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Programming / Re: Realtime or semi-realtime turns

« on: November 02, 2011, 05:36:10 PM »

I think it'll definitely need a 'panic button' where you can hit enter or something and halt time so you can think about your next move. I'm not against people agonising over every turn if they want to, but I want easy battles and actions (like walking from one side of the room to another) to be quicker and smoother.

Perhaps an automatic stop-time if a monster X levels above your party comes into view would be a good idea too...

A lot of tactical squad-based strategy games (X-Com, etc.) had to deal with these kinds of issues.  In an actual firefight, you want turn-based combat because that's the only way to let the player make complex tactical decisions.  But in between battles when you are just wandering around the map, turn-by-turn control of a squad of six characters or so is a big pain.  Plus by the time some of the later games came out, turn-based strategy was largely dead due to the rise of RTS games so there was a lot of pressure for new games to include real-time aspects.

Most of the games dealt with these sorts of problems by making everything outside of combat real time, and everything in combat turn-based.  The transition would be handled by "interrupts", when a new enemy came into view of a character, time would stop and that character would get a chance to take a turn.  Generally if the enemy didn't notice the player and the player didn't do anything to attack, play would resume to real-time, otherwise it would continue turn-based after the interrupting player had their turn.  Some games had weirder systems, Space Hulk for example was a FPS squad-based strategy game, and it had a "freeze time" concept.  At any time the player could exit out of the FPS view and see a tactical map, where they could give squad members orders to move, cover an area, fire at will, etc.  But the freeze time was limited, so the player had to give orders quickly and then go back to the FPS view.