Interview RPG Dot talks to Planewalker Games

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: The Broken Hourglass

<a href=http://www.rpgdot.com>RPG Dot</a> asked the <a href=http://www.planewalkergames.com/>Planewalker Games</a> guys, better known for their modding work on the Infinity Engine games, <a href=http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1226>some questions</a> about recently announced The Broken Hourglass game. Here is a brief overview for the lazy ones:
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<blockquote>Mechanically, The Broken Hourglass is an isometric 2D CRPG in a sword-and-sorcery setting, the Tolmiran Empire. Players will create a single protagonist character and assemble a party from characters in the gameworld. Together they will face down enemies, seek obscure artifacts of legend, mingle with townspeople, fight, lose, win, love, laugh, die.
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It's certainly fair to say that we enjoy the style of gameplay that BG2 represents and think it's a valuable building block, yes. That would include aspects such as a character and party-focused story, a pace that encourages considered decisions (i.e., we're not producing a "twitch" game), real-time combat with auto- and manual pause events, and interaction with the gameworld aside from simply killing its inhabitants. That includes weaving romance into the game as well-many of the mods we developed were largely concerned with adding or expanding romances to BG2, and we think the presence of romance in that game has been a major part of its enduring success and popularity. So it's only natural that we would bring that forward into an original title as well.
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A few weeks before the game begins, an unknown power took over the capitol building of Mal Nassrin, erecting a magical shield that prevents anyone from entering or exiting. A short time later, an entire neighborhood simply imploded in a massive explosion of unknown origin. And shortly after that, a magical dome appeared around the entire city perimeter. Everyone inside the city is trapped, and local authorities are at a loss to do much about the situation. To make matters worse, people have begun to see shadows of the past appear in the city, and reportedly their touch is deadly.
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Mal Nassrin isn't a city brimming over with men of action and dashing heroines and so forth. It's not where you'd expect the beginning of the end of the world to start, and as such nobody's particularly prepared for the eventuality.
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The Tolmiran Empire setting at this time in its history is also somewhat lighter on "monsters" than many other popular CRPG settings are. This has a number of implications, including the fact that "adventurer" is not the dime-a-dozen career choice you see in many fantasy settings. "Humanity is the enemy" is the slogan the world designers tried to adhere to when specifying the scenario's threats. So hordes of kobolds won't be burrowing into town any time soon--and if they did, there wouldn't be 20 adventuring parties spilling out of the town's taverns to intercept them. It's just not that kind of world.
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Non-combat skills have their role as well. On the purely interactive side, we offer Haggling (affects store prices and can play a role in quest rewards as well), Diplomacy, and Manipulation-the "truthful" and "misleading" sides of the same coin. Stealth, carrying capacity, perception, lock and trap manipulation, and so forth are also available skills, derived from governing primary abilities as well as points spent directly. We support pickpocketing as well.
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"Why" is that, simply put, it [real-time combat] seems to work pretty well for a pretty substantial segment of the player base. I'm not religious about real-time combat nor am I looking to demythologize turn-based CRPG combat. We simply looked at a structure that we felt worked quite well to convey epic action while still preserving hands-on options for the player, and said "Yes, let's do that."</blockquote>It's a long interview, so there is a lot more where it came from.
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[Volourn]

Basically...


If you liked BG2 you might be interested.

If you didn't like BG2, you likely wouldn't be.

 

[MrBrown]

The mana systems sounds nice.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Yep, I like that too. It's similar to Geneforge's shaping system, but would work much better with a spell casting system.

 

[Zomg]

Sounds like good stuff. I'm pretty anti-RTw/P, if only because I dislike the RTS control scheme and that the balance is always off (since your power increases with pause frequency, up to the limit of your patience), but I'm interested to see how they handle it.

 

[FrancoTAU]

Good interview, it was almost Codex worthy

It sounds like a perfectly good BG2 clone. Which is fine since they are not nearly as frequent as Action RPGs. The magic system sounds cool too. I'm still skeptical that their tinkering will make RTwP fun at all.

