OpenXcom Forum
Contributions => Offtopic => Topic started by: aceshigh on July 18, 2014, 08:41:59 pm
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I don´t even think there is a strategy game with individual soldiers field of view like XCOM. The closest I can think off is games like Baldurs Gate, which are however sword and sorcery fantasy games and the battles do not play like XCOM at all.
Let´s try to imagine a game using the same "stats" for individual soldiers as XCOM. So maybe it´s the reverse process, as the developers thought how make different stats for soldiers work in a turn base style.
Turn base is awesome, no wonder I (we all) have been playing XCOM in the past 20 years. But real time with pause could also be interesting for a strategic game... and it would be more "realistic", after all, real battles are not played in turns. (has anyone here played South Park The Stick of Truth rpg? Reminds me of Cartman telling one of them to wait his turn, because that's how real soldiers fought in the f*cking middle ages!)
@17:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCbF3PDXGEI
Now, let´s convert XCOM turns to "real time":
I suppose each square of the battlescape grid is supposed to be about 1x1 meters. Soldiers need 4 TUs to cover a square. Most of them start with about 60 TUs and therefore can "run" 15 meters.
This link ( https://www.ask.com/question/average-human-running-speed ) says an average human sprints at 24 km/h and runs at average 13 km/h. Usain Bolt can sprint at over 44 km/h.
Now, no matter how good our soldiers are, they can´t sprint as fast as Usain Bolt. We must consider battle condition sprinting, meaning they are carrying weapons, armor, other weight, must reserve energy for doing other things, etc.
If we consider a turn to be 1 second, it would mean a novice soldier (with about 60 TUs) can sprint 15 meters in one second. That converts to 54 km/h. Nah, just too fast.
If we consider a turn to be 2 seconds, it would mean a novice soldier can sprint about 7.5 meters per second (or 15 meters in two seconds). That´s 27 km/h.
If we consider a turn to be 3 seconds, it would mean a novice soldier can sprint about 5 meters per second (or 15 meters in three seconds). That´s 18 km/h.
Let´s consider 3 seconds. Therefore, an untrained soldier can sprint while carrying weapons, armor and other weight, 5 meters per second, or 18 km/h
We have to assume everything is happening simultaneously, therefore, if you spend all your TUs for walking a big distance, it means you are actually running hard. You covered 15 meters in 3 seconds. If you use half your TUs to move, and the other half fireing, we have to assume that in those same 3 seconds of the turn, he run at about 10km/h for about 1.5 second and spent the next 1.5 second fireing at an alien.
Of course, XCOM uses the same TU system for everything in the game. Therefore a soldier increasing his TUs means his is doing EVERYTHING faster, not only running. If before he took 1 second for shoot three times (auto shot, 20 TUs out of 60 TUs), increasing the TUs as he levels up, and now having 80TUs (the turn still has 3 seconds), 20 TUs would therefore be 0.75 second. And his sprint (spending all TUs to move) would equal 21 km/h.
So far, does anyone agrees with me? Want to see your input on the considerations above.
Considering all the stuff above, we can start sketching how XCOM (or a similar game) would work in real time. Instead of TUs, each soldier would have (and level up) these different stats. That means we would order the soldier to walk, run or sprint, and his speed would be somewhat based on the calculations above.
We can pause and give orders to multiple soldiers... and when unpausing, they would start doing the orders.
Now... how fast you move has implications on what else you can do. Like... you are sprinting. You surely are not aiming and you are moving your arms around while carrying your weapon. Therefore, as soon as the sprinting soldier sees an alien he cannot shoot back (he is out of TUs). He would need like 20 TUs (1 second) to slow down and autofire at the alien. In real time, you can imagine that you give the command to shoot while the game is paused (auto-pause when a soldier sees an alien or performs his actions) and as you unpause, the soldier will take some time to slow down and one second to shoot the alien with auto-shot. Unfortunatelly for him, the alien was not running. But walking. Therefore he was already aiming and prepared to shoot any human soldier on sight with a snap shot immediately (because it was already prepared, by walking slowly, with the weapon pointed in the forward direction). Of course, an aimed shot would take longer, because more than prepared, the alien would have to aim. The time it takes to aim maybe the human would be able to shoot an auto-shot at you. Obviously, by auto-shooting, his chances to miss are great, while you have a good change to hit him by aiming. So it´s up to the alien to decide. He goes for the snap shot. And misses. Another snap shot. And misses again. While that played out, the running human is coming to a halt and auto-shot the alien. One of the shots hits the target, killing the alien.
