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An argument for turn based - The Magnificent Seven argument

Saint_Proverbius

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Basically, this is a non-standard argument for turn based combat in CRPGs based on a movie, The Magnificent Seven.

Okay, the set up is there are scenes at the beginning of the movie that demonstrates why the Magnificent Seven are, in fact, "magnificent". One of them is a scene featuring a guy who specializes in throwing knives as his combat forte. He is challenged by a gunslinger as to whether or not he's faster with his knife throwing than the gunslinger is. They do a mock run at an actual duel and the gunslinger claims victory. The people looking on say they couldn't tell who won or who lost. When the gunslinger asks the knife guy to tell them who won, the knife guy says, "You lost."

So, the gunslinger gets angry, and tells the knife guy he wants to prove it by them dueling for real. When the gunslinger keeps on insisting, the knife fighter eventually stands up, and they duel again, standing about 20 to 30 feet apart. Long story short, as the gunslinger is drawing, he gets a knife hitting him and killing him.

The knife thrower was much faster than the gunslinger, capable of not only beating the gunslinger's weapon draw, but also having the knife travel accurately through the air in time to kill the gunslinger before he fired.

Turn based can do this situation flawlessly. Most turn based systems have a combat system based on how fast a character can act based on their agilty, or other attribute(s), the characters in combat are. Avernum does it. Geneforge does it. SPECIAL does it. I'm pretty sure GURPS does this as well. Because the knife thrower was more agile than the gunslinger, he won the fight. His "turn" came up first.

Now, consider this situation in real time. In real time, you have to deal with actions and animations also going on at the same time. You have three animation sequences for this fight. The knife flying through the air, the knife thrower drawing and throwing the knife, and the gun slinger drawing his weapon. Each of these animations will have a certain fixed frame count per second.

For most 2D games, the animation frames for the sprites is 15 frames per second. 3D games are pretty much the same, only they can blend the model movements with the frame rate, making the animations a litte more smoothly. Because of this, in real time, you'd have to set up a delay calculation for the gunslingers just to get the knife in the air for it to complete the animations of the drawing just before it fires the gun.

That's basically the problem here. You'd pretty much have to script this to work right, and it'd only work for that one event. You'd have a consistancy issue throughout the game. If you made it so the knife thrower was always that much faster, you'd end up with several balance issue problems as well as a problem with the timing of actions per "round".

You have to deal with the time it takes for the knife thrower to go through his draw and throw animations, and the animation of the knife travelling through the air. If it takes ten frames of animation for the draw and throw, you have to delay every gunslinger that he's faster than for 7/10s of a second, and possibly delay them even more depending on the travel time for the knife. That may not sound like much, but that's a fairly long time to delay actions in real time. Depending on the round length, or when time "recycles", this would result in long gaps between the next cycle or you'd have overlapping cycles, just to compensate for this effect.

Also, depending on whether this is a bonus or penalty of lag time due to an attribute like agility, you run the risk of having a narrow attribute system just so the round time isn't too long. It's it's a bonus or penalty of .7 seconds per agility point, and you have a attribute range of 1-20, you're talking a round cycle time of 14 seconds in real time, which would make it grossly slower than turn based.

So, basically, that's an advantage to turn based right there. It can allow a specialist character to actually be magnificent in his area of specialty, which wouldn't be possible in real time without a hell of a lot of fudging.
 

Xerophyte

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Counter-point

It's no fun to discuss a dichotomy if no one argues with you, so allow me to play Devil's Advocate and boldly refute your analogy. :)

The first, rather nasty, error lies in the choice of medium. Movies flow in real-time. If a movie can, using the real-time system known as live acting, make a more agile character attack before his slower counterpart, so can a game. The director of the movie most certainly had to deal with both characters being able to move simultaneously.

The numbers you used seem like conjecture to me; I certainly see no reason for the throwing-from-belt animation or the flight time of the knife to be longer than their real-life equivalents. Also, any reaction delay needn't have anything to do with round time, delaying the execution of a given order with some undefined measure of time is unrelated to the subsequent 'rate-of-fire'. An effective, if non-RPG, example can be seen in the pseudo real-time wargame Combat Mission where reaction delay varies between 5-20 seconds, depending on troop experience. No, I'm not suggesting that length for a one-character RPG. :)

I can easily see a cRPG combat system in real time (preferably pausable, but that's not required) with appropriately used reaction times. If you'll allow a bit of imaginative narrative from an RPG not currently in existance:

A, a slow and cumbersome brute who wields a mean greatsword, is doing his utmost to skewer the nimble and rapier-equipped B. A was just issued orders to bull-rush B, which is to be followed by a series of brutal overhead chops. This order will take, say, a second to register. The second B notices A bearing down on him, he is ordered to jump away and follow up with a quick thrust. B has lesser 'lag', barely avoids A's lunge and gets to deliver a painful sting to A's backside as he blindly thunders past.

Both fighters get the opportunity to play out their strength - A can maul B to a messy pulp, if he manages to predict his movements well enough to actually hit. B might not be able to deal quite as much damage, but he has the advantage of being able to respond to A's moves instead. I can't quite imagine anything near this played out in a clunky and cumbersome turn-based mode.

Finally: "It [Turn-based] can allow a specialist character to actually be magnificent in his area of specialty, which wouldn't be possible in real time without a hell of a lot of fudging"? Where do you draw this conclusion? Even assuming you are right and the animation factors of real-time does preclude reaction advantages, something I highly doubt, there's no inherent property of real-time that makes a particular brand of character somehow less 'magnificent'. Even without my wistful Combat Mission-inspired system above, an agile fighter in real-time can always be given an attack speed increase compared to her slower counterpart. In most every turn-based system there are specifc Time Unit thresholds that increase effectiveness improportionately. Example: in Generic Turn-Based System A, a weapon costs 3 TUs to fire and a character with 9 TUs per turn thus fires as fast as a character with 11 TUs. Real-time allows the faster character to exploit her speed to its fullest, when turn-based does not.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Re: Counter-point

Xerophyte said:
It's no fun to discuss a dichotomy if no one argues with you, so allow me to play Devil's Advocate and boldly refute your analogy. :)

The first, rather nasty, error lies in the choice of medium. Movies flow in real-time. If a movie can, using the real-time system known as live acting, make a more agile character attack before his slower counterpart, so can a game. The director of the movie most certainly had to deal with both characters being able to move simultaneously.

Movies lack something games have to have, a means of controlling the action. Movies also have those wonderful editting techniques where they can shoot the action from different angles and splice them together in such a manner as it looks like the knife throwing character is actually faster than the gunslinger.

You're confusing movie magic with reality here.

The numbers you used seem like conjecture to me; I certainly see no reason for the throwing-from-belt animation or the flight time of the knife to be longer than their real-life equivalents.

Let's play Mr. Wizard then. Go out in the back yard with a knife and a gun. Throw the knife, watch it fly through the air. Now fire the gun and tell me you can follow the bullet as it travels.

Bullets would be largely instantaneous in terms of their travel time within an area as small as corral. Knives won't be.

Besides, this is a game. People know knives travel slower through the air than bullets do, and they expect an animation for it since it's visible in real life.

