Quote: Original post by Red Falcon
but TIME is what is linked to movement. if you move, the previous state passes, such creating more time. time is the same as things that happen. what happend ago is time. so, if i talk about what happend(movement) you MUST talk about time. movement is time changing, even if time is a human definition of things passed

Quote: Original post by Trinka
Yes, that's what i said... if you want to observe the movement, then you need a system of reference (time) to describe the movement.

starts laughing :D we are both right. without time u cant descripe a movement and you can also not move. i see time as a nature defined thing, cause it excisted before humans. but you see time as a human made thing to describe things, and so movement can happen without it describing ;) am i getting near yout point?

Quote: Original post by Red Falcon
starts laughing :D we are both right. without time u cant descripe a movement and you can also not move. i see time as a nature defined thing, cause it excisted before humans. but you see time as a human made thing to describe things, and so movement can happen without it describing ;) am i getting near yout point?

My point is that time doesn't exist in the universe as a regulating rule or a driving force, and is human made thing to describe the movement. Let's say we have an object at point A and it moves to point B. We do not need the time to move it there, but we need the time if we want to explain that movement. BTW, if same object moves back to point A, it's not traveling back in time. It's just a change in the states.

Alright, let's take this back on-topic.
We take Trinka's idea and make a game that assumes time being something fictional. Everything happens at once and it's us who's brains sort things in a meaningful full order to cope with complexity.

How would this philosophy relate to time travel? Well, travelling through time would essentially be the same as taking a bus ride around the block. What a about the paradox? Would this be resolved? Things like killing your own ancestors? Dead-end. No solution provided by the idea so I think we can skip it.

My alternative would be related to the 'looking at the past' idea.
We can travel back, but we cannot modify the state of the future by doing things in the past. Technically we can avoid any trouble by introducing 'temporal momentum' that grows infinitive in the direction of the current time. The consequence would be, travelling 3 minutes back is impossible and dying in the past results in an instant transfer back to the moment you left your current time frame.

Why do I want this? From a player's point of view, time-travel is just a gimmick that can provide you with hints for future actions (more like an interactive flashback). E.g. you need to travel back to see were aunt Barbara has hidden the keys to that mysteriuos cellar door, but you can't make her leaving it open for you. By letting the player do whatever (s)he pleases to do while being in the past, you add a fun factor while not having to worry about consistency and avoiding paradox situations.

If you manage to hide this special property of the game universe you can even make figuring this out part of the game's quests. First, players will try to modify the past to help them and when they realise they cannot alter the present, they will just watch, investigate, talk to NPCs and so on.

Chrono Trigger did a good job in introducing an interactive past that enables consequences for the future and present, but the complexity is high and the designer had to be careful about paradoxes. My idea is to offer time travel without violenting any current space-time theories and possible paradoxes while still adding story and gameplay using it.

Does this make any sense?
Pat.

Well, under "my" idea (which is more of a theory than idea) time traveling is impossible, because time doesn't exist at all. ;-)

Quote: Original post by Trinka
Well, under "my" idea (which is more of a theory than idea) time traveling is impossible, because time doesn't exist at all. ;-)

I see that. Though you didn't come up with a way to replace the 't' in v = s * t-1 [wink].

Any comments on my suggestion?

Because i don't need to. :-) In v=s/t all the variables are human creation, and they are valid. Here time is a measurement tool just like speed and distance.

BTW, in game universe you can do anything you want, because *you* are creating the rules for it.

Quote: Original post by Trinka
Because i don't need to. :-) In v=s/t all the variables are human creation, and they are valid. Here time is a measurement tool just like speed and distance.

I won't comment on this one. Or else this is getting somewhat metaphysical [smile].

Quote:
BTW, in game universe you can do anything you want, because *you* are creating the rules for it.

True, but the OP wanted these rules to be sound. Which is difficult to achieve if you allow time travel (hence my immutable-past idea).

Time is not as it appears to be. Neither is God.

I derive this from:

-If time existed linearly as we think it does, the universe (in some form or other) would have to exist infinitely in the past
-If the universe existed infinitely in the past, it could never be created at a specific time. The same goes for us.

Imagine the "God made life in 6 days" scenario. Let's assume that time works linearly like we currently think and that God has always existed, infinitely in the past. It is impossible for God to exist infinitely in the past and suddenly at one point stop and decide to create things. Why? Because you cannot pick a moment in time when you've existed infinitely. It's hard to explain, so think about it and hopefully it'll make sense.

This means that since we don't know much at all about time (or what we percieve it as), we can't assume that time travel *is* impossible. Didn't some quantum physicists recently teleport particles (truly) instantaneously?

Quote: Original post by darookie
My alternative would be related to the 'looking at the past' idea.
We can travel back, but we cannot modify the state of the future

well i agree that its a tool to describe time. and i also agree it cant most probally be manipulated, but you can travel in time, thats sure.
everything that excists emits visual light. If i look at you, i see the state(light) you emit. but if im FASTER then the light, i can see you in a previous state. if i run for you faster then the light, i will see a previous form of you. of course you will need a way to see the light, but i have am convvinced that this will be possible. u can look back, but you cant manipulate

the above text is actually a quate, but its from 2 pages back. so i pasted it here. the thing you say darookie, is exactly what some scientists claim with this theory

Some did teleport particles, but they were photons , massless quantum energy particles, and they didn't do it instantaeously.