Time Travel

Will any Time Changing/Time travel tools be possible?

It would be quite hard to implement into gameplay.
But then again it would be very cool...

I think it could if it follows one definitive rule...

The history of any of your species cannot be altered, thus there is a time/space lock surrounding your species system(s). If you travel back in time you can not visit your system or any other species you have interacted with.

Otherwise the game would have to record every action of your species, and then show repercussions of your actions as you go back in time... It's just not possible.

Concept for time warp/peek/travel.

Activating the tool will allow you to dynamically reverse/fast forward time. You will see planets orbit backwards, stars de-form into dense nebula.
Perhaps you could even go back to the big bang...

While back in time you will:

A) Only be allowed to visit systems that you have not already discovered as in doing so you could alter your species history ala paradox. (Vague much...? Needs a bit more thought)

OR

B) Only be able to observe. Thus there will be no repercussions as you will not act upon anything. You still may not observe you own systems. (Game will have to record your progress ALL the time if so)


Any speculation on these concepts?

Seeing as you weren't part of the last generation, I'll say this right off the bat- there are many things not fit for the game, or our computers, and it was settled a looong time ago that we wouldn't have this feature.

Traveling back to the past;

As for the genius who thought up the Back to the Future trilogy, it's fun to think about, but would it work? How would the computer be able to make out a paradox? Well, okay, I know you can't interact with your past self, but there's still the problem of recording the past. Think about it- the computer would have to record the events that happened from the moment you came into the game as a tiny cell, and perhaps even before that, if ever you want to go there. That's a lot of memory.

Then there's traveling into the future. It's more plausible, but then the computer would probably implode, burn, morph into a pile of seemingly harmless melted plastic, metal and ashes and then explode, in your face, getting its was-functional guts all over the walls, trying to calculate all of the events in the galaxy that will happen in the next, say, billion years, in the course of a few seconds. Simply put, it's too much.

So, sorry, uh, no..

Heh fair enough

I didn't have much hope for the concept, just wondering where it stood :]

Noitulove wrote:

Seeing as you weren't part of the last generation, I'll say this right off the bat- there are many things not fit for the game, or our computers, and it was settled a looong time ago that we wouldn't have this feature.

Traveling back to the past;

As for the genius who thought up the Back to the Future trilogy, it's fun to think about, but would it work? How would the computer be able to make out a paradox? Well, okay, I know you can't interact with your past self, but there's still the problem of recording the past. Think about it- the computer would have to record the events that happened from the moment you came into the game as a tiny cell, and even before that. That's a lot of memory.

Then there's traveling into the future. It's more plausible, but then the computer would probably implode, burn, morph into a pile of seemingly harmless melted plastic, metal and ashes and then explode, in your face, getting its was-functional guts all over the walls, trying to calculate all of the events in the galaxy that will happen in the next, say, billion years, in the course of a few seconds. Simply put, it's too much.

So, sorry, uh, no..

QFT

also, according to the chaos theory, just the fact you went back in time would completely change everything about the universe's future, therefore you may cease to exist or end up in a completely different place, etc, etc.

it's a good idea though, i wish i had thought of it. lol

Time travel... not possible. Time is constant. Every moment of time is replaced by the next. For time travel to be possible, time would have to keep a record of every moment that passes by... and every moment that will pass by.

InvaderZim wrote:

Time travel... not possible. Time is constant. Every moment of time is replaced by the next. For time travel to be possible, time would have to keep a record of every moment that passes by... and every moment that will pass by.

[sketchyphysics=I'm sorry if I am wrong] Im not actually sure if time IS constant...? I mean, Einsteins theory of relativity shows us that it can be observed as variable depending on speed and relative position to large gravitational mass. Wait this is Time dilation, thats the word I was looking for. Im not sure but does Time dialation state that time IS or IS NOT constant?[/sketchyphysics]


If not.....

(Be warned, concept is almost improbable)

But what about a device powerful enough to record the position of EVERY atom in the universe... The button is pushed and it stores this data. Button is pushed again 10 years in the future and EVERY atom in the universe is re-assembled to these positions...

Probably not very helpful in game play. In fact its more or less what saving and re-loading does

I guess in this case, for ease we should assume that in the Thrive universe, Time travel is not possible.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but time travel can be achieved by getting time dilation to extra accelerate the future, then stop the acceleration. Dunno if you can reverse time, but that can be possibly done via negative matter?

