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First thing first, I'm looking to implement this within a multiplayer videogame as a "special" skill or powerup, but, I'm willing to build it upon a physics based explanation/theory.

The question may be misleading due to my language gap and lack of knowledge in physics, in that case, I'd be thankful if you'd correct me.

Derived from: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/19819/how-to-implement-bullet-time-in-a-multiplayer-game

What I think is associated to this question:

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel
  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
  4. General and Special relativity.

The question is, what do I have to follow in order to implement a slow motion/bullet time effect for a player as a skill, while keeping these conditions in mind:

  1. The player under the effects of slow motion has an advantage to make more precise actions (shooting, movement etc.), due to seeing everything in a much slower pace.
  2. His actions should affect the other players in real-time.
  3. The players looking upon our affected player, do not see any difference, except they can experience the actions he have done (like, player gets shot/affected dodges a rocket).
  4. When the player comes out of this effect, he simply continues in the same pace as usual. (If this is not possible, then I guess he'll have to suffer until the time gets synced back)

In case my imagined scenario is impossible, what would be closest possible solution for such an effect?

I hope I've made myself clear and thanks in advance!

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The point is that you can't make a slow motion on a multiplayer game: if do that, there will be a time desincronization on the game, i.e. after the slow motion the game itself will be ahead of time for all the other players, because the clock ticking on each other's players (the real physical clock), is always ticking at the same time. – J. C. Leitão Nov 17 '11 at 14:44
There are two possible workarounds though: there are a couple of games that are multiplayer style but you only play against computer controlled bots where you can freely influence the time. The second more "hackish" approach would be to look at current multiplayer games. In most cases they use some kind of prediction algorithm to be more robust against lost network packages. You could increase the prediction time for the other players and the one player with less prediction time could then "warp" as it is currently seen in some games already when packet loss occcurs. – Alexander Nov 17 '11 at 19:03

closed as off topic by Qmechanic♦, mbq♦ Nov 17 '11 at 15:10

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1 Answer

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You can achieve this effect only by speeding up the character (this is the same as with bullet-time -- camera is just shooting frames more frequent). In a game, it is rather hard to develop since you can't implement it, since it would require to speed up the actual human player -- at least you can just slow down the whole simulation and the reactions from all controllers except of this of your powered-up player.

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