Fate of Io
Action vs. Strategy debate (long!)
2003/03/07 19:01:03 PST by astravaii [0/21]

who here has played 'Baldur's Gate' or its ilk (excluding Neverwinter Nights) like... 'Planescape: Torment' and 'Icewind Dale'? anyone?

the system Temporal is proposing seems very similar to the system used in those. so if you want to see how it might work, that's a place to look.

with a good strategy you can defeat an enemy considerably stronger than you are. i love it. the more action-based a battle is the more it bores me. so i can only hope...

2003/03/07 19:19:05 PST by Temporal [manager]
[Temporal's avatar]

Hehe... Ironically, I hate Baulder's Gate. (Although, to be fair, I have only played the first one, and only a little way in. I've been told it gets better.) But, what I didn't like about it was not the system itself, but rather that it wasn't used in interesting ways (as far as I saw). I always found myself just telling my people to fight while I sat back and watched. Here, there will always be something intelligent you can do that's better than simple fighting.

2003/03/07 21:06:19 PST by Temporal [manager]
[Temporal's avatar]

I talked to Clockwork on AIM. He's still having trouble logging in, but it's AOL's fault for caching pages too agressively, and he can't get any other browsers working at the moment. We did come to an agreement, however.

First, enemy AI in this game will also use many of the tactics which are open to the player, such as ambushes, terrain, etc. This is something I was sort of planning on doing already, but Clockwork wants to emphasize this. The idea is that, if the player is allowed to pause while thinking, than the AI should be able to think hard too. Yes, this will involve some complex coding, but it's not as hard as one might think. Having taken the AI courses at my college, I have a pretty good idea of how to do it. :)

The other idea we had is that the total time the player spends paused will be recorded. Then, if you can reach certain parts of the game while keeping your total pause time under a certain level, you will get little rewards. The rewards won't be required to complete the game, of course. Think of Chrono Trigger's multiple endings. Also, players who complete the game with very little pause time will have bragging rights. (BTW, I beat Super Metroid in 1:06 earlier today! :P)

2003/03/08 14:56:36 PST by mystik3eb [0/43]
[mystik3eb's avatar]

Nice. Very nice. Good idea. Very good idea. I really like it, seriously. I hadn't considered that...intelligent AI? ;) But really, that's an awesome idea, especially the time-account thing. That's very much like something I was talking about a while back, where we would start a dungeon, and depending on how long you take to complete the dungeon and the methods you use, you would get certain prizes at the end/on the way, none necessary to beat the game, but some that are just fun, or a serious help; maybe some that can help the perfectionists (like myself) to get all the items/spells/ore/weapons/etc. in the game.

Now, it would be asking too much to consider multiple endings, right? =) (BTW, I never finished Super Metroid, I hated it far too much. PRIME I beat in 15:00 with 79%, haven't played it since)

2003/03/09 14:27:31 PST by astravaii [0/21]

well... my point was that the system was similar, not that it was handled as well as it could have been. ^^ some people seemed to be having trouble imagining how it would run/be balanced, etc.

and the second one *was* better.

2005/01/31 18:50:04 PST by Captain Vimes [0/13]
Awards: 2 from Dev

I know that way-pointing is probably a must (Go to point A, proceed immediantly to point B), but will pause functionality end there?

Seeing that there probably will be a counter to record pause time, shouldn't there be a 'Deep Pause' so that a player that pauses the game to go grab lunch doesn't end up with an, erm, unspectacular ending?

Also, how far can a party member wander away? Could someone lead the guards on a merry chase (assuming the player has god-like management skills) for the entire duration that the rest of the party explores the castle?

Sorry if this has been brought up before, I just scanned this topic, picking up the points.

2005/02/01 00:00:13 PST by Temporal [manager]
[Temporal's avatar]
Quote from Captain Vimes:

I know that way-pointing is probably a must (Go to point A, proceed immediantly to point B), but will pause functionality end there?

Wow, it's been a looooong time since this was discussed. But... uh... what else are you looking for? My plan was simply that while paused you could issue all the same commands as when not paused, but they simply wouldn't be carried out until you un-paused.

Quote from Captain Vimes:

Seeing that there probably will be a counter to record pause time, shouldn't there be a 'Deep Pause' so that a player that pauses the game to go grab lunch doesn't end up with an, erm, unspectacular ending?

Sure. In a "deep pause", then, the screen would be blank, other than a message saying that the game is paused and a button to un-pause. You wouldn't be able to issue any commands, etc., while in this mode, but it wouldn't count against your pause timer.

Quote from Captain Vimes:

Also, how far can a party member wander away? Could someone lead the guards on a merry chase (assuming the player has god-like management skills) for the entire duration that the rest of the party explores the castle?

Hmm... I wouldn't put any limit on how far the party members can move. I suppose that means you could have one on the opposite side of the world from the others. The guards, though, would be programmed not to follow that far.

But, luring the guards to chase one character around the general area of the castle, keeping them away from the other characters as they explore it, might very well work, and if it does, would be a good strategy. It wouldn't take "god-like" management skills, either. By pausing the game periodically to give further instructions to the bait character, you could keep them running pretty easily.

Perhaps we should even set it up so that you can have the game automatically pause once a character has completed their current list of commands, so that you don't have to worry about forgetting to check on that character.

2005/02/01 01:40:50 PST by mystik3eb [0/43]
[mystik3eb's avatar]
Quote from Temporal:

Perhaps we should even set it up so that you can have the game automatically pause once a character has completed their current list of commands, so that you don't have to worry about forgetting to check on that character.

Great idea, reminds me of Fort Condor. Even better would be to offer the option to pause after the command is finished, instead of forcing it every single time, know what I mean? I found it very annoying after awhile to keep being thrown back to my guy once it was done moving and I just wanted him to stand there, or when a guy attacked, I just wanted him to keep attacking automatically instead of me telling him. Having the option to bring my attention to it would've been nice, though. That's my two cents.

And about leading the guards around: I think it's a cool idea. It'll really bring out the sterotypical "stupid guard/cop" often seen in movies and video games, following around one character and not suspecting a trap or diversion. Maybe it would be wiser to have the character distract them and have the guards chase him/her until the others are inside, then sneak inside themselves, and what better will the guards know? Anyway of that making sense?

2005/02/01 18:26:02 PST by Temporal [manager]
[Temporal's avatar]

I meant that the auto-pause would be optional, yes.

2005/04/09 19:49:54 PDT by Temporal [manager]
[Temporal's avatar]

I'm going to bump this just to make sure I fixed that bug...

2 posts deleted.
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