Also, any reaction delay needn't have anything to do with round time, delaying the execution of a given order with some undefined measure of time is unrelated to the subsequent 'rate-of-fire'. An effective, if non-RPG, example can be seen in the pseudo real-time wargame Combat Mission where reaction delay varies between 5-20 seconds, depending on troop experience. No, I'm not suggesting that length for a one-character RPG. :)

A round would exist regardless since it's a mathematically timed model. How many actions can only player do in the amount of time to where there is a evenly divisible amount of seconds between the two. That would be a "round".

Since real time combat requires actions to happen when the animation is ready for them, you'll already have some delay in there. Factoring in even more delay for slower people would create problems. Balance problems would be a big one if you didn't limit the number of actions allowed within that given round time. You'd end up having the speed determination factors being more powerful than anything else.

I can easily see a cRPG combat system in real time (preferably pausable, but that's not required) with appropriately used reaction times. If you'll allow a bit of imaginative narrative from an RPG not currently in existance:

A, a slow and cumbersome brute who wields a mean greatsword, is doing his utmost to skewer the nimble and rapier-equipped B. A was just issued orders to bull-rush B, which is to be followed by a series of brutal overhead chops. This order will take, say, a second to register. The second B notices A bearing down on him, he is ordered to jump away and follow up with a quick thrust. B has lesser 'lag', barely avoids A's lunge and gets to deliver a painful sting to A's backside as he blindly thunders past.

Again, you're forgetting that all these actions are based on the frame rate of the sprites themself. Even 3D, with skeletal animation, is limited to frames references per given time period. The only difference in the 3D instance is that you have smoother transistion.

That ultra fast rapier guy is still limited to what speed can be visibly done. It's still going to take a few ticks for his sword to thrust or parry. If the slower guy is that much slower, you're going to have the problem with him looking like he's going in slow motion. Therein lies the problem with real time action in a CRPG.

Consequently, if you ever wanted to know why there's missing missing feats from real time 3E D&D CRPGs, that's precisely why. You can only have so many actions in a time frame because those actions are tied to their animations in real time.

Finally: "It [Turn-based] can allow a specialist character to actually be magnificent in his area of specialty, which wouldn't be possible in real time without a hell of a lot of fudging"? Where do you draw this conclusion? Even assuming you are right and the animation factors of real-time does preclude reaction advantages, something I highly doubt, there's no inherent property of real-time that makes a particular brand of character somehow less 'magnificent'.

If you doubt the simple concept of having actions and animations strongly tied together in real time due to it's nature, then perhaps you need to think more about what's going on in real time combat. Before you can fire an arrow, you need to have the sprite go through the frames for the bow being fired. You can't just fire the arrow and then have the sprite or model draw back the bow string. Likewise, you can't have the enemy fall over dead and then have the avatar swing his sword.
 

Sol Invictus

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The problem with having a mag7 RPG in real time is that real time will rely too much on the player's own reflexes than the character's. As such, the game's design will have to compensate by giving 'additional damage' for every attack made by the protagonist, and make him take far less damage than the enemy does for every hit he receives. It would therefore be extremely unrealistic.

After all, it's the character who's magnificent, not you. The game should depict that, and having it in turn based is the only way to properly do it.

The fast knife thrower can simply have an extremely high initiative statistic (as seen in Fallout and Disciples 2), in order to launch the first strike.

Likewise, you can't have the enemy fall over dead and then have the avatar swing his sword.

You can, in an anime. :roll: Of course, those cartoons really suck, so I don't have to mention that.
 

Xerophyte

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Re: Counter-point

Movies lack something games have to have, a means of controlling the action. Movies also have those wonderful editting techniques where they can shoot the action from different angles and splice them together in such a manner as it looks like the knife throwing character is actually faster than the gunslinger.

You're confusing movie magic with reality here.

Non-point, old boy. There is nothing preventing the director in the shot described above from showing both actors, without "movie magic", he just chooses not to as it is more effective. I've certainly seen plenty of western duels with both shooter and shotee in camera.

Let's play Mr. Wizard then. Go out in the back yard with a knife and a gun. Throw the knife, watch it fly through the air. Now fire the gun and tell me you can follow the bullet as it travels.

Bullets would be largely instantaneous in terms of their travel time within an area as small as corral. Knives won't be.

Besides, this is a game. People know knives travel slower through the air than bullets do, and they expect an animation for it since it's visible in real life.

Would you, mayhap, like to count the time it takes for a well-tossed, light, balanced object to travel the 15 or so meters that tend to be averege fighting distance in RPGs? It's not an amount of time that's exactly prohibitive to picture the duel situation described above. I think you're overstating the required slowness of the knife by more than a tad. But, seeing as how we've hardly got the equipment to toss up a 3D renderer and start displaying knives in flight, might I suggest an agreement to disagree here? I see no reason for a knife to travel slower in a game than in aforementioned western. You do.

A round would exist regardless since it's a mathematically timed model. How many actions can only player do in the amount of time to where there is a evenly divisible amount of seconds between the two. That would be a "round".

Entirely true. What I said was that it's unrelated to any delay in reaction. The combatants start doing things with different rapidity depending on how fast they react. This has nothing to do with how fast they then continue to do it.

Since real time combat requires actions to happen when the animation is ready for them, you'll already have some delay in there. Factoring in even more delay for slower people would create problems. Balance problems would be a big one if you didn't limit the number of actions allowed within that given round time. You'd end up having the speed determination factors being more powerful than anything else.

Again, I don't think this would be anywhere near as big a problem as you envision, given an even moderately efficient skeletal animation system. As I don't know much about the issue and certainly haven't got any good examples to back me up (except oft-mentioned Combat Mission, which does not count much), I'll leave it at that until you can present me with irrefutable expert opinions that my ideas are impossible to include and not just personal opinion.

[Note - Yay! I invented good examples lower down in the document!]

Again, you're forgetting that all these actions are based on the frame rate of the sprites themself. Even 3D, with skeletal animation, is limited to frames references per given time period. The only difference in the 3D instance is that you have smoother transistion.

That ultra fast rapier guy is still limited to what speed can be visibly done. It's still going to take a few ticks for his sword to thrust or parry. If the slower guy is that much slower, you're going to have the problem with him looking like he's going in slow motion. Therein lies the problem with real time action in a CRPG.

Again, I think you're overstating the significance of animation delays and I'll leave it at that.

Consequently, if you ever wanted to know why there's missing missing feats from real time 3E D&D CRPGs, that's precisely why. You can only have so many actions in a time frame because those actions are tied to their animations in real time.

Point conceded. But only one of those has been 3D, and they neglected to bring in any extra animations for the speciality feats (that I noticed, at least). For a counter-example, see Asheron's Call 2. The game is using a skill system akin to that of Diablo 2 and they have specific animations for each and every combat skill. Yet they can still include a heavy element of timing, with certain skills being most efficient when queued up one after the other and especially during a certain vulnerability phase the enemies enter every once in a while. This is very similar to what I'm proposing - a system where the player queues up actions and attempts to time them to what he sees his opponent doing to acchieve maximum effect.

. . . Just thought of an even better example, really :) My poor, ill-reviewed Grandia II also has a combat system which was pseudo real-time and had a strong element of prediciting enemy movement and queueing up the correct counter-moves. Agreed, you had to have the aid of a few interface bars, which is not exactly perfect, but the only difference between it and what I'm proposing is that I want orders to be given at any time with a slight delay in execution, rather than only being able to give them when my battle meter has filled up. Regardless, both games are very close to doing what you claim to be impossible.

