Time stoppery?

[Epic4242]

Question for Virgil. Or anyone really  ;D:

Is the game time going to be the same as creeper world? Will we be able to stop time? Speed it up? Will our game time be our "score"?

No pressure to answer :).

[knucracker]

This game is "frame locked" like CW1-3.  That means each step of the game is the same for each player regardless of the speed of their computer.  It's a deterministic simulation, not something designed to render as many frames per second as possible like a twitch FPS might be.

So yes, you can pause the game, step advance, run it faster, issue orders while paused.

As for score...  I've not decided just yet.  That may be a part of some missions and I may record time and score, but it may also be absent from some missions (like the story).  There are good and bad things about scores, and I'm just not sure yet.  One option may be to record completion times but not a score per mission.  That would allow purely information displays of how long it took to complete a given mission.  Online charting might still allow sorting by completion time for folks that like to compete using metric.

[J]

Looking from a map designer perspective, I think a score for the player would be vital to creating some challenges, especially if there are things that enhance your score. While also looking at what CW3 has, I even think scores should be more important than time. Time can be directly converted to a score but not vice versa. So if scores are the default sorting and it's made visible to the player that time is converted to a score, you've got a good system that works for any map (with or without things that de/increase your score).
Score: 10000
Time: -698
Collectibles: 1x 50
Final score: 9352
I don't know however if there's a collectables mechanism that fits the game and this scheme I put here, I haven't played the game yet.

One suggestion for at the very bottom of the suggestions list: an option to disable frame-skipping when increasing the game speed (for fast computers).

[Michionlion]

I think any end-of-game report screen needs to include things that will help improve your gameplay - stats of when, where, and with what weapons enemies were killed, your power-gen curve, and so on.  I think CW1 made a good start on graphs like that, but I think in the end being able to analyse YOUR performance will be more fun than comparing it to others.  I don't think that dynamic should go away, though - sometimes it is fun to fight for 1st place, but that rarely happens in a game that is played by thousands of people.  I would advocate for a return of the type of end-screen in CW1, but beefed up.  A lot, preferably - that would be way cooler and more useful than a score system.

One suggestion for at the very bottom of the suggestions list: an option to disable frame-skipping when increasing the game speed (for fast computers).

+1 to that.  I often get the feel of lagging or stuttering, but I'm running at a solid 60.  That would probably eliminate some of those problems.

[pawel345]

Some kind of scoring for the missions would be good i think. I guess what would the scores calculated form depends on how the game would play in CW the amount of time was a good indication, in this new game(is there a name for it?) maybe it will not, maybe something like structures build/lost would play a large role in determining the score?

[Hubs]

Anyone play Age of Empires 2? That game had really cool/helpful graphs at the end. It had markers on the graph for major battles and research achievements.

I'm also stoked that there is a 8x speed option! I almost always run CW3 at 4x speed.

[pawel345]

Yeah that was the scoring system I trough of when I wrote the post above^^

[thejoe66]

The scoring system in Empires is amazing. I definitely think that kind of system should be put in to consideration for game 4.

[F0R]

CW3 generally is paused 75% of the time for me and 1x speed at other times. A different system where we arent constantly pausing to maximise our score may be interesting and new

[4xC]

CW3 generally is paused 75% of the time for me and 1x speed at other times. A different system where we arent constantly pausing to maximise our score may be interesting and new

Wow. I pause about as often, but play with 4x. (I never noticed much actual speed difference anyway)

On maps at least 150 cells long on either side, that must be quite frustrating for you to go 1x all the time.

And I can never really play maps above 200 cells long due to severe lag at any speed.