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How long should a day be, in game that is. |
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echorev |
Apr 14 2007, 07:35 PM
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PW Sound Team
Group: PW Developer
Posts: 132
Joined: 29-December 06
Member No.: 864
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Minthos |
Apr 15 2007, 04:45 AM
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PW Programmer
Group: PW Developer
Posts: 316
Joined: 12-January 05
Member No.: 198
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Uneven day/night distribution is a good idea, because playing when it's dark ingame sucks. If nights aren't dark, there's no point having nights at all, so nights should be short and days should be long.
Too short nights is bad, same with too short days. A normal raid (be it pvp or pve) often takes 2-5 hours, sometimes more, so I think our night should be long enough for it to be possible to conduct a full raid in complete darkness. That means about 5 hours of night. If Wish's 3:1 distribution is anything to go by, that means 15 hours of day. Total time for day/night cycle: 20 hours. Someone who plays at the same time every day will experience 4.8 ingame hours of rotation.
20 24 40 48 60 72 80 96 100 120 120
5 RL days become 6 ingame days. 7 RL days become 8 ingame days and 9.6 ingame hours, so someone who plays only on a specific weekday at a specific time, will experience 9.6 ingame hours of rotation.
I think the best way to do this is to make one ingame minute equal to one RL minute and one ingame hour contain only 50 minutes (or vice versa with minutes/seconds). Instead of accelerating time during night. Let the night start at 2200 game time and end at 0400 game time (daylight saving time :p).
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glibdud |
Apr 16 2007, 06:46 AM
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Seasoned User
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Member No.: 998
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QUOTE(Minthos @ Apr 16 2007, 08:04 AM) Night is dark. Players don't like darkness because they don't see anything.
I don't think that sentiment necessarily speaks for everyone, that's the point I was making. People who go out at night make sure they have a light source with them. (Plus, perhaps some races have better vision at night.) And since dynamics change at night, there are things you can do/see then that you can't see in daylight. If you brush off nighttime as an annoyance, you leave the nocturnal characters out in the cold. Mulling it over some more, I guess a 2:1 or 3:1 day:night distribution could make sense, though. As long as the days aren't so short that there's less than 3 hours or so of night. EDIT: Of course, there's no reason why you couldn't give the players their choice of more light/more dark. If the land mass is large enough, you could simulate an axis tilt such that some of the world (probably the more heavily populated portion) has more day than night, while near the other "pole" there's more nigth than day. This post has been edited by glibdud: Apr 16 2007, 06:57 AM
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Minthos |
Apr 16 2007, 07:55 AM
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PW Programmer
Group: PW Developer
Posts: 316
Joined: 12-January 05
Member No.: 198
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QUOTE(Pandra @ Apr 16 2007, 03:28 PM) Well we all know how awake my sorry behind is during 'daylight' hours. Some players are nocturnal by nature, I think instead of looking at night as a hendrence we need to look at a way to make it add to game play.
And yet you don't sit in utter darkness and you usually stay indoors when it's dark outside. I'm nocturnal myself, I love the night, I want long, pitch black nights in the game, but from previous experience with dark games (Doom 1/2/3, Quake 4, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), I know that too much darkness gets really tiresome and annoying in the long run. Which is why I suggested the 20 hour day with 5 hours night and 15 hours day. If I get my way, the servers will limit view distance at night-time, so even if players turn up their monitor brightness to the max, they just won't get any info about creatures outside their view radius (unless those creatures are illuminated [torch, fireball, etc]). The players would then be encouraged to carry torches/lanterns or use light spells at night and inside dungeons, to increase their view radius beyond a few meters. For added realism and creepiness, the server could tell the client to play sounds but not exactly where the sounds come from. QUOTE If the land mass is large enough, you could simulate an axis tilt such that some of the world (probably the more heavily populated portion) has more day than night, while near the other "pole" there's more nigth than day.