Darkgamma wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but time travel can be achieved by getting time dilation to extra accelerate the future, then stop the acceleration. Dunno if you can reverse time, but that can be possibly done via negative matter?

You mean going close to the speed of light? That would work: the closer you get the faster stationary things outside seem to go, in other words you are going slowly relative to people outside who are not going especially fast. Einsteins theory of relativity, isn't it?

Time Travel is...

1. Impossible according to science, as time does not actually exist.

2. Impossible to implement into gameplay outside of strategic saving of the game.

So no.

The Uteen wrote:

You mean going close to the speed of light? That would work: the closer you get the faster stationary things outside seem to go, in other words you are going slowly relative to people outside who are not going especially fast. Einsteins theory of relativity, isn't it?

Yes, that was what I was looking for! Although it isn't implementable (?) in-game, could negative mass be the key to back from the future? If an object has negative inertive mass, when you push it, it'd hit you über hard into your stomach...
Hmm, this gave me a propulsion and TO idea: Negative matter engines! No energy investment, maybe some for transformation from positive into negative, then it'd accelerate to infinity, and you can turn it off or put it on the other side and decelerate!

Darkgamma wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

You mean going close to the speed of light? That would work: the closer you get the faster stationary things outside seem to go, in other words you are going slowly relative to people outside who are not going especially fast. Einsteins theory of relativity, isn't it?

Yes, that was what I was looking for! Although it isn't implementable (?) in-game, could negative mass be the key to back from the future? If an object has negative inertive mass, when you push it, it'd hit you über hard into your stomach...
Hmm, this gave me a propulsion and TO idea: Negative matter engines! No energy investment, maybe some for transformation from positive into negative, then it'd accelerate to infinity, and you can turn it off or put it on the other side and decelerate!

Hm... Not sure how you could get something with negative mass, but maybe if it is possible, we can do it. Maybe a particle that, instead of traveling at a constant rate forwards, it goes backwards. If time is just a dimension, then surely it is possible to go in the other direction? Some particles can do weird things like that...
Maybe we could say say that we're reversing the polarity of the neutron flow.

Accoridng to physics, time seems to be essentially local, and the faster you move in relation to another object the more differently time passes (look up on those experiments where they put atomic clocks on rockets spinning around the earth), however I beleive that for simplicity's sake we should implement an in-game "universal" time passage. Keeping track of all those temporal distortions bound to speed and such would be processing hell.

However time travel COULD be possible in-game on a limited form.

The idea would be of "time bubbles", either a god tool or a very high-tech device (possibly both?) where a certain volume of space enclosed on such a bubble would be subject to faster (or slower, or reverse possibly?) timeflow. Time bubbles could be also set to contain a single celestial body (star, planet or otherwise) much like the Blink of an eye voyager episode.

This would be a useful solution to god-mode celestial engineering, because it'd allow the player to create new primordial nebulaes with forming stars and not force him to age the rest of the galaxy billions of years for the planets in there to form. Also don't forget the war potential. Drop one such device on an enemy's star and watch as it ages quickly.

Djohaal wrote:

Accoridng to physics, time seems to be essentially local, and the faster you move in relation to another object the more differently time passes (look up on those experiments where they put atomic clocks on rockets spinning around the earth), however I beleive that for simplicity's sake we should implement an in-game "universal" time passage. Keeping track of all those temporal distortions bound to speed and such would be processing hell.

However time travel COULD be possible in-game on a limited form.

The idea would be of "time bubbles", either a god tool or a very high-tech device (possibly both?) where a certain volume of space enclosed on such a bubble would be subject to faster (or slower, or reverse possibly?) timeflow. Time bubbles could be also set to contain a single celestial body (star, planet or otherwise) much like the Blink of an eye voyager episode.

This would be a useful solution to god-mode celestial engineering, because it'd allow the player to create new primordial nebulaes with forming stars and not force him to age the rest of the galaxy billions of years for the planets in there to form. Also don't forget the war potential. Drop one such device on an enemy's star and watch as it ages quickly.

Actually, that sounds like a good idea for a time travel god tool.

The Uteen wrote:

Djohaal wrote:

- IDEA -

Actually, that sounds like a good idea for a time travel god tool.

Yipee finally someone agrees with one of my ideas with no strings attached!

