Everyone probably knows the great titles Max Payne or Matrix. So there`s no explaining needed on what bullet time is. (slowmotion, slow enough to see the bullet and it`s slipstream). you can dodge bullets, or see how a sniper bullet ends up right in the scope and the eye of another sniper :P
Why not implement it in lan? NPC`s, however you look at them, are all quite stupid in shoot`em ups. And whatever way you look at it, it`s usually more fun to play against humans.
the only problem so far is that the game would probably need the bullet time to run constantly on network which means alot more data stream. Which will only be fully used by players that go into bullet time. But heck, isn`t the feature just cool enough to buy a gigabit lan connetor?
Or an idea to reduce the data and still make a game that has bullet time in multiplayer?-- Keeper of the Blue Flame, Jul 06 2004 Would this not result in players on the same map being "ahead" or "behind" in time than others? I mean, you are faced with a human controlled opponent, and you unleash a stream of bullets at them. They press "bullet time" and go into bullet time. For them ,the game is now playing at a slower speed than for you, so how can you legislate for many players effectivfely being at different 'times' in the game from each other?-- ChewTheBeef, Jul 06 2004 It would result in slowing down the whole game whenever 1 person goes into bullet time. Either that or they have to 'resync' in some sort of way.
the whole idea is pretty cool, but to implement it is a complete diffrent story... that much I allready know.-- Keeper of the Blue Flame, Jul 06 2004 It'd be fine being in bullet time when you're under heavy enemy fire, but not so good when someone else is in bullet time and you're just trying to run down a corridor.
Plus, with enough players, surely you'd end up being in bullet time almost all the time? Which would just end up like wading through jelly.-- lostdog, Jul 06 2004 They wanted to implement it in "The Matrix" mod for halflife. From the rumors I heard, it was going to either be: happen after some time interval, be user controllable, with the user only being able to use it every once and a while (so they'd conserve, such as in "Max Payne").
I think they ran into copyright and technical problems, not to mention, the W bro's probably saw it as competition for the matrix game. From what I remember, they did release the game under a different name, but, I don't think they ever implemented bullet time.-- nomel, Jul 06 2004 This would have to affect all players to work. And there are plenty of games and mods that already do this. So, it's either impossible or baked.-- 5th Earth, Jul 06 2004 the way cannonfodder talks about it seems plausable... dunno... (+)-- photojunkie, Jul 07 2004 q2c /5 seconds or so/ real-time, or bullet-time? Your implementation of it would be good.-- david_scothern, Jul 07 2004 I know that in unreal tourney's single player mode (the first one at least) you could cheat with "slowmo xx" where xx was a number from 1.0 to 0.1 or so... making the game speed that percentage... ie "slowmo .3" would make the game play at 30% speed. Used to love doing that after jumping off a tower and seeing how many bots i could pick off with a sniper rifle before hitting the ground (and dying)
since the code for it already exists as a cheat, making a powerup in that enviroment should be really simple...
where it gets iffy is with higher pinging people... someone at a high ping would not slow down at the same time as everyone else because their machine wouldn't have recived the information as fast... of course, they are already high pinging and so any advantage they can get is a godsend...-- photojunkie, Jul 14 2004 Just make the bullet time cause you to move really fast and auto-dodge most bullets.-- sninctown, May 03 2006 This would actually be pretty cool if it were implemented as a randomly spawning "power up" with a limited-duration effect -- that way, no more than one player at a time would ever be in bullet time. The effect would be to slightly accelerate the affected player's movement speed (not so much as to make fine adjustments or aiming unreasonably difficult) while simultaneously throwing the rest of the players into slow motion.-- uhlume, May 03 2006 If you're familiar with online gaming you'll also be familiar with the terms 'lag' and 'ping-rape'. Bullet-time would just mean you have to wait longer to know whether or not your opponent's ping is lower than yours. If it is, chances are you'll be dead before your bullet hits anything.-- kuupuuluu, May 03 2006 F.E.A.R's Multiplayer has implemented this, by slowing everyone down except the player with the pick up, who moves at normal speed. No idea how well this works as we only have one copy of the Game, so it won't work on our LAN.-- MikeOliver, May 03 2006 random, halfbakery