I like that idea :)
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glibdud |
Apr 16 2007, 08:15 AM
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Seasoned User
Group: Members
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QUOTE(Minthos @ Apr 16 2007, 09:55 AM) If I get my way, the servers will limit view distance at night-time, so even if players turn up their monitor brightness to the max, they just won't get any info about creatures outside their view radius (unless those creatures are illuminated [torch, fireball, etc]).
Careful with that, though. Under some conditions (open plain, clear sky, full moon) visibility could be just about as good at night as during the day. Depends on the cosmos in this universe. I like the idea of being able to hunt the nocturnal animals. Definitely wouldn't want to announce your presence with a torch in that case. Of course, in a forest or under cloud cover, light sources will definitely be needed to get around.
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RicoSuave |
Apr 26 2007, 02:52 PM
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Master
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Joined: 22-March 06
From: (Undisclosed)
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I like the idea too. Only Fable used this acceptably imo, and only on a small-scale at that. I would love to see it here. However... We need to realize that many, many people out there will not have high-end computers and the components necessary to make the effect we intend with this. Are we going to make it so people can simply "turn it off?" Are we going to just make a $10,000 computer mandatory? Are we going to impede and hinder players if real-life makes them unable to play except at certain times? Above all, I want this game to be fun. If realism needs to suffer a bit, so be it! The reason I play games is to do the things I can't, or sometimes shouldn't do in real life. I play for the fantastical-part, not to live just another gruling life... my life is boring enough as it is. J/K I would hope for something a bit different. Let's consider the majority of the expected player base for a moment. How often and for how many hours do we expect them to play? My ideas are thus: Hardcore (kids and virgins): Everyday -- 10+ hours dailySerious (mostly teenagers): Nearly everyday -- 6-10 hoursModerate (college students): 3-4 days/week -- 3-4 hoursCasual (familyman/woman just relaxing): Occasionally -- 1-4 hoursLight (geriatrics): Only when asked to cover for the Hardcore during a 'Bio.'I expect (perhaps I'm wrong) somewhat of a standard deviation here: 5% - Hardcore 15% - Serious 60% - Moderate 15% - Casual 5% - Light If we consider when the majority will be on and how it will affect them, I think we'll come up with a different solution. More to come, I hope. This post has been edited by RicoSuave: Apr 26 2007, 02:53 PM
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joshpurple |
Apr 26 2007, 04:13 PM
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PW Artist
Group: PW Developer
Posts: 790
Joined: 3-July 06
Member No.: 613
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Yup, Excellent point(s) Rico! I agree that, "If realism needs to suffer a bit, so be it!" I see it as a project that will continue to develop in stages. As the stages of the game get developed, I think this aspect will get more and more defined. For example, having our characters in-game, on the world map, -and able to move. Once we have PW at that stage, we will have an idea of how resources are getting used & at what 'minimum system requirements' we will want to list for PW. And the speed of the moving character in-game will most likely be a strong influence on how far a character can travel in a day? So, here's a guess At a default I'd say for Minimum System Requirements: (just for the very fist PW ver. 1.0) Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000/Windows XP CPU: 1.4 GHz Pentium III or AMD Athlon (2.5 GHz Pentium IV or AMD recommended)RAM: 256 MB (512 MB recommended)Video Card: 64 MB DirectX 9.0c-compliant Sound Card: 16-bit DirectX 9.0c-compliant sound card DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c CD-ROM: n/a Downloadable Hard Drive Space: 1.5 GB Multiplay: Broadband with 64 Kbps upstream (128 Kbps recommended)With... maybe... "TEEN" (Violence, Strong Language), -ESRB Content Rating ( http://www.esrb.org ). Remember, that's a complete guess & I could be completely wrong But, and I'll see if I can remember and find my source, I believe according to Ubisoft ( ~2005 ), the above stats were considered "within reasonable market demographics" for retail PC Games at $19.95 Please DO feel free to rip any of that! I take no offense .
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