If you doubt the simple concept of having actions and animations strongly tied together in real time due to it's nature, then perhaps you need to think more about what's going on in real time combat. Before you can fire an arrow, you need to have the sprite go through the frames for the bow being fired. You can't just fire the arrow and then have the sprite or model draw back the bow string. Likewise, you can't have the enemy fall over dead and then have the avatar swing his sword.

Now you're reading more stupidity in my post than even I could have put there. No, I don't doubt that actions and animations are strongly tied together. They are in life too, I have yet to be able to dodge punches in karate practice after they hit me. I just don't see this connection as a gargantuan hurdle on the way to combat variety goodness, like you're obviously doing. I've played several (oh, fine, two and a wargame) somewhat real-time games which did an excellent job of including many of the elements of timing and reaction I'm talking about with little effect to the pacing of the combat. Certainly less than the highly artifical pacing pure Igo-Ugo turn-based creates.


The problem with having a mag7 RPG in real time is that real time will rely too much on the player's own reflexes than the character's. As such, the game's design will have to compensate by giving 'additional damage' for every attack made by the protagonist, and make him take far less damage than the enemy does for every hit he receives. It would therefore be extremely unrealistic.

After all, it's the character who's magnificent, not you. The game should depict that, and having it in turn based is the only way to properly do it.

You queue up actions. Something happens that make you wish to change them, causing you to hit space. Unless you're currently having an epileptic seisure, that should be a rather undifficult action even for the most unattentive player in the midst of fierce combat.

Mmm . . . 3.30 AM. Xero sleep now.


P.S: Oy, Exit! There's anime and there's other anime. It's not like it's all written, drawn and voiced by exactly the same team of no-brained monkeys. There are several different teams, and some of them sometimes know what they're doing. D.S
 

Sheriff_Fatman

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I liked S_P's analogy. It highlights one of the main deficiences of realtime very nicely. Good choice of film, too ;)

To restate what I got from it, without the analogy: realtime makes some physical attributes redundant. Any initiative/reaction speed attributes are superceded by those of the player, and any accuracy/coordination related attributes are supercede by the player's mouse skills. For a combat-based game, this would relegate the only point in the inclusion of dex type scores as determining what weapon your character can use.

I would say, though, that the same problem exists for other attributes, outside of the combat system. Sensory skills, like perception are always in competition with the user's ability to spot things for themselves and intelligence and wisdom have always been contentious in RPGs.

I'm going to make a half-hearted attempt to use a spagettit western analogy to try to highlight the downsides of turn-based:

You know that scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, where you've got the three guys, and the camera switches to one and shows sweat running down his forehead, then switches to another to show him frown, then switches back to show the other guy narrowing his eyes? Several minutes later, after a lot more camera switching, something actually happens.

Although it works pretty well in the film (in a cheesy kind of way), I don't like the way TB creates this effect in a CRPG. You moving your char towards the fight, the enemy moves, you take a pot shot that misses, the enemy moves closer, etc, etc (in a squad-based game or a RPG where you control your companions, this effect is even worse, but let's not go there).
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Re: Counter-point

Xerophyte said:
Non-point, old boy. There is nothing preventing the director in the shot described above from showing both actors, without "movie magic", he just chooses not to as it is more effective. I've certainly seen plenty of western duels with both shooter and shotee in camera.

No, that is the point. They take the best possible camera angle to where it looks like the one who is supposed to win, did win. Regardless of the camera angle they use, after the *bang*, the actor that's supposed to die is going to flop over regardless.

There's a huge difference between saying something that you see in a movie is real time, therefore you can do it in real time in a game because the game has to follow a model and not a script. They just use "movie magic" to make that scene look as good as possible.

In a game, the bad guy isn't going to fall dead on cue, the second the good guy flinches. The bad guy's only going to die when his hit points reach zero. The bad guy also isn't going to hold off on pulling the trigger because he's not supposed to win because the movie script says he's not supposed to pull the trigger.

That's why I said you'd have to script it to work in real time in a game, because these events are too staged in a real time movie.

Would you, mayhap, like to count the time it takes for a well-tossed, light, balanced object to travel the 15 or so meters that tend to be averege fighting distance in RPGs? It's not an amount of time that's exactly prohibitive to picture the duel situation described above. I think you're overstating the required slowness of the knife by more than a tad. But, seeing as how we've hardly got the equipment to toss up a 3D renderer and start displaying knives in flight, might I suggest an agreement to disagree here? I see no reason for a knife to travel slower in a game than in aforementioned western. You do.

There's also a reason you see arrows flying through the air in games as well. It's visual feedback. Knives are relatively slow compared to bullets. You would expect to be able to see their travel time, like you'd expect to see an arrow fly. There is no ground for disagreement here. That's just the way things are. Knives fly visibly through the air because a human being can only put so much force behind them and they're heavier than bullets.

It's physics, Xero. Bullet from a gun has a tiny mass and a lot of impulse from the powder explosion. Throwing a heavier knife with less force won't be instantaneous travel. The knife is not travelling nearly as fast, nor is it teleporting in to the target.

Entirely true. What I said was that it's unrelated to any delay in reaction. The combatants start doing things with different rapidity depending on how fast they react. This has nothing to do with how fast they then continue to do it.

Apparently, you didn't get what I said. Even in this situation, you'd still have a "round". It would just be where the both the combatants actions were resolved at the same time. If you have a 6/10 of a second guy and a 4/10 of a second guy, a round would be 12/10s of a second. The 6/10s guy would be doing two actions per round and the 4/10s guy would be doing three actions. It still boils down to a round.

Again, I don't think this would be anywhere near as big a problem as you envision, given an even moderately efficient skeletal animation system. As I don't know much about the issue and certainly haven't got any good examples to back me up (except oft-mentioned Combat Mission, which does not count much), I'll leave it at that until you can present me with irrefutable expert opinions that my ideas are impossible to include and not just personal opinion.

I think I already covered skeletal animation in 3D. You're still going to have a number of keyframes per second which is pretty much like a sprite frame. Efficiency has nothing to do with this, you're still going to have to visibly present the action that resulted in the target taking damage to the player before the sword hits, the gun fires, the knife leaves the hand, and so on.

I fail to see why you'd need EXPERT IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE when this boils down to COMMON SENSE.

Point conceded. But only one of those has been 3D, and they neglected to bring in any extra animations for the speciality feats (that I noticed, at least). For a counter-example, see Asheron's Call 2. The game is using a skill system akin to that of Diablo 2 and they have specific animations for each and every combat skill. Yet they can still include a heavy element of timing, with certain skills being most efficient when queued up one after the other and especially during a certain vulnerability phase the enemies enter every once in a while. This is very similar to what I'm proposing - a system where the player queues up actions and attempts to time them to what he sees his opponent doing to acchieve maximum effect.

NWN does basically the same thing, because it has fixed rounds. If the combat model tells the enemy that it misses, it tells the enemy to swing and the player model to block. However, when you factor in that all these animations take time to do, you can only do so many of these actions within that given allotted time. Why? Because the animations take time to do!

That's the point! You have to yield to those animations before you can do the delivery of damage.

You queue up actions. Something happens that make you wish to change them, causing you to hit space. Unless you're currently having an epileptic seisure, that should be a rather undifficult action even for the most unattentive player in the midst of fierce combat.

