Achron Message Board

Brain-provoking time-travel RTS Achron, which Richard had a good old chat about here, has been out for a couple of months, but it’s been lacking a demo for cautious, interested parties to have a play with before taking any kind of plunge. That all changes today with a demo that gives you a taste of the linearity-shattering multiplayer. Developers Hazardous say: “The recommended way to download the Achron Demo is via torrent,” but “The demo is also available via direct download.” Hooray!

I’ve also posted a video of some of the multiplayer action below.(more…)

Time travel's often viewed as a cheap, desperate tactic for storytellers, an all encompassing deus ex machina that both solves and creates a million different problems.

Hazardous Software founder Christopher Hazard came up with the idea for his time travelling real-time-strategy game, Achron, back in 1999, and spent the years after working out the kinks.

Turns out there were a bunch of kinks.

"There was a lot of balancing aspects that I don't think people fully appreciate that went into Achron," said Hazard.

I spoke with Hazard while on a business trip recently, and already filed a story on the game's 10 years of development and involvement with our nation's military (no, our government doesn't have time travel), but part of our conversation never made it into the story. Hazard watched our Quick Look (it's below) and read the comments from all of us--including you.

He wasn't upset, since many of the observations had been echoed elsewhere before. Instead, he started explaining the reasons behind them.

One of the basic decisions we puzzled at was having to select all your units simultaneously to chronoport, letting you warp across the map, rather than just telling the commander to do so, as in other games.

"You wouldn't believe the amount of balancing and thought that went into that simple decision," said Hazard. "You can send something back in time, and now, if you wait until the arrival--let's say the arrival was a minute ago--if you wait until that falls off the timeline that was committed into the past and now you undo the departure, now you end up with a permanent clone of that unit--a permalone, as we call it."

But if movies and books have taught us anything, clones (and paradoxes) are an intrinsic part of time travel. Hazard didn't want to erase it, only to ensure cloning didn't break the game and make Achron an interesting experiment, rather than fun to play.

"Early on," he said, "we knew this would happen and we had a whole bunch of tools to mitigate it, but we didn't want to break that mechanic because it's so consistent in our engine, so we wanted to come up with economic ways to mitigate that."

Sweaty palms, pounding heart, and a mind that won't stop racing. The sooner it's over, the better, you tell yourself, but wouldn't it be be nice if someone pulled a fire alarm and ensured this didn't have to happen at all?

That probably describes public speaking for most of us, even if it's the best man speech you've rehearsed for weeks. Now, imagine being asked to present your ideas to some of the world's most powerful people in a small room at the Pentagon.

"I don't remember the last time I was nervous presenting," said Christopher Hazard, founder of Hazardous Software and one of the two main developers on Achron, a real-time-strategy game with time travel mechanics as impressive as they are perplexing.

Yes, the same Achron that collectively melted the brains of a room of Whiskey Media employees during a recent Quick Look. The same RTS that allows players to play with time and space to create the ideal outcome for a matchup by allowing the player to jump back and forth through time. If Achron were real, we could practice our public appearances over and over again.

Knowing that, it shouldn't be much of a surprise Hazard knows how to keep his cool.

• added cinematic volume toggle to volume settings
  
• added toggle to enable/disable autosaves for single player levels
  
• disabled quick (radial) controls by default
  
• changed guards to be a little looser (campaign 3)
  
• improved scrimmage AI start game logic
  
• fixed bug: Clone Challenge would not unlock Achievement when condition was met
  
• fixed bug: in main menu, immediately changing profile post menu load would return to active profile the first time
  
• fixed bug: Loading save games would play start-level cinematic
  
• fixed bug: moving Slingshot did not stop properly
  
• fixed bug: tooltip for weapon strengths for Incepter and Carrier
  
• fixed bug: Incepter creation would not account for missing foundation Power amount
  
• fixed bug: teleporting Vecgir RPs long distances would not work via Slipgates
  
• fixed bug: exploding Vecgir air vehicles could get stuck in permanent explosion if pilot failed to eject out
  
• fixed bug: performance degredation on some C3 levels when controlling a lot of units in proximity of main character
  
• fixed bug: incorrect unit is created in a progen triad where one of the triad is low on energy
  
• fixed bug: autohierarchy would create circular heirarchies
  
• fixed bug: skip torpedo could get stuck perma-teleporting if it couldn't get to destination
  
• fixed bug: grekim units would ignore initial arcticus dispatch after setting the arcticus as commander
  
• fixed bug: Incepters would not attack air units directly above them
  
• fixed bug: RPs wouldn't auto-process large QP crates when approaching from certain directions
  
• fixed bug: Incorrect logic to set speed key bindings for Steam install
  
• numerous campaign improvements
  

• major performance and behavioral increase on pathfinding
  
• added AdditionalParameters 3 & 4 to Rescript
  
• stop action step now clears target's current action
  
• fixed bug where private game servers would frequently say that files are mismatched
  
• added goal_distance to Rescript for BESTMOVE queries
  
• BESTMOVE query now sets perf_ret to goal position as packed position
  
• improved bloom filter
  

Meet the time-travelling RTS that should be impossible. It’s called Achron, and we asked Richard to pull off the equally impossible feat of not calling it ‘Archon’ even once. That’s a completely different game. But we digress. Here’s Wot He Thought.

