UFO Aftermath Wrap Report at IGN. Must see.

[Vault Dweller]

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/448/448644p1.html

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.

Yes, I like when someone simplifies aka dumbs down all these complicated games for me.

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

I also like when someone decides for me which mode I'd like to use.

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

Not another stupid "it's not realistic" argument.

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.

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!

It is actually much closer to turn-based games than to real-time.

Of course, we all know that RT with pause is actually TB combat in a nutshell

Well, that certainly explains why Aftermath sucked.

 

[Araanor]

It's depressing when devs are making these kind of arguments. One can only hope it bombed.

 

[Sol Invictus]

a dumb cretin wrote:
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

The fact that this idiot is virtually hinting that JA2 and X-Com are titles rife of 'bad design decisions' and putting his game up on a pedestal higher than the two best turn-based tactical games of all time makes me want to shrug in dismay at his intellectual cretnism, and subsequently piss on him.

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

Chess is played in turns, too, and it isn't because people don't mind the lack of realism, but because it adds strategy and tactical thinking into the game rather than thoughtless war form. Games aren't good inspite of Turn-Based mode, they're good precisely because they're turn-based!

Bottom line: Aftermath sucks, and the aftermath of aftermath sucks even more.

 

[Jed]

Oh, you've never played real-time chess? It's great fun. You just throw your pieces in your opponent's face until one of you gives up. My strategy--er, tactic--is to aim for the eyes! Much more realistic than pokey ol' turn-based chess. What a bore!

 

[Vault Dweller]

Oh, you've never played real-time chess? It's great fun. You just throw your pieces in your opponent's face until one of you gives up. My strategy--er, tactic--is to aim for the eyes! Much more realistic than pokey ol' turn-based chess. What a bore!

I just imagined such a game, "to aim for the eyes", lol

 

[Rosh]

Lead Designer = pretentious cocksucker.

 

[Human Shield]

Until a breakthrough in AI and/or controlling interface, turn-based is a more intelligent simulation of combat.

 

[triCritical]

Whats interesting is that its actually quite easy to debunk the notion that RT is more realistic then TB. As a matter a fact I have yet to see a 3rd person isometric tactical combat game that was indeed more realistic then a TB game. Once one dispells the myth that RT is more realistic, and actually gets to the heart of what a tactical combat game does, such as recreate tactical combat or simulate it. To do this one can think of many abstractions to simulate tactical combat one being TB combat. Furthermore if one can then use things like interrupts and AoO's to take account for some of TB's deficiencies then its makes it a very good and realistic system.

Its just a stupid argument altogether. Being a physicist, I have learned to solve problems in the easiest space possible. In Solid state physics its k space, in tactical combat its AP space!

 

[Vault Dweller]

It is a stupid argument that you'd expect to hear from some idiot Bio fan, not from a lead designer of a supposedly tactical game.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I'd say that realtime is closer to being realistic than realtime with pause, given in real life you don't pause to issue commands.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

I remember the original X-Com keeping me up late plenty of nights. One of those "Oh my fucking god! It's 4am already! And I have to be up in an hour!" games. Loved the game to death. The second one was okay, but it was just the first game underwater. No big change. I still love the first one best. Then came Apocalypse. :evil: Never even finished it. I liked certain aspects of it and really would have loved it to have been a good game. I gave it plenty of tries, but just couldn't stomach it after awhile. I think it had to do with the RT/TB choice you had for combat. The TB just seemed like an afterthought to me.

My friend, who is also a BIG X-Com fan, recently got his hands on the demo for Aftermath and didn't even finish it. He said it had potential, but it just wasn't there. That was enough for me. I might try the game if I get my hands on a copy of it, but I won't buy it.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Fair enough. I wouldn't pay for this heap of garbage on any day of the rest of my life.

 

[EEVIAC]

One can only hope it bombed.

Aftermath was released at around the same time Silent Storm was and I think that's one of the reasons it got slaughtered. Silent Storm is getting an expansion while, in contrast, I expect the Aftermath devs to fade away into the distance to hold hands with Reflexive.

 

[Anonymous]

I never understood how Turn-Based isnt realistic when each turn is suppost to be a small amount of time (like about 3 seconds) slowed the fuck down (basically), so then you can put out orders and they do the orders as they are given. If you were to see a Turn-Based battle in real life it'd just be like a normal fight, the 'turns' would just be instant thoughts and movements or someone giving out commands and the people doing them right away.

 

[Realbumpbert]

Actually, there is an online real-time Chess game. It's called Kung-Fu Chess and it's not as bad as you might expect. Pieces have a meter that must recharge before they can be moved again; pieces can dodge incoming foes, etc. Interesting, but it doesn't beat real chess.

 

[Rosh]

LlamaGod, I think you forget that many people can't think that in-depth so must rely on superficial appearances alone.