| 3 |
Long
answer:
Consider
that
not
only
was
Achron's
engine
specifically
designed
for
the
time
travel
and
manipuation
mechanics,
but
that
in
order
to
do
so
much
of
the
game
and
units
had
to
be
limited
in
ways
that
would
have
been
ridiculous
as
far
back
as
1995.
At
present[tooltip=Note
this
only
applies
to
the
most
recent
release
of
Achron.
Hazardous
Software
has
continued
to
upgrade
the
engine
so
there
may
be
capabilities
as
yet
unknown
to
the
public][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip],
units
cannot
have
their
own
timers
for
reloading
or
healing
or
anything[tooltip=what
healing
and
other
periodic
events
there
are
work
by
modulo
operation
on
the
current
game
time,
not
a
per-unit
timer.
There
literally
are
not
enough
free
bits
for
one][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip]
which
means
no
cooldowns
or
durations
for
abilities,
units
can
only
move
on
a
grid
roughly
the
size
of
the
smallest
unit[tooltip=what
appears
to
be
smoothness
is
just
graphical
interpolation][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip],
units
can
only
move
in
8
directions,
units
can
only
have
somewhere
on
the
order
of
12
bits
for
health
and
8
bits
for
energy
and
ammo,
player
resources
can
only
take
on
the
order
of
25
bits
for
the
main
two,
and
closer
to
16
for
power
and
reserves,
and
moving
beyond
even
30
units
in
play
on
most
systems
will
cause
noticeable
lag
issues[tooltip=Think
Zero-K
in
a
10v10
a
few
minutes
in][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip],
along
with
the
entire
system
being
client-server
just
to
let
people
without
2011-era
monster
CPUs
play
multiplayer
at
all.
|
3 |
Long
answer:
Consider
that
not
only
was
Achron's
engine
specifically
designed
for
the
time
travel
and
manipuation
mechanics,
but
that
in
order
to
do
so
much
of
the
game
and
units
had
to
be
limited
in
ways
that
would
have
been
ridiculous
as
far
back
as
1995.
At
present[tooltip=Note
this
only
applies
to
the
most
recent
release
of
Achron.
Hazardous
Software
has
continued
to
upgrade
the
engine
so
there
may
be
capabilities
as
yet
unknown
to
the
public][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip],
units
cannot
have
their
own
timers
for
reloading
or
healing
or
anything[tooltip=what
healing
and
other
periodic
events
there
are
work
by
modulo
operation
on
the
current
game
time,
not
a
per-unit
timer.
There
literally
are
not
enough
free
bits
for
one][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip]
which
means
no
cooldowns
or
durations
for
abilities,
units
can
only
move
on
a
grid
where
1
square
is
the
size
of
the
smallest
unit[tooltip=what
appears
to
be
smoothness
is
just
graphical
interpolation][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip],
units
can
only
move
in
8
directions,
units
can
only
have
somewhere
on
the
order
of
12
bits
for
health
and
8
bits
for
energy
and
ammo,
player
resources
can
only
take
on
the
order
of
25
bits
for
the
main
two,
and
closer
to
16
for
power
and
reserves,
and
moving
beyond
even
30
units
in
play
on
most
systems
will
cause
noticeable
lag
issues[tooltip=Think
Zero-K
in
a
10v10
a
few
minutes
in][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip],
along
with
the
entire
system
being
client-server
just
to
let
people
without
2011-era
monster
CPUs
play
multiplayer
at
all.
|
| 5 |
That's not even all the limitations, but the point is that in order to make time travel a thing, pretty much everything else was restricted to be more on par with WarCraft 1 than StarCraft II. Making any Spring engine game have even rollback netcode[tooltip=which would be essentially a subset of time travel][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip] would be a tricky matter of data compression and storage, making it have full-on manipulable timelines would pretty much require dropping most of what we value in the Spring engine for unit movement and physics.
|
5 |
That's not even all the limitations, but the point is that in order to make time travel a thing, pretty much everything else was restricted to be more on par with WarCraft 1 than StarCraft II. Making any Spring engine game have even rollback netcode[tooltip=which would be essentially a subset of time travel][color=orange][*][/color][/tooltip] would be a tricky matter of data compression and storage, making it have full-on manipulable timelines would pretty much require dropping most of what we value in the Spring engine for unit movement and physics.
|
Time Travel Mechanic