Fucking RTwP in Project Eternity? HOW DOES IT WORK? TB vs RTwP

[Average Manatee]

"How much time do I want to waste to make the game easier" is not the kind of flexibility that a game should provide. It basically makes balance impossible because you can't control for how much a player wants to pause at any given time.

Once again, in theory, but in practice....

In practice and in theory.

A TB/RT combination handles this much better without asking the player how boring they want to make the game in exchange for how easy they want to make the game.

Yeah, maybe. I'd love to see that implemented well someday. Perhaps one of the upcoming turn-based Kickstarters will cave in and try to implement RT as well.

I think TB/RT has already been implmented a hell of a lot better than any RTwP has. Even Arcanum feels better. And there's really no reason that we can't have ToEE-level TB alongside a relatively normal RT system.

 

[Infinitron]

In practice and in theory.

I think TB/RT has already been implmented a hell of a lot better than any RTwP has. Even Arcanum feels better.

Uh huh. I think you'll find many people disagree with you there.



More and more I think a person's opinion of RTwP is mainly a reflection of their own ability to effectively control and manipulate such systems.

It's not that RTwP is "twitchy" or requires awesome dexterity, but obviously it requires some exercise of aptitude that isn't trivial for all people.

I don't have any other explanation as to why two people can have such different opinions on whether or not RTwP "works".

"It's awesome and tactical!"
"NO IT'S A CLUSTERFUCK IT'S COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTROL".
"No, you're wrong!"
"No, YOU'RE wrong."

 

[Visbhume]

Another thing to mention is that in the late '90s in the origins of Rtw/P RPGs there was a big fad that all the elements of a game should be in one point of view and one basic UI. I forget what they called it but it even had a game journalist fad term like the later "immersive" and that type of thing. So games like a Betrayal at Krondor that had combat take place in a different universe from movement became unfashionable. But looking back that was obviously just an odd quirk of designs that there is no reason to propagate either method for all time.

I do like that uniformity. I find it somewhat jarring when a game stops being "real-time" and suddenly slips into turn-based mode for a fight (note that I'm not arguing for "realism" or anything like that).

I've seen this property called "non-modality" in roguelikes:

Non-modal
Movement, battle and other actions take place in the same mode. Every action should be available at any point of the game. Violations to this are ADOM's overworld or Angband's and Crawl's shops.

http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php/Berlin_Interpretation

Just a matter of taste I suppose.

 

[Anthony Davis]

I'm thinking:

Could it be that one reason that RTwP RPGs have tended to have better encounters than TB ones is because the former are quicker and easier to test, and therefore iterate upon and improve?

Anthony Davis
As our resident professional game developer, I wonder what you have to say about this theory of mine.

Hmmm, well I've never worked on a TB game officially so I cannot say for sure. There could be some truth to that for sure.

Bioware and their Infinity Engine are what launched RTwP into the mainstream, so to speak. The reason the IE games had it is because a long time ago the Doctors wanted to make RTS games. It was Feargus who saw their first RTS game and said that this isn't a very good, but it would make a pretty good DnD game. Feargus had access to the DnD license through Interplay and the rest is history.

We also hit a LOT of problems with it with NWN2 that caused a storm with the NWN1 fans. Does anyone remember the whole Cleave thing?

What happened in NWN1 was that the character would animate for each swing in the Cleave. If each Cleave animation took 1.5 seconds, you could at MAX cleave 4 enemies (1.5 x 4 = 6 seconds). This is how it worked in NWN1 and it made the Fighter classes substantially weaker than they were supposed to be. These problems actually existed with all IE games, including KOTOR1 and for other melee abilities too.

We FIXED this in NWN2 by adding a single animation for Cleave and a lot of (dumb) people freaked out even though it made their character more in line with what it was supposed to do.

Personally I've never liked the RTwP because of all the fake stuff they used to hide the 6 second turns. For example, the "fake" swings as you wait for your real swing. Once I got to work with the Infinity Engine, I liked it even less.

That said, Josh and Adam frequently discusses how to fix RTwP and they aren't using the Infinity Engine. I am extremely positive on the combo of Josh and Adam (Jabby). Josh and Jabby work very well together.

 

[Average Manatee]

In practice and in theory.

I think TB/RT has already been implmented a hell of a lot better than any RTwP has. Even Arcanum feels better.

Uh huh. I think you'll find many people disagree with you there.