One thing I suppose is that playing in real time would allow the battlescape to play faster. Remember Terror from The Deep and how long it took to play a Cruiser ship level (8 decks total). I think in real time with pause you could play much faster.
Tell a group of soldiers to walk along the entire deck and they would go until spotting an alien and time pausing. Maybe we could create formations. Like selecting 3-4 soldiers, telling them to stay in formation, and they would walk in that formation, slower if for example the front one is crouched to allow the backone to fire over him, or flank soldiers walk while targeting the sides...
If it played faster, and we wanted the time of each Battlescape fight to be longer, we could have bigger maps, which would take the same time to play in real time as smaller maps in turns...
Ok, I haven´t thought out every situation or how it could work in every situation.
So, give your opinions, ideas, etc :)
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Yes it works. There was a game: X-com Apocalypse that had this real time feature :)
It is ofcourse different than turn based.
I think the Apoc engine was very good. Only things that did not make sense was that you could access your inventory instantly without having to spend any time grabbing those grenades from your backpack.
+ it makes more realistic simulation
+ it also allows bigger maps to be played without taking too much time
- it is harder to control and you miss some of the action if it all happens at the same time
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RTwP has certain downsides, namely:
1. Loss of intimacy of violence. TB allows centring screen around explosions , hits and deaths while playing animation which is pretty important for UFO's (and Laser Squad's) mood.
2. Absolute control of action for the player. Compared to TB where there are periods when it's impossible to give orders and the other side gives orders and pure RT where the player control is limited by time.
I think that if it has to be RT, pure RT with subordinate AIs would be much better than RTwP, SOPs and stuff like that. Additionally, even such pure RT would need some simulation of propagation of orders and information to be reasonably realistic.
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Yes it works. There was a game: X-com Apocalypse that had this real time feature :)
I never played Apocalypse. I remember seeing it at a friend´s house, back in the day, and being turned down by the graphics, which I remember to be too colorful and bright, with lots of reds and yellows and blues. Don´t know if my memory serves me well there. Plus, I remember thinking this new geoscape (it was inside a single city, or something, wasn´t it?) to be quite weird.
Thus I may have missed out the RTwP features.
I think that if it has to be RT, pure RT with subordinate AIs would be much better than RTwP, SOPs and stuff like that. Additionally, even such pure RT would need some simulation of propagation of orders and information to be reasonably realistic.
yes, obviously for total realism, you actually shouldn´t even be playing with a mouse. You should be screaming orders and at maximum have a camera on each soldier's helmet. Wouldn´t be too much fun. And your companions AI would never be good enough.
A compromise must be reached. Turn base is cool for playing but there is absolutely no realism. I think RTwP is the best compromise.
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yes, obviously for total realism, you actually shouldn´t even be playing with a mouse. You should be screaming orders and at maximum have a camera on each soldier's helmet. Wouldn´t be too much fun. And your companions AI would never be good enough.
A compromise must be reached. Turn base is cool for playing but there is absolutely no realism. I think RTwP is the best compromise.
RTwP is even less realism.
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RTwP is even less realism.
why dp you think so?
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I never played Apocalypse. I remember seeing it at a friend´s house, back in the day, and being turned down by the graphics, which I remember to be too colorful and bright, with lots of reds and yellows and blues. Don´t know if my memory serves me well there. Plus, I remember thinking this new geoscape (it was inside a single city, or something, wasn´t it?) to be quite weird.
Yes, the graphics ruined the game. But the engine behind graphics was good. Realtime support. Buildings would collapse if you destroyed the bottom levels.
About the realism aspect and compromises, one solution would be to adjust it with difficulty:
with HARD no pause or bullettime
MEDIUM 15 second pause possible at every 30 seconds of game time, bullettime possible
EASY pause possible at all times
EXTREME voice control only :D "SQUAD ONE SHOOT THAT ALIEN!" "NO THAT OTHER ALIEN YOU DUMBAS**S!11!"
and yes, Apoc made it possible to make squads and give orders for squads without controlling them one by one.
and with bullettime I mean the slow mode of Apoc. It was not actual bullettime but I think it was half-speed or something like that.
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the way I see it, the PAUSE is a compromise needed to simulate the intelligence of the soldiers. In other words, without a flawless AI that would pass a turing test and much more, the only way to properly simulate the actions and strategy of each soldier + squad commander (small 3-4 men tactical units) + unit commander (the whole deployed squadron) is to let player take control of them. That can´t be done at the same time for all units, therefore you need the pause.
