Firearm combat and TB vs. RT

[Emotional Vampire]

It's ironic because it was *me* who pretty much got called a simplisticfag.

 

[Mareus]

There's been small-scale combat in RTwP, there's been medium-scale combat in RTwP, and there's been large-scale combat in RTwP, and they all worked.

The same could be said for TB and RT.

@Mareus: Goddamn you're thick. No, these are not your apples and oranges. Real world is not a goddamn RPG with retarded balance. There ARE some things which are better than others.

Yeah and RT is better than TB because you say so. Wow, I feel so enlightened now.

Turns were used for a long time because there has not been computers for a long time. You can't play Chess in realtime because that would be a clusterfuck and eventually the person person who punched the other guy in the face would won.

No, you can't play chess in real time because then it wouldn't be chess. But me explaining that to you just shows what a dumbfuck you are.

But now we have PCs, we CAN simulate real time environment,.../snip

We now have PCs, so we don't need chess anymore? Wow,... just wow man.

...and both the CPU and the game code are perfect, unbribeable judges over the rules.

WTF??

It's stupid and uinmaginative to keep to turns because of nostalgia.

It's actually stupid and unimaginative to make everything look the same just in the name of progress and inovation. When every game becaomes a first person shooter thanks to dumbfucks like you that will be so cool, wouldn't it? And there is a big difference between nostalgia and diversity, but I guess to people like you it means the same.

In one of my early posts I made an example about QWERTY keyboards. Do you know why the keys are placed this way, and not the other? Back in old times before PCs, there were typing machines, and the keys were set normally - ABCDEF. But people quickly learned to type too fast and the little hammers banging on the ink couldn't keep up and were getting stuck. So all the letters were scattered around to slow down people's typing. And it stayed to this day, even though there's absolutely no reason whatseover to keep it anymore since there are no hammers anymore. There are several different types of key placement, most famous being the Dvorak one, which allow you to type faster, more accurate, and more ergonomical. But no one uses it. That's the tradition for you.

Thank you for this little information, because I didn't know that. However technology and art are not the same thing. Damn, you just keep mixing apples and pears, don't you? I bet you were really bad in math. So because we have computers now, we don't need books? Sir, since you are so bent on progress and inovation, I suggest you find yourself a job at Bethseda. I am sure you will fit very well there.

And why real time is better? Because it's REAL.

Are you that dumbfuck from other forum who wrote:
"If it is in first person and you shoot things, its first person shooter!"

Everything we experience is happening in real time. Let's say you want two dudes to duel to the death - all we know about dueling is in real time. When we invaded Iraq, we did that in real time too.

You are Todd Howard, aren't you?

 

[Niektory]

There's nothing that TB does which RT doesn't do better.

You can't play Chess in realtime because that would be a clusterfuck

I have never seen an universe which would operate in turns.

Have you seen an universe with pause?

 

[Balor]

Have you seen an universe with pause?

Our universe CAN be with pause. However, since wer are inside it, we'll never detect it. TB, however, is quite easy to detect, and it's not the case.

 

[Armacalypse]

Pause doesn't take away the fact that time in the game is linear, where everything exists in the same "timeline" (for lack of a better word).

If time in a game goes faster, slower or stops completely, it has absolutely zero affect on the game world. The only thing it affects is the relative speed difference between the game and the real world, which gives the gamer more time to think, react, and move.

A world with pause can act realistic, but a turn-based world can't. I don't have anything against TB if it's used right, but if you claim that it doesn't make a game more unrealistic you are just retarded.

 

[callehe]

In one of my early posts I made an example about QWERTY keyboards. Do you know why the keys are placed this way, and not the other? Back in old times before PCs, there were typing machines, and the keys were set normally - ABCDEF. But people quickly learned to type too fast and the little hammers banging on the ink couldn't keep up and were getting stuck. So all the letters were scattered around to slow down people's typing. And it stayed to this day, even though there's absolutely no reason whatseover to keep it anymore since there are no hammers anymore. There are several different types of key placement, most famous being the Dvorak one, which allow you to type faster, more accurate, and more ergonomical. But no one uses it. That's the tradition for you.

Keyboards are unrealistic, why do you use them at all?

 

[Mareus]

Pause doesn't take away the fact that time in the game is linear, where everything exists in the same "timeline" (for lack of a better word).

If time in a game goes faster, slower or stops completely, it has absolutely zero affect on the game world. The only thing it affects is the relative speed difference between the game and the real world, which gives the gamer more time to think, react, and move.