You still have the problems with simultaneous actions/animations here, as well as consistancy. Pausing doesn't remove that effect.
 

Xerophyte

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And the debate rages on . . .

This is getting somewhat confusing, so I'll attempt to break your argument down a bit. Hit me if I miss one.


1: Camerawork, the movie can choose what is most effective.

True, naturally, but I still don't feel that this proves much. If a movie scene is displayed in a way so that events that obviously do not stand to reason take place (say, the gunman aims backwards and shoots, followed by a cut to his target in front of him who falls down dead), the viewers notice this. Any potential movie scene has to at least be probable imagined from a variety of viewpoints for people to accept it. The effectful camera trickery is effectful, not needed.


2: Script vs. model, the scripted events of a movie cannot always be emulated well by a model-driven game.

Conceded, in part. A game is limited in this regard. However, a model for a game can, animation difficulties nonwithstanding (tackling those in a bit), be written that allows the Magnificent Seven scenario above to be depicted by making the agile character throw his knife and have it connect a CPU-cycle or so before his opponent gets to fire his gun. Heck, that's not even difficult to create a model for, unlike some other potential movie sequences (like, say, effective conversation). You do not have to script it by mere virtue of it being real-time.


3, a throwing knife must travel slower than a bullet.

Yes, it must. But I doubt it must do so by the amount your picturing. As neither of us likely have the time to create a knife-throwing animator to see exactly how slow we must have it travel not to think it unrealistic (which is nicely subjective, as well), I suggest we agree to disagree for the moment.


4, reaction time and rouds.

I don't really think we're disagreeing on anything here. If a character with reaction time 6/10 s and a rate of fire at 2/10 s faces a character with a reaction time of 4/10 s and a rate of fire at 4/10 s, you can either say that we're working on a 12/10 s round system where the first character does 6 attacks per round, save for round one where the first 3 are lost and the second does 3 per round save for round one where the first is lost or you can say that one character starts attacking 6/10 seconds after being told so, doing 5 attacks per second and the other starts 4/10 seconds after being told, doing 2½ attacks per second. Since I was using Combat Mission in the initial example, which employs a strict round time of one minute between order-giving sessions, I've possibly also been a bit conflicting in my use of the term 'round'.

As for factoring in more delay before given orders take effect somehow making speed determination factors more powerful than anything else, I still don't quite follow your line of thought. It's a balancing issue, like anything else, and I find it hard to see anything that makes it inherently impossible to balance.


5, animation time matters.

Yes, it does, unlike in turn-based. In real life, too, the time I take to perform an action has an effect on the time it takes for the result of my action to be seen, I am perfectly aware of this. No need to get condescending just because you're loosing the argument. :p

What I have issue with is your fervent belief that computer animation is somehow incapable of adequately portraying actions in a believeable timeframe. I can think of a number of games that have succesfully done this. Arcade fighting games have featured fluid 3D combat animation for the past 5 years or so. If you want PC RPG examples, try Revenant - it too has a strong focus on linking attacks together and pulled of animating this with little trouble. Naturally, you can always have so many actions in a given time frame - this is the same as turns not being of infinite length in turn-based games. Varying the animation speed of a given character motion - as opposed to awarding more Time Units in turn-based - is not an impossible task by any stretch, it's been done in a multitude of games - including haste spells in Neverwinter Nights, for example.

Yes, pretty much all my examples are twitch games, but your issue was that the nature of real-time animation somehow makes it impossible to keep actions within a reasonable timeframe. This has been false for years.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Sheriff_Fatman said:
I'm going to make a half-hearted attempt to use a spagettit western analogy to try to highlight the downsides of turn-based:

You know that scene in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, where you've got the three guys, and the camera switches to one and shows sweat running down his forehead, then switches to another to show him frown, then switches back to show the other guy narrowing his eyes? Several minutes later, after a lot more camera switching, something actually happens.

Although it works pretty well in the film (in a cheesy kind of way), I don't like the way TB creates this effect in a CRPG. You moving your char towards the fight, the enemy moves, you take a pot shot that misses, the enemy moves closer, etc, etc (in a squad-based game or a RPG where you control your companions, this effect is even worse, but let's not go there).

Are you suggesting allowing the player to spend a turn to just let sweat drip off him for intimidation purposes?

Xerophyte said:
2: Script vs. model, the scripted events of a movie cannot always be emulated well by a model-driven game.

Conceded, in part. A game is limited in this regard. However, a model for a game can, animation difficulties nonwithstanding (tackling those in a bit), be written that allows the Magnificent Seven scenario above to be depicted by making the agile character throw his knife and have it connect a CPU-cycle or so before his opponent gets to fire his gun. Heck, that's not even difficult to create a model for, unlike some other potential movie sequences (like, say, effective conversation). You do not have to script it by mere virtue of it being real-time.

Just a CPU cycle or two? You know that's .0001 milliseconds average these days, right? Regardless of that, a CPU cycle isn't going to cut it for this. You have to think in terms of frame cycles for animations.

You'd have thought the whole frame cycle thing would have sunk in by now. :roll:

3, a throwing knife must travel slower than a bullet.

Yes, it must. But I doubt it must do so by the amount your picturing. As neither of us likely have the time to create a knife- throwing animator to see exactly how slow we must have it travel not to think it unrealistic (which is nicely subjective, as well), I suggest we agree to disagree for the moment.

Because you can't just have the knife thrower do his animation and have the guy instantly hit. There has to be a travel time for it. Get it through your thick skull.

Baseball pitchers, the really good ones, can throw a fast ball at 40 meters per second. If they're 15meters apart, you have 4/10 seconds travel time. At the typical 15 frames per second that most models and sprites animate at, that's 6 frames worth of animation time in addition to the number of frames it takes before the knife is even thrown.

That's the point here. You have to deal with the frame count of the sprites/models, travel times, and so forth to do it in real time. If you have to do this on a consistant basis, you're going to run in to problems.
 

Section8

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Although it works pretty well in the film (in a cheesy kind of way), I don't like the way TB creates this effect in a CRPG. You moving your char towards the fight, the enemy moves, you take a pot shot that misses, the enemy moves closer, etc, etc (in a squad-based game or a RPG where you control your companions, this effect is even worse, but let's not go there).

Let's not even think about the effects of trying to control more than 1 character in real time, either.

I think what you've highlighted is actually one of TB combat's strengths. Drama. If you are taking potshots and missing at a fast approaching enemy that has some kind of insane melee attack, for example an HR Giger alien, or a 40K Genestealer. Then chances are you are going to be sweating on each and every shot, and as your last chance to get a successful shot comes around, you can bet you'll be thinking "Oh god, please let this shot hit!"

Drama. Either fictional xenomorph in the above example approaching in real time is going to be rapidly overrunning you, and you'll be fighting against the interface to actually hit it with your mouse cursor. And if it's a pausable system, then you're going to click on it once, and watch as your character takes pot shots, and you don't have time to register any kind of emotional reaction in the few seconds a combat resolution is going to take.

Animation rates

A decent animation system, allows scaling of the rate at which the animation plays. however, this incurs extra CPU cost. Slowing down an animation is probably going to be roughly equivalent in terms of processor when compared to the original animation rate, because you are probably going to want to ramp up the interpolation in order to keep the animation smooth. However, playing an animation at twice the speed is going to have double the processor hit, which may not be an issue, depending on how much you scale the animations. But bear in mind, you may be simultaneously scaling the animations of a large number of models, whereas in TB, you will only ever have one character animating.

