DescentBB

What if you took some game you like - and as the timer clock goes on, the game gradually speeds up as you play.
Everything is sped up: movement, rotation (ok maybe not rotation, you do need to be able to see), sound effects, weapons, reloads, it's like your computer's clock speed is getting faster and faster.
It keeps getting faster until it starts to approach un-playability. ie: eventually you are crashing into walls the instant you hit a movement button.
Then the level ends/resets.

Is that a thing already? Do any games do that?

I think it would be pretty funny.
Particularly in descent, where joystick movements are not typically that fast. I'd like to watch someone play descent with their joystick reduced to a twitchy blur
So yeah, i think it'd be an interesting mod for a lot of multiplayer games (remember it effects all players equally), particularly FPS games.

Single player games could get weird, since the AI will likely be at no such disadvantage in a sped up environment (unless we try to simulate lag for the AI, which could be an idea). Maybe the singleplayer mechanic would be have the speed be a dynamic thing, like a difficulty setting that changes as you play depending on how well you're doing. If you're doing well - you're playing too slow and it speeds up.
Anyway, that's a sidepoint. The multiplayer is what i was mainly thinking about.

And boy oh boy will it speed up your map learning ability. Infact that's prettymuch what the gameplay mechanic will devolve into, it forces you to react strategetically as fast as you possibly can. All gameplay eventually devolves into map knowledge, pavlovian responses, cause-effect, you'll soon be navigating levels via your muscle memory alone.

Each level will still start normal though. So you'll still be playing the same game for at least a few minutes, it'll just get gradually faster as the level goes on, forcing a gradual change in tactics until it's no longer anything like what you remember.

Sounds a little like life.

man i wish. Driving my car at 600kph could be quite interesting. Just as long as i respawn after the inevitable

The Zone in WipEout? (The video game not the reality show).

Sounds like Space Invaders (Atari)...

roid wrote:What if you took some game you like - and as the timer clock goes on, the game gradually speeds up as you play.

I did this with a game about 2 years ago, part of a server mod of this lightcycle game. It was my attempt to make a challenging single-player mode with levels, something not intrinsic to the game. For each level the game gradually increases speed, and the following levels have increasingly higher base speeds from which to grow. By the final level (12) you can barely control it, yet it is still possible to "beat the game" (a few people have, and it took me several days to).

So yeah, I like speeding up.

Spidey wrote:Sounds a little like life.

LOL, Spidey, how true. But i guess you have to reach a certein age to appreciate the joke.

Tetris?

Remember Breakout on the old Atari 2600 game system? The little ball would speed up as the game progressed through progressive walls and levels. Damn near broke the paddle controller trying to keep up with the thing. I installed a version of it on my old WIn 98 system, but using a mouse just didn't work as well as those paddle controllers did.

Or Pong- more the player bounces the dot, the faster the dot goes.

These sound like "mastery oriented" games, to quote and article you found years ago, which described the difference between games that give you fake rewards against those that required skill.

Tetris would be mastery oriented while Diablo is mostly performance based. One requires you improve yourself, while the other requires you improve your character.

As it turns out, I just saw an article today about a game that does something like this. A group of people at MIT's Game Lab came up with a game that simulates the effects of relativity, including things like frequency shifting and time dilation. Not quite hypermode, but still really cool.

Krom wrote:Tetris?

Absolutely. The original PC version of Tetris had a top speed which was actually playable, but later versions would eventually get unplayably fast (so fast you literally couldn't move the piece to the far edges).

I used to push for the farthest/fastest level I could on Tetris for NES. You could start on level 19, and I managed to get to level 23 once. At that point, you're just trying to set it up so that if you get lucky with the pieces you're given, you can just fill in the middle.

The list so far

Singleplayer

• Space Invaders
• Wipeout (Zone mode)
• Tetris
• Breakout
• Armagetron Advanced (untitled mod).

