Game time... that old chestnut...

[andrewjbaker]

OK, last weekend I made a stab at the fundamental movement and mapping facilities of my game world. It's a simple tile-based affair where you move around a static grid...

Each tile is 1/4 mile square. An average PC will move at approximately 5 yards per second so working on the premise that there are 1760 yards in a mile, 1760 / 4 yards per tile, it would take 88 seconds (1760 / 4 / 5) to transition from one tile to the next.

Now... from a gameplay perspective, expecting players to have to wait 88 seconds until they are able to move to an adjacent tile sounds a bit like overkill!

I could, for example, reduce game time by a factor of four (or even eight) so that 88 seconds becomes 22 seconds but I had really wanted to keep things more realistic.

I suppose I could maybe introduce a series of random encounters that help or hinder the PC (and ensure that their interest remains peaked) when transitioning from one tile to the next.

How have other people addressed game time and transitions from one location to the next in their games? Especially regarding time taken to perform various PC-related activities like movement, drawing, firing and reloading weapons, resting, digesting the contents of a book, etc.

[Chris]

Code: [Select]

fun != realism
Choose one

[JGadrow]

It would probably depend upon what other options the player has while they are moving. 1 and 1/2 minutes spent simply moving from one space to the next means that they should either have other things to do in the game while they are waiting to complete their move or that you can expect them to be doing other things while playing your game. "Ok, I moved. Time to check out PennyArcade for today, I'll come back to it when I'm done."

Also, if you're going for realism, it would actually take longer to travel to a diagonally adjacent space than it does for a horizontally or vertically adjacent space. The formula for diagonals would be:

sqrt ((1760 / 4)^2 x 2) / 5 = 124.45 secs (approx.)

[andrewjbaker]

No Chris, fun isn't equal to realism. That's why I'm striving for 'more realistic' not 100% realism. 

The game is a survival horror RPG so I think that introducing random encounters when transitioning could work quite well; the player never knows what they might encounter whilst in transit and once they get to their intended destination, there could be something unpleasant laying in wait... thus building suspense in the process.

Thank you JGadrow for bringing diagonals to my attention... I'll definitely be using the formula you've supplied. 

[andrewjbaker]

sqrt ((1760 / 4)^2 x 2) / 5 = 124.45 secs (approx.)

So in PHP that's translated to...

Code: [Select]

<?php
define('BASIC_MOVE', 5);
define('YARDS_PER_MILE', 1760);
define('TILES_PER_MILE', 4);

$diagonalTransitionTime = floor(sqrt(pow(YARDS_PER_MILE / TILES_PER_MILE, 2) * 2) / BASIC_MOVE);

I'm gonna' introduce a YARDS_PER_TILE constant I think. Good, good... many thanks. 

[dsheroh]

I could, for example, reduce game time by a factor of four (or even eight) so that 88 seconds becomes 22 seconds but I had really wanted to keep things more realistic.

First, you need to define what constitutes "realistic" to you.  Personally, my sense of "realism" has absolutely no problems with time compression (The game world runs at four times the speed of the real world?  Cool.  Just remember to keep it consistent by making the day/night cycle 6 hours instead of 24, etc.) but having characters studying, crafting, stopping for random encounters, etc. without it increasing their travel time feels very "unrealistic" to me.

If you don't do time compression, though, then you probably need to change the distance scale because a minute and a half is an awkward interval to deal with - it's too long to just sit and wait for it, but too short to go do something else and come back.  The one way I could see it working with 1/4 mile tiles and no time compression would be if you can queue up several moves (perhaps by setting a distant destination), such as saying "go to the next town, 10 miles away" and then coming back in an hour when you've (hopefully) arrived at your destination.  This has the disadvantage, though, that the player may well not be present for any events along the way, so you can't count on the resolution of those events being interactive.

Edit:  Speaking of realism...  5 yards/sec is a bit over 10 mph.  Normal humans sustaining that pace for any extended period of time is extremely unrealistic.  Average men's marathon times run around four and a half hours, so roughly 5mph, or half the rate you're talking about, and those are people who train for it.  A typical short-term walking pace is around 3mph and I'm used to fantasy RPGs using something in the 20-25 miles/day range for long-term travel on foot.

