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[Ascii Kid]

So I'm reading the future fortress stuff on the original Slaves to Armok page, and under the mystical stuff I notice time travel, with a problem on only being able to go back to alternate pasts or the future. 
I have a solution to offer, one that works for time travel in the real world too: =->
  When you "travel back in time" you actually draw the past up as a new segment of personal time line that takes the place of your future.  Where you to travel forward once more you would travel to the future of the past to which you went from your current present.  =->

Maybe this will help

Ordinary Timeline a - b - c - d
Time travellers timeline a - b - a(b) - e

The same goes for the future, where if you travel forward, then back, you return to the past of that new future.  This protects the universe from personally designed paradoxes as it ties perception, reality and self to contained ideas.  Sure you could travel back in time and kill your grandparents, but you would only destroy the future of that new past you created by visiting.  You leave your reality by time traveling and enter one that looks and seems exactly the same, and is, except for where its' different.

[eerr]

we have more important things to worry about,

like adding more reasons why someone would want to travel back in time

[Ascii Kid]

Well, let me know how that works out for you.

[Evaristo Carriego]

Time travel? I liked it better when it was called save scumming...

[Zironic]

Thats more of precognitive ability

[Christes]

Actually, if Toady implements a way to resume the history part of worldgen, time travel wouldn't be unfeasible.  When going back, just go back to a state of history from earlier.  When going forward, basically run worldgen up to that point.

It would be pretty cool to go back in time 100 years, kill the demon leading the goblin civilization that destroyed your home, and come back only to find that your home never existed in this reality (and have that all done naturally by game mechanics, of course).

[Mel_Vixen]

Nice thought on the Object. Wasnt that mostly the Hugh Everets Theory of many worlds?

Anyway each Timetravel creates an new time line iirc. And that makes the coding easyer if timetravel would come into the game.

First of i think an world were timetravel would be possible would need its entire History.
If you travel now in time backward the world gets reseted to the Point were you renter the timeline. You do your stuff in this period and then you travel "back home". From the moment you hit the "Back home button" the entire world must generate "history" for the time your are absence(same goes for travels direct to the future). The killed persons etc must be erased from the generation naturally. I see that this could work actually.

One mayor problems would be "undoing" your own failures (you dont really undo them you just create an world there they never happend) by killing/aiding yourself (only on the side of programming in RL there wouldnt be an Problemm). This can be avoided in two ways.

The first is the easyest make the parts of the timeline ,or only the certain areas of your influence in this time, Inacessable. You can join before or after but not during this time.

The second would be the safest. You just replace your "former" self at the point there it enters the timeline.

Interresting would be if DF could create (if allowed) at certain points like big fights/wars 2 differnt historys for the same world and generates them say 100 years ahead of your endpoint. This way you could meat persons out of alternate futures/historys.

[Capntastic]

I think Toady would've considered this, since creating a new world from a given point is the easy part.   The hard part being abstracting previous states in time from present save data.   And Toady would want to do it fairly seamlessly and perfectly.   Which is hard.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

time travel would be much like if you took a save and played it then someone looks at what you did and found then took the save you used and played it to. they essentialy travel back in gametime and takeover. they have no access to the other timeline in their current game and nothing much happens except they will know stuff like hey magma pipe over there and gold right under here type of stuff.

[Torak]

I can imagine Dwarf Fortress somehow becoming an exercise in the possibilities of time and 'grandfather paradoxes' at a later date.

[LordNagash]

As if the game isn't going to be complicated enough, what with alternate dimensions and stuff

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

if thats complicated for you dont even try to think about all the worlds that are genned and never used.

[Mel_Vixen]

Dwarves fortress: Slaves of Armok - "Insanitys in time and space."

Hehe entirly altenate worlds would be interresting too but this are easyer to implement then Timetravel so please dont let us to derail this thread to much.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

i think the dwarves already have time travel but dont care. like they already have perpetual motion machines, atom smasher, quatum refuce piles, anti-gravity ice, and many other things so really time travels just another old hat for them.

[Qmarx]

As long as we use a time-error axis exclusively for time travel (like chrono trigger did,minus the whole Marle paradox thing the developers did before they came up with the rules for time travel)

Basically, you have a secondary time axis which is the absolute time for time travelling.  Combine with the time orphan approach, where travelling through time renders you immune to changes in the past.