Animation rate is, in my opinion a better way of abstracting action points in a RT system than systems like what we used in Fallout Tactics. It doesn't have an almost instant use of all current APs when entering combat, and then a slow regen, it's a constant rate, which is much better.

However, once you start having characters with a big disparity in movement speed, or certain actions happening too fast or too slow, you are taking away a great deal of the realism, and "it's more realistic!" seems to be one of the most common catch crys for RT combat systems.

Projectiles

Projectiles cause all sorts of issues in real time. If they are too slow, then they stand a big chance of missing their intended target, which has since moved. This may be realistic, but if chance to hit is already factored in if the knife is on target, then the knife thrower is at a disadvantage. If you precalculate the success of the attack, then you end up with the knife thrower bending it like some english soccer batty-boy, which also dispenses with some plausibility.

Additionally, the flight time needs to be factored into the time it takes to play the knife throw animation. Which means you need to consider an average, or expected throwing distance, and work the time so that a throwing action, and the knife travelling through mid air to reach that point is balanced against a fire gun animation, proportional to skill and effectiveness. Then the range itself needs to be considered. Does the falloff for a chance to hit drop off slower for the knife since the thrower is already disadvantaged by how long it takes? Do you enforce that the total flight time is constant, so the knife speed varies according to range? Or do you fudge it some other way?

Reaction and Delays

The approach you have mentioned about the initial delay is an effective simulation of the concept of initiative, sequence, etc. However there is also the issue of interface latency. If I'm 0.6 seconds late in clicking to attack, then the delay is pointless. You could add an auto pause on sight of enemy, but that's going to annoy the hell out of the player for any battles where interface isn't an issue. Plus, what happens once you unpause? You just sit back and watch some knives get thrown? what if you want to try and disable both hands first and then go for the eyes? then you are going to be constantly pausing, in which case it may as well be TB, or if you've got hotkeys for locational targetting, then once again, it's back onto the player to sufficiently time the location switching during the swift animation times. And if the game is reflex based, then why have any kind of aritificial abstraction of reactions or agility, and put that in the hands of the player.
 

chrisbeddoes

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AXXXXXXXX !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -!@#$%^

In turn based we have INITIATIVE.

( One of the reasons that i love FALLOUT)


In real time we could also have initiative


Like for example

We now have peace mode and combat mode.

But if sane game devs follow my advice ( CB inflates his big ego ) we could have

a) Peace mode , b)Combat mode without lock on enemy c) Combat mode with lock on enemy.

If 2 enemies were seen on screen on real time the computer would compute the initiatiives of the 2 opponents and prohibitt the opponent with the weakest initiative to go from combat without lock to enemy to combat with lockon to enemy for a certain amount of time.

That time frame could well be 2-4 sec if an opponent is much weaker that another as a result from fear , inexpirience and say only 1 sec if an opponent is slightly weaker than another and its only a case of slower waiting time.
 

Sheriff_Fatman

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Section8 said:
I think what you've highlighted is actually one of TB combat's strengths. Drama. If you are taking potshots and missing at a fast approaching enemy.

No, it is not a strength, relatively speaking. The enemy advances in turns, the time between which can be as long as the player needs to consider his options. This compares to real time, where the enemy advances very rapdily, putting the player under a certain amount of pressure.

In both systems, the drama depriciates quickly. After the first few times you've fought mercs, radscorpions, bands of orcs, whatever, you pretty much know what the outcome will be, so you there is very little suspense or exictement. In those situations, I just want the shortest route to the end of the combat.

S_P said:
Are you suggesting allowing the player to spend a turn to just let sweat drip off him for intimidation purposes?

Ha ha. No, my reference was analogous, not literal. What I am suggesting is that many TB fights include too many turns where progress towards resolution seems insufficient.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Sheriff_Fatman said:
No, it is not a strength, relatively speaking. The enemy advances in turns, the time between which can be as long as the player needs to consider his options. This compares to real time, where the enemy advances very rapdily, putting the player under a certain amount of pressure.

In both systems, the drama depriciates quickly. After the first few times you've fought mercs, radscorpions, bands of orcs, whatever, you pretty much know what the outcome will be, so you there is very little suspense or exictement. In those situations, I just want the shortest route to the end of the combat.

No, I agree with Gareth on the drama thing, because it goes at a slower and tactical pace. In real time, it's often more than a second or two, followed by the display of You're Dead! In turn based, you have the time to consider your options. You have the time to weigh out how you should spend your allotted time during your turn for the round.

Consider the case in Avernum when you defile the Dark Altar in the Nephilim fortress, and the two mung demons appear to take their vengaence. You're in the altar pit, and they're just outside the pit. The combat round starts..

  • ROUND ONE

    You don't know your party is in grave danger yet. You move your fighter(s) towards the demons because they get initiative due to their higher dexterities. The demons go next, because they have the next highest dexterities. One summons a large mess of critters to help kill you. The other casts Slow on your party. At this point, you may think you're in for a decent fight because the Mung Demons have powerful spells, but your magic people haven't gotten their turn yet.

    So, your priest gets his turn. You figure that you should augment your fighters with a War Blessing, so they can handle the demon better. You augment your best fighter. It's your mage's turn now, so you cast Ice Lances, since it's a multitarget spell. You wipe out the Mung Demon's summoned army. Good for you, but you also notice the spell has no effect on the Mung Demon. Uh oh.
  • ROUND TWO

    Your fighter(s) turns. You are in range to run up and smack the Mung Demon closest to you. Because you have a War Blessing, you do massive damage to the demon, but it only reduces his life bar about a quarter of it. Hmmm.. This thing has lots of hit points.

    Your second fighter has a bow, so you fire an arrow at the damaged Mung Demon. It either misses because Mung Demons have a good dexterity, or it hits and does little damage because Mung Demons are fairly resistant to damage. Again.. Uh oh. Well, now you know.

    The Mung Demons take their turn. The farther one summons up a horde of Nephilim warriors this time. The one closest to you casts multitarget Lightning, which drops your fighters' hit points to about half, and nearly kills your priest and mage. Now you're getting the idea that you're in trouble!

    So, you have your priest cast Mass Healing to bring up the hit points of your party. This is a no brainer since it's either that or die.

    Your mage is now forced in to another Ice Lances to deal with the Nephilim warriors that were summoned. It kills most of them, and it somewhat damages the other demon. You now know that not all Mung Demons are alike. Yay!
  • ROUND THREE

    Your blessed fighter smacks the demon again. You kind of wish he was Hasted, but the mage was busy and you don't want to waste a turn drinking that potion. The Mung Demon is down to half his life bar.

    Your second fighter puts away his bow and moves towards the other demon.

    The Mung Demon that your fighter is attacking gets it's turn and it decides to claw you... four times. So, now your best fighter is dead. You just learned a valuable lesson. Mung Demons are much better in melee than your level 5 fighter, whom you blessed.

    The other Mung Demon casts Ice Lances on your party, which reduces the Priest and Mage back down to 0 HPs, which isn't death until it's -1 or lower, and your last fighter down to 50% of his.

    The surviving Nephilim wariors enter the pit.

    Well, it's time for mass curing again from the Priest. Hey, look at his mana go down. You can't keep this up much longer.

