Back on that online game I'm writing. My world rotates, as all good worlds should, so clearly it has a day length. Various things may change depending on what time of day it is, and really low level nations might not be able to do very much in the dark, although I'm not sure about that (it's one of those realism vs. player annoyance questions). How long should a virtual day be? I'm thinking it would be good if there were an integral number of virtual days in a real day so players will know that if they have a routine of playing hours the world will be in the same state each day. Gameplay would be fairly 'light', only needing an hour or so a day, so I want a day to be reasonably slow to go with the relaxed pace of the game. One day per day seems kind of sane. I have a similar question about years; the world has seasonality so the time of year is more than just a display gimmick. For this I think a year should be a good bit shorter than a real one, maybe about a month, so players get a chance to see the seasons change before they get bored! (A day is currently taking one minute :D so I can check that the sun goes around properly.)

Totally depends on your game, so you'll have to be the judge. But I've played games where it was one real hour to one game day, and in the same vein, every 24 hours indicates one month (24 day months). You could do six real hours to one game day as well if you wanted it to be a bit closer (as this means three game days per real day) then have every 21 days in your game be one month (one game month per real week, means game 4 months per 1 real month. You could have each game month be a different season of the year and that would mean that every week you have a different season and every real month you've cycled all of them.)

Hmm, depends on the gameplay. In Harvest Moon the ratio is an hour of gametime to ten minutes of real time, so days are 240 minutes or 4 hours long. I've also seen an MMORPG which had 6 hour long days which worked quite nicely.

Remember that people will generally be playing at only a given time of the day. If you're going to make anything time-dependant (e.g. close shops at night, different monsters in the wilderness), then you need to keep the day short enough that anyone playing for a reasonable amount of time will not be screwed by the game day length. I'd hate to be the person playing from Australia who always has to log in for the middle of the night and thus can never sell off their loot, for example. It's bad enough that nobody else will be online.

How quickly days pass should be accordance with how often factors occur which involve day or night play. If many important things are only going on at night or only going on at day, then time should flow faster so the player doesn't have to wait as long for the event they're looking for. However if the difference between day and night is not a big deal, then have time go slower.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe there are a ton of differences between day and night in World of Warcraft. Also I think I remember the game operating on the same 12 hour day time frame as our real world here. I can't remember, I might be wrong. (Only played it hundreds of hours, some memory I have)So that makes sense for them.

Well, since the world is spherical it would be possible to start your nation in an area where it was daytime when you played. Six hours is sounding quite good at the minute :).

Just to clear up a little misunderstanding: this is not an RPG. It's more of an empire-building game (controlling tiles), and your nation will still be active when you're not logged on (mines will still produce and so on). However, your points are all still useful, thanks for responding :).

There are pros and cons to having perfect integral days, like having 1 game day be like 1 or 2 hours real time. Because if someone always logs in at the same time, then they'll always log in during a certain game time. Say, if 1 game day is 1 hour real time and there are 6 days in the week, then the player will always log in at the same day of the week. So, if something only occurs on another day of the week, then he/she will never see it happen. Or if 1 game day equals 6 hours real time, then the player may only get to see like a certain time of day or night and miss out on things that may happen at other times of day. The plus side, of course, is that its eaier to keep track of the difference between game time and real time and things become more predictable.

I know that for FFXI, each game day is slightly less than 1 real time hour, which gets really annoying at time because its some weird fractional amount, which I can never remember. On the plus side, if I only can log in a certain time of day, I won't have to worry about not seeing things that only happen after dark or on certain day of the week because eventually, the time shift will cause me to see it.

As for time based effects, FFXI is almost built around it, well a good part of it is. Certain monsters only appear at certain times of the day (ghosts and skeletons only appear after dark from 8pm to 4am game time). Each day of the week has a related element, which affects your spells and crafting (so 8 day weeks because of there being 8 elements). Thay also throw in moon phases, which affects crafting and item drop rates and, most importantly, fishing. So, how accurate your time system needs to be really depends on how much "time" is tied into the game. If its not that important, then any arbitrary mapping that's easy to work on and implement will work just fine.

Quote:

Original post by Bob Janova I'm thinking it would be good if there were an integral number of virtual days in a real day so players will know that if they have a routine of playing hours the world will be in the same state each day.

I'd actually like it to be 5 or 7 hours per game day so that's it's not integral. This means I get a variety of experiences even though I log on at the same time every day. In other words, I get to experience more of your content. If I don't log on at the same time, it's the same crapshoot I'd have anyway.

Quote:

I have a similar question about years; the world has seasonality so the time of year is more than just a display gimmick. For this I think a year should be a good bit shorter than a real one, maybe about a month, so players get a chance to see the seasons change before they get bored!

If you have 5 hours per game day, then that's about 76 real days per 365 game days, or about 19 real days per season.

If you have 7 hours per game day, then that's about 106 real days per 365 game days, or about 27 real days per season.

Either could be considered "about a month". I like the "about a month" thing. Long enough to play with it, not long enough to feel static.

Quote:

(A day is currently taking one minute :D so I can check that the sun goes around properly.)

This could be interesting, too. :)

So if I understand correctly, first off you are building a nation and mostly just seeing to the administration of it? You build your nation up in a part of the world that will correspond to daylight at the time you usually play, like playing in the correct 'time zone' as it were.

That could work if the day was the same length as a real day, but that's kind of long I think and if your nation expanded beyond that 'time zone' it would be earlier/later in the day in those areas. I'm not really sure if you mentioned how having it be day or night really affects anything any way.

If the day was that long tho, I wouldn't have the year be much shorter than a real year or else that would be weird to have like 4 really long days in one year. If your world is spinning like all worlds should, it should also be going arounds its sun right :) A world that spins that slowly would end up facing away from the sun faster than it can spin back to facing from it.

All that rambling aside, is the world going to have an axis that will affect the relative length of day and night during the different seasons, ie: Longer day in the summers (in the corresponding hemisphere) and longer nights in the winter?

Quote:

I'd actually like it to be 5 or 7 hours per game day so that's it's not integral. This means I get a variety of experiences even though I log on at the same time every day. In other words, I get to experience more of your content.

Hmm, OK. I hadn't thought of it that way, but yeah, that makes sense. And I agree that a 'year' should have a reasonable number of 'days' in it, probably either 240 or 360 for convenience reasons.

Implementation is a piece of cake; I just have a field for the number of frames in a day and in a year, which I can change to whatever I like :).

Quote:

So if I understand correctly, first off you are building a nation and mostly just seeing to the administration of it?

Yes, that's right.

Quote:

All that rambling aside, is the world going to have an axis that will affect the relative length of day and night during the different seasons, ie: Longer day in the summers (in the corresponding hemisphere) and longer nights in the winter?

Yes, the seasons are calculated based on the planet's obliquity.

Quote:

I'm not really sure if you mentioned how having it be day or night really affects anything any way.

Not in detail, no, because I haven't completely decided yet. But a few ideas would be: if you haven't researched lighting (very early tech!), production is massively reduced at night; production is reduced outside working hours; solar power doesn't work in the dark.

Thanks for your responses :).