More and more I think a person's opinion of RTwP is mainly a reflection of their own ability to effectively control and manipulate such systems.

It's not that RTwP is "twitchy" or requires awesome dexterity, but obviously it requires some exercise of aptitude that isn't trivial for all people.

I don't have any other explanation as to why two people can have such different opinions on whether or not RTwP "works".

"It's awesome and tactical!"
"NO IT'S A CLUSTERFUCK IT'S COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTROL".
"No, you're wrong!"
"No, YOU'RE wrong."

I push over 100 APM in RTS games. Control is not the problem.

Consider jRPGs. One of the awful features of them are the ridiculous long animations for uber skills. This causes players to not want to use said uber skills due to out of game contraints (patience, time) even though they may be the best solution to a problem. Compare to RTwP, where players may not want to use uber micro due to out of game constraints (again, time and patience) even though micro is always the best thing to be doing. This intrusion of out of game constraints into gameplay is the problem with RTwP.

 

[attackfighter]

What infinity engine games had fake swings again?

 

[Infinitron]

I push over 100 APM in RTS games. Control is not the problem.

Consider jRPGs. One of the awful features of them are the ridiculous long animations for uber skills. This causes players to not want to use said uber skills due to out of game contraints (patience, time) even though they may be the best solution to a problem. Compare to RTwP, where players may not want to use uber micro due to out of game constraints (again, time and patience) even though micro is always the best thing to be doing. This intrusion of out of game constraints into gameplay is the problem with RTwP.

Ah, I see. You've trained yourself to think about and play real-time games in such a way that makes (some of) them unfun.

That reminds me of what I posted here. Mismatch of gameplay with the player's psychological conditioning is a definite problem. It's more of an issue for very experienced gamers, less so for noobs who are more malleable, so it's no wonder that it's been ignored by the industry.

 

[Anthony Davis]

What infinity engine games had fake swings again?

All of them, including KOTOR. KOTOR did something really neat though with the Lightsabers, they added in their parry system which paired up animation to make the melee combats feel more like Star Wars. But the blasters, you would should 2 to 4 shots but only one was real.

 

[Anthony Davis]

As much as I was not a fan of RTwP, IWD and IWD2 had some pretty amazing tactical fights that were actually "puzzles". In other words, fights where you had to think about how you were going to position your party members, how you were going to control movement, etc, because you were clearly out gunned for the fight.

BG2 had a few of those that were secret encounters that were also challenging.

 

[Infinitron]

It's like...the tutorial sections in today's games are all about teaching inexperienced gamers how to play the game. The basics of the mechanics.

But most tutorials do very little to teach experienced players how to shift their already-established expectations, to tell them "This is how you need to think about these familiar-yet-different mechanics, to derive maximum enjoyment from this game". So experienced gamers go charging into games using their own existing style of gameplay, and that doesn't always work.

 

[attackfighter]

What infinity engine games had fake swings again?

All of them, including KOTOR. KOTOR did something really neat though with the Lightsabers, they added in their parry system which paired up animation to make the melee combats feel more like Star Wars. But the blasters, you would should 2 to 4 shots but only one was real.

KOTOR was infinity engine? Also BG and PS:T definitely didn't have fake swings.

Consider jRPGs. One of the awful features of them are the ridiculous long animations for uber skills. This causes players to not want to use said uber skills due to out of game contraints (patience, time) even though they may be the best solution to a problem. Compare to RTwP, where players may not want to use uber micro due to out of game constraints (again, time and patience) even though micro is always the best thing to be doing. This intrusion of out of game constraints into gameplay is the problem with RTwP.

This applies for TB games as well. In Fallout I often grew tired of kiting melee enemies and instead just fought them straight up, regardless of the fact that I was taking more damage that way.

 

[Infinitron]

KOTOR was infinity engine? Also BG and PS:T definitely didn't have fake swings.

KOTOR was upgraded NWN (Aurora) engine. I think they called it Odyssey?

BG definitely had fake swings.

 

[Anthony Davis]

They can call it whatever they want, it's still Infinity Engine, I've worked in the source code... a LOT. The fake swings is just what they called "Filler Animations" for the 6 second turns. PST still had them, they just were something else, like Morte doing a flip or something.

I also think they were LESS noticeable in KOTOR because, if I remember correctly, the halved the turn to 3 seconds.