A world with pause can act realistic, but a turn-based world can't. I don't have anything against TB if it's used right, but if you claim that it doesn't make a game more unrealistic you are just retarded.

Yeah, Diablo is more realistic than ToEE because it's in RT. In Diablo you can drink mana potions at the same time as you drink health potions and it doesn't even prevent you to fight with 30 imps who are poking you with their little horns all the time. Yep, that's what I call realism.

When will you people learn that looks real and realism are not the same thing and that realism depends mostly on the game itself. Why do I even bother?

 

[SpaceKungFuMan]

I did a quick search and nobody posted the word overwatch yet.

Anyways, turn based games are games, not military firefight simulations.

What I described in my post was over watch. The biggest loss in 3rd edition 40k was the end of over watch.

 

[easychord]

It's said that if it is at all possible to simulate reality well enough to fool our perceptions then it's a near certainty that what we are experiencing isn't reality at all but a computer simulation. This is because it would be massively easier to simulate reality than to create a universe. So, if it is at all possible to make a realistic game then what we would think of as reality almost certainly wouldn't be, so how could we say that the game is realistic? Paradox.

Saying that pause mode is more realistic than turn based mode isn't that obvious to me. Both ways of making certain types of game more playable. Turn based play can be more elaborate and sophisticated but neither are really super realistic. Real time can be better for games with a lot of action where the player is twitch reacting to events. Turn based can be better for games with strategic planning.

 

[Kaiserin]

There's a game called 'X-Com,' you might want to try playing it someday OP.

 

[Zomg]

Thank you guys for making me feel dead inside for not using Dvorak keyboards and base twelve.

 

[Armacalypse]

Pause doesn't take away the fact that time in the game is linear, where everything exists in the same "timeline" (for lack of a better word).

If time in a game goes faster, slower or stops completely, it has absolutely zero affect on the game world. The only thing it affects is the relative speed difference between the game and the real world, which gives the gamer more time to think, react, and move.

A world with pause can act realistic, but a turn-based world can't. I don't have anything against TB if it's used right, but if you claim that it doesn't make a game more unrealistic you are just retarded.

Yeah, Diablo is more realistic than ToEE because it's in RT. In Diablo you can drink mana potions at the same time as you drink health potions and it doesn't even prevent you to fight with 30 imps who are poking you with their little horns all the time. Yep, that's what I call realism.

When will you people learn that looks real and realism are not the same thing and that realism depends mostly on the game itself. Why do I even bother?

If you think magic is more unrealistic than totally surrealistic metaphysics, sure.

I guess it's all pretty subjective anyway, since it's in a game.

 

[shihonage]

I used to be heavily in favor of turn-based combat, but I've been re-working the combat implementation in my game (Shelter) for a while, struggling to make it fun and "feel right", and these are the conclusions I came to:

Turn-based combat works fine in a game like Fallout, or X-Com, or any other game where the designer controls the maximum number of people involved in any combat encounter, because the world isn't seamless, the cities are isolated, and random encounters are faked.

When you attempt to go for something bigger, however, the programming and design implementation of it starts to fall apart really fast. Fallout was made in 1997. In the 21st century, one making a game in a similar world would have enough ambition to remove much of the "fake" and "isolated" from the vocabulary, creating a world where people truly roam on the BIG MAP between cities, with various agendas in each one.

Imagine for a moment if this happened in Fallout. You are in a turn-based combat encounter inside a city, when suddenly, OUT OF THE BIG MAP, out of the yellow border space, walks in a Raider patrol. In realtime.

My solution to this was to implement instanced turn-based combat. Parts of the world would proceed in realtime, and parts would be in turn-based combat. The moment someone gets "aggroed" into combat, they switch into turn-based.

Despite multiple attempts to save this system, it would fail to "work properly 100% of the time", as a combination of factors, part of which was balancing the CPU load for the AI of everyone in the world and "local threat scans". Anything less than 100% was unacceptable so it was scrapped. Threat tracking was a logistical nightmare with this system, as was deciding whose turn it was, with people who could join combat at anytime.

The next thing I tried was to freeze the entire world whenever a combat encounter occurs involving the player, and make the world go into turn-based mode. Of course, waiting for the hundreds upon hundreds of people in the entire world to take their turn was ridiculous.

The next step was this - "freeze the world when player is involved in combat", but only switch player's enemies and himself into turn-based mode. The rest of the world proceeds in realtime. The battles that NPCs run into OUTSIDE OF PLAYER SCOPE are fought in realtime.

