I implemented variable length actions and tried it out but I am disappointed about the results and am thinking of implementing a much simpler system. It's good simulation wise but it gets unintuitive and very complicated from a gameplay perspective. Take this example:
player time to move one tile = 1
player time to melee attack neighbouring tile = 0.5
bird time to move one tile = 0.4
What the player sees if they move about is that the bird alternates between moving 2 and 3 tiles at a time: 2,3,2,3,2,3
Now if the player switches to melee attacking something (not the bird) the bird will appear to slow down: 1,1,1,2,1,1,1,2
This highlights two problems (in my opinion). First the bird slowing down is unintuitive. Why would a bird appear to slow when the player attacks and speed up when they move? This expects the player to understand the whole relative time thingy.
Second that 1,1,1,2 staggering...the player can't predict movement in this system because look there are three 1s in a row and you might think the next movement of the bird will be one tile...but no it suddenly seems to jump 2. Okay that's a common problem and a minor one, but it does limit predictability.
The biggest problem I see is that the player is expected to make critical survival decisions based on time, yet variable length actions obfuscates how time works in the game and forces them to run complicated calculations upon detailed statistics. For example imagine the player is being chased by a tiger and needs to work out if they have time to throw a javelin at the tiger and still be able to flee to a door 10 tiles away in time how do they do that? The tiger moves 121% as fast as the player. Throwing a javelin takes 78% as long as moving a tile. They are going to need a calculator. They could just guess, and that's how I would play, but I would do so knowing that my method of play was "lazy" and I was playing with a sub-optimal strategy. After losing a few times I might just decide I will never win unless I bother running all the calculations...
Another problem I found was kiting:
player time to move one tile = 1
player time to melee attack neighbouring tile = 0.8
orc time to move one tile = 1
orc time to melee attack neighbouring tile = 1
So now if the player times this right they can can wait for the orc to walk up to them, melee attack and the orc doesn't get a chance to react before the player gets to move again. The player then steps backwards and avoids the orcs attack. But this kiting only works if you time it right, which means the player has to calculate it. But this is fine because it's a simulation - except if it's a proper simulation the player should be able to choose how long they wait. Ie a variable "wait" action. Press that '.' key and get a little input field asking how many "turn units" you want to wait. 0.2 please. And now this game is just getting too complicated.
All these things can be worked around somewhat. But I am beginning to lean towards uber simplicity of just having all actions of all creatures take the same amount of time, or multiples of 2. At least that is predictable and perhaps that's what matters most of all? It's not like variable action lengths are easy to implement either. Knowing what I do now I wouldn't have bothered.
Same story with field of vision...I spent too long reading about permissive field of view and that digital one, and turns out the far more basic method is "better".