 

[attackfighter]

KOTOR was infinity engine? Also BG and PS:T definitely didn't have fake swings.

BG definitely had fake swings.

Nah.

 

[Anthony Davis]

The only Bioware game I cannot be sure of as to whether is was Infinity Engine or not is DA2. DA:O definitely was, and I thought they did a good job improving it.

Don't misunderstand me, the Infinity Engine is a good engine. It's old, sure, but so is my Dad's 1967 Shelby Cobra Mustang. That doesn't make it less awesome.

 

[Infinitron]

The only Bioware game I cannot be sure of as to whether is was Infinity Engine or not is DA2. DA:O definitely was, and I thought they did a good job improving it.

Umm...DA2 used the same engine as DA:O.

Do you know something we don't?

Is the NWN engine directly based on the Infinity Engine? It's always been assumed that it was completely or almost completely new.

 

[Anthony Davis]

KOTOR was infinity engine? Also BG and PS:T definitely didn't have fake swings.

BG definitely had fake swings.

Nah.

That was me back in the day. WHY AREN'T YOU HITTING?!?!?! Because he isn't really swinging.

 

[Infinitron]

attackfighter
Direct copy-paste from Baldur's Gate Readme.txt

p.77 To-Hit Rolls and Melee Combat
In Melee combat, not every swing is intended to hit. A character in
Baldur's Gate may make an "cosmetic" swing during the 6-second round
aside from the actual attempt to deliver damage. This swing represents
the feints and parries that would occur in real combat.

 

[Anthony Davis]

The only Bioware game I cannot be sure of as to whether is was Infinity Engine or not is DA2. DA:O definitely was, and I thought they did a good job improving it.

Umm...DA2 used the same engine as DA:O.

Do you know something we don't?

Is the NWN engine directly based on the Infinity Engine? It's always been assumed that it's completely new.

I don't know because I did not play DA:2.

NWN is still mostly Infinity Engine. Like it was stated above, they took to calling it Aurora Engine at that point. That became their new base and from there they made KOTOR and DA, and I believe the CDProjekt guys used it for at least Witcher 1.

Remember, DA was in development for YEARS. I saw it behind closed doors at E3 in 2003, well I was in their cube waiting to talk to someone behind mobile games and they left the door open and I was able to see it. They made a LOT of improvements since then obviously.

 

[Anthony Davis]

attackfighter
Direct copy-paste from Baldur's Gate Readme.txt

p.77 To-Hit Rolls and Melee Combat
In Melee combat, not every swing is intended to hit. A character in
Baldur's Gate may make an "cosmetic" swing during the 6-second round
aside from the actual attempt to deliver damage. This swing represents
the feints and parries that would occur in real combat.

That is correct. It applies to everything too. Go play KOTOR and equip a blaster. Every combat round you character will fire more shots than he needs (with standard attack) and only ONE will count as a real hit.

 

[attackfighter]

Hm, well I guess you're right then. I figured the ratio of misses/hits was about right considering starting THAC0, but whatevs. And 6 second rounds

 

[Infinitron]

NWN is still mostly Infinity Engine.

Well that's interesting. It certainly looks, feels and plays nothing like it. Are you absolutely sure they don't just share some file formats or something?

 

[Anthony Davis]

NWN is still mostly Infinity Engine.

Well that's interesting. It certainly looks, feels and plays nothing like it. Are you absolutely sure they don't just share some file formats or something?

It's funny you say that, to me they feel exactly the same (minus rule changes).

Yes, I'm positive. I've seen the code and it is old. Again, this isn't a bad thing. The Infinity Engine/Aurora Engine is a good engine. A lot of it is Rock Solid.

 

[Infinitron]

It's funny you say that, to me they feel exactly the same (minus rule changes).

I'm sure the people who were (and still are) massively butthurt that Neverwinter Nights wasn't another Baldur's Gate will be thrilled to hear that.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's like...the tutorial sections in today's games are all about teaching inexperienced gamers how to play the game. The basics of the mechanics.

But most tutorials do very little to teach experienced players how to shift their already-established expectations, to tell them "This is how you need to think about these familiar-yet-different mechanics, to derive maximum enjoyment from this game". So experienced gamers go charging into games using their own existing style of gameplay, and that doesn't always work.

No, the problem is that it does work. The problem is that the way to play most effectively in the game is also the way to make it the most boring. That is a big problem. RTwP is asking players to gimp themselves to make the game fun.