Multiplayer

• Pong

Hmm, seems a more common concept in Singleplayer games.
I'm more interested in the Multiplayer aspect though, particularly First-Person (or even 3rd-Person type), like FPS or even 6DOF like Descent.
Vision's Armagetron Mod seems the closest to what i'm talking about so far, since it's a 3rd person view multiplayer. But it has a strong "careful you don't kill yourself" aspect which can end up dominating the gameplay, which i'd like to avoid.
(update: oh, right, seems the Tron mod isn't multiplayer)

I have a vague memory of one of the games in the UnrealTournament series having a slider-bar to increase the gameplay speed, but i can't remember, it's been so long. I need to play more games

Actually... now that i think about it you would end up with huge problems playing this game with the joystick, as you'd soon get to a point where rotations are impossible to control and direct. With a mouse it would be ok though as rotations are instant and semi-absolute - being limited only by the speed of your hand.
This may be a serious problem with the idea of making Descent like this, when it gets upto higher speeds joystick players may be at a significant disadvantage .

Alter-Fox wrote:The Zone in WipEout? (The video game not the reality show).

[youtube]A2FIGOEeOVM[/youtube]
That looks good as far as a single player "me vs the environment" gameplay style goes. Just as long as the ability to control the vehicle increases at the same rate the vehicle increases it's speed (ie: acceleration & top speed ability always accompanied by equal abilities in the steering/brakes). From the video that does seem to be the case, the player was able to make some very sharp corners while at high speed, but it's hard to tell with that type of game coz balancing the lag of your vehicle's movements against your vehicle's speed is basically the central aspect of those racing games.

Top Gun wrote:As it turns out, I just saw an article today about a game that does something like this. A group of people at MIT's Game Lab came up with a game that simulates the effects of relativity, including things like frequency shifting and time dilation. Not quite hypermode, but still really cool.

That's great, always love a good educational Serious game. Few years back i was searching for a good game that simulated the nano-scale world in some way accurately (i was hoping to get a more intuitive understanding of quantum effects), didn't find much unfortunately. But i guess fold.it has come out since, which is nice, maybe i should have another look around.

Anyone up for a game of Armagetron, let me know. However, I'm pretty good. You've been warned

roid wrote:

Alter-Fox wrote:The Zone in WipEout? (The video game not the reality show).

[youtube]A2FIGOEeOVM[/youtube]
That looks good as far as a single player "me vs the environment" gameplay style goes. Just as long as the ability to control the vehicle increases at the same rate the vehicle increases it's speed (ie: acceleration & top speed ability always accompanied by equal abilities in the steering/brakes). From the video that does seem to be the case, the player was able to make some very sharp corners while at high speed, but it's hard to tell with that type of game coz balancing the lag of your vehicle's movements against your vehicle's speed is basically the central aspect of those racing games.

Wipeout in Zone mode rocks. The handling *does* increase with speed. It might not be obvious from the video since the player isn't very good. The player in the video makes it to zone 27, but I'd made it to zone 76 back in the day, and I've seen Youtube videos with players well into the 100's. Another awesome (and random) thing about Zone mode (and Wipeout in general) is that you can choose your own music to race to, which in Zone mode also affects the visualizations.

roid wrote:Multiplayer

• Armagetron Advanced (untitled mod).

Actually, the server mod I made was single-player only. :/ I could easily be converted to multi-player, but never was.

Isaac wrote:Anyone up for a game of Armagetron, let me know. However, I'm pretty good. You've been warned

Lies. Do you play multi-player online? What is your name in Arma?

vision wrote:

Isaac wrote:Anyone up for a game of Armagetron, let me know. However, I'm pretty good. You've been warned

Lies. Do you play multi-player online? What is your name in Arma?

Yeah, online. That's the only way I've ever played. I normally play during vacation, but for you I might make an exception.

Isaac wrote:Yeah, online. That's the only way I've ever played. I normally play during vacation, but for you I might make an exception.

Ok. I use the name "sine.wav" in Armagetron. I'm kinda famous there, haha. Been at it for 5 years. The server mentioned above is called "Adventures of TRON: MAZE-A-TRON."

After you play me you're going to start calling me, "the chosen one".

Chosen One! Chosen! Wieouwieouwieouwieeeee!!!

Nyaaaarrrnyaaarrrnyaaarrr... !