 

[Higher Game]

I'd buy it just to support BG2 type games. Those late 90's isometric RPGs were the silver age of the genre. I'm glad they're swearing off on kobold hordes and pointing out diplomatic options and non-combat skills, but I'm not holding my breath here. Finally, real-time with pause needs to die. Just keep it purely real-time and leave time-based to rogue-likes and other kvlt games.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

I don't mind RTwP. It's not my favourite system, but it has never hindered my enjoyment of an otherwise well written game. It seems like they have a nice setting and some good ideas, a more than suitable presentation and a realistic design plan - so this one sounds promising to me.

I thought the discussion on 2D vs. 3 D was very interesting - several aspects (like the difficulty of getting experienced artists for this stuff) that I never thought about.

 

[aboyd]

I don't mind RTwP either.

As to the interview, thanks for that. I was hungry for more information. I'm off to read the whole thing.

-T

 

[themadhatter114]

I don't mind the real-time with pause system because I'd rather be able to pause and tell each of my party members whom to attack than force them to wait for a command or for the AI to take effect. Turn-based would certainly be more tactical but if you don't want the pause in there you can just disable it yourself. I personally like the option of giving several commands simultaneously.

 

[Quitch]

I'm sure I'm not alone (okay, maybe here ) in saying that RTwP is my preferred system. Sure, turn-based has its place, but frankly, it's a pretty clumsy implementation which attempts to represent combat in a way that roleplaying games could handle. As X-Com players saw, it made close-combat vastly more powerful than it deserved to be, simply because a turn-based system with any kind of terrain is innately exploitable. Uh oh

Computer games simply stuck with the system used by the pen & paper versions, because it didn't demand too much from the PC. That's why there used to be so many, and why there aren't that many now, because the PC can do more, and most people expect it to do so.

RTwP is, IMO, the best system to adopt on the PC. Pure real-time turns into your standard RTS click fest, and I'm really not interested, but by introducing the pause element you can retain that tactical feel, while using the strengths of the PC.

It also means there's zero divide between exploring the world and fighting in the world. You won't suddenly be dumped to a sub-screen, nor will your whole party change the way it navigates the map.

Like I said, I like RTwP

I'm glad they're swearing off on kobold hordes and pointing out diplomatic options and non-combat skills, but I'm not holding my breath here.

Well, I'm personally a huge Planescape fan, so my quests tend allow for a lot of exploration through dialogue and non-violent routes, as well as consequences which don't fall into neat little boxes of good and bad. Though I don't pretend to be worthy to lick the boots of the PST writers. Damn, but that was one fine game with magnificent writing

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Computer games simply stuck with the system used by the pen & paper versions, because it didn't demand too much from the PC. That's why there used to be so many, and why there aren't that many now, because the PC can do more, and most people expect it to do so.

If that was true, wouldn't all developers/publishers adopted a strictly real-time only rule? No, turn-based is a gameplay choice not a technical one. It's like 2D vs 3D. Why have 2D when you can have all those superpolygons and bump mapping and cock-shading and all that great stuff? Because it's a style choice. Hell, Pac-Man was real time. Dig-dug, Pole Position, Gauntlet, they were all real-time. So why didn't everyone instantly switch over? Because they wanted their games to be turn-based because of the gameplay it offers not because they were technically limited.

It also means there's zero divide between exploring the world and fighting in the world. You won't suddenly be dumped to a sub-screen, nor will your whole party change the way it navigates the map.

If your "immersion" is broken by having a grid show up on the screen you need to stop and realize that it's a game and not real life.

 

[Roqua]

Computer games simply stuck with the system used by the pen & paper versions, because it didn't demand too much from the PC. That's why there used to be so many, and why there aren't that many now, because the PC can do more, and most people expect it to do so.