    Your mage, since it doesn't have to cast Ice Lances to remove an entire horde this time, decides to cast Fire Bolt on the closest demon that the first Ice Lances did nothing to. You figure you'll clean up the Nephilim next turn. Bam! Because he was injured, the Fire Bolt kills him. YAY! You've just had your first victory. The score is now Party - 1, Mung Demons - 1 in terms of kills.
  • ROUND FOUR

    Your last fighter closes the distance and smacks the Mung Demon for about 1/5 of his life bar. He's weaker and not blessed.

    The Mung Demon casts some multitarget fire spell which totally screws up your party. They're all riding zero except the fighter, which is at 4HP.

    The Nephilim close on the mage, and kill the mage. There goes your best horde killer.

    Your priest casts Mass Healing again to countermand the damage. You know this is your last time casting this. You're really, really in trouble.
  • ROUND FIVE

    Your fighter smacks the Mung Demon again. There's really no point in it, but it feels good. Last act of defiance and all.

    The Mung Demon claws him to death.

    The Nephilim close on the Priest, the last member of your party, and slaughter him.

    Welcome to the You have died screen.

Now, in real time, there wouldn't have been much more than a few blinks of the eye, and a death screen. Even with a pause, there's two many things to deal with there. You'd have been trounced with very little time to even think about what you're doing and what's going on around you.

There'd be no drama at all.. Only, "WTF! I'm dead! I couldn't do anything!"

Moreover, because of real time combat, you don't know whether it was your tactical approach, assuming you even had time to do one, or whether you clicked fast enough, paused soon enough, and so on.
 

Sheriff_Fatman

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Some people might say death is a little more dramatic than a carefully orchestrated victory.

Let's not get hung up on the drama thing. I think we must be working with differing definitions of it. It's probably my fault for usinga dodgy example.
 

Xerophyte

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I am back. Yay.

A to the discussion unrelated notice: You can eliminate the entire problem of calculating projectile trajectories compared to eventual enemy location by implementing wego turn-based, where both sides give orders for a section of time which the computer then calculates and displays in real-time. This would allow the projectile to always perfectly predict his path, thus making any hit or miss look entirely unstupid. There's the "problem" of your opponent being able to fire while your projectile is in the air, if one now wishes to view that as an a problem (not saying that anyone here does). But, since I'm arguing for the side of real-time, Wego is out. Ah, well.


Er-hum, er-hum. Drama is a point, but a very subjective one. I found UFO to be the most dramatic game I've ever played for that reason, but since the type of one-shot-kills gameplay that made UFO tense is just annoying in most every cRPG I've come across I can't say I've found any turn-based RPGs very dramatic. Certainly not more so than watching the fight develop in a believable real-time fashion. If you now think drama is a high point of TB then I can hardly claim that you are wrong, but that goes two ways and the issue is certainly not going to tide the issue of which is "best" in any direction without severe surveying.

And, animation. Again. As I've pointed out several times, Saint, I've no problem seeing that animation needs to happen. Insulting me isn't going to make you any more convincing to anyone, least of all to the persons you're supposed to be debating with. Now, your current point seems to be that the knife has something of about ½-1 second of travel time. Yes, it does. I've never contested this. What I am saying is that I cannot see how this would create any serious problems with the game. You might have to diverge from reality a bit by awarding damage to a knife that appeared to have missed by a meter or having it curve like the aforementioned football - that's still a lot less of a shock to any suspension of disbelief than having the characters politely wait for their turn whilst being hammered to goo.

Finally, human reaction time. Part of the problem can be aided by auto-pausing, somewhat annoying, especially in an RPG that is combat intensive (ie: not BG) but less so in one that instead features short-but-dangerous battles (ie: most of Fallout). Secondly, action queuing, which isn't entirely uncommon in more strategic RT games these days, will nicely eliminate any problems stemming from wanting to do several specific actions after eachother. What's left is a human's inability to instantly react to unexpected situations. This can be partially countered by simply penalising a computer somewhat in it's reaction speed compared to the human, but I won't state that the problem is thus eliminated: it is one inherent to RT combat. But one must also bear in mind that there is a positive side to having a focus on human reaction time, there's an added incentive to pay attention to what's happening in your surroundings - something which can go a long way to immersing the player in the game.

From what you're saying, the problems pausable RT inflicts on cRPGs is that it will invariably produce a slight unrealistic effect from projectile hits and misses and possible lack of syncronization in animation speed, as well as add human reaction time as a player-based factor on combat. The last one is even subjective as a problem - a number of people feel that human reaction time should have an effect in cRPGs, just as human intelligence does - but I'll list it since I personally feel that it shouldn't.

Turn-based, on the other hand, involves sacrificing a great deal of familiarity and immersion as well as some of the player's concentration for the, to me, comparably minor improvement of not having the player's reaction time be a factor in compat effectiveness. Suffice to say that chosing TB does not seem to be the rational choice.
 

Anonymous

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As a side note, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate being able to read a passionate debate of issues, while esoteric to much of the rest of the world, nonetheless of great intrest to me <i>sans flames</i>. Keep up the enjoyable debating, gents. This, along with S_P's honest reviews, is proving RPG Codex to be the CRPG site I've been waiting years for!

Thanks!
 

Section8

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No, it is not a strength, relatively speaking. The enemy advances in turns, the time between which can be as long as the player needs to consider his options. This compares to real time, where the enemy advances very rapdily, putting the player under a certain amount of pressure.

I don't buy that. Think about the Matrix, where Neo leans back and the whole bullet time thing happens. Compare that to when a clip of bullets is unloaded at an agent, and you see several blurred impressions of the agent dodging and ducking around. Which creates a more dramatic effect?

I'll definitely concede that it's entirely possible to react to an action sequence, but there's no time to consider it, which is what I consider dramatic. It's still the same situation relatively speaking, a character with lots of APs can quite easily be considered to be advanancing rapidly, but instead of the pressure that player feels as a result of the interface, it's much more considered. The player still knows they're in deep trouble, but that's purely due to the gameplay, not because they're fighting the interface.

In both systems, the drama depriciates quickly. After the first few times you've fought mercs, radscorpions, bands of orcs, whatever, you pretty much know what the outcome will be, so you there is very little suspense or exictement. In those situations, I just want the shortest route to the end of the combat.

Which is why cookie cut monsters and encounters are bad, but I'd say the problem is worse in RT systems. RT systems rely on the outcome being fairly clear cut. In MMORPGs you check to see what something "cons" before you attack it. In most RT systems, it's expected that the character has very little choice in the actions they can perform against an enemy, because a diverse range of actions is hard to interface with in RT. So things such as called shots are generally nerfed or non-existent, and major variable factors are also watered-down. If you were playing a RT game and you critically failed an attack causing you to drop your weapon, it's game over. In a TB system you can have a wide range of chaotic factors that require the player to rethink strategies, readjust themselves, and can tip combat in the favour of any constituent. Because TB gives the player time to react to such occurances, they are valid gameplay facets. Even damage yields and chance-to-hit in RT need to have narrow ranges of random values, because combat needs to be predictable, which is another weakness.

You can eliminate the entire problem of calculating projectile trajectories compared to eventual enemy location by implementing wego turn-based, where both sides give orders for a section of time which the computer then calculates and displays in real-time. This would allow the projectile to always perfectly predict his path, thus making any hit or miss look entirely unstupid. There's the "problem" of your opponent being able to fire while your projectile is in the air, if one now wishes to view that as an a problem (not saying that anyone here does). But, since I'm arguing for the side of real-time, Wego is out. Ah, well.

