Achron - if we had attacked them in 2 minutes we will win some minutes ago

[Kane]

WHAT?



http://www.achrongame.com

shoutcasted match:



and a review: http://www.rtsguru.com/game/389/features/192/Achron-Review.html

 

[Malakal]

Seems like another one of those games that rely on one gimmick and nothing more. They inevitably fail, of course, as its not enough to carry a whole game to success...

 

[Kane]

Seems like another one of those games that rely on one gimmick and nothing more. They inevitably fail, of course, as its not enough to carry a whole game to success...

timetravel is not a gimmick in this game. it's a core game mechanic and in fact not only has the whole game been build around it but also the engine.

 

[DwarvenFood]

This had been released a real long time ago now, and even though the idea was nice, it played like shit.

 

[Kane]

This had been released a real long time ago now, and even though the idea was nice, it played like shit.

I know I just learned about it yesterday. The gameplay is glorious you just don't get it.

 

[evdk]

This had been released a real long time ago now.

Yeah, but it was made today.

 

[Kane]

Are you being facetious here or is it really good?

I have read about it several times now but simply reading doesn't make it make sense to me. Is it really worth trying?

watch the videos. if you like experimental games you'll love it. be aware though that the engine is very special and requires CPUs with large bandwidth and large ringbuffers, so anything starting nehalem (i5/i7) and upwards should be good to go. below that it will lag.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Well you can go a couple of minutes back and ahead in time but I guess one must really like it how this game deals with it - I feel that the idea is good but the execution of it is bad, bland.. they could have done it better. But that's my opinion of it when I played it. Mind you, I was looking forward to this game for months back then.

 

[Kane]

I feel that the idea is good but the execution of it is bad, bland.. they could have done it better.

Seamless integration of arbitrary timetravel is bad, bland? What could they have done better in your opinion?

The reason you can only go back a limited time (~3 min) is two fold:

a) That's approx. the duration of human short time memory (~ 2 min)
b) The CPU requirements grow exponentially in time, so unless you happen to have some kind of supercomputer below your desk you simply can't do it anyway.

 

[Angthoron]

So how many of the Codexian bros have played it? I'm still interested in it but the way the previous thread just died a sad and quiet death I sort of abandoned hope.

Watched the Shoutcasted match and holy fuck was that spectator annoying.

 

[DraQ]

b) The CPU requirements grow exponentially in time, so unless you happen to have some kind of supercomputer below your desk you simply can't do it anyway.

I wonder if it couldn't be helped by discretizing the time and going TB.

Of course, it would come for a price.

 

[Kane]

b) The CPU requirements grow exponentially in time, so unless you happen to have some kind of supercomputer below your desk you simply can't do it anyway.

I wonder if it couldn't be helped by discretizing the time and going TB.

Of course, it would come for a price.

turn-based real-time strategy. you've outdone yourself DraQ.

 

[DraQ]

b) The CPU requirements grow exponentially in time, so unless you happen to have some kind of supercomputer below your desk you simply can't do it anyway.

I wonder if it couldn't be helped by discretizing the time and going TB.

Of course, it would come for a price.

turn-based real-time strategy. you've outdone yourself DraQ.

Well, yeah, the price would be switching genres, obviously.

 

[Norfleet]

All games are basically turn-based anyway. It's just a question of how short the time limits are on a turn.

 

[LoPan]

God damned Cartesians.

 

[DraQ]

All games are basically turn-based anyway. It's just a question of how short the time limits are on a turn.

Morrowind is an old-school TB RPG.

 

[copx]

Been trying out the Achron demo.

As far as I can tell, time travel mechanic is great. The graphics are bland as fuck though, so your units will quickly become a mess of PLAYER_COLOR and grays instead of recognizable units. The pathfinding is weak too which is more of a problem when you shouldn't micro because of chronoenergy costs.

The demo doesn't give me a whole lot of room to experiment and see what the game is like though. From what I hear the AI isn't very good, but the timetravel mechanic is so fucking solid I'm tempted to buy it and give it a shot, probably online.

Has anyone here bought & played Achron? Any impressions they'd like to share?

 

[Mangoose]

when i play it i'll tell you yesterday

 

[Kane]

The pathfinding is weak too which is more of a problem when you shouldn't micro because of chronoenergy costs.

They actually can't do strong pathfinding, because that would take a cut on CPU power making the whole time travel impossible.

 

[Destroid]

Sounds like a pretty lame excuse to me.

 

[Malakal]

Sounds like a pretty lame excuse to me.

No if you want to have armies with more than five units or maps bigger than 5x5 tiles. Think logically about the number of combinations time travel introduces and how much data would have to be stored.

 

[Kane]

if you're interested, they have the paper about the underlying technology published somewhere.

 

[Destroid]

Sounds like a pretty lame excuse to me.

No if you want to have armies with more than five units or maps bigger than 5x5 tiles. Think logically about the number of combinations time travel introduces and how much data would have to be stored.

Correct me if I'm wrong (I've only watched a few youtubes), but I don't believe the units need to pathfind through time portals? I don't see how it's pathfinding is any more complicated than that of any other RTS with a high unit count.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I already played the full game, but if I tell the Codex how it went I will probably change the game and retroactively make my review obsolete.

 

[Malakal]

Sounds like a pretty lame excuse to me.

No if you want to have armies with more than five units or maps bigger than 5x5 tiles. Think logically about the number of combinations time travel introduces and how much data would have to be stored.

Correct me if I'm wrong (I've only watched a few youtubes), but I don't believe the units need to pathfind through time portals? I don't see how it's pathfinding is any more complicated than that of any other RTS with a high unit count.

I think its more about having to store every unit location on the map for the entire game for every single unit. So 100 units at 100 different locations every second? Every half second? Depends how much map is divided into locations and what are the minimal time units. BTW thats also every projectile fired. Speculating tho since I havent seen the game.