If that was true, wouldn't all developers/publishers adopted a strictly real-time only rule? No, turn-based is a gameplay choice not a technical one. It's like 2D vs 3D. Why have 2D when you can have all those superpolygons and bump mapping and cock-shading and all that great stuff? Because it's a style choice. Hell, Pac-Man was real time. Dig-dug, Pole Position, Gauntlet, they were all real-time. So why didn't everyone instantly switch over? Because they wanted their games to be turn-based because of the gameplay it offers not because they were technically limited.

It also means there's zero divide between exploring the world and fighting in the world. You won't suddenly be dumped to a sub-screen, nor will your whole party change the way it navigates the map.

If your "immersion" is broken by having a grid show up on the screen you need to stop and realize that it's a game and not real life.

I disagree. TB combat is not just a style choice. It’s a fundamental mechanics choice. 2d or 3d nwn would’ve played the same and been the same basically. Its not about style, its about function. If you are a stupid, cocksucking, pansy ass bitch who doesn’t like a challenge, tactics, strategy, or good, you are a RT (pause or no pause) fan.

When synergy rules, when every decision is a big one, when every move matters, and every result is important, you sure as fuck won’t be playing a RT game. I never played a RT game where I new every aspect and facet of my character(s), even darklands.

 

[Azarkon]

If it's a turn-based system, every turn *better* matter in the sense of decisions. I hate the FF style of TB where 90% of the battles consist of "repeat Sword Attack x 5" but involve ten minutes of repetitive animations in order to get through. Either they make every single action/decision matter, or give me the option of at least auto-combating or strategic combating through routine fights.

Actually, that's exactly what a well-implemented RTwP system accomplishes: a few relevant tactical decisions per battle, and everything else auto-combatted in real-time. I rather enjoy it, if only because most battles in CRPGs simply don't require a decision per turn.

 

[Roqua]

If it's a turn-based system, every turn *better* matter in the sense of decisions. I hate the FF style of TB where 90% of the battles consist of "repeat Sword Attack x 5" but involve ten minutes of repetitive animations in order to get through. Either they make every single action/decision matter, or give me the option of at least auto-combating or strategic combating through routine fights.

Actually, that's exactly what a well-implemented RTwP system accomplishes: a few relevant tactical decisions per battle, and everything else auto-combatted in real-time. I rather enjoy it, if only because most battles in CRPGs simply don't require a decision per turn.

Don't play FF TB games then. ToEE had none of what you talk about.

 

[Volourn]

"who doesn’t like a challenge, tactics, strategy, or good, you are a RT (pause or no pause) fan."

That's funny. Most turn base combat games are rather easy. Go figure. *shrugs*

 

[Azarkon]

Don't play FF TB games then. ToEE had none of what you talk about.

So I've heard. Unfortunately, ToEE was plagued with a host of other problems that prevented me from enjoying its first few acts, so I dropped it. I guess you can't have everything.

 

[Roqua]

"who doesn’t like a challenge, tactics, strategy, or good, you are a RT (pause or no pause) fan."

That's funny. Most turn base combat games are rather easy. Go figure. *shrugs*

yeah, except for the good ones. And even the best RT games are invalid/simpleton easy. Go figure. *emotes are gay, stop this emote nonsense*

 

[WouldBeCreator]

I've never really understood the claim that RTS games are "easy" or don't require thinking. My experience is fairly limited (Warcraft, Warcraft II, Starcraft), but I found that while clickspeed, "muscle memory," and build-order memorization played a fairly significant role among low-level players, there was a lot of thinking involved in terms of figuring out where to attack, predicting opponents' movements and army compositions, etc. It also requires intelligence (of a different sort) to rapidly process information and make on-the-fly decisions when you don't have time to study all the data that you've got. RTS games favor quick thinking over deliberate thinking, but they do involve thinking. (Normally, players who think that they don't require intelligence feel that way because they weren't able to think fast enough and continuously lost to quicker players, creating the impression that twitch speed was the deciding factor.)

