Achron Review

[BobisOnlyBob]

Sounds interesting but the AI pathfinding bit puts me off a bit. If changing past orders costs a resource per command having to spend more to deal with shoddy AI is a major problem.

Am I the only one that wanted to grab him and say "That's not how the damn game's name is pronounced have you seen a single video of the game before!?"

More on topic I found out about the game a while ago and I think it looks pretty awesome. With luck the developers will release some patches to fix pathfinding issues.

So how is it pronounced? I didn't know of this game until know and I would also pronounce it ah-kron without further instruction based on its spelling.

Regarding pronunciation: ay-kron. Think of the word "asynchronus", then remove the "syn" and "us". Chron means time; a- means "without". In the game, you play as an achronological commander who is unaffected by the flow of time, hence your unique position and ability to carry information back and forth in time.

Regarding pathfinding: Please see this article [http://strangedesign.typepad.com/strange_design/2011/09/understanding-achrons-terrible-pathfinding.html]. Pathfinding CANNOT be patched as a result of the time-manipulation mechanic.

Achron doesn't just have units which respond to actions - it calculates the actions of every unit forward and backward in time in relation to those actions. You can order a tank across the map, then almost instantly jump to the end of the game, and see where that tank ended up. Then jump back to 10 seconds after you gave it's original order, make an adjustment, and then jump to the end again. Everything that tank will ever do has to be calculated in a fraction of a second every time you click the mouse.

Games like Starcraft don't anticipate reactions - they just respond quickly to user input, and make sure that events unfold in reasonable ways. The need of the Achron engine to anticipate consistent future results must be driving every programming decision the team made - because it's a heck of a computing problem.