Have kids, need a damn pause button for AI games!

Meh, semantics!

In this case I agree that we shouldn't care too much. It's just a video game. But it's good to know what is what.

I make you an example. Let's say that I sell you a car, telling you that it's in Gamma, and you would probably wondering what that doesn't mean, but you could assume that since Gamma comes after Beta, the model is pretty much drivable on public roads.

You buy it, even if it costs you more than the average car you find on Steam. But you want this car, 'cos it has some nifty featured listed on Kickstarter.

The day you drive it for the first time, you discover that the car lacks of the stationary breaks. As well as some other key features promised on Kickstarter. A quick visit to the Forum confirms that some other things promised on Kickstarter will never be implemented, and you bought the car assuming that it was far after Beta, therefore completed.

Would you be happy?

Now you probably see how semantics is important. In order for me to honestly sell you a car in Gamma stage, that car should actually be out of Beta. Instead I sold you a product still in Alpha.

Ah! The power of Marketing on unaware customers... it's gonna make me rich with those cars

I would love a pause button as well, not just for AI games but for multiplayer - i'm sure it would be possible to implement a system whereby in the lobby, an option for 'allow pause' or 'allow pause by vote', with some kind of timeout etc, could be agreed upon.

E.g. player hits pause, other players are alerted and have a small time window to vote. With an other lobby setting for 'resume play after 3 minutes or whatever'.

Just thinking out loud anyway. I understand this isn't a priority, but the AI only pause feature would certainly be nice.

You know an agreed Pause/Save MP system could be interesting. I'm sure it'd have to be banned for competition games, but for laid back gamers that can agree on pausing and saving sessions, it could be a very nice tool indeed. But where does the session get stored, how big are these sessions, how do they get reloaded and resync'd. I'm sure there's a 1000 more issues that would crop up...but it's an interesting idea and I like it! Cheers!

why? on Forged alliance tourneys it's left on. I don't see the problem.

It's not like any of those matches go uncasted and the player's reputation isn't at stake. plus competitors stay human and humans sometimes have to go pee and whatnot. and on those few occasions people are sportsmanly and allow them to and patiently await their return.

Its not to do with kids. its anything. How many can say that they can sit at the pc for 2-3+ hours without having to do something else. Be it eat, go to the toilet, kids whatever.

It doesnt matter if its multiplayer, plenty of multiplayer games has a pause button.

Hopefully it will come sooner rather than later.

The same with saving multiplayer games.

It'd be one more reason to hold up competitions beyond connections, respawns, but at the same time sure it could add flexibility and hope for some. I understand humans have to pee sometimes, but humans also have self control...and if the other party disagrees to the pause, or it's something holding up a bigger match, then it should go from a pause to a forfeit. In that aspect the pausing in competition, in my eyes adds more negativity instead of resolving what's currently there.

I'd rather see pause as promised + as suggested above - support for competition games unless maybe both players agree beforehand or some sort of control was implemented. Not that there'll be cheating (I'm sure someone will try eventually...but I have a feeling they'll be caught quickly in this title thankfully).

I don't see it being a positive thing, even if FA did it with any semblance of success.

I may never be in a competition, maybe someday I might..but if so I really hope there's a choice to allow or disallow competition match pausing...I would say nay. Even if it cost me forfeiting because my kid was sick, wife needed me, or because I couldn't control my bladder for another ten minutes. I'd rather see matches kept straight and narrow with as few obstructions as possible. That's just my perspective on it.

common, what about fair play, sportsmanship? in any case these games are almost always casted, often live! are they going to do that in front of their whole audience?

they invalidate the match if he does, and either way the community would look don on him. nobody does that.

The main reason why a pause button is required in competitive games is technical difficulties. It's okay if it pauses only automatically the moment a player disconnects. But just letting the game continue while one of the players is not even in the game anymore is simply stupid.
Other valid reasons that require a manual pause exist as well though. All normal RTS have give each player 2 or 3 chances to pause the game. That's because it simply is a good idea. Ending a game in a complete failure just because one of the players had to go afk for 3 min for whatever reason is just bad.

The main reason you provide is definitely sound, with the automatic pausing. I totally agree with that.

I'm not even saying manual pausing shouldn't exist, quite the opposite for most of the game. I'm just saying from my perspective I don't think it's a good idea for a manual pause in a competition. I don't feel manual pausing adds anything truly beneficial to a major competition event that can't already be taken care of with automatic pausing or self control or even good sportsmanship as tatsujb suggests.

Manual pausing for single and standard MP I totally agree with 100%. Pausing is an obvious standard for at least SP, though I can't say I've ever paused in any MP game I've played in memory, and maybe that's where my bias comes from on this topic.

I've had to walk away from matches for a variety of reasons and forfeit, it is what it is. I would totally like to see a pause feature for that, unless I was in a competition...then it's show-n-go or the show goes on. Keeps things flowing and simple.

Should something like a planned, organized and casted competition come up that I'm involved with, and sans technical errors (then yes..automatic pause makes great sense)...I see no reason for manual pausing. Again that's just my opinion and two cents. Cheers.

Especially if you play in a competition for $ you really don't want to lose the game because your neighbor randomly decides to show up and you have to go to the door real quick. (And at least I personally also don't want to just ignore such things completely) There are a myriad of possible reasons that can come up that take like 60s to take care of and that are completely valid especially in an online competition. A competition should not be decided by a random real life effect that hits one of the players. Obviously if you play offline at a lanparty then yes, the only reason for a pause really should be technical difficulties. But so far all PA competition happens online.