That said, I can't see much of any reason to make a party-based RPG real-time. The primary benefit of real-time is that you can have a large number of entities doing things and still move things along at an exciting pace. But the Bioware RPGs that used realtime had such small battles, there really wasn't a good reason not to use turn-based, although clearly that wound up being more popular with players, so there must be something in it that some people like . . . .

 

[Crichton]

Don't play FF TB games then. ToEE had none of what you talk about.

yeah, but it had a huge number of other problems, so I don't think it's any great shining example of a good skirmish tactics engine.

My personal favorite was pinpointing AoE spells to roast bugbears while leaving their oppoents in melee (my people) completely unharmed. The old gold box games had this exact same problem, and it's not even inherent in a TB game, they could have solved it by either making the AoE random (+ or - 5 ft) or making it scatter (instead of allowing you to inpoint it).

So instead of a mage launching a fireball forward, he's lobbing it like a hand grenade (right over the heads of his comrades) and this indirect fire is actually more accurate than direct fire (bows need to roll to hit). Two lines of warriors holding each other in place while mages behind each line do all the damage by tossing fireballs over their heads is the best simulation of WWI I've ever seen but as a tactical system it bites ass.

The IE games helped out a little by a) not marking the AoE on screen (making pinpointing harder) and b) doing a better job of representing a "swirling melee" by having people move over the time scale of casting a spell. This doesn't mean that the IE was a better combat engine but it did a better job of balancing the three arms (missile fire, melee and magic) and since all of the IE games had a better mix of opponents than ToEE, I generally found their combat more interesting (just too many identical bugbear/ogre fights in ToEE).

The primary reason to make skirmish tactics games RTwP is that you don't have to work quite as hard at eliminating artifacts (like using static positions to represent a melee) or allowing for "attacks of opportunity". The primary reason not to is that it's less cinimatic, making one decision at a time and watching the consequences of that decision alone is a much better representation of what one sees on a movie screen even if it pales a little in representing real life.

 

[Zomg]

Well, I think the big advantage of RTw/P over TB is that it does a better job of hiding bad combat. Not even the lowest fanboy could have played the NWN OC in turn based, since it's almost entirely about challenge-free lawnmowing in which you just kind of mouse your character around and watch him or his follower automatically kill everything. In turn-based bad combat is a morbidly awful clicking slog; not just boring but aggressively grating. RTw/P tends to flatten out the highs and the lows.

 

[aboyd]

Turn based can be okay with queues. TBwQ I guess. Direct your tank to pound away automatically until a trigger fires (he's too hurt, etc.). Spend your turns micromanaging the spellcaster. Etcetera.

Unfortunately, I know very few that do that. Oddly enough, it's RTwP games that seem to implement queues, such as KotOR2.

-Tony

 

[Quitch]

If that was true, wouldn't all developers/publishers adopted a strictly real-time only rule?

No, because I was quite clearly talking about early RPGs.

Hell, Pac-Man was real time. Dig-dug, Pole Position, Gauntlet, they were all real-time. So why didn't everyone instantly switch over?

So you're saying the combat mechanics of Pac-Man are of similar depth to a turn-based RPG and require no less "think" time?

Me thinks you're being ridiculous

When synergy rules, when every decision is a big one, when every move matters, and every result is important, you sure as fuck won’t be playing a RT game. I never played a RT game where I new every aspect and facet of my character(s), even darklands.

I think your subjective view and reality are becoming distorted here.

Actually, that's exactly what a well-implemented RTwP system accomplishes: a few relevant tactical decisions per battle, and everything else auto-combatted in real-time. I rather enjoy it, if only because most battles in CRPGs simply don't require a decision per turn.

I think that's quite true.

To me the whole point is in representing the various elements of a battle as best you can. It's no coincidence that turn-based games introduced elements like "opportunity fire". They did so because their mechanics suffered from poorly representing certain areas of combat.