I beleive this is the simplest route to manage the several problems that time would present to us (geological timescales, time travel, etc)

toxiciron wrote:

Noitulove wrote:

Seeing as you weren't part of the last generation, I'll say this right off the bat- there are many things not fit for the game, or our computers, and it was settled a looong time ago that we wouldn't have this feature.

Traveling back to the past;

As for the genius who thought up the Back to the Future trilogy, it's fun to think about, but would it work? How would the computer be able to make out a paradox? Well, okay, I know you can't interact with your past self, but there's still the problem of recording the past. Think about it- the computer would have to record the events that happened from the moment you came into the game as a tiny cell, and even before that. That's a lot of memory.

Then there's traveling into the future. It's more plausible, but then the computer would probably implode, burn, morph into a pile of seemingly harmless melted plastic, metal and ashes and then explode, in your face, getting its was-functional guts all over the walls, trying to calculate all of the events in the galaxy that will happen in the next, say, billion years, in the course of a few seconds. Simply put, it's too much.

So, sorry, uh, no..

QFT

also, according to the chaos theory, just the fact you went back in time would completely change everything about the universe's future, therefore you may cease to exist or end up in a completely different place, etc, etc.

it's a good idea though, i wish i had thought of it. lol

Actualy, it's far more likely that the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle is true allowing the flow of time to be static. However, we can't program chaotic dissapation. So no time travel.

Accelerating/slowing down time in an area, or something similar?

Yeah, why not.

Going BACKWARDS in time?

No. End of discussion.

The only way to implement this is to essentially save the game constantly, which would take up vast amounts of memory, and then (when allowable memory for this feature runs out) thrash the users hard drive. This is absolutely fine for a game like Achron (with system requirements higher than anything i've ever seen in order to get it to run smoothly (It is VERY cpu bound.)) where we are talking minutes of time travel at most, but any more than that and we asplode the computer

Bashinerox wrote:

Accelerating/slowing down time in an area, or something similar?

Yeah, why not.

Going BACKWARDS in time?

No. End of discussion.

The only way to implement this is to essentially save the game constantly, which would take up vast amounts of memory, and then (when allowable memory for this feature runs out) thrash the users hard drive. This is absolutely fine for a game like Achron (with system requirements higher than anything i've ever seen in order to get it to run smoothly (It is VERY cpu bound.)) where we are talking minutes of time travel at most, but any more than that and we asplode the computer

What about "temporal regression", for things which are defined as functions of time flow such as star lifecycles, undisturbed planet ring formations and such? I beleive that if such things are defined as fractals or something they are subject to run on negative time if properly implemented. Whole untouched systems could be regressed that way as a matter of fact, if we used fixed seeds instead of random numbers.Now if the player sculpted their face on the planet...

Djohaal wrote:

Bashinerox wrote:

Accelerating/slowing down time in an area, or something similar?

Yeah, why not.

Going BACKWARDS in time?

No. End of discussion.

The only way to implement this is to essentially save the game constantly, which would take up vast amounts of memory, and then (when allowable memory for this feature runs out) thrash the users hard drive. This is absolutely fine for a game like Achron (with system requirements higher than anything i've ever seen in order to get it to run smoothly (It is VERY cpu bound.)) where we are talking minutes of time travel at most, but any more than that and we asplode the computer

What about "temporal regression", for things which are defined as functions of time flow such as star lifecycles, undisturbed planet ring formations and such? I beleive that if such things are defined as fractals or something they are subject to run on negative time if properly implemented. Whole untouched systems could be regressed that way as a matter of fact, if we used fixed seeds instead of random numbers. Now if the player sculpted their face on the planet...

Yes, everything will retain it's seed value used for generation (the seed for celestial bodies and initial environments will be generated from position. It's called starseed.)

And yes, anything defined as a function of time (which funnily enough, includes the creatures) can be regressed by regenerating with an earlier "age" value.

However, this stuff will come way into the future.

Focus is on getting a detailed environment on a single planet before space is even looked at.
I want planets to feel alive, and so am working on immersion at the creature level above all else

Bashinerox wrote:

However, this stuff will come way into the future.

Focus is on getting a detailed environment on a single planet before space is even looked at.
I want planets to feel alive, and so am working on immersion at the creature level above all else

Gloriously approved. If we give people even just one planet, the possibilities are vast.