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[Krelian]

this game does indeed look very interesting!

but there is something im yet to understand... I can see how you can change the past.. but... how the hell the game predicts the future? :s I mean... If I go to the future with a unit and attack my (human) rival... how the game know what will he do 5 minutes from "now" :S

In the 2v2 posted on the first post, what does those blue sweeps across the screen means? the commentor is traveling in time, or someone who was playing ?

[Sowelu]

You can't actually go into the future, only into the past.

And those ripples are causal...things.  I think it's something like, if you have a factory, and it builds units, then someone goes back in time and destroys the factory, then as soon as one of those ripples hits the point where the factory was destroyed, the units go away.  Or something LIKE that.  I know you can get wonky oscillations and stuff...

[Itnetlolor]

I think some of the site's demo videos explain how the mechanics of the game works. A blue swipe, I think I recall, is a chronowave or something like that, basically it fastens events in place and everywhere from the future past that sweeps across the past future, and you see the new present future. Pay attention to those and the present time frame, and you can look back in time properly to find out where things screwed up, and counter-attack in the past and correct the adjusted time line, or work with it for a new strategy.

As Sowelu stated, it's a visual representation of the ripple effect of time. The further back it happened, the longer it will take to reach.

[Virex]

The game works with so called time-waves. They're the lines you see progressing along the time graph in the lower center of the HUD and they carry changes in the game state into the future. If a time wave passes you by (they go faster then game-time itself. Don't think too much about that though) you see the sweep across your screen and the game is updated taking into account what has happened in the game-past. For each point in game-time, time-waves pick up the changes made after the previous time wave came past that point and carry it forward. It only takes into account what has really happened, so any extrapolation into the game-future will not take any actions that haven't been made yet (in meta-time)  into account, the game doesn't predict what anyone would do. So if you jump into the future you just get a blank extrapolation of the current game state, and any changes made prior to the point you jumped to (in game-time) but after you jumped (in meta-time) will have to wait for a time-wave to be carried into the future.
....
I really need a piece of paper to explain this game...

You can't actually go into the future, only into the past.

And those ripples are causal...things.  I think it's something like, if you have a factory, and it builds units, then someone goes back in time and destroys the factory, then as soon as one of those ripples hits the point where the factory was destroyed, the units go away.  Or something LIKE that.  I know you can get wonky oscillations and stuff...

Sure you can. I think that one of the games I watched had one of the players play 2 minutes into the future for quite some time, and in another one the commentator was musing about the option that one player would call in reinforcements from the future, which is a real option once you get a chronoporter. Chronoporting units will also cause them to "hop" over time waves so you can take units from a time-wave interval in which they exist to a time-wave interval where the base that would build them gets destroyed in an attempt to save it. That will cause some strange oscilations in the game-state though, because if a time-wave picks up the destruction of said base, it will propagate forward, meaning the units you sent back no longer exist, but if those units managed to save the base before they get erased, that will propagate forward with another time-wave, meaning you'll have an interval where the base is still present, followed by one in which it is destroyed, followed by one in which the base is saved by the units it built in the first time-wave interval. Things can get confusing....

[Sneer]

but there is something im yet to understand... I can see how you can change the past.. but... how the hell the game predicts the future? :s I mean... If I go to the future with a unit and attack my (human) rival... how the game know what will he do 5 minutes from "now" :S

In the 2v2 posted on the first post, what does those blue sweeps across the screen means? the commentor is traveling in time, or someone who was playing ?

The blue sweeps are called timewaves. They propagate (sends forward) changes in the timeline. The solid colored lines are players viewing the different times. When a player is changing the orders of his units in any time the future will not change immediately. The timewaves will sweep the changes forward in time (they move faster than the time.) The players can act as timewaves by viewing time at double speed and by doing so manually propagating the changes.
The way you can use this is at the beginning of the game. In the present you send a scout to the enemy base. You wait for a timewave to propagate the scouts travel to the base forward in time. When the timewave has moved a bit you can view the newly updated future and see your enemy's base. Then you can jump back to the past and change your order for the scout so he stays in your base. And just like that, you have scouted the enemy base without losing a scout.

[Jreengus]

Of course they might see that they did damage to you in the future, take a look and see that you scouted their base then deliberately go back and change the design slightly. Time travel is fun!

[Virex]

I think it is even possible to jump back all the way to the very beginning of the game and change the race you chose. You'll need to invest quite some chrono-energy though because you gotta redo the whole early game in the past.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Nah, not as far as that I think. At the very least, the timetravel window is about 5 minutes long. Not because of engine limits, mind you - it's theoretically capable of weeks. It's just the current hardware. A single action replay of a typical RTS game would already be quite a resource hog - now imagine five of them running concurrently, and being constantly edited.

[Sneer]

It's all about foresight and hindsight. I like how your base can be obliterated in the past and before the timewave arrives you have built an army and a chronoporter in the future. Then you send your units back in time and stop the base from being destroyed. Then your base will exist in the future and in the past. In between it is obliterated. The game is so confusing and so awesome.

[Jopax]

The entire game is one of those things that is incredibly hard to describe with words but if you do it with a video example it becomes quite understandable and easy to do.Especially the famed grandfather paradox

[Krelian]

the timewaves sure makes it much easier to understand!

I thought it all happened instantly.

Sure you can. I think that one of the games I watched had one of the players play 2 minutes into the future for quite some time, and in another one the commentator was musing about the option that one player would call in reinforcements from the future, which is a real option once you get a chronoporter.

I understand that you could only take from the future units you have already qeued ? Because the game (obviously) wont know which units you are going to make otherwise, right? sorry if im being a bit airhead

[Krelian]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTVsXbWQXp0&feature=player_embedded#at=149

on this video, each new orange bar represents a new reality right ?

[Sowelu]

I wonder if you can dequeue things after you yoink them from the future, and get your resources back...

[Sean Mirrsen]

Yes, except those units will end up not being built in the future. As soon as a timewave passes the point where they would have been built, the units will fade out.

[Sneer]

I wonder if you can dequeue things after you yoink them from the future, and get your resources back...

Let's say you create a couple of units. You send them back in time before they were created.
You decide to undo the creation of those units. You get the resources back.
When the timewave sweeps past the point where the units traveled back in time, there are no units that travel back in time.
The units that arrive in the past never arrive. They never traveled.
The timewave propagetes the change of the units not arriving over the units that did travel, and they disappear.
You did get your money back in the future, but you lost the units in the past.