Pausing is very important for competitive play, although no-one cares for random public play. Just have a set of server variables for this and you'd be good (or at very least on/off with some sensible figures in for the number of pauses etc)

Pausing on/off
Auto-pause on disconnect on/off
Player pause on/off
Spectator pause on/off
Length of pause xxx

You people know you bought a 1st gen game, which is possibly even MORE important to consider, instead of a game with an pre-existing engine and build. That is the existing difference between the few features in Assassin's Creed and the many more in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

Obviously the first hovercar ever made will probably not be the one you want to buy, you want to buy the later generations which are polished over. Same with Smart TVs, my brother's is a first gen, and it takes 30 seconds to load the page for apps on amazing internet, and the sound delay on "game" mode is still delayed my guitar hero says "178"ms. Same with electric cars and hybrids, the first ones burnt themselves down.

You know what you bought, the game isn't done and the kickstarter is never an image pulled from the future release of the game through time travel. Like the swirls, I bet they could add them to the game and you would both rue and lament it while playing, especially using land units, ever.

[

I read just the first part of your post so excuse me if I'm saying something wrong but I honestly don't feel cheated, maybe I was disappointed in losing my commander but to fix that problem you know what I did? I paid 200 extra dollars to get those commanders. I understand it's in development and have had so much fun being apart of it. I love Uber and have a whole lot of confidence in them!

Edit: I hate not being able to backspace those smilies :l

I bolded the important part in your post, that means that Planetary Annihilation is in whatever stage the actual software developers behind the game want to call it

I wouldn't have bothered, but you're really keen on pushing this tangent like some kind of fact.

And pause button please!

ps. Let me tell myself what's the important part of my text is. Wont' you?

Obviously they can call it what so ever they want. Even Potato stage, if their marketing "guru" so will prefer.

But as a matter of facts, PA is still in Alpha. Ask to any serious developer, and they'll tell you. Gamma stage in software development simply does not exist, period. As podrgbi does not show up in any English dictionary. You can make your private dictionary, but do not assume everyone will fall for it and accept it as new standard.

When you communicate with people, you need to use meaningful definitions. And Gamma stage is not. It's just marketing. What Gamma does, it sells more than Alpha. Simple as that.

Here for your acknowledgement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

For the record, I'm totally fine with the game being still in development. I am in no rush to see it completed.

So now you have some more bold words to quote

You guys in general are so fanatic about PA to lack a serious sense of reality and balanced judgement. It makes me wonder if you also bought stock options from Uber

And this doesn't not mean that I do not consider PA being an awesome game already. It is awesome. But it is not perfect as well, and I frankly question the how it is being marketed.

Originally, alpha didn't exist. Or beta. I forget which came first.

And originally, I'd imagine "alpha" only meant anything outside of internal development milestones when the public needed to know that the game was in alpha. No point calling it that otherwise.

To say that "this term isn't a commonly-accepted part of the software lifecycle" means nothing in an era when technology (specifically in the mobile and games spheres) is advancing faster than definitions (and more importantly/scarily, international law) can keep up.

If PA had a feature, called X, that they planned to implement post-release . . . does this mean that the game would be in Alpha when it had been released? I don't think so. X not being implemented doesn't stop the release candidate from going live.

You need to live on Wikipedia definitions less. I work in mobile software development, things change far faster than it took "serious" developers to abandon the completely moronic approach to software development that is the waterfall design pattern.

Yes but in the situation where you're playing for money in a competition, don't you think you'd be able to control your bladder or let people know you're unavailable for an hour? Half of the reasons or excuses that come up could be labeled as a control or mismanagement issues in my eyes with that affected individual, should everyone else need to be affected by someone else's irresponsibility beyond an acceptable limit for randomness?

Wouldn't you be able to allocate or dedicate the time to that to minimize such events? Wouldn't that make the most sense to do for an organized event? Sure I realize randomness happens, but at what point is there a line drawn between being too catering to personal issues and not enough?

Sure I can see a neighbor dropping by or something random (trust me, I understand random! ), should that really be something that holds up everyone else? Should your issues become everyone else's burden? Should everyone else's issues become your burden? I for one say hell no, not if it's going to create a negative impact on the event, other players, spectators, etc.

I think it manual pausing only be allowed if the competitors and competition holders agree it to be so. Not that it's always a bad thing, but if everyone has to take a few minutes to pee, or for various other things, eventually annoyance and negativity will ensue no matter how much good sportsmanship and accepting there is for it.

You make some good points, sure, and you are very active in the scene (I enjoy watching you guys plays on Zaphod's casts btw! ), so if you say it would work...it probably would. I just don't agree with it as more positive than negative. It's one more utility to be taken advantage of and to take something that could be simple, flowing and clean to add complications, problems and negativity.

Thanks for taking the time to bring your reasoning to the table, I just don't agree that it brings enough usefulness and positive aspects to the table to overshadow the negatives I find it to bring. Cheers!

Yes a really real random event (that I have no control off) should be allowed to hold up a casted game for like 3 minutes. In fact even 5 minutes would better than the alertnative: "Sorry this final we wanted to cast here just ended because player A had to leave for real life reasons for 5 min and therefore instant lost for being afk"

If you love your kids, you'll get your priorities straight. Pause for the children!