If you don't like TB games, I especially want your opinion here... EDIT: TB fan opinions welcome, too!!!!!* Can turn-based games be made more exciting without losing their thoughtful appeal? Usually a game is turn-based when your game pieces have LOTS of choices / options. But the majority of the time the action is slow and dull. What can help fix this? I think two things *might* help: Reactions to player decisions need to be more swift, so the player doesn't have to wait a long time for feedback or opponent actions. This means shorter turns. And the visual representation of turns needs to be more dramatic. A good example of the last is the old game Incubation, where creatures would leap over walls or burst out of doors when it was their turn. What do you think? Can TB games be made more exciting? *Had to put that in because I saw a few replies where ppl thought I only wanted non-TB player opinions. Not true! -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership... Edited by - Wavinator on March 20, 2001 4:41:59 PM

Definitely make the turns shorter. You have to be careful not to make it impossible to address a decent portion of all the options and actions that require your attention, though.

"Cinematic" sequences help, too. Perhaps after every five moves, a movie re-plays what happened, movie style (I read your post about turn-based Tekken...). Sound is good, too. Background music and sound effects, or comments made by units, or grunts and breaking bones, or something.

Many turn based games (especially board games) are bogged down by the many, many details and the info that has to be kept track of. If you make things easier and more intuitive and less of a hassle, the time between moves can be sped up and the intensity and pressure can be turned up. To return to the TB fighting example, if you have a fist icon that represents punch moves, and after clicking on it, you are represented with icons that show the basic idea of each move and a point cost, a rapid decision can be made- and then you can present the graphic result directly afterward. The opponent now has a few seconds, selects a kick move, picks one that looks like a tornado, and then knocks you on your butt...

Easy to use scripting would also help in games with lots of details or different units or something- to have to pay attention to every unit every turn is a pain.

One more idea- sometimes the symbolic representations of units and stuff make things more dry- if you have an army of knights, I want to see lances and bucklers and horse dung... if you have an ogre mage, I want him to show you a toothy grin and grunt and then have flame come off the horn on the side of his head. You get the idea.

Sheesh, now you have me all pumped up to go make an exciting TB game!

Torus


"Impressive!!!"

You wanted posts from people that hate turnbased gaming: here''s one person that hates turnbased gaming . (Actually I used to play chess, but I''m talking about computer turn-based games here )

Why do I hate turn-based games:
Not the pace of the action. It doesn''t bother me that action is quite slow, that''s simply inherent in turn-based gaming. Making the turns shorter will only make a game less turn-based, and I think that would be a serious hack.
What bothers me is the LENGTH of the action. A single chess game can take up to 2 or 3 hours, or longer, depending on the level you play at. That may seem like a long time, but many turn-based games take LONGER than that to finish. RPGs are especially guilty of this. If I am playing a TBG, I want the entire game to take that long, not every combat.
Old ADnD games were specially guilty of that. Every few steps in the dungeon you''d end up in a combat with about 6-10 foes, and it would take a while (20-30 minutes sometimes) to finish the combat.

Shorten the total length of the game.
I don''t want to spend five hours micro-managing all the elements of combat. Let me tweak the top-level parameters, like amount of attack, amount of defense, etc. I don''t want a turn of my time to represent 0.3 seconds of in-game time. That''s ridiculous. I think that the average time I spend on a turn should be at least equal to the amount of time assumed to have passed in the game during that turn.




People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
Mad Keith the V.

Follow me back into the mists of time (well a decade and a half anyway, to the mid-late 80''s) to a time when RT games were restricted to simple fighting games, platform games and scrolling shooters. One of my favorite TB games of that time was "Chaos" by Jullian Gollup (forerunner to my fav TB game of all time "Lords of Chaos"). It was a turn based stratergy game, but great fun. Unlike most modern stuff, one "bout" (entire game) took no more than an hour (well there was a set number of turns anyway) or until all the enemy were dead. Turns were quick, (usually 2mins tops) and the playing area small. Ok animation was great (in fact the graphics weren''t very good at all, but then with a 16 colour pallete and the restriction that one "square" (8x8 pixels) could only be two colours (foreground and background) they never were going to be great). Anyway this brings me to Combat which was basically compare attack and defence stats, and deal damaged based upon that.

The purpose of this example?

Ok 1: This was actually an exciting game for its time, I''m not holding it up as a perfect example, but its almost as near as it can be for me.
and 2: An example of "maybe how it should be done" (although thats open to opinion), the amount of options/choices/numbers available was small (in Lord of Chaos (LOC from now on) the only complex bits were spell casting {pick spell, pick target, cast) and inventory management, which was plenty) which ment that players completed thier turns quickly and so the action flowed reasonably well.
and 3: "Chaos" (IMHO) WOULD NOT have work as a RTS, the arena (world) was way to small, some 16x11 "squares", for a start.

A more general point TBS games do give the added advantage that you have more "control" over your units (unlike in RTS''s where they are still usually as thick as two short planks, but in TBS they''re easier to stop BEFORE they do something very dumb)

Have you played the "Project Rebelstar" game thats in the Showcase on this site Wav? It answeres your first suggestion, the

quote: Reactions to player decisions need to be more swift, so the player doesn''t have to wait a long time for feedback or opponent actions.

one (the only complexity to it really is inventory management).

I cant comment on turn based CRPG''s having never really played one.

quote:
"Cinematic" sequences help, too. Perhaps after every five moves, a movie re-plays what happened, movie style (I read your post about turn-based Tekken...). Sound is good, too. Background music and sound effects, or comments made by units, or grunts and breaking bones, or something.

