Keen 9: Battle of the Brains

Shilor · Post by **Shilor** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 5:33

I'm liking this time travel stuff. Just I'm not sure about revisiting levels... I mean I love it but copyright issues kinda cross my mind when thinking about it... or does that not matter? can anyone clear that up?

Perhaps Keen can go back in time and cross his own path like in Back to the Future. That I thought was interesting seeing the same story from the first movie but at a different perspective.

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 6:14

Hi there Bunde, welcome to the forum.

Time travel is a great idea for a mod. I'm seeing a Keen 1 mod, teleporter network is arranged to look like you're entering the same time machine, and coming out in areas that look like the same area but at different times on the world map. The story could be pretty mind-bending, what with temporal paradoxes and causes/effects being out of order. The more I think about it the more Keen 1 fits--yorp statueesque in-level messages would be a must.
So Keen could hop across the centuries, running from dinosaurs, getting stranded in the ocean due to continental drift, seeing the future. Blaze family would be a nice addition--not only would you have to keep your ancestors protected but you could learn something about them. Visit Grandpa BJ during the war, see what your dad was up to in his youth (Cold War superspy?), etc.
I don't like Mortimer as the villain, though. It would be, "hooray I just finished Mort off once and for all in Keen 9! oh wait his past self went time traveling so now I have to finish him off once and for all again. ..."

Grimson · Post by **Grimson** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 12:52

Ah, great to hear K9 is back on track.

About time traveling, I always disliked the idea that going backwards in time, and changing the future by doing something in the past. It just could by no means work, and would certainly cause our universe to hit blue screen.

There's a funky theory, where everytime you would (somehow) go back in time, another alternate dimension/universe is created parallel to the one where you didn't travel back in time. You'd have two worlds completely isolated from each other, and a new one is created every time someone travels backwards (going forward doesn't necessarily change anything) in time. The person who would be traveling would always end up in the same universe/dimension he/she left from when he/she travels "back" to the present time. So if you went back in time to kill your grandpa, you would not disappear, and if you traveled back to the future (present time), nothing would've changed in your world. Instead, you would've created a parallel world where you don't exist.

Though, this may or may not provide as much excitement for the plot as the comic-way of time-traveling.

VikingBoyBilly · Post by **VikingBoyBilly** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 16:21

Won't Billy be shocked to see that cavemen aren't white like in all the cartoons

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 20:53

Another way to handle it is to have killing your grandfather be physically impossible, because it's logically impossible in the universe. No matter how many futuristic lasers you aimed at your grandfather during his childhood, they'd all fizzle from completely unrelated causes.
Or another way to handle it is having the timeline be changed irrevocably every time you change it from the point of changing, and because you were at the point of changing you wouldn't be changed. This is the way a lot of stories go when villains try to mess up history.

TerminILL · Post by **TerminILL** » Fri Feb 05, 2010 23:24

I like the idea that time travel into the past is impossible, whereas time travel into the future is very possible.

If creating a paradox is likely to disrupt/destroy the universe, then arguably the unvierse would have built-in failsafes against this happening, ie. not being able to travel backwards.
As for travelling forwards, we do that all the time without thinking about it. Surely it would be possible to travel forward faster.

Also, time travel and quantum physics hurt my head when I think about them too hard.

Post by **Levellass** » Sat Feb 06, 2010 2:36

The way current physics is all of time has already happened. That is, we have no free will. (Though oddly enough, randomness still occurs. Don't ask me how this works.) So you can travel tot he past, nothing in physics stops you, but you can't kill your grandfather, that's not a 'valid' path. But if you're going back (Errr, have gone back? Always have had gone back?) there's no way to get out of it, it's already happened.

Shilor · Post by **Shilor** » Sat Feb 06, 2010 3:10

I have gone cross-eyed

Deltamatic · Post by **Deltamatic** » Sat Feb 06, 2010 18:01

@traveling forward faster: that's been done by astronauts on reentry, but not visibly (they traveled through time a few nanoseconds faster than the rest of us) and we only know about it due to calculations. If people accelerated to nearlight speeds using fusion or Bussard or antimatter drives, they could come back to earth after a few year (their time) and a few centuries (our time) had passed. That's because the faster you go the faster you go through time, general theory of relativity funkiness i.e. time dilation.

@already gone back: that's in a consistent timeline where everything that happens happens on the timeline, there are no imaginary numbers so to speak. (Okay, bad math pun.) So if there was a history of time traveling, all time travelings would show up on the same timeline and there wouldn't be any alternate timelines that branched off or needed fixing. There's no telling what a paradox would do in this sort of timeline.

Post by **Levellass** » Sat Feb 06, 2010 23:38

Just what I said.

But more clear.

TerminILL · Post by **TerminILL** » Sat Feb 06, 2010 23:39

In a fixed, predetermined timeline, paradoxes are impossible, as all events leading up to the time travel have happened already. How exactly it would become impossible? Who knows.

So as far as we can tell, abuse of time dilation to travel into the future is the only plausible method of time travel.

Post by **Levellass** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 0:03

The way I see it, there is not time. Things happen, yes. Clocks tick, atoms spin and so on, but there's no independent 'time' for them to happen in.

That is, traditionally time travel is possible because there is a 'past' and a 'future' to go to, they're real places, real locations in 4D spacetime to go to, just like going down the street. Whereas I think all that exists is the universe, here, now. So you *can't* time travel, there's no time to travel in. (Time dilation of course is just things happening slower, not time itself slowing down. Think of it like things being lighter on the moon.)

Commander Spleen · Post by **Commander Spleen** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 0:25

What Levellass is saying sounds very similar to what various religions and spiritual teachers have described over the centuries. Everything that ever will happen and ever has happened, has happened and is happening now. A lovely mind-bender at the very least.

Computer games are a very suitable microcosm for the idea. Every possibility within the game exists as a possibility. But unlike in a movie the individual frames do not exist, only, for example, the processes to catch input, randomise events and maniuplate the hardware to display what's happening now.

</rant>

DoomJedi · Post by **DoomJedi** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 6:11

Yep, indeed

Commander Spleen · Post by **Commander Spleen** » Sun Feb 07, 2010 6:27

Haha, just noticed my tautological use of 'possibility' up there. Go team!