I suppose I could maybe introduce a series of random encounters that help or hinder the PC (and ensure that their interest remains peaked) when transitioning from one tile to the next.

Pet peeve:  Piqued, not peaked, unless the user's interest is shaped like a mountain.

[andrewjbaker]

Edit:  Speaking of realism...  5 yards/sec is a bit over 10 mph.  Normal humans sustaining that pace for any extended period of time is extremely  unrealistic.  Average men's marathon times run around four and a half hours, so roughly 5mph, or half the rate you're talking about, and those are people who train for it.  A typical short-term walking pace is around 3mph and I'm used to fantasy RPGs using something in the 20-25 miles/day range for long-term travel on foot.

Yes dsheroh, I'd noted that. The pen & paper role-playing system that I'm using to kickstart the core of the RPG uses a value for basic move calculated on attributes of the PC. As a typical average, the rules state that 5 yards per second is to be considered the most common but I'd already performed the same conversion you have from yards per second to miles per hour and come to the same conclusion.

It'll be addressed, don't worry. 

Pet peeve:  Piqued, not peaked, unless the user's interest is shaped like a mountain.

Noted, thanks. 

[Chris]

You should not make diagonal movement more expensive. It is grid, players are to expect that moving along grid takes as many movement points as there are grids to traverse. That is the nature of tiles and the advantage of tile system is that you can calculate distance easily.
Either go for full realism and remove tiles or make the cost equal.

The pen & paper role-playing system that I'm using to kickstart the core of the RPG uses a value for basic move calculated on attributes of the PC. As a typical average, the rules state that 5 yards per second is to be considered the most common but I'd already performed the same conversion you have from yards per second to miles per hour and come to the same conclusion.

Have you seen even one game master that is calculationg realistic movement distance during RPG session? The rule is for flavour or for very unusual cases, or to give general idea. But not to be used literally.

Anyway, my answer to the original question is: Yes, I think it would be an overkill. Even 5 seconds wait time between tiles would be an overkill in my opinion (assuming this is standard tile based RPG style map).

[JGadrow]

Have you seen even one game master that is calculationg realistic movement distance during RPG session?

D&D 3E rules actually specified that every 2nd diagonal cost 2 squares (10') of movement instead of 1 square (5'). This is approximately correct, mathematically. So... yeah, I've seen tons of game masters doing exactly that! lol

[andrewjbaker]

Given the fact that implementing an additional time penalty when moving diagonally is trivial, I think I'm gonna' go with JGadrow's suggestion first and then once people have play-tested the RPG for a while, they can feedback to me. Making the switch is literally one line of code.

Would I expect GMs to perform this calculation? No, I wouldn't really cos' it's a bit of a complex formula to do around the table. But with a computer, it's a trivial calculation that can be performed transparently to the player.

That's what I like about you Chris; your perspective generally favours playability over correctness... this is something I will understand better I hope once I've something to play. 

Thank you both.

[dsheroh]

You should not make diagonal movement more expensive. It is grid, players are to expect that moving along grid takes as many movement points as there are grids to traverse. That is the nature of tiles and the advantage of tile system is that you can calculate distance easily.

I've encountered many players (myself among them) who expect diagonal movement to be more expensive on square grids.  If you want movement costs to be equal in all directions, use a hex map instead of a square one.

One of my pet peeves is (computer) games which have no additional cost for diagonal moves, but have not tuned the pathfinding algorithm to favor horizontal/vertical moves over diagonal moves, so units constantly zig-zag all over the place for no reason instead of moving in straight lines.  Aside from looking ridiculous, it's just plain sloppy design/coding.

Have you seen even one game master that is calculationg realistic movement distance during RPG session?

*raises hand*

Why do you think I knew that 20-25 miles per day is a realistic average (under, I might add, ideal conditions - it could get down to 5 miles/day in bad weather with no road to follow)?  Ars Magica long-term movement rate tables.