to happen in real time, and in such a way that the changes don''t directly impact player characters.

Fourthly, you could have unrestricted causal effects, which is certainly beyond current tech, and raises all sorts of paradoxes.

I''m not sure the third type is actually workable without reducing it to the second case or solving the problems of the fourth case. On the other hand, you need at least the third case to get the feel of changing history that some people seem to want.

I don''t really see the problem here.

just a suggestion off the top of my head, but i think it could work...

In this universe there are certain types of people capable of timetravel (magic, technology, transdimensional aliens from BEYOND SPACE, it doesn''t matter). These people (PCs) are out of tune with the time stream so that they are, in a sence,
a-temporal. What I mean is that they do not follow the normal universal chronolgy of time, they only experience through their personal relative time. They cannot be directly affected by silly people mucking with the continuum. Like this --> If Player A (PA) is flitting through time, and at one point kills Player B (PB). PB is dead. Any actions performed by PB in future-times prior to his death still occur because PB was there to do it originally. His death only means no new actions may be taken. (Dead people are like that.) If someone kills PA in a period before PB is killed then PB is still dead, (because PA can jump through time it is impossible to pin down his actual temporality, although you killed him before a certain chronological event, you could not have killed him before he experienced the said act)

Similarly, if you travel to the future, the time line only recognizes your current actual existence. Like a game state, if you save a new game and delete one of the previous saves do you lose all progess? No. the game only keeps track of where you are now, and what your total experince is now. Thus, if your past self were to be killed, it would not void your current existence, because you are where you are now and nothing can change that.

As for the game world, because the PCs do not experience the normal flow of time, they can easily remember the tree not always having been there, because there experiences remain as true as the new reality. I would suggest handling it like this though-->
If someone builds a house in the past on a location occupied (in the present) by PA, then PA does not see a house spring up, nor does he wind up inside it, obviously he would not have walked into it if it had been there, so that''s silly. But, as soon as he gets off the altered property, and his back is turned (the new object is out of interaction and perception range), the house is there. when turns back around he sees it. PA thinks, "Crapweasle! I was gonna build a mansion there twenty years ago, somebody beat me to it." Because he understands the game mechanics is not terribly surprised to see new things, or to miss old things, and is merely inconvienced (at worst) by the building he doesn''t remember.

Need coffee, silly temporal mechanics makes me cross-eyed.

Personally, I think there are many, many problems with putting time-travel into an MMO setting, but I''ll just throw one monkey wrench into your scenario:

quote: Original post by Hammurabi
I would suggest handling it like this though-->
If someone builds a house in the past on a location occupied (in the present) by PA, then PA does not see a house spring up, nor does he wind up inside it, obviously he would not have walked into it if it had been there, so that''s silly. But, as soon as he gets off the altered property, and his back is turned (the new object is out of interaction and perception range), the house is there. when turns back around he sees it. PA thinks, "Crapweasle! I was gonna build a mansion there twenty years ago, somebody beat me to it."

...PA then continues, "Guess I''d better go back to before this house was built, build my mansion, and completely get rid of this other guy''s hard work." PA does so; PB suddenly has no house because someone stuck a mansion where he {had built/was going to build} his house; PB says, "This game is fuxored." and leaves, never to pay again. Scenario repeats; game quickly has a userbase of -2.

-Odd the Hermit

Well obviously an idea off the top of my head won't be perfect, but I don't think you're quite right.

An attraction to the game would be the ability to totally mess with everyone else, I find this to be my favorite past-time in p&p rpgs, and i regret the lack of that ability in computer rpgs. (Try polymorphing a party member into a pudding, bottling him and selling him for some-extra gold, Dwarf-pudding! only 5gp! get it while its Dwarf, get it while its pudding!) If you find it irritating you're playing the wrong game, or playing the game wrong. Or you could work out a purcahse agrement with the other player that want's his house there, come up with a trade or a payment to end the harrasment. Or share the house. Whatever. But basically, I think it would be fun and I would play, I do not think EQ is fun, I do not play.

[edited by - Hammurabi on August 28, 2003 2:46:40 PM]

If paradoxes are unavoidable, why not just make it a core aspect of the game? One source of quests would be to go and fix the discrepencies, like those Temporal Affairs guys from Star Trek.

If you start with the idea that all PCs are from the future and have something to protect them from paradoxes, then players would realize that houses and trees poping into existence are the result of other players messing with the timeline. All the NPCs would act as if that new tree has always been there, but players would have to live with the change or go back in time to remove the tree after it was planted. It could work if the time travel was done in 10 or 100 year increments.

previously i expose a simple idea with the present and the past, but we can inverse the problem, doing thing in the present that create multiple future.
whith the past/present i have tried to avoid paradox by fate
now i''m trying to include them

well the idea came up while i was playing pso online on gc
in this game you have a "persistent" lobby which is dedicated to chat and team building and here you can also join a party which is limited with member team but even if another party get the same quest you actually never met on a party and the party is erase when all member quit

well, in a MMO seeting with time travel we can make a present as a persistant world and time travel is to adventure in a future and keeping back element from that future. when the player use a time gate he can join one of multiple possible future create by another player jump or create one another by jumping by onto and which is create by the current state of world which is depending on stuff all player keep back from multiple future

these future are not permanent since when all party member came back the future is destroy, but when a future is created it''s from the current world state, then future never be the same twice

then future became a ressource that player want to manage to become powerful
we can imagine team which try to reduce certain amount of item in the present because it''s disturb the future the way they want it (destroy item is easy by toss them in a future and close this future
the game must have few time gate to make them a source of conflict and control since when you can acess time gate you have acces to all current future

that''s keep the game evolve and tricky to play, whith alliance trahison and all stuff

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
be good
be evil
but do it WELL
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Since time doesnt really advance in MMOG's that should help get around some of the paradoxes.

For 3 time periods you'd have 3 copies of the game world. The past world would never change, only the present and future worlds would be changable. The 3 worlds would have to be linked so that if, say... (using MMORPG example) in the present game world there is a cataclysmic disaster on course. By travelling into the future world you'll see the effects of the disaster and be able to, through quests, find out what happened to create the disaster. You could even find a way to have stopped it. From there the player could go back to the present time and prevent the disaster by happening by using the history from the future game world. If you wanted to make it really interesting you could even make the player go into the past game world, not the present, and stop it at that time. Then that would affect the present and the future game worlds.

For the most part the time travel would probably have to be more geared towards alternative playing fields with the players being unable to affect the flow of time unless it directly relates to the current storyline going on. They could do small changes like building a house in the past/present would also create that house in the present/future but it would be in ruins.

The game world would have to be pretty flexible so the dev team can change it for storylines. AC is a good example of this... they have the seasons and can change the game world as needed. The town of Shoushi was toasted in it by a giant meteor during beta, fire mobs were running all over and the game was changed around; thats roughly what I mean for flexibility.

[edited by - Raedis on August 28, 2003 11:35:16 PM]

Forgot to add that there could be some cases where players affect minor events. They would still have to be on a storyline though

A city taken over by orcs is a good example. By finding out the history of what happened you could travel through the past and find a way to stop it. Maybe warning the town, slaying the orc leader, whatever... I think all things that a player could change would have to be coded in. Smaller quests could easily be repeated for everybody but entire game world changes would likely have to be main storyline quests.