* * * * *
                                        
  “I take out your units before your units take out my units before they take
                                out your units.”
                                        
> Achron is the world's first meta-time strategy game, a real-time strategy
> game where players and units can jump to and play at different times
> simultaneously and independently.
> 

“Achron—Time Travel is Coming [1]”

Over a year ago I mused about making a computer game involving time travel
[2], but it seems, a group of programmers have gone ahead and made a game
where pieces can travel in time, and from the videos, it looks like they've
done a great job with the user interface.

> Q. Dude, paradoxes?! You know, grandfather paradox, units fighting side by
> side? 
>  A. Paradoxes can exist, but since the window of time is limited (e.g., an
> 8 minute window) all events eventually fall off. A paradox will oscillate
> between its different states until one of the states reaches the edge of
> the time window, leaving the players locked into one of the two states.
> Example: in the case of the grandfather paradox (where you use a factory to
> build a tank, have the tank time travel to before it was built, and then
> use it to destroy the factory) you will play with the paradox until it
> 'falls off' the time window, at which point there is a 50/50 chance of
> either the tank lives and the factory is destroyed, or the factory remains
> and the tank was never created. All paradoxes are nicely resolved with
> time. 
> 
>  
> 
> Q. How stable/buggy is this game? I can't imagine a game engine this
> complex without bugs!
>  A. Very stable. We have taken QA extremely seriously because of how
> complex time travel is, and we have been testing multiplayer games for 4
> years. 
> 
>  
> 
> Q. Is it true that I can keep sending units back in time to have them fight
> along side themselves and duplicate an entire army?
>  A. Yes you can, but not without consequences. It costs chronoenergy to
> command units from the past to travel further into the past, and obviously
> you use more chronoenergy to control more units in the past. Also you are
> using up your playing time to manage this instead of building units or
> controlling your armies. And finally, if the original 'parent' units are
> damaged, the time traveled version will wind up being damaged and if the
> original units are destroyed and don't travel back in time, you wind up
> undoing the entire cycle. 
> 
>  
> 
> Q. My head is exploding already. Are you sure this is easy?
>  A. Yes, though grandfather paradoxes are the most complicated aspect of
> the game, they don't tend to happen much in actual gameplay. The rest is
> super quick to learn. It's like learning to use a DVR control to rewatch a
> tv show or using your DVD control to jump around chapters in a movie - once
> you start using time travel it's really simple, but if you've never picked
> up a remote controller before, those play and 'next-chapter' buttons look
> scary. We've been play-testing for 4 years and have learned how to make
> this game accessible, taking people who never played an RTS before and have
> them effectively using time travel 5 minutes into the game. We do this by
> unveiling time travel gradually to the player, so you are not fully thrust
> into it right away, but can learn to play it one step at a time. 
> 

“Achron—FAQ [3]”

Cool … just way cool …

[1] http://achrongame.com/
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2007/10/21.1
[3] http://achrongame.com/achron_faq.html

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.