Total real time works for larger battles in normal RTS games as well as games like Rome Total War... where the individual intelligence of units is not that important, nor the individual units (you lose many in a battle and don´t care)
at XCOM there are too many happening at once and fast, therefore a pause, for the player to control the units and thus simulate at the same time the units intelligence as well as the squad commander orders, is necessary.
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Why don't you just play UFO: Aftershock or X-Com: Apocalypse, despite its so-so graphics? They are superb games, especially the former.
I have nothing against loose discussions like this, but it's essentially like saying "I would like to see a modification of Starcraft where the game takes thousands of years and you build cities and wonders". There are several games like that, there's no need to tailor a completely different title to do new things it was not meant for.
RTwP is even less realism.
Riiiiiiight. ::)
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You don't need to shoot down every mod idea; the only way to have a successful and long-lasting community is to let it go where it wants and trust that good things will follow. Do you think Quake would have gotten anywhere if every little fan-made doohickey had to be lore-approved?
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I'm not "shooting down every mod idea", this is absurd and untrue. An a community member as any other, I don't even have the power to do so if I wanted, though obviously I'm not. However, if I think an idea is IN MY OPINION not worth pursuing, then I, as well as every other member, have the goddamn right to say so. And everyone else has a goddamn right of not giving a damn about it, if they disagree.
Sorry about being so blunt, but I think certain rules must apply, otherwise you'll have a forum of yes-men which will fill have no purpose other than inflating each others' ego. Especially seeing as most suggestions are IN MY OPINION rather silly (which isn't bad, this is how brainstorming works... as long as silly ideas can be identified as such.) I'm not talking about this particular idea, it's not silly at all, actually it's quite cool, but I think also infeasible at this point.
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This keeps on popping up. The more I think about it the more I want to code a real time version of the original XCOM. As crazy idea as it is.
It would be a different game, yet almost the same. You would need new tactics to beat the classic Xcom.
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This keeps on popping up. The more I think about it the more I want to code a real time version of the original XCOM. As crazy idea as it is.
It would be a different game, yet almost the same. You would need new tactics to beat the classic Xcom.
IMO, what really helped to cut time the most on Apocalypse was the ability to create squads and give them orders.
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IMO, what really helped to cut time the most on Apocalypse was the ability to create squads and give them orders.
Oh, yes. Well, it's similar in other such games, like the UFO franchise.
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@Solarius
You know what, my post came out a lot harsher than I had meant, I'm sorry for that. It just seems that the community can get extremely defensive about the purity of the game, and it was riding my nerves a little, since mods by definition have to mess with that purity a little.
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@Solarius
You know what, my post came out a lot harsher than I had meant, I'm sorry for that. It just seems that the community can get extremely defensive about the purity of the game, and it was riding my nerves a little, since mods by definition have to mess with that purity a little.
Oh, absolutely no offense taken. My response was pretty harsh too, though frankly deliberately so, since recent weeks have seen a surge of really impractical feature requests which are either bad in themselves or unrealistic in terms of implementation. This seems to lead to the devs getting somewhat indifferent to new features, because so much people want so much stuff that often has little in common with the game itself. And that would be bad for modders.
I also wrote about XCom: Apocalypse and UFO: Aftershock because the OP author seemed to not have played them, and they both would probably fulfil his desire for such a game.
Having said all that, I would probably play the hell out of this RTwP version of X-Com, if it was done correctly; after all, Aftershock is my second favourite game ever! As I said, it's not a bad idea, it's just a huge project, practically a new game with same graphics. Off the top of my head, it would demand:
- Completely new AI.
- Completely new mechanics for most things (from how weapons are fired to how units move around etc.)
- Completely new interface, containing at least controls for time, but preferably other options like squad management and movement planning.
- Larger maps, because the game would be much faster. (This one is easy)
So if it ever happens, it will be a whole new product that would not only demand so much new code, but also a good game designer, because this new stuff needs to be invented professionally. If there is one person who would be willing to give it a try, they have my blessing and possible help. :)[/list]
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Jagged Alliance (2 at least) uses an interesting system : the battles are fully turn-based, but as soon as there are no enemies in close vicinity, it becomes "real-time", so you can more interactively regroup your soldiers over long distances, sweep the map and scout the terrain. As soon as an enemy is detected (sighted, heard, or on the first gunshot), the system becomes turn-based again.
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The main devs should have a hard line and only add options that make the interface, moddability and playability better and options that allow high resolutions and hopefully someday .png pictures without palette madness. My opinion is that the vanilla Openxcom has already too much options and mods and it would be best to try and put most of them on the mod site instead. I don't understand why there is default mods like always day or always night? On the other hand I can really well understand mods like explosions working on many levels. Instant grenades again no, non-instant was very clear how they designed it and they could have done it to work instantly even in Laser Squad but they did not want to.