Of course this was a bullshit approach which was quickly scrapped. First of all, the threat tracking problem was still there. Second, realtime and turn-based combat modes are completely different. You can't just run turn-based balanced world in realtime and expect the same result as if it was turn-based. Consistency was gone.

Desperate for a solution, I started researching for other combat modes.

Turn-based combat: REJECTED (won't work well in a large world, management is a nightmare)

City of Heroes combat: REJECTED (WSAD to move, 1234 to target body parts of mouseover person, its too "actioney" - the skill involved should be that of the character, not player)

Diablo combat: REJECTED (even worse than above)

Prequeued-actions combat: REJECTED (you can only predict so much, and NPCs will constantly block queued actions, making it frustrating; watching the same thing take place twice is also not fun)

Phase-based combat: (everyone is frozen; player does X actions in realtime; everything unfreezes; everyone else expends their action points) - close but no cigar, the balance between true realtime of NPC vs NPC combat and phased player vs NPC combat is violated - REJECTED

Realtime with pause (KOTOR) combat: REJECTED - negates much strategy.

When you start to expand the demands on the game, it becomes really hard to deal with stuff that "just worked" in older games - the games that _faked_ the illusion of a live world. The faked mechanics were controlled, and that's why they were open to a lot more. I didn't understand that before.

I finally came up with a mode of my own which would work in a true "large world" game... while it is not "KOTOR combat", not realtime, and it isn't turn-based either. I wasted a lot of time learning how and why pure turn-based doesn't work with a huge world... lesson learned.

 

[Mareus]

If you think magic is more unrealistic than totally surrealistic metaphysics, sure.

I guess it's all pretty subjective anyway, since it's in a game.

I really have no clue what you are talking about, and from what I have read you don't seem to know what you are talking about either.

 

[Virtz]

*snip*

Have you ever considered rogue-like turn-based? Where it's not so much going into turn-based as much as having the whole world in one-action turn-based all the time?

It's basically a system, where nothing moves until the player does something and then everyone gets to move in some order based on their speed and how much of a delay their last action cost until it comes down to the player's turn again.

Teudogar features something of the sort, but only for combat (world normally moves in real-time). Also see Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode.

 

[Solohk]

Or what if when the battle started, any non-combatants spend their turns to flee the scene. Once they get far enough away, you don't have to deal with them anymore, and I think if there was a sudden gun/swordfight most people would run away anyway.

 

[shihonage]

*snip*

Have you ever considered rogue-like turn-based? Where it's not so much going into turn-based as much as having the whole world in one-action turn-based all the time?

It's basically a system, where nothing moves until the player does something and then everyone gets to move in some order based on their speed and how much of a delay their last action cost until it comes down to the player's turn again.

Damn it dude you practically guessed my new combat system !

It doesn't work quite the same as Rogue's instant per-tile movement system, and it is pending ehnancements to compensate for balance flaws characteristic for such a system, but generally it is like that.

Or what if when the battle started, any non-combatants spend their turns to flee the scene. Once they get far enough away, you don't have to deal with them anymore, and I think if there was a sudden gun/swordfight most people would run away anyway.

Yeah, except there are issues there... first of all, nobody wants to wait for the non-combatants' turns. Second of all, given how the engine allowed for multiple simultaneous turn-based combat encounters to happen in different parts of the world, it had a pretty "dynamic" understanding of the concept "combat scene", and "valid threats".

What is a battlefield ? Is it merely a summary of "threat radiuses" of its participants ? Is there a center ? Who determines the center ? Sometimes it can mean it will stretch uncomfortably far, or even merge with another "dynamic battlefield".

It's hard to pin down into words, but that kind of stuff just didn't work consistently well. Fallout didn't have this problem as battlefield was basically the entire localized map.

 

[Severian Silk]

TB fails because you have to press buttons to keep the characters moving.

 

[Cimmerian Nights]

if you spend all AP before a door, and an enemy is standing right after it, he'll basically have his entire turn to rape you with impunity) - but it has nothing to do with realism.

About this door thing - here's another point where TB fails.
Say you have an unloaded rifle, and open a door. On the other side is a guy with a loaded SMG. You roll higher for initiative. Now you can load your rifle, aim for the guy's head and shoot, leaving him dead before he has a chance to even act.