"Wego" turn based is phase based, with a simultaneous resolution phase, and in my opinion is probably the best way to present combat, provided it has a couple of things.

  • Opportunities - I want the ability to order a player to "look for an opening" and as such it should be one of the actions I can issue to my character(s). By discretely specifying when the player wants an interupt to happen, a system such as this allows characters with some form of advantage to exploit that advantage. If my character is holding a gun at the ready, but any targets @ the start of the round are hidden behind cover, and hence not valid, then I'm at a disadvantage by being exposed. However, by specifying that I want my character to look for targets within a certain vision arc, during a certain portion of round time, the advantage is back in my hands. I'm watching a specific point, waiting for a character to pop his head out, and when he does, I get to re-evaluate my actions within the time frame I specified.
  • Non-Automation - Any kind of re-evaluation of actions during the resolution phase should be able to be controlled by me, as a player. If my character is moving to what has become an occupied location, then the system should throw an exception - "Cannot reach location. Take Action?" and if I care enough, I can alter what that character does, otherwise the AI can simply move that character to the nearest point.
  • AI player simulation - The AI is in effect using the same interface as the player, so that it has the same kind of actions as me, and doesn't do a whole bunch of cheaty things on the fly during the resolution phase.

Ideally, I'd like to have a system with multiple "tracks" for actions, such as movement and attacking, so I can shoot on the run, run and look for an opportunity to shoot, run and attack blindly at whatever I'm running from, but that's another issue altogether. It's something that is simulated quite easily in TB, but never happens in RT systems, due to animation restriction, and interface problems.

Er-hum, er-hum. Drama is a point, but a very subjective one. I found UFO to be the most dramatic game I've ever played for that reason, but since the type of one-shot-kills gameplay that made UFO tense is just annoying in most every cRPG I've come across I can't say I've found any turn-based RPGs very dramatic.

Definitely agreed on that one. I've been playing UFO:EU recently for about the billionth time, and it still has that. However, in the original Fallout, fighting against some of the nastier enemies, such as deathclaws or super mutants offered similar tension. There was still the impending doom of something that was going to rip you apart very quickly, there just wasn't the hesitation on every move into the open that UFO has.

Suspension of Disbelief

I realise this is not an easy point to clearly contest. To me, suspension of disbelief works on a few different levels. In a FPS game, I am very attentive toward suspension of disbelief. I can't stand Deus Ex and it's circle strafing enemies, because there's not too many humans I know that can swivel their hips 90 degrees either way independent of their spine, and so when I see something that is supposedly human doing that, it ruins the effect.

However, when it comes to RPGs, suspension of disbelief comes in the form of world consistency. If everything in the world behaves consistently when compared to it's counterparts, and societies seem to have some form of infrastructure, then generally I'm pretty happy. My mind also tends to rationalise TB as a set length of time, in which all characters perform what would normally be simultaneous actions sequentially. I find this no more disruptive to suspension of disbelief than watching a character perform actions at 6 second intervals. In fact, I find it less disruptive, because it bears no resemblance to any kind of expectation of reality.

To analogize - If I'm playing a platform shooter, I'm not particularly offended by a character that can jump 10 feet in the air, because I have no prior expectations of what side-scrolling reality is. However, if I'm playing a FPS and I shoot a character only to find they are invincible, that is damaging to suspension of disbelief for a couple or reasons.

Firstly, FPS games tend to try and simulate reality, at least to a certain extent, and I expect that shooting would hurt just about anything, unless there some obvious game device that indicates why that character shouldn't be taking damage, such as a forcefield, or the fact that they are made from pure titanium.

Secondly, if everything else I've tried to shoot has been damaged by me, then something that is invincible is inconsistent, and doesn't obey the rules of the game world. In order to effectively simulate something you need solid, unbreakable rules, no matter how simple or complex the system is, and that plays a large part in suspension of disbelief, for me personally.

I don't necessarily expect every game or game world, to reflect reality, so that plays less of a role than a game world being consistent within itself. If everything is an alternate reality behaves in a fashion I can familarise myself with, it's believable, and that goes for TB too.

Finally, human reaction time. Part of the problem can be aided by auto-pausing, somewhat annoying, especially in an RPG that is combat intensive (ie: not BG) but less so in one that instead features short-but-dangerous battles (ie: most of Fallout).

Auto-pausing I feel is pretty much redundant. If you want any form of complexity to the system, auto-pausing is going to be a regular occurance, which begs the question "Why bother?" TB offers the same, but also provides a logical progression through any combat situation. When you consider character levels being a measurable quantity, or even levels in a game such as Doom, you can see there's a constant reinforcment of progression. Imagine a character system without levelling of any kind, you just get gradually better at doing things, or a game like Doom with one big level, then you lose a lot of that sense of progress. There's absolutely no reason not to provide similar reinforcements for combat rounds. It definitely worked in UFO, where at times, making it to the next turn was an accomplishment, and because it's rationalised as a discrete value, the player begins to anticipate, and that's one of the strongest hooks a game can contain. There are games with very little gameplay value that are entirely founded upon anticipation of progression. They're called MMORPGs.

Secondly, action queuing, which isn't entirely uncommon in more strategic RT games these days, will nicely eliminate any problems stemming from wanting to do several specific actions after eachother.

Provided those actions are somewhat interesting, and something more than what the player could do in RT, I don't mind that sort of thing. However, if the action queue consists of "Kill this, then this, then this, and then this" then all it's doing is making the game a very passive experience.

What's left is a human's inability to instantly react to unexpected situations. This can be partially countered by simply penalising a computer somewhat in it's reaction speed compared to the human, but I won't state that the problem is thus eliminated: it is one inherent to RT combat.

I think that further accentuates the problem. if there's some kind of artificially latency, then faster players are even further advantaged. An autopause is a better solution, but see above.

But one must also bear in mind that there is a positive side to having a focus on human reaction time, there's an added incentive to pay attention to what's happening in your surroundings - something which can go a long way to immersing the player in the game.

Yet another reason why games such as Diablo are infinitely more interesting than something like Baldur's Gate. You have to pay attention. Even if the interaction is simple and fairly mindless, the reliance on player reaction can produce an enjoyable experience. Doom is purely reactionary. I never have time to think, so my mind has been conditioned to strafe when somehing launches a projectile at me, and anything with hitscan weapons I try to keep out of my line of sight unless I'm trying to shoot it. Because 95% of what I do in Doom is effectively unconscious, it's very immersive.

However, I don't think RPGs should be walking the same path as action games. I enjoy both, but for completely different reasons. I should also add that I really don't enjoy games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Dungeon Siege, because they take away that reflex/reaction challenge, but don't offer any kind of challenge as a substitute. They're very passive, and don't require either reflexes or intelligent thought, which makes them mindnumbing and dull. Most TB games offer a challenge to the strength of the mind, while RT games offer a challenge to the speed of the mind. RT+Pause is more of a challenge in the vein of trying to sit through daytime television.

From what you're saying, the problems pausable RT inflicts on cRPGs is that it will invariably produce a slight unrealistic effect from projectile hits and misses

Not entirely, I just hear the "RT is so much more realsitic!" argument so many times, that RT advocates seem to have a misplaced faith in realism. I don't think it's particularly important.

