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Real Time with Pause: Difference between revisions
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The first group is ''turn-based'' games, which play like [[Chess]] or [[Rochambeau]]: The game is [[Sliding Scale of Turn Realism|sliced into pieces]] so that each player can make decisions, give commands, and watch those commands being executed without interference from each other.
The second group is ''Realtime'' games, where time never stops for anyone: All players are interacting with the game simultaneously, where quick thinking and quick fingers can, depending on the game and/or player, become a key advantage.
While games within each group can be varied in style and design, ''Realtime'' and ''Turn-Based'' games tend to be very different from one another. Turn-Based games put an emphasis on thinking ahead and analyzing your best move from a wide array of choices, while Realtime games put an emphasis on quick-thinking and motor skills with a streamlined interface. As a result, they often appeal to different kinds of players.
Over the course of the years, there have been many diverse and sometimes very successful attempts to combine aspects of both groups into a single game. Such a game then belongs to the category of ''Realtime With Pause'' (RTWP, or
Approaches to this issue are often unique or innovative, as there are many possible combinations to be tried. Games may have a different emphasis on action versus strategy, and interface design can make a huge difference too. Trying to play without the pause aspect can be a form of [[Self-Imposed Challenge]].
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RTWP games can generally be categorized into one of the following groups:
* Plain '''Realtime With Pause''': The game runs in real time, which means that all characters and enemies act at all times. The player can give commands whenever he wishes, just as in regular "Realtime" games. However, if the game is paused, the player retains his/her ability to give orders, survey the playing field, and pretty much do anything that's possible when not paused. Once the game is unpaused, all orders given are executed normally. The main goal of this design is to allow players to stay "on top" of the situation, reducing the need to frantically move the mouse or controller all over the screen to get their bearings. It also allows issuing complex orders to multiple characters and digging deep through complex menu systems, which would otherwise require very fast fingers.
** This type of gameplay is usually only available in games where one human player is facing off against one or more computer-controlled opponents. If the game also has multiplayer mode, the option to pause is normally disabled completely in that mode.
** Since it relies more heavily on some degree of automation between orders, [[Artificial Stupidity]] may become a problem, so the ability to issue some kind of simple conditional commands is common, sometimes amounting to a simplistic [[Programming Game]].
* '''Simultaneous Turn Resolution''': This is an approach more similar to Turn-Based games. First, all players issue orders to their characters simultaneously, usually within a limited amount of time. Once everyone's done giving orders, the game goes into the “Execution Phase,” where all of these orders are executed simultaneously, while the players can only watch. Rinse and repeat until one side has lost.
** This style of gameplay attempts to circumvent one of the major grievances with traditional Turn-Based
** In single-player games where there's only one entity under human control, this is commonly used to brush unimportant NPC movements under the rug, such as in [[Roguelike
* '''Simultaneous Turn Resolution With Pause''': As above, but combined with something like the ATB system from a ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' game. It gives the feel of a Realtime With Pause game, except in truth the game is actually a well-disguised Simultaneous Turn Resolution game. In this design, the game runs in what looks like realtime: The game runs by itself when unpaused, orders may be given and the game paused at any time. However, all actions start and end in unison, any order given—whether in paused or un-paused mode—is only executed once the next “turn” begins, and actions can't be interrupted or cancelled before they finish.
* '''Unintentional Realtime With Pause''': The designers added the ability to pause the game as a simple convenience, allowing the player to take a break from the action. Often, the screen goes gray, and/or a big obtrusive box appears, saying "The game is paused". But while the designer intended the game to be ''truly'' paused, for some reason it is still possible to examine the playing-field and/or give orders to your units!
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Contrast [[Real Time Weapon Change]].
{{examples|Examples of plain Realtime With Pause:}}▼
{{examples}}
* Several Realtime Strategy games developed in the 00's, including:
** The ''[[Age of Empires]]'' series
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** ''[[Supreme Commander]]''
** ''Warrior Kings''
** Note that the majority of RTS games, like the ''[[Command
* Nearly all [[BioWare]] and (to a lesser extent) [[Obsidian Entertainment]] titles, as well as games made using engines licensed from them:
** The ''[[Baldur's Gate|Baldurs Gate]]'' series
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** ''[[Hearts of Iron]]''
** ''[[Crusader Kings]]''
** ''[[Victoria:
* ''[[Fallout]] Tactics''. It also has the ability to switch freely between RTWP and a purely turn-based mode, whenever you like.
* ''[[Freedom Force]]''
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* ''[[X-COM]]'''s [[World Map|Geoscape]]. The first two games had turn-based combat though.
** In ''[[X-COM]]: Apocalypse'' you can choose between PRT and a pure turn-based mode for combat, but only before a battle starts. The cityscape portion of the game always uses PRT.
** The ''[[X-COM]]'' series' [[Spiritual Sequel]], [[UFO:
* ''7.62mm High Caliber'' (or ''7.62 High Calibre''), a [[Spiritual Successor]] to the ''[[Jagged Alliance]]'' games, uses this system for combat, though the gameplay can be slowed down too; each character has an action queue with actions' time to complete measured in the hundredths of a second, such as taking a shot (such as snap, aimed or scoped), or weapon transitions, readying a grenade for throwing, the actual throw, and so on. Unfortunately since the orders themselves are not displayed, this can lead to some awkward or time-consuming moments, especially when rearranging gear in one's vests, pouches, holsters, slings or backpacks during combat.
** There's also the ''extremely'' annoying tendency for certain actions that, once started, cannot be cancelled, like reloading a weapon (which can take a very long time if you don't have a spare clip).
* Most ''[[
* The "Pause" button on [[Captain N: The Game Master|Captain N's Controller]] is like this... for his allies. Kevin is fully mobile during the pause effect and can relocate objects... but can't give his friends new orders.