But I think this is now the best Xcom project and site that there is and it is gathering more people like me, that can do some coding. We can make those crazy ideas like real time mode if we want to and it will not take anything away from the main game as long as they stay as their own forked projects and mods. In that way there is no reasons to be against mods, just don't download them. But at the same time there is lots of reasons to be against the main project implementing new mods. Maybe the forum should separate these two different things more clearly?
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you switch between mods, option and forks wildly in your post
e.g. "mods like explosions working on many levels" explosionheight is no mod but an option
how many easily available and frequently updated/maintained forks of openxcom are there?
i only know of the commendation/soldier diary - fork
do you want two additional subforums about forks (complete + in development)
+ two subforums about options (in game + suggestion/development)
or is this a "it not 100% vanilla and i got confused by too much choice"-rant
[i admit the option/mod screens should get some GUI overhaul but reducing/removing existing options is not the way to got in my opinion]
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If it continues, the game will need an internal compiler to merge dozens of forks with various bits of code. :P
Which isn't really so bad. I guess at some point it may happen, if X-Com engine becomes a basis for various mods, total conversions etc.
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you switch between mods, option and forks wildly in your post
e.g. "mods like explosions working on many levels" explosionheight is no mod but an option
how many easily available and frequently updated/maintained forks of openxcom are there?
i only know of the commendation/soldier diary - fork
do you want two additional subforums about forks (complete + in development)
+ two subforums about options (in game + suggestion/development)
or is this a "it not 100% vanilla and i got confused by too much choice"-rant
[i admit the option/mod screens should get some GUI overhaul but reducing/removing existing options is not the way to got in my opinion]
Yes, I think that was what I was trying to say. It is not very clear what is what and it might cause people to make unnecessary negative comments on mods that would not affect their lives. Though not saying that everyone should be a "yes man" either.
About the forks. I predict that in the near future there will be many. For years people have wanted to mod X-Com but the modding has ended on two words: "hard coded". Openxcom 1.0 is still quite new and as people get aware that the hard coded is no more a problem, I believe we will see lots of crazy mods/forks. Even something like this topic speculated about, real time.
About the forums. I do not want anything. I am not so familiar yet with this forum. I was just thinking that maybe it should be more clear what is a mod and what is going to be implemented as an option in the main game. I have been against some suggestions because I thought they were to be added on the main game as an option. But as mods I would not be against them.
And yes, it was a "rant" about being vanilla. I think the main non modded version not being vanilla is the biggest threat for Openxcom. I see that it complicates everything. Separate mods, mod packs and forks is the way to go and to keep things maintainable.
Yes for real time fork.
No for real time option.
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If you're looking for a good game with real-time squad-based battles, check out Fallout Tactics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_Tactics:_Brotherhood_of_Steel
It's not XCOM, but it's still a great game, and if you want to create a real-time version of XCOM, this would be a good game to study for ideas.
They have it on sale on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/38420/
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And yes, it was a "rant" about being vanilla. I think the main non modded version not being vanilla is the biggest threat for Openxcom. I see that it complicates everything. Separate mods, mod packs and forks is the way to go and to keep things maintainable.
Give this man a glass of vodka! :)
If you're looking for a good game with real-time squad-based battles, check out Fallout Tactics.
Oh yeah, it's a decent game too. Not in my top three, but it's good. I somehow forgot about it...
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Just to make it clear people, in no way I am suggesting a RTwP mod for OpenXCom, like so many posts above seem to have understood this topic.
If this was a mod suggestion, I would post it on the Suggestions board or some other board more about it. I posted it on General Discussion exactly because I wanted to discuss how would XCOM work in real time, or other game being as good as XCOM but in RTwP, etc. I don´t even think it´s possible to mod OpenXCom so much to the point where it becomes real time with pause.
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Just to make it clear people, in no way I am suggesting a RTwP mod for OpenXCom, like so many posts above seem to have understood this topic.
If this was a mod suggestion, I would post it on the Suggestions board or some other board more about it. I posted it on General Discussion exactly because I wanted to discuss how would XCOM work in real time, or other game being as good as XCOM but in RTwP, etc. I don´t even think it´s possible to mod OpenXCom so much to the point where it becomes real time with pause.
Ah, in this case I guess you deserve an apology and an actual response from me:
1) It technically is possible, as long as someone's crazy enough, experienced enough and creative enough.
2) It would be fucking awesome.
Nuff said.