(more…)

You should all buy it etc. etc.

We haven’t written anything on time-bending RTS Achron for while, which is probably because our enemies travelled back to the past and eradicated our earlier posts. Let me just travel to the future and ascertain whether we go on to write any further posts about it.

…

We do! Not that anyone on the planet ever gets to read them, because of… no, I vowed I wouldn’t talk about that. So while I go dig a fallout shelter in the garden, I’ll leave you guys to enjoy your final week of existence with the Achron launch trailer.(more…)

Gameplay

Achron requires a little explaining in terms of how it works. The core of the game is a pretty standard RTS fare, with three playable races and a variety of units for each. Where Achron really stands out, however, is it's primary gameplay element: fully-funtional time travel. In addition to the mini-map and controls on the game screen, there is also a timeline displaying all the actions taken by the player the last 8 minutes or so, extending about a minute into the future as well. At any point during gameplay the player can jump forwards and backwards on this timeline, allowing them to change their actions in the past and have these changes then affect the timeline ahead of them. Players are also able to send units forward and backwards through the use of Chronoporters, resulting in battles where a unit may find itself fighting alongside itself. Naturally, these elements result in a variety of interesting strategies - for example, you send your units to defend against an attack from the north when the timeline changes and you find those same enemies now attacking from a different direction against your unprotected base.

So how fun does this turn out to be? In short, very. Although the idea of free-form time travel sounds a little confusing at first, the concept is quite easy to get to grips with and you will soon find yourself managing changes in the timeline with ease. Paradoxes are not a problem, as the model of time-travel used by the game resolves these impossibilites in an effective manner - the two or more states of a paradox will alternate between each other until one falls off the end of the 8-minute timeline.

As the game is not yet complete single-player gameplay is currently restricted to the tutorial levels and AI players, although the developers have promised an extensive campaign spanning all three playable races. The multiplayer community is well-established, if a little small; the users in the official IRC channel are always willing to play regardless of how new a player is.

Overall, gameplay gets a 7/10.

Graphics

The in-game HUD is sleek and well-designed, with an easy to understand layout. The quality of the graphics for levels is largely dependant on the level itself - although a large number of textures and scenery are available it is mainly up to the creator of each map to determine how detailed the level will be. In terms of units and buildings, however, the game could use some work: most of the models are uniquely designed and clearly distinguishable from each other, although the textures are rather bland and repetitive.

Graphics gets a 5/10, though with a little work to the textures this could easily be increased.

Story

Since the game is still in development and the single-player campaign has yet to be released, not much is currently known about the storyline of Achron. The website hints at an interesting plotline, if somewhat generic, though until the campaign is released it isn't clear what quality the storytelling will be.

For the time being I won't assign a score to storyline, though once the campaign is released this will be revised.

Sound

The sound of Achron can be separated into sound effects and music. The sound effects of the game are fairly average, though limited at the current time (again, Achron is still in development so additional sound effects may be added in the future. The music of Achron is all custom, and features a distinct ambience - the majority of songs are quite peaceful, with a few faster paced songs. The music isn't anything amazingly spectacular, but it definitely adds to the feel of the game.

Sound gets a 6/10.

Conclusion

Overall, I give Achron a 7/10 - it definitely shows a lot of promise and the concept of free-form timetravel is a unique idea that has never been implemented as well as it has in Acron, though there are several areas where development is still needed. I highly recommend pre-purchasing it - you will recieve every alpha and beta build, the full version of the game when it is released some time this year, and any updates and add-ons to the game after that.

I'm not eligible since I joined prior to the start of signups (12th member on the forum as a matter of fact), but I thought some of you might be interested in this.

If none of you can remember what Achron is, it's basically a RTS with fully functional time-travel.

You will remember that time-travelling RTS Achron made me a bit giddy last year, largely because it was one of the cleverest pieces of game design I have ever seen. Hopefully you’ll also have thought “whatever happened to that”, because now we have the answer: there’s a video and a detailed update from project lead Chris Hazard – including the phrase “I have briefed senior officials at the Pentagon” – below.(more…)

Perhaps some time in the future when the game is a bit more advanced we should have some kind of tournament.

Still downloading myself, but from the videos this looks like this is an awesome game.