* [[Vandal Hearts]] 2 uses the Dual-Turn Battles, which is this to a tee. Not only you need to move your characters, you need to anticipate which enemy character will move, to where, and what action will they do. This requires a lot of advanced thinking and good guess, even if the AI can be abused to allow unlimited turn treasure hunting.
** In the game, there even exists a spell called "Premonition" which tells you which enemy character will move. However, it will not tell you where it will move and what it will do. An experienced enough player can still make educated guesses based on the enemy's movement range, weapon range, skill and equipment list, etc.
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* ''[[Frozen Synapse]]''
* Outside of combat in games like the ''[[Ultima]]'' or ''[[Exile]]'' series, the entire thing in others like ''[[Might and Magic]]'' or ''[[Cythera]]'', where you can only control a single character at a time.
* [[BattleTech]] the board game does
* Global Conquest on the PC version of [[Command
* While ''[[Civilization]]'' is more or less uniformly straight-up [[Turn-Based Strategy]], multiplayer games can be played with simultaneous execution. This is useful when there is a large number of players in later stages of the game: Turns in single-player games can easily take as much as half an hour, particularly if the player's empire is large and at war. Imagine, then, that you have four or five human-controlled large empires, all at war. Yeah, you'd like simultaneous execution, too.
* The space strategy game ''Flotilla'' is basically exactly that. You usually only have 2 to 5 units and order every single one of them to move somewhere on the 3D grid, shoot at an enemy (or not) and turn, tilt and roll over during the execution phase. This precision is needed since they all have ridiculous armor on the front and the top and are '''very''' vulnerable at the back and the bottom.
* The ragdoll fighting game Toribash has a unique way of using this system. Two players face off in one on one matches controlling all the major joints of their respective ragdoll. At the beginning of each turn players have a limited amount of time to manipulate the joints of the ragdoll in order to get it to move. After which the ragdolls move as predicted a small amount and the process repeats. Through careful planning and manipulation, the ragdolls can be made to do virtually anything.
* Non-video-game example: the classic [[Wooden Ships and Iron Men|Napoleonic naval battle war game]] ''Wooden Ships & Iron Men''.
* Another classic non-video-game example is ''[[Diplomacy]]'' (from the same company as the above game, Avalon Hill). This
* ''VGA Planet'' and its [[Spiritual Successor]] ''Stars!'', being designed for [[Category:Play-By-Post Games|play-by-email]]
.
* ''The Dark Eye: Drakensang''
* ''[[Summoner]]''
* ''[[Star Wars]]: Empire At War'' has a tiny, hard-to-reach pause button with no hot-key associated with it. It clearly was not intended (or at least badly designed) to pause the game often enough in mid-combat for it to be useful. There are third-party mods that add a hotkey, making it a viable feature. Considering the quick pace of battles in this game, it is not surprising that such mods were developed. Some players consider this cheating, however.
* The first ''[[Homeworld]]'' game has a pause feature which actually makes the game more difficult to play because its behavior is very unpredictable. It may have been designed to allow examining the battlefield, but not to issue commands. Still, some players do manage to use it that way, making the zero-g RTS significantly easier.
* This is very common in fast-action and arcade games across all platforms, if the pause feature allows the player to examine dangerous situations while they are frozen. Naturally, it only applies if examination of the danger confers a significant advantage to the player once the game is un-paused. Many players consider this cheating. Others simply say it's a way to play the game if you lack the twitch-reflexes normally required. Naturally, this does not apply in multi-player mode where pausing is almost always disabled anyway.
** One type of game that's especially prone to this are ''[[Tetris]]'' and its clones, which now usually cover up the board when pausing. A variation peculiar to them is “infinite spin,” in which a player spins a piece simply to stop it falling.
* [[Hidden Object Game
** But it does persist in other casual games like the "connect 3" variety, especially since there are so many of them being made.
== Other Designs ==
* ''[[Fallout]] 3'' has V.A.T.S mode, where the game is paused mid-battle, and the player can target an enemy's bodyparts. This is unique in that once unpaused, the game goes into a slow-motion replay of the shooting sequence that was queued in V.A.T.S, temporarily taking away the player's control of his character. The game then proceeds right back into full realtime mode.
* ''The Clue'' and ''The Sting''. These games use a Simultaneous Turn Resolution design, except there's only one "turn" in each mission. You can spend up to an hour giving a long sequence of commands to your team members, and then watch the heist being performed in real time with no opportunity to intervene until it's done.
** Similarly, but more extreme, the ''[[Dominions]]'' series. You can only input general commands to units when you organize them, and must have faith in those orders working when combat occurs, whether because you initiated an assault or were attacked.
* ''Matrix: Path of Neo''. The pause screen gives 'Neo' the 'see everything as vertical lines of numbers' ability. Including seeing enemies hiding behind nearby walls.
* Several adaptations of the board game ''[[Space Hulk]]'' use a restricted version of
* ''[[James Bond]]: [[James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing]]'' has the "Bond Sense" mode, which allows the player to replicate Bonds expert markmanship by both giving them more time to examine the situation and select targets, and also highlights enemies and destroyable scenery. While it doesn't fully pause the game, it does slow the action to a crawl to give you more, but not unlimited time.
* The ''[[Inazuma Eleven]]'' series straddles the line between plain Real Time with Pause and Simultaneous Turn Resolution. They're primarily plain Real Time with Pause, with the caveat that the manual pause has a 10-second cooldown after resuming before it can be used again. However, some events will trigger an automatic pause (not subject to the 10-second cooldown); if the event in question requires the player to choose one of several actions (for example, an opportunity to steal the ball: regular tackle or sliding tackle?), it gets Simultaneous Turn Resolution.
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