To me real-time works better because the world is real-time, and therefore a real-time implementation does a better job of representing how it would work within the rules of that world. That mage may start his fireball spell, but people aren't going to stand around while he does it.

Of course, it's all a matter of taste. Turn-based battles present their own problems and challenges, but I prefer RtwP (pause being essential) because it allows for a more dynamic feel.

IMO though, RPGs should be about character not combat, and those who get hung up on the combat system are missing out on the sort of RPG I love, one where I care about those around me. In the end, it's the world and the people filling it that matter to me, and the combat is secondary.

 

[Roqua]

To me real-time works better because the world is real-time

but I prefer RtwP (pause being essential)

Yes, because the world has a pause function.

You guys can mask poor game design with “Dynamic, blabbity blah nonsense.” Games use hordes of weak enemies as a filler, to add to thr hours of the game and make the Ritalin children happy. RT (with or without pause) leads to mass abuse of this type of shitty ass design. Maybe you stupid bitches love your games to play like poor, shitty, crap ass movies, but I like a little more interaction beyond picking up the mass piles of junk left behind by the hordes of enemies my character fights (which is so fucking realistic, isn’t it, you fucking brainiacs).

If you like RT w/ pause, that’s fine. Don’t say it is more tactical or strategic than a good TB game.

And to the genius talking about RTS’s, are you fucking retarded? Maybe we should talk about the combat in other, non-related genres. And when I talk about TBS’s, of course I am talking about the character-centric, squade TBS’s, such as the JA’s, X-coms, and Silent Storms, which have a lot more in common with crpgs than any fucking RTS.

Turn based can be okay with queues. TBwQ I guess. Direct your tank to pound away automatically until a trigger fires (he's too hurt, etc.). Spend your turns micromanaging the spellcaster. Etcetera.

Unfortunately, I know very few that do that. Oddly enough, it's RTwP games that seem to implement queues, such as KotOR2.

Your lack of understanding of basic mechanics and stupidity actually causes me a headache. I cannot reply to your utter gibberish.

If fact, I have no idea why I even entered this debate. You fucking freshman bitches just don’t have the foundation to enter into an intelligent debate about this aspect of games. Why should I waste my time talking to fucking console pansies that spout out ignorant nonsense at every turn?

You could make computer chess and add 5,000 more enemy pieces, down grade the functioning of each piece, and make the game RT where all your pieces can move at once, but you changed the game from one of strategy, planning, and tactics, to make it largely reactionary. The strategy is vastly watered down, the tactics change to reacting, and the planning is removed. A game that really emphasized the correct use of each piece, making every move count, planning ahead, stressing acting, and provides the greatest challenge, can be changed to a messy click fest with barley any strategy or anything substantial. Any you guys would defend it, because you are all retarded. What is a better game is a matter of opinion. What is more strategic or tactical is not. Stop dreaming about how awesome clicking or watching is and start fucking thinking you fucking monkeys.

And until you fucking invalids start making any sort of valid points that show you have some sort of foundation that would allow you to enter into an actual grown-up debate based on reality, I guess I'll concede the issue. DS and IE games are super duper startegic and make TB games stupid.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

RTw/P tends to flatten out the highs and the lows.

Real time with pause doesn't flatten out highs and lows, it's just plain automated. It removes the majority of the interaction of the player from the game. In the case of the original release of NWN, there was no point for a melee character to ever pause because the only reason for the player to actually be physically in the room with the computer was for battles where the player was taking damage. In the fight with the magical armor in the first chapter of NWN, I actually went downstairs to get myself a sandwich because the armor couldn't hit me and I was barely hitting it. If the game were turn based, I wouldn't have had to have waited the mandatory six seconds per round and could have gotten that fight over with and THEN gotten the sandwich.

There's a reason why this type of system was born in the RTS genre where it actually works. The player really isn't supposed to care much about those units, so he can give them a few orders in a queue and pay attention to something else. Real time with pause is like watching someone else playing a game and occationally piping up with some advice on how to do it.