That fits into the horrible ideas threat.
I was thinking the game could keep track and repeat certain major events that the previous player character did, even outside the reality bubble. A nuclear explosion could be one such event, whether because of a silo nuke or a mininuke.
And perhaps the new post-jump player could receive a random short list of things that the pre-jump player did, a list such as “Started a car at [coordinates], 2nd of Spring, 2138hrs” or “Penetrated lab at [coordinates], 3rd of spring, 2341hrs” or “Killed zombie hulk at [coordinates], 4th of spring, 0155hrs” and so on.
I think it’d be uniquely entertaining to play a time travel scenario a year or two later (of realtime) with a short list of clues what the previous character did. Depending on the player’s personal memory of events, of course. Perhaps the goal could be to stop that guy. Or just watch and follow him and… reminisce.
But first, we’d have to introduce a player character copy (NPC) that follows the player around at a distance in the first pre-jump game… It would drive any new player mad, until truth is revealed. That copycat would sometimes leave the player notes that say things such as “Don’t look me up” or “You don’t want to know” or “The hardest thing for a cat to do is to resist curiosity”.
In the post-jump games, the player would have a set of choices regarding the notes to leave for the pre-jump copy character. But these notes would be different, and meant to manipulate the actions of the pre-jump copy character - notes such as “There’s food at [coordinates]” or “There are medical supplies at [coordinates]”, and depending on the status of the pre-jump copy character, he might or might not divert path and choose a new destination, potentially getting himself killed in the process… unless the player intervenes, assuming intervention by player is made possible.
Am I making sense? This time travel / causality crap makes my head spin, and it’s even more difficult to express the related ideas. I’m not crazy, I swear.
Could you? This is the interesting thing about time.
Could you actually >change< the past? It’s basically a Paradox, and I for one think that you really couldn’t change the past if you could timetravel. Everything you would >do< in the timetravel would already be written in stone, because it is the future you’re coming from. That means that, regardless of how often you try to travel back in time to make things right, you wouldn’t be able to, because you already KNOW the outcome of it all: The Cataclysm. You couldn’t change it, and even worse, you would probably realize at some point that you are the reason for the Cataclysm and you couldn’t do a thing against it.
That would be crushing for the character.
A different approach to the time travel paradox is, obviously, the Multiverse/multi dimension theory, where you would simply enter a different dimension/Universe. You could change things in there, definitely. you could potentially stop the Cataclysm before it starts.
But…is it worth it? It ain’t your Universe, your dimension. It’s not really your home, it’s a copy of it, probably with some small differences to your own dimension. While you could potentially rescue A human civilation, it wouldn’t be yours, and you’d never quite fit in it either way, because you’re marked by your past in the Cataclysm itself. One could argue that this isn’t worth it.
…sorry everyone. I love philosphy and debate, an time travel shenanigans are a great way to think about the Universe and Time :P[/quote]
This is the way I see it too, you can’t change what has happened, but what you can do is escape a bad situation. So for example if the thing you’re escaping is your family dying, well that doesn’t make much sense, they’re still dead, the best thing you can do is find another version of them to preserve your own happiness, but that requires some emotional and mental gymnastics that make the whole exercise rather sketchy.
With DDA though, the world has ended, your chances of finding peace and happiness are very small, so just starting a new life in a new world makes a lot of sense.
Could you? This is the interesting thing about time.
Could you actually >change< the past? It’s basically a Paradox, and I for one think that you really couldn’t change the past if you could timetravel. Everything you would >do< in the timetravel would already be written in stone, because it is the future you’re coming from. That means that, regardless of how often you try to travel back in time to make things right, you wouldn’t be able to, because you already KNOW the outcome of it all: The Cataclysm. You couldn’t change it, and even worse, you would probably realize at some point that you are the reason for the Cataclysm and you couldn’t do a thing against it.
That would be crushing for the character.
A different approach to the time travel paradox is, obviously, the Multiverse/multi dimension theory, where you would simply enter a different dimension/Universe. You could change things in there, definitely. you could potentially stop the Cataclysm before it starts.
But…is it worth it? It ain’t your Universe, your dimension. It’s not really your home, it’s a copy of it, probably with some small differences to your own dimension. While you could potentially rescue A human civilation, it wouldn’t be yours, and you’d never quite fit in it either way, because you’re marked by your past in the Cataclysm itself. One could argue that this isn’t worth it.
…sorry everyone. I love philosphy and debate, an time travel shenanigans are a great way to think about the Universe and Time :P[/quote]
This is the way I see it too, you can’t change what has happened, but what you can do is escape a bad situation. So for example if the thing you’re escaping is your family dying, well that doesn’t make much sense, they’re still dead, the best thing you can do is find another version of them to preserve your own happiness, but that requires some emotional and mental gymnastics that make the whole exercise rather sketchy.
With DDA though, the world has ended, your chances of finding peace and happiness are very small, so just starting a new life in a new world makes a lot of sense.[/quote]
^ This right here
You could approach it from the other side too. Some roguelikes give you the option to continue playing (Die? [y/n]) when they’re killing, without save-scumming. Picture this: you find a lab, reach the finale, find a time machine and trigger it, then walk through… and the game puts you back on the surface, completely erasing the entire lab from existence and replacing it with something else, as if it had never existed. What’s actually happened is a snapshot of you has been taken at the moment your character walked into the time machine. When your character dies, a time portal opens and your character steps through exactly as he was when he stepped through the portal – a time-travelling version of you from a timeline where you went into a time machine, while in this timeline you didn’t. It would also allow for the possibility of duplicating uniques in a legit way, since you could now loot your own corpse. (And cook and eat it, if you were so inclined.)