I
Incanus
Guest
Well, I'm new here too, but I'm also playing Fallout 2 at the moment. Hearing of Fallout 3, I speculated a little about the good and bad things in real-time vs. turn-based...
First of all, I do understand the skeptics who support turn-based combat. After all, pretty much any and all strategy games out there use real-time combat, so do we really need another one? Of course, the game has to sell and if real-time strategy makes that more likely then that's what will happen, but I do think it's fair to at least acknowledge that the people who support turn-based combat might do so precisely because the first Fallout games were among the few that never jumped onto band-wagon of real-time strategy games. To those people the turn-based combat of the previous Fallout games might have been one of the major attractions, and there is no point in denying that.
Still, I also don't think catering the needs of these people from the basis of a real-time based engine is impossible. After all, what does turn-based really mean? Well, in Fallout terms it just means that people act according to sequence and when it's the player's turn to act, he takes all his actions. Once he has done that, everybody else gets to act while he gets to do nothing but watch. That's not so difficult to put into a real-time based engine, I'd say. All it requires is an option that automatically activates the pause-mode every time it's his turn to act. Then he gives his commands and exits the pause-mode and the game performs actions for everybody else. The next time it's his turn again the computer will just enter pause-mode automatically again. Sure, this doesn't include giving orders to companions, but you were never able to do that in any Fallout game in the first place.
The one area where there might be real trouble is that in turn-based combat you get to see the effects of your actions immediately. That you cannot do in real-time combat because the effects will not be known by the time commands are given. The only way to solve that is to cut the action points into several shorter sequences. For example, if you want your character to move next to his enemy and then hit him twice, then you could do that by either telling the computer to do all of it and then watch the outcome, or you could let it move the character, then pause, then hit the enemy, then pause again, then command another hit.
Another method could be to let each character act once for every action point in sequence. If a character takes an action that costs several action points, then he won't get to act until all of those have passed, and if he runs out of action points then he doesn't act again until the next round/turn begins. This would be an approach that slows down combat significantly, but the option to take it would be nice.
One thing that really cannot be solved is that of changing events. I mean, what if your character strikes the enemy once, kills him, and then decides to sacrifice the action points to immediately loot the body for a better weapon? There is no way to command a character for such an eventuality. Instead the program could just pause and await new commands whenever any given subsequent commands are no longer valid, in this case because you obviously cannot attack a dead opponent. A real-time engine won't be able to recreate all the turn-based advantages, but it can get pretty close, I think.
What should be done is probably to allow players to choose which version to play, preferably in the options menu. For instance, if there is a Turn-based option it can default to real-time but with the options of selecting action sequences or single actions as I've described above. That should allow a real-time based game to grant options that can let the game come very close to turn-based system people know from the previous Fallout games.
First of all, I do understand the skeptics who support turn-based combat. After all, pretty much any and all strategy games out there use real-time combat, so do we really need another one? Of course, the game has to sell and if real-time strategy makes that more likely then that's what will happen, but I do think it's fair to at least acknowledge that the people who support turn-based combat might do so precisely because the first Fallout games were among the few that never jumped onto band-wagon of real-time strategy games. To those people the turn-based combat of the previous Fallout games might have been one of the major attractions, and there is no point in denying that.
Still, I also don't think catering the needs of these people from the basis of a real-time based engine is impossible. After all, what does turn-based really mean? Well, in Fallout terms it just means that people act according to sequence and when it's the player's turn to act, he takes all his actions. Once he has done that, everybody else gets to act while he gets to do nothing but watch. That's not so difficult to put into a real-time based engine, I'd say. All it requires is an option that automatically activates the pause-mode every time it's his turn to act. Then he gives his commands and exits the pause-mode and the game performs actions for everybody else. The next time it's his turn again the computer will just enter pause-mode automatically again. Sure, this doesn't include giving orders to companions, but you were never able to do that in any Fallout game in the first place.
The one area where there might be real trouble is that in turn-based combat you get to see the effects of your actions immediately. That you cannot do in real-time combat because the effects will not be known by the time commands are given. The only way to solve that is to cut the action points into several shorter sequences. For example, if you want your character to move next to his enemy and then hit him twice, then you could do that by either telling the computer to do all of it and then watch the outcome, or you could let it move the character, then pause, then hit the enemy, then pause again, then command another hit.
Another method could be to let each character act once for every action point in sequence. If a character takes an action that costs several action points, then he won't get to act until all of those have passed, and if he runs out of action points then he doesn't act again until the next round/turn begins. This would be an approach that slows down combat significantly, but the option to take it would be nice.
One thing that really cannot be solved is that of changing events. I mean, what if your character strikes the enemy once, kills him, and then decides to sacrifice the action points to immediately loot the body for a better weapon? There is no way to command a character for such an eventuality. Instead the program could just pause and await new commands whenever any given subsequent commands are no longer valid, in this case because you obviously cannot attack a dead opponent. A real-time engine won't be able to recreate all the turn-based advantages, but it can get pretty close, I think.
What should be done is probably to allow players to choose which version to play, preferably in the options menu. For instance, if there is a Turn-based option it can default to real-time but with the options of selecting action sequences or single actions as I've described above. That should allow a real-time based game to grant options that can let the game come very close to turn-based system people know from the previous Fallout games.
