RE: [GD-Design] RTS vs. turnbased

[Tom F. <to...@mu...>]

StarTopia has a pause which lets you wander around and look at your station,
but not give orders. So no real gameplay implications we thought, just a fun
way to show off the graphics. However, there are occasional bombs planted by
saboteurs, and you have ten seconds to find them before they go off. Of
course if you pause the game as soon as you get the "there is a bomb on your
station" message, you can spend as long as you like looking for them. Doh!
We only realised that a few weeks before ship. But as bombs drive some
people absolutely insane with hatred and frustration, and letting them pause
the game somewhat solves the problem, we left it in.

X-Com Apocalypse did this sort of gameplay superbly. Although I loved the
turn-based play in the first two, and Apocalypse still had a turn-based
mode, of the two, I preferred the pausable realtime mode.


Tom Forsyth - Muckyfoot bloke and Microsoft MVP.

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ivan-Assen Ivanov [mailto:as...@ha...]
> Sent: 27 February 2003 09:45
> To: gam...@li...
> Subject: RE: [GD-Design] RTS vs. turnbased
> 
> 
> 
> > Also Bioware RPG can be switched between real time and 
> > "paused" mode. 
> 
> Actually, some people wrote us to say they actually play
> Celtic Kings in that mode :-) because the Pause is 
> implemented in a way
> that allows you to give orders while paused. We hadn't seen
> it coming, it was definitely "emergent game abuse" :-)