We are all in time travelers – at a speed of one second in one second. Trying to delve into the intricacies of alleged temporary movements, we inevitably come across paradoxes. It is worth realizing once that you are returning to some other, but at the same time, as you will immediately begin to worry the “grandfather’s paradox” (if I kill my ancestor in the past, will I disappear myself?).
Quantum mechanics easily solves this problem: any time in time can be calculated using the Markov chain. If we imagine the “grandfather’s paradox” as a sequence of random events with a final or countless endless number of outcomes, which is characterized by the property that in a fixed present future, regardless of the past, it has two possible continuations: you are either born with a probability of ½ and kill the ancestor or kill the ancestor or kill the ancestor. with the same probability you are not born and it remains to live.
§1. Ahronological strategy
If when reading the above passage you felt bad, yawned from three to eight times and for some reason imagined how you are trying to reproduce this material at the board, you should immediately stop reading, squeeze out of the floor or go out into the street. Otherwise, with further familiarization with the text, an extensive explosion of the fifth degree of brain explosion is not excluded.
As you know from the previous course, computer games widely reveal the topic of time. Braid or Cursor 10 – Arcades built on interaction with him. The subject of our conversation today is rather not a game, but an artificial environment for experiments over time.
It is called Achron (read [eikrən]; "Ahronological" game). This is a military strategy, therefore, the basic principles of gameplay are already familiar to us: the player builds a base, collects resources, produces numerous units (up to three hundred) and controls them.
Achron stands out among competitors thanks to one key opportunity – it is allowed to move in time. Anyone who at least once circled the units with a frame or built a plant for oil/gold/Tiberium processing can easily imagine how travel travel can be used in RTS: the enemy suddenly attacks the flank, we move a couple of minutes ago and rebuild our own Defense appropriately. This is an elementary example.
Another feature deserves attention – the ability to teleport individual units to the past. If you send one combat unit to the past, say, a hundred times, then there, in the past, a whole army will turn out. There is a danger of chronofragmentation.
Chronofragmentation is a paradox that arises if one unit is teleported to the exact location of himself in the past. In this case, one of them dies.
To avoid such excesses, AI makes combat units go a certain distance immediately after teleportation.
In Achron, relations immediately find out three playable races, and each of them has a relationship arranged over time in its own way. People for temporal travel use a building called chronocortis. Humanity is a faction with the most developed fire power, the main weapon of people is an atomic bomb.
Grekim aliens do not need any additional buildings, each unit can travel in time on their own. Absolute weapon Grekim – Chronomb – moves all units within the radius of action … two minutes to the future. Thus, they disappear from the battlefield, pose a threat of chronofragmentation (in other words, in two minutes the future will become real, units will return to the same place from where they were deleted, and will crush everyone who is currently there).
Second alien race – Vecgir. Their horse is teleportation. Units Vecgir are bulky and clumsy, but they can independently move themselves in space. They have a unique disappearing torpedo in service. It is not as destructive as the atomic bomb, but it can overcome huge distances, during the flight constantly teleporting in randomly specified places in order to knock down the air defense system.
§2. Grandma's effect
All mentioned techniques are available in multiplayer. We would like to invite you to think exactly one minute over the meaning of this phrase.
Even if you bear thoughts about the difficulties of realizing such a gameplay by brackets – as this is possible in principle? How any educated person knows from the movie Terminator 2, the future is not predetermined. You can predict the actions of the computer opponent, but what to do with living opponents? When the player moves into the past or the future, what remains of him in the present, with whom the opponents are fighting when he is "not at home"?
About everything in order. The main element of the interface is the time scale ( rice. 2 ). The nearest analogue is the scale of the same name in any multimedia player. Two -thirds of it occupies the past, one third – the future. And the present is between them. Gameplay events (unit's step, the destruction of the building, and so on) are marked by “indignations” on this scale.
Just as when watching the film, we move the player slider, here you can choose the time for moving (or the point where unit will be abandoned).
There is no distant future in this game. But the nearest to calculate is not difficult: the game determines the commands given to military units, and on their basis creates a forecast. That is, the player, say, orders the tank to get to a certain point. Let this action take twenty -four seconds – on the temporary scale at the mark “Twenty -four seconds in the future” the chronogram fixes the jump. The gameplay is similarly arranged in the past: that the enemy is trying to change the outcome of the lost fight, you will learn by bursts on the scale.
Further – the most interesting.Changes in the past with time make themselves felt in the present.
From left to right along the temporary scale, with a certain interval, temporary waves are raised.
Temporary wave – outrage of space, reproducing in the present changes in the past (see. The film "The effect of the butterfly" or the game "Anabiosis: Dream of reason").
For example, you returned to the past for twenty seconds, repelled an enemy attack, saved the destroyed building. Upon returning to the present destroyed structure, it will remain in ruins. And only when a temporary wave passes, it will restore.
While the player solves his problems in the past, artificial intelligence is blown up for him; Each action in the past takes chronoenergy, which does not allow players to leave the present for a long time.
Finally, the most breathtaking trick of Achron is the opportunity to play in the past in an accelerated or slow mode. Imagine that you spent a minute in the present, then returned to the past for thirty seconds and played them there. What turns out: from 0:00 to 0:30 you played once; from 0:30 to 1:00 – twice; from 1:00 to 1:30 – never. What does it have to do with 1:30? Think about while you played in the past thirty seconds, time was not standing still! When you come back after thirty seconds, you get at once at 1:30. Thirty seconds of the present disappear for you.
The problem is that in your absence you will have to rely on AI – it is unsafe. Therefore, developers allow you to play in the past at a doubled speed: to quickly replay familiar events and return to the present with a minimum "lag".
* * *
Achron – a game of the relationship of the past and future. She folds the past, present and future into a single whole – and builds a gameplay on this! Time here is several different states of space, the player jumps between them, transforms it, uses various tactics, changes them on the go. Yes, an Achron can get a laboratory for crazy experiments (to blow a couple of evenings), or maybe a game oversaturated with gameplay, a triple concentrate of strategy.
What will happen in the end – will show, sorry, time. The main thing is that this very time does not put Achron end (the game has been in development for about ten years). We hope that because of the passion for temporal experiments, the developers did not forget that in reality the hands of the watch can neither turn back nor accelerate.
Control questions
1. Give examples of games about time management.
2. What is the phenomenon called chronofragmentation?
3. Why should the “disappearing torpedo” fly and teleport if you can simply teleport right at the enemy base and immediately explode?
4. What is the difference between the "grandfather's paradox" and the "butterfly effect"?
5. If you drop the chronobomb into the epicenter of the atomic explosion, how many minutes it will delay the explosion?
Exercise 1
1. Throughout the batch, the player collects a huge army in the corner of the map. The enemy is already attacking his base, and then he suddenly sends all the troops into the past and with one powerful blow destroys the enemy base (where at the moment there is a single peasant who calmly builds the first barracks). This is possible?
(Answer: It is unlikely. To send a huge number of units into the past and command them there, a giant amount of chronoeneria is required. )
2. The player’s base was destroyed in the present, and he destroyed the enemy base in the past a few moments before. Who won?
(Answer: It all depends on the temporary wave. If it passes before the player’s https://all-wins-casino.co.uk/ last building collapses, then he is the winner.)
3. The enemy created a gigantic army, the player penetrated the past and destroyed one single enemy barracks before these units came out of it. They will all die?
(Answer: That's right!)