...possible lack of syncronization in animation speed, as well as add human reaction time as a player-based factor on combat.

As I've said above, I don't mind challenges based on player reactions, but they have no place in RPGs, which are much more of an intellectually stimulating pursuit. That and RT+Pause takes away this reflex challenge, without offering a mental challenge instead.

The last one is even subjective as a problem - a number of people feel that human reaction time should have an effect in cRPGs, just as human intelligence does - but I'll list it since I personally feel that it shouldn't.

I think human intelligence is a much more acceptable factor, as RPGs traditionally lend themselves to a more intellectual crowd. It's also a lot harder to factor intelligence out of any game, a reliance on reflexes is much easier to remove.

Turn-based, on the other hand, involves sacrificing a great deal of familiarity and immersion as well as some of the player's concentration for the, to me, comparably minor improvement of not having the player's reaction time be a factor in compat effectiveness. Suffice to say that chosing TB does not seem to be the rational choice.

I personally don't find the sequential actions damaging to immersion, because my expectations in that area differ. Additionally, I find TB forces the player to concentrate. A fully RT system will occupy the mind, but not at any real depth, and RT+pause doesn't require much in the way of attention and/or attention span. On top of this, there have been recent studies of the brain that point to games with little mental interaction leading to higher levels of aggression, inability to concentrate and permanent changes to brain wave emissions. Too much gaming without mental stimulation puts the brain into a permanent state of relaxation, which makes any kind of mental effort difficult. If the only games around to play are reflex based, then there's a lot of societal damage waiting to happen. TB is the saviour. :P
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Section8 said:
"Wego" turn based is phase based, with a simultaneous resolution phase, and in my opinion is probably the best way to present combat, provided it has a couple of things.

  • Opportunities - I want the ability to order a player to "look for an opening" and as such it should be one of the actions I can issue to my character(s). By discretely specifying when the player wants an interupt to happen, a system such as this allows characters with some form of advantage to exploit that advantage. If my character is holding a gun at the ready, but any targets @ the start of the round are hidden behind cover, and hence not valid, then I'm at a disadvantage by being exposed. However, by specifying that I want my character to look for targets within a certain vision arc, during a certain portion of round time, the advantage is back in my hands. I'm watching a specific point, waiting for a character to pop his head out, and when he does, I get to re-evaluate my actions within the time frame I specified.
  • Non-Automation - Any kind of re-evaluation of actions during the resolution phase should be able to be controlled by me, as a player. If my character is moving to what has become an occupied location, then the system should throw an exception - "Cannot reach location. Take Action?" and if I care enough, I can alter what that character does, otherwise the AI can simply move that character to the nearest point.
  • AI player simulation - The AI is in effect using the same interface as the player, so that it has the same kind of actions as me, and doesn't do a whole bunch of cheaty things on the fly during the resolution phase.

Ideally, I'd like to have a system with multiple "tracks" for actions, such as movement and attacking, so I can shoot on the run, run and look for an opportunity to shoot, run and attack blindly at whatever I'm running from, but that's another issue altogether. It's something that is simulated quite easily in TB, but never happens in RT systems, due to animation restriction, and interface problems.

Don't forget abstraction. Depending on the detail level of the tactical combat, this can prove to be the worst system for a CRPG.

Wasteland was phase based, and it worked really well because the combat was extremely abstract. You always saw the enemy, there was very little in the way of terrain use, line of sight, and various factors that you can do in a turn based CRPG without blind siding the player.

Case in point, there are two highly tactical phased based games I can think of, those being Robo-Sport by Maxis and Laser Squad Nemesis. They're both fine games, very fun. However, they're just tactical games where you can expect to lose units during the games. You'll lose some every time, assuming you're not cheating or playing with someone totally inept.

Because of the structures to move around in and the line of sight hiding, outcomes are highly unpredictable. Any time you move in to a new area, you have no idea what you're going to face so what you set up can be totally wrong for the situation. In essence, this system relies on you to program your moves for the round and then watch as your characters act them out.

Because doors are choke points, for example, your characters have to move through one at a time. If there are several enemies camping on the other side, you're programming your little guys to all march to their deaths as they travel through that door, no matter how cautious you go about it.
 

Sheriff_Fatman

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Section 8, I'm talking about the pressure the player feels through being forced to make quick decisions in a realtime system. In TB, I have time to have a sandwich, make a cup fo tea and take a wizz while I'm considering the possibilties for my next set of moves.

I'm not saying there is no pressure/excitement, but the pressure from being made to decide quickly is entirely missing.

I didn't get your Matrix example. Sorry, but I'm having trouble seeing how it translates to computer games. I realise I'm probably missing something.
 

Rosh

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Sheriff_Fatman said:
I'm not saying there is no pressure/excitement, but the pressure from being made to decide quickly is entirely missing.

Drama does not equal twitch gaming, it's a completely different issue.

Please leave the dichotomies in your pants from now on, for decency's sake.
 

Sheriff_Fatman

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Drama does not equate to anything simplistic. When Section 8 first used the term, I think he mainly meant suspense or possibly anticipation, but drama does not simply equate to those, either.

I think it is fair to say that excitement and pressure have their place in a dramatic situation, as do suspense and anticipation.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Sheriff_Fatman said:
Drama does not equate to anything simplistic. When Section 8 first used the term, I think he mainly meant suspense or possibly anticipation, but drama does not simply equate to those, either.

I think it is fair to say that excitement and pressure have their place in a dramatic situation, as do suspense and anticipation.

Drama certainly doesn't mean fast paced either. Considering how this thread started, I'd like to mention that one of the big motiffs of the spaghetti westerns are that when there's a lot of dramatic action, they actually switch to slow motion to portray the drama of the fight.

There is nothing dramatic about the pressure to have to click faster. As Section8 pointed out, that boils down to having to fight the interface to accomplish a victory in a fight rather than being focused on the fight with the enemies within the game itself. In fact, a lot of times, it boils down to being frastrating if you lose.

With turn based, if you lose a fight, it boils down to one of two things. Either your party isn't ready for that fight or something went wrong with your tactics.

With real time, you have those problems as well, but you also have the issues of did you click fast enough on the interface and/or did the AI automation of the characters do something stupid. That's why it's more frustrating. If you lose a fight in a real time CRPG, because there are more reasons as to why you lost. Maybe your tactic was sound, but you just didn't work the mouse fast enough. Maybe it was sound, but the pathfinding didn't work as well as required for it. Both of those really boil down to fighting the interface.

That's a fairly big problem in my opinion, since real time does present the problem of effective control, either in the form of having to click faster to do things or in the problem of having to automate some characters. Turn based really has neither of those problems. It's dramatic because you can gauge what's going on, and you have time to consider the consequences of everything.
 

Sheriff_Fatman

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I agree, faster clicking does not add to the sense of drama. Faster decision making does, though.

Interface issues are problematic in both turn based and realtime. A cumbersome interface can take turn based from being acceptably slow to being a tedious crawl.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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An interface in turn based can be a lot more cumbersome in turn based because you have time to use it. I agree though, I've seen lousy interfaces in both, but I know that lousy, overly complex interfaces in real time are a lot worse.

Then again, a problem with making really, really simple interface is that you might have to cut some options from the combat.
 

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