This I think would drive me MAD, and only suceed in lengthening the game. (Maybe an option to watch it movie style at the end)

Nooo... don''t simplify those games *g*. Well, I do like TB games, so I guess you are not as interested in my opinion. But that''s just what I enjoy about turn-based games, that I can really think through my actions and don''t have to decide in a manner of seconds. A turnbased game that is as simple as most RTS are, would be just boring.
For me, the fun in these games come from the fact that I really have to plan what I am going to do. I do this and that, and in the end we will see what good came out of it. To me, that isn''t boring... I can literally spend hours with a game like Alpha Centauri, and have lots of fun.
Maybe it would help if the player could indeed give more choices to the computer if he chooses to. Like for example that he automatically builds stuff, so that the player just has to make the broader decisions ergo a shorter turn time. The problem here is, that the computer has to do this GOOD, because if he continually builds stuff that I don''t need I will rather do it myself.

Ah well... I can see how all that might be boring for some people. Hm, is it just me or are there less and less turn-based games?

IMO, to make TB games more exciting, there really does need to be a sense of urgency to the game--music may help this, but only if it suits the situation: if you have pulse-pounding music as you''re tending crops (as a lousy example) then you haven''t made it any more interesting, and have actually shown that you''re trying to be gimmicky.

If you can balance the attack level, constant raids in a TB empire game can keep the urgency level up--for instance, in HOMM II, something like the 2nd or 3rd scenario has the player planted right in the middle of 3 enemy territories, with relatively weak "neutral" monsters in the way. They also start with slightly more powerful armies, so a few turns in, you will have stronger enemies running around your city. Suddenly, there''s that sense of urgency: if you stray too far from you castle, you risk losing it; if you protect it too much, you risk getting behind in the resources race. To me, that makes TB games more interesting than the endgame on some large maps when you know you control an entire continent and know exactly where everyone is...*yawn* There''s no challenge there.

Maybe I''ll come up with more ways later...
--


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Dan Upton
Lead Designer
WolfHeart Software

One thing that has always detracted from turn base games is the characters lack of presence and sense of the momement. This is reflected in the characters relative lack of interaction with their enviromement and in their posture. Like when they stop their turn they either stand straight up in a full static pose. Also, their montonous generic death sqeuences are also detracting. If i had to say how i would make a turn base game it would include these features :

-Action points for momvement and action

-Non-static stop poses (for example : person running, doesnt stop running when they end their turn, instead they would be in a full run pose with motion blurred)

-Interactive posses (for example : a person who stops next to a barrier, while in combat, will naturally crouch to avoid being exposed (note this doesnt take action points and it decreases mircomanagement if units did intellegent things like this)

-Reduce micromanagement through the use of intellegent design (for example : templates for gear layout and automatic restocking of gear. Intelligent unit automatic unit behavior with enviroment. A unit can posses more of these intellgent behavior modules as reflected in their experiecen level.)

-Increase enviromental interaction (for example : units tripping over debris, or units automatically using cover when fired upon, or lighting condtions modifiers)

-Multi-unit simultanous movement. The ability to execute a multi-unit movement within a single turn within a single units turn.

-Deep unit statistics (units with a few hidden variables to keep it intresitng, plus the standard stats, and perhaps even a few ''perks'' to borrow a phrase from fallout)

-Lots of death sequence (one of the things i liked about fallout)

-Meaningful back story beyond the tactical game(like fallout and x-com)

-Unique units and cutomizable untis (similar to fallout in that sense)

Thats all i can think of now..

Good Luck

-ddn

I also like turn-based games to an extent. But I think that making it more like a real-time is an EXTREMELY BAD idea. The game Imperialism was real fun. Turns were a "month" long and sometimes, nothing had to be done- in which case you''d just click the end turn button right away.

My favorite TBS game was a really old one called Empire. IT had seven or so different units and cities thaat your conquered. None of this "resources" crap. Just a time constant. (Though the game was balanced by changing the player''s effiencies.) The whole thing was getting the right guys to the right spot at the right time. The only down side to this game was it''s inability to deal with large numebrs of units. Turns late in the game were absurdly long because you had to deal with every unit individually. I think that can be fixed by upgrageing the features it already had -- like adding pathfinding to the goto command so they don''t get stuck in a small arc of a river. And recognising when you are going along with the units in your group and conforming to their moves as well. (guy in the front goes before the guy in back instead of the guy in back breaking and screaming at you cuz it can''t go cuz there''s a dude infront of him!)

I was thinking of putting a time limit on how long you have to decide on your move - something small like 5 seconds so that you are really under pressure to make the move fast. If you run out of time, your character will just take a defensive position for the next turn.
Imagine going through a whole turn under that kind of pressure, it would be a relief when it was finally over - similar to the kind of feeling you get when you''re playing tetris and finally get the long piece you''ve been waiting for to fill the whole.

The only real problem I have with TB systems is when there''s a pile of units that need to be delt with but they aren''t a part of the action. Standard micro-management complaint I guess. I think that TB systems are good if you want a game with lots of startegy. RT systems are good if you want lots of action. You could put them both on a continuum and make one more like the other, but I prefer it when a game sticks closer to the pure form of one or the other. Unless I just haven''t seen a hybrid that I like.

Personally, I wouldn''t try to make it more exciting. I''d try to make the wait between turns more interesting or suspenseful. This could probably be done with music or some special effects or something. Picture yourself sitting there thinking about what you''re going to do next turn when one of the baddies does something to try and psych you out.