So how would a situation as described in the OP work in Brigade?[/quote]
I think JA2 overcame situations like this as enemies could get an interrupt checks in these situations.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall many times being fired back at during my turn with interrupts that weren't triggered by movement/sound/LOS, and then being allowed to complete my turn.

 

[SpaceKungFuMan]

The next step was this - "freeze the world when player is involved in combat", but only switch player's enemies and himself into turn-based mode. The rest of the world proceeds in realtime. The battles that NPCs run into OUTSIDE OF PLAYER SCOPE are fought in realtime.

Of course this was a bullshit approach which was quickly scrapped. First of all, the threat tracking problem was still there. Second, realtime and turn-based combat modes are completely different. You can't just run turn-based balanced world in realtime and expect the same result as if it was turn-based. Consistency was gone.

Why not just freeze the world outside of combat entirely, the unfreeze it when combat ends? This seems like an obvious solution.

 

[shihonage]

Why not just freeze the world outside of combat entirely, the unfreeze it when combat ends? This seems like an obvious solution.

So, when the player is in ... Vaulty Sands (making these up), and a gang of Raiders meets a gang of Monks somewhere between Promise City and Vermin Village, all of a sudden he finds himself unable to move because someone, somewhere is participating in turn-based combat which has to play itself out until no one there scans a currently valid threat around them.

Or, do we exclude the player from the "freezes caused by combat not involving him", and make him wonder around the frozen world in realtime, like the guy from Dead Zone, shooting anyone he wants ? Or do we break the immersion even further by making people invulnerable in this frozen state...

Paved with turn-based combat is the road to design hell. TB only works in controlled, closed spaces, not in genuine open worlds.

 

[Armacalypse]

If you think magic is more unrealistic than totally surrealistic metaphysics, sure.

I guess it's all pretty subjective anyway, since it's in a game.

I really have no clue

Time doesn't slice itself up and give itself to different individuals to be used in turns. That's why TB breaks metaphysical rules, and that's why it's obviously not realistic. TB is as realistic as 2+2=5.

 

[Trash]

TB and RTWP both have their merits and faults in a game. Realistic however, they are not. Thread closed, I win and goodnight.

 

[Helton]

shi is there any reason why you're against autocalculating battles? Surely nothing particularly groundbreaking is going to emerge from the computer fighting itself. So figure out who wins most of the time, make a formula, and get a dice roll program and call it a night.

 

[shihonage]

shi is there any reason why you're against autocalculating battles? Surely nothing particularly groundbreaking is going to emerge from the computer fighting itself. So figure out who wins most of the time, make a formula, and get a dice roll program and call it a night.

That was another approach. For a while I thought it was genius... until it came to implementation.

Auto-calculating battles, is a separate engine. A separate combat engine made to instantly "assess" the results of battles far away from player, to "cheat", so to speak.

This however brings out the inconsistency and man-hours problems. The insta-battle engine would have to at least LOOSELY match the outcome of the same battle should it have honestly taken place in TB. As for man-hours you'll see what I mean in a moment.

Let's say we create this insta-battle engine to compare player's stats, armor and firepower vs. another player, right.

Scenario 1: We have Marius, a level 1 Vaulty Sands citizen, walking through the desert, when he encounters a pack of rats. The instacombat engine predicts that he kills them all, and that is an accurate prediction.

Scenario 2: Marius is walking across the desert, he finds an Alliance soldier of level 7, who kills him. Again, correct prediction using their stats.

Scenario 3: You gave Marius the Torch of Gandalf, the magical item, which, when lit up, freezes your enemies for 100 ACTION POINTS. He runs across the above Alliance soldier. As result, the regular, real combat engine would have him survive the encounter by using the item and running away. The shortcut combat engine, having no such concept as ACTION POINTS, would compare stats and declare him dead, leaving the player wondering how the hell could've that happened with Torch of Gandalf.

As result one would constantly have to work to keep both engines balanced, and keep the second engine basically as a highly inaccurate hack job which starts to fall even further apart in complex multi-people combat.

What if the regular combat engine allows to take advantage of melee and/or shielding yourself by running up behind enemies so that other enemies' bullets hit them ? How can the instacombat engine even start accounting for all that ?

The instacombat parallel engine would force one to simplify and reduce the real combat engine so that their results arent wildly, BROKENLY, out of sync. That is a loser design, it didn't fly with me.

And I don't have the time necessary to write two separate combat engines, one of which is a complete guessing hackjob, a Miss Cleo equivalent of a combat engine.