Day Night time

RSphil · 2012-05-18, 09:01 AM

hi planetside nuts

not sure if this has been answered before and i just havent seen it but do we know what the day/night cycle time is gona be? are we looking a few hours of day then a few hours of transition followed by a few hours of night or will it be real time?

MacXXcaM · 2012-05-18, 09:07 AM

We don't know for sure, at least I don't.

Most likely it's not realtime. That would be ridiculous.
If you watch the TB video, it starts with a sunsetty point of time and at the end you see the dawn.

The video is 20 minutes but it's obviously been cut. He said he had 90 minutes of footage. Maybe that's a night time...

RSphil · 2012-05-18, 09:15 AM

the vid isnt that great though as its a alpha and he speeds it up to daylight. i dont think we have seen a vid yet where the timer is normal lol. they are always speeding it up of setting it to a time.

would be nice to know though. id say a 24 hour cycle would take maybe 8 hours maybe. 3 hours of day, 3 hours of night then the other 2 for transition

ringring · 2012-05-18, 10:21 AM

Originally Posted by MacXXcaM

We don't know for sure, at least I don't.

Most likely it's not realtime. That would be ridiculous.
If you watch the TB video, it starts with a sunsetty point of time and at the end you see the dawn.

The video is 20 minutes but it's obviously been cut. He said he had 90 minutes of footage. Maybe that's a night time...

No, TB manually advanced the day/night cycle to demonstrate the look.

On the question, we don't know but I recall Matt saying that they hadn't decided on the hours but that night would likely be shorter than the day.

MyMeatStick · 2012-05-18, 10:32 AM

Go to one of the videos where he changes the day and night cycle to x100

Count how long it takes to go across the sky and do the math?

SteinB · 2012-05-18, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by MyMeatStick

Go to one of the videos where he changes the day and night cycle to x100

Count how long it takes to go across the sky and do the math?

That would only show the base timecycle for the design not what they will eventually use in game.

Vancha · 2012-05-18, 06:36 PM

I still think 7 hours would be perfect. It just works out too well.

Gonefshn · 2012-05-18, 06:42 PM

the longer the better but it cant be real time because if it was certain people would either only ever see day or night because of their schedule and when they can log on during the day.

Crazyduckling · 2012-05-18, 06:58 PM

I think 5 hours seems reasonable.

If you have a long gaming session, you'll be able to experience 'multiple days' fighting on Auraxis. Also, having an odd number is key. Many people will be confined to playing at a certain time, so this would keep the game constantly changing each time they log in.

MyMeatStick · 2012-05-18, 07:20 PM

People are talking about 5 or 7 hours here? No thanks, I'd rather have 24 hours in game last about 2 hours.

SuperMorto · 2012-05-18, 07:22 PM

Hmmm, average gaming time is 3/4 hours. I say 1/2 hours night 2/3 hours day. Job is done we can move on now......

Gonefshn · 2012-05-18, 07:22 PM

Originally Posted by MyMeatStick

People are talking about 5 or 7 hours here? No thanks, I'd rather have 24 hours in game last about 2 hours.

I think 3 is perfect. so im close to you on that. You can't have people really frustrated cause they can only play for short periods every day and they constantly get stuck with one time of day

Xyntech · 2012-05-18, 07:38 PM

Well it would have to be 3 hours 30 minutes to properly cycle around the clock. It can't be a number that evenly goes into 24.

2.5 hours is the shortest I would want to see a day and 9 hours would be the longest.

5 seems good to me though. There will be multiple continents, so presumably if you are really sick of always fighting at a certain time of day, you can go to another continent and it will be different.

Vancha · 2012-05-18, 07:40 PM

Originally Posted by Gonefshn

I think 3 is perfect. so im close to you on that. You can't have people really frustrated cause they can only play for short periods every day and they constantly get stuck with one time of day

That's only a problem for 4, 6, 8, 12, 24 and to a lesser extent 9 hour days.

2 hour days would mean less than an hour of night. Tactically that's barely worth planning for.

Keep in mind, if you want 1 - 1.5 hour nights, that also means you'll probably get 1.5 - 2 hour days. If you're someone who for whatever reason refuses to play nights, wouldn't it suck to have such a time limit on where you fight?

Long nights (and thus, longer daytime) only seem like a potentially bad idea if each continent doesn't have it's own timezone.

Edit: 5 hours means that you'll only complete a cycle every 5 weeks (smallest multiple of 5 and 12/24 is 60, with 168 hours in a week, 840 in 5 weeks). 7 hours means the cycle resets exactly every 7 days, so while sunrise is at different times throughout the week, it's the same from week to week and thus you can learn the schedule.

Edit II: Also keep in mind that you need to include time for dawn and dusk, too. A 3 hour day isn't 1.5 hours of day and 1.5 hours of night.

Gonefshn · 2012-05-18, 07:44 PM

Originally Posted by Vancha

That's only a problem for 4, 6, 8, 12, 24 and to a lesser extent 9 hour days.

2 hour days would mean less than an hour of night. Tactically that's barely worth planning for.

Keep in mind, if you want 1 - 1.5 hour nights, that also means you'll probably get 1.5 - 2 hour days. If you're someone who for whatever reason refuses to play nights, wouldn't it suck to have such a time limit on where you fight?

Long nights (and thus, longer daytime) only seem like a potentially bad idea if each continent doesn't have it's own timezone.

what sort of person would refuse to play nights they look amazing!

But yea I see your point I mean 5 hours is good too if I had to say another time. See I'll probably have really long play times so id personally like it really long when I said 3 I was thinking more realistically about what makes sense for other people who might not play as long