Vault Dweller
Commissar, Red Star Studio
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2003
- Messages
- 28,039
http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/448/448644p1.html
Well, that certainly explains why Aftermath sucked.
Yes, I like when someone simplifies aka dumbs down all these complicated games for me.Lead Designer said:We wanted to take the gameplay elements of those games we liked (XCom and JA) and drop those we now find too cumbersome or too difficult to understand.
I also like when someone decides for me which mode I'd like to use.This meant simplifying things, but also making them more obvious. There are tactical games that offer you five or six movement modes. This may look realistic, but it is not a good design decision. To me, good gameplay is about making decisions between a few clear alternatives. The player will eventually find only two modes are useful to him and he will not use the other ones anyway. Therefore, UFO: Aftermath has only two movement modes - walking and running - and two stances - standing and kneeling
Not another stupid "it's not realistic" argument.Other thing we decided to break away from was traditional turn-based combat. While this is almost a synonym for "tactical" (as apposed to "real-time clickfest"), in fact, it is very unrealistic. It is a throwback to old war games that obviously had to be played in turns
For the love of God, stop using "introduced" to describe good ol' rt with pause. Just because you made the idiotic and pretentious name for it doesn't make it a revolutionary breakthrough. Fucking morons!In UFO: Aftermath, we introduced our Simultaneous Action System (SAS) in which you plan out orders for your men (where to go, what to equip, whom to attack) while the game is paused. Then, you run the game, your men go carry out your orders and the game pauses when either one of them completes his plan or when something unforeseen happens like a new enemy is spotted, or a soldier comes under fire.
Of course, we all know that RT with pause is actually TB combat in a nutshellIt is actually much closer to turn-based games than to real-time.
Well, that certainly explains why Aftermath sucked.