TimeShift & Cursor*10

[hugheverett]

was playing that timeshift game on the 360, and boy the time mechanic is bloody fantastic.
It's just an average 1st person shooter (i.e thin plot etc..)
But this game mechanic has hardly been explored at all, it's great fun to reverse/slow time.
you can slow time, take someones gun, and they act all funny, and generally shooting people
in slow time is fun, as well as reversing time. I think looking at reversed explosions and grenades is every amusing.
This mechanic is so under used in the game it's incredible, I came up with a zillion amazing ideas that could
be done with this concept, combined with these:-


Cursor*10

http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html

shift

http://armorgames.com/play/751/shift


I do like new ideas (last big one was Portal, which was Narbacular Drop originally)

infact, if Valve get wing of timeshift, I'm sure they'll incorporate a 'time-suit' in the next halflife.
amazing how such good ideas are just out there, totally under used.

A game with a portal, time and cursor10 mechanic puzzles would be good.

[Darkflame]

Some people on a Portal forum were discusing trying to make a "time portal" mod.

The idea being when one portal is layed, going into the other one will take you back to the point the first was made.
Effectively letting you have two copys of yourself at once.

(so really, the system would record all your movements from when you chuck portal 1, to when you walk into portal 2, and play them back on a clone as you exit from portal 1 again)

[fog]

Timeshift was hardly the first game to use the idea of being able to pause and rewind time. Also, as you pointed out, it doesn't exactly make good use of it either.

[Glyndwr]

Blinx Timesweeper anyone?

[Wibble]

Blinx Timesweeper anyone?

I had some great fun playing that, though I'm now frustrated with it

[sack]

Some people on a Portal forum were discusing trying to make a "time portal" mod.

The idea being when one portal is layed, going into the other one will take you back to the point the first was made.
Effectively letting you have two copys of yourself at once.

(so really, the system would record all your movements from when you chuck portal 1, to when you walk into portal 2, and play them back on a clone as you exit from portal 1 again)

of course when the clone enters the portal you end up with a third clone..... what happens when your clones collide? I had a whole puzzle game premise laid out based on this (with some elements borrowed from an old archimedes game that predates all of this ) - sort of like lemmings combined with chuchu rocket and an army of clones of yourself

[Atty]

I wasn't at all impressed with Timeshift, tbh.

At it's core, it's a dull, generic Half-life 2 wannabe.
The timeshifting mechanic may look attractive, but the powers have all basically been done before in many other games.
Slow and stop are both basically variations on the bullet-time thing that's been in god-knows how many games, and time reversal thing has been done better in the new Prince of Persia series and the Blinx games.

There's really nothing new to see here.

[Darkflame]

I liked Blinx's idea, but found it very hard to controll.

I always felt it would be more fun to just have time controlled with a 3rd axis.
(so, say, 1 analogue stick controlls your moments as normal in space, and the second stick forward/backwards controls time).

Probably best to have the neutral stick position as normal time progression, so you actually have to tilt back slightly to pause.

This sort of system would let you do all sorts of crazyness, like running forward in space while backwards in time.

of course when the clone enters the portal you end up with a third clone..... what happens when your clones collide? I had a whole puzzle game premise laid out based on this (with some elements borrowed from an old archimedes game that predates all of this ) - sort of like lemmings combined with chuchu rocket and an army of clones of yourself

Yes theres all sorts of issues raised.

I thought the most simple would be each clone becomes an unyielding object, completely solid.

This would allow "fun" moves like jumping on your own head.

[hugheverett]

Some people on a Portal forum were discusing trying to make a "time portal" mod.

The idea being when one portal is layed, going into the other one will take you back to the point the first was made.
Effectively letting you have two copys of yourself at once.

(so really, the system would record all your movements from when you chuck portal 1, to when you walk into portal 2, and play them back on a clone as you exit from portal 1 again)

Now that's mindbending, sort of the thing I was thinking about.
Even thinking about how that would be programmed is making my head hurt.
Like explosions, I assume 5 min history or something is stored for every particle/object in the scene, which will be a big number if you reverse an explosion.

I can't believe I missed this Blinx xbox game - I'm going to pick it up now from ebay!

[Darkflame]

Prince of Persia games are much better, imho.
(Warrior Within has some nasty recorded timeline related bugs half way mind, the 1st and 3rd are much nicer anyway)

And yes, reverseing an explosion would be hard work.
But, even a game with no explosions could be very interesting.

[fog]

And yes, reverseing an explosion would be hard work.
But, even a game with no explosions could be very interesting.

Not really that hard work. If you know a particles point of origin and vector then it's very easy to calculate it's current position using a timer, with no need to store it's position in every frame.

[hugheverett]

And yes, reverseing an explosion would be hard work.
But, even a game with no explosions could be very interesting.

Not really that hard work. If you know a particles point of origin and vector then it's very easy to calculate it's current position using a timer, with no need to store it's position in every frame.

Surely it would be more computationally effecient just to store the already calculated vectors,
rather than re-calculate each position for each rendered frame?
My guy feeling is you just record everything for a short period like they do when they 'playback' or 'watch again' your scene. come to think of it, say in grand-turisimo, all you are storing is xyz/time vectors for just a just a few cars,
and the camera. - that's not a lot of information and could easily be stored for the entire race. In comparison a car race is easy to record and playback. A battlefield scene doesn't a have such megre storage requirements.

I reckon you just store the co-ordinates of the grenade say, and not all the resulting firework/special effects particles. I don't think people would notice if the firework special effects were a little different when you reversed time, as long as, say the trajectory of the grenade was he same.
In Cursor*10, it's just storing the x,y co-ordinate for the mouse for every frame for the duration.
if it's 24 frame a sec, for 1 min, it would be 24x60x4 x 10cursors bytes per min, so not that much storage for that.


Having said that, I can't even imagine the data-structures for storing multiple versions of your-self, of you went back in time and watched your self through a time-portal.

er, recursion?

[Darkflame]

Surely storeing multiply versions of yourself is the exact same problem?
It becomes an instant/clone of your mesh's X/Y position and any animation? Just like watching a car replay.

Thinking about rewind, while its more efficiant in terms of memory to work out explosions and such again, I'm not convienced physics engines we have are that perfectly replayable. If Havok is set up with the exact same parameters, will the results always be the same? Or does some choas-like effects creap in based on small errors?
I certainly noticed with a few "Box physics" style programs, the same set up can yeild varying results.