Make one player or group of players (1) move at a graphically normal looking speed but see all other players(2) as moving slow. Yet these players(2) seen as moving slow also see themselves as moving normal although they see faster players(1) as moving like a blur.
Are their any games at all that do this? How would you solve such a problem?
Oh it's possible it's just challenging/restrictive- you never run into it before. I was thinking separate atoms could represent the movement at different rates of speed. And these atoms would pass information to their counterpart clients.
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The worlds would desynchronize immediately, the way you have described it. Lugia is right, this isn't physically possible. At least, not without altering the players' real-world perceptions of time. I guess you could try to hypnotize them?
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Thanks. If I have other ideas I'll be sure to keep it to myself. Their was no real attempt at solving this problem.
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Well, what you've described is physically impossible to do in a synchronous system. I guess if you made the game asynchronous (which would probably require the game to be turn based) you could display the actions at any rate you wanted. But you would still need synchronization points where the "faster" player would have to wait for the "slower" player's game to catch up.
The real issue is getting input from the slower player, because their game is at an earlier point in time. You can't use the input they're giving right now, because they want to take those actions in the "past" (or what is the past for the "faster" player). The "faster" player has already decided what the world looks like by the time the "slower" player arrives at that moment, so the slower player can't take any action without desynchronizing the worlds. It's an interesting idea, but so long as the game's output and player's input is restricted to the passage of real time, there's no way to keep the two time streams synchronized. | |
Speeding up graphics for group 2 would require seeing into the future (impossible), while slowing down graphics for group 1 requires seeing into the past (which is actually pretty easy).
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Continuing own with my idea. It would basically be like a short term overwrite. Player 2 would see themselves moving normally then suddenly be in a different spot(state) because of an action Player 1 took on an object which represented Player 2's action(s). Just want to figure out some way to smooth it out. Although an interesting concept I don't want that sort of jumped appearance you would get from- say a sudden reload of saved information.
As far as player 1 goes player 2 would see player 1 in segments and could effect these segments to cause an overwrite. (If it helps visualize, think a character you see when a game has lag.) Edit: These segments would time out, ect. Edit: Of course there would be "logged in checks" and "precedence que." "Logged in checks" would be optional in case their was a desire to be able to effect players who had logged out of client , ect. But yeah I also was curious to how anyone else might do this. | |
Were you hoping that re-explaining it would make it possible (or even plausible, if it were) to do?
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Lol, oh it is. Call me back when there is something productive.
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Well, if he's okay with time-warping the faster player back whenever the slower player desynchronizes something, it's possible. You'd have to be very careful to make what was going on clear to the players, though. If you do it right, it could be an interesting mechanic.
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I think you definitely need to establish the amount of players you're expecting to be in the game when something like this happens, because things could get prickly if you have too many and don't think.
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Once upon a time, people thought humans could never fly.
I imagine something like a cut-scene for the slower player. Something to kill time while the faster player continues to play in normal fashion with the world slowed down. Perhaps AI takes over for the slower player while the slower player is viewing the cut-scene so that the game looks fluid. After the cut-scene, time resumes for the "slower player" and he goes into a sort-of movie playback mode where it shows what happened during that time at their own normal relative speed (which would show the faster player moving around like crazy), and then finally time syncs up again and both players resume at normal speed. *edit* to add on what Albro said. This sort of thing could get very complex, and more-importantly very tiresome for players if it is not done carefully. | |
The bottleneck here is the lack of time travel technology. Even if we do get simple enough time travel that can be used casually in games, it probably wouldn't be good for your health.
The original idea here doesn't involve cutscenes or any graphical discontinuity for anyone involved. That is why it's impossible. You can change the idea to include cutscenes and time skips to resynchronize the players, but then you can't argue that the original idea is any more possible. | |
Let me clarify that beginning statement to actually fit with this scenario.
When people thought humans couldn't fly, they built an airplane. We have an engine. Let's imagine it is a car frame with no engine. We can fill this frame with our own creations to make it run, but there's some pieces that just don't or can't fit. Some of them require lots of time to build just right to do their job. Some of them look like they wouldn't fit, but they might if you toy with it a bit. The difference is that the airplane was built from the ground up with no limitations on what could be made - Dream Maker, while an awesome engine, is still just an engine and has limitations. We can't build an airplane and stick it inside of a car frame. This feature seems like it would be a very large piece that may or may not fit, depending on how you go about putting it into the frame. We will just have to see how we go about this. On that note, it seems like this topic belongs more in Design Philosophy. | |
Forgive me, but I am a Marine. I'm used to the concept of "doing more with less." I'm not saying we're going to invent time travel here. I was simply saying that having a can-do attitude is what makes humans capable of accomplishing things that others would write off as impossible.
I just don't want to be the guy to shoot down his ideas with all the reasons why it can't be done without at least giving him some alternate ideas for what can be done. =) *edit* On another note, me and a buddy managed to get an IRC server running successfully over this radio (http://bit.ly/1biHgz2) when the manufacturer (Harris) themselves told us it was impossible. | |
Being a Marine, you should also know that having "impossibility" examples like that is not universally applicable and every situation is different.
Some things just can't be done. Some things can be done, but not in any plausible, playable manner. | |
Brb. Gonna tell marines that it's impossible to create a perpetual motion machine. See if they can "do more with less" their way out of this one.
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This isn't an issue of trying. To have one player perceive time slower than other players in the way OP wants is impossible.
One could make it so the person moving (in relation to the other) faster so that to the second player the first would be going way faster; but that would make it more of a bullet hell and sensitivity issue for the first player and not what OP describes. The only conceivable way something like this could be done is not with a speed mechanic but a time travel mechanic where you could go back in time to effect earlier events - but that would take a massive amount of data to be kept on hand. But at that point you're dealing with recorded past events so it doesn't matter what a player sees since it almost becomes a secondary session to the first game. http://www.achrongame.com/site/ | |
Player A sees Player B moving slowly. Player B is trying to move 10 tiles at a rate of 1 tile per second. Player A sees Player B move at half speed. Player A has to wait 20 seconds to see Player B move to this tile, while Player B only has to wait 10 seconds.