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What best time of day and night for you?
Added a poll to answer fast. Choose cleverly please.
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CS2D
Mods Length of day and night
Length of day and night
11 replies
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Poll
Best day/night time
Only registered users are allowed to vote
| Both 1 min | 0.00% (0) | |
| Both 2 min | 6.67% (1) | |
| Both 3 min | 6.67% (1) | |
| Both 4 min | 26.67% (4) | |
| Day 1 min and night 2 | 0.00% (0) | |
| Day 1 min and night 3 | 0.00% (0) | |
| Day 2 min and night 4 | 0.00% (0) | |
| Day 2 min and night 1 | 0.00% (0) | |
| Day 3 min and night 1 | 0.00% (0) | |
| Day 4 min and night 2 | 26.67% (4) | |
| Your choose (post a commect) | 33.33% (5) |
15 votes cast
What best time of day and night for you?
Added a poll to answer fast. Choose cleverly please.
PM - 12 minutes
1 day (In-game time) - 24 minutes
edited 1×, last 09.10.13 01:02:45 pm
Thing is, the choice depends on the complexity of the implementation, among other things. Is the day-night cycle the only thing there is? Is there a date system as well? If so, are there seasons? If you have seasons, then you could just stick to the real world implementation and make days longer than nights in the summer (and spring, slightly), and nights longer than days in the winter (and autumn, again, slightly).
I find that the choices you provide in the poll are all too low. It might seem like 5 minutes is pretty long for a time of day in a game, but I can say from having played things like Minecraft, Terraria and Stranded that there's never enough day. Having under five minutes of daylight is ridiculous. Having one is ludicrous.
I say that, but I don't know what the map and mode constitute. You operate in very vague terms, "random" and "for example". If you want a good, solid system then you'll need to provide more details.
If it's something like just building a base in the day and then defending it against invaders in the night (think tower defence), then you might want to make nights longer than days, so players would manage their time in daylight intelligently.
If it's anything like Terraria or Minecraft, where you have to explore and gather, then you should either make the two equal or make the day slightly longer than the night, to give people the opportunity to explore the world in relative peace.
Choosing the actual, rather than proportional, lengths of the times of day also depends on the scale. If you have a 1000x1000 map with lots to do, then your poll's 1 minute will not cut it, neither will anything under 5 minutes. If you want players to build up, they'll need to return to their base now and then. If you give them one minute of daylight to explore, they'll have to stick to the immediate vicinity of their base - if they want to both build up and survive they don't have another choice since they can't venture out for very long.
Conversely, if you want people to never stay on one spot and keep moving in your large world, or if your map is a 100x100 one with a few locations and some NPCs, then under 5 minutes is the way to go.
Nights should generally be around the same length - you shouldn't have your nights twice as long or as short as your days. Thing is, when you play e.g. Minecraft or Terraria, nights always feel longer than days because you are in danger and under pressure from monsters, even if they aren't - nights in Minecraft are actually shorter than days. That feeling also depends on the difficulty of your enemies - if the player struggles to survive, then nights will feel even longer. That's why they shouldn't be much longer than days objectively - because they already are subjectively, and that is why nights might have to be made shorter than days - so if you have a 1-minute day, you might want to have a 1-minute night, a 5-minute day might have a 4-minute night, and a 10-minute day might have a 7-minute night.
However, the above paragraph might not apply completely. That depends on whether you have activities that the player can do in the night that don't involve actively fighting against monsters - think mining in Minecraft and how it sometimes makes you lose track of time completely, or fighting bosses in Terraria and how players look forward to dusk to do that.
If you have something that the players can do only in the night, or if you have something that doesn't depend on the current time of day, then the duration of both nights and days might have to be adjusted respectively, so perhaps give players another minute of night so they would be able to grab some resources before they can venture out into the world again, or take away a minute of daytime so they would wait less until they could do something like fight a boss.
Rainoth is also right in that players don't really want to stare at a black screen for prolonged amounts of time, so if you don't want to make it bright enough for players to be able to see at least somewhat clearly, then you should definitely shorten the duration of your nights. EngiN33R: well, I'm not gonna read your lecture, but:1. Make a time zones
2. Make a moon shaddings 4 it
3. Make an eclipse(s)
4. Make a npc's wich can be only at night and only at day time. Ex.: Zombies at night & simple human at day.
Hope you will do it.
He basically said that players can't give appropriate timing because the author of the post wasn't clear enough about what he was making and therefore it's not possible to give an accurate advice.
@
EngiN33R: I expect that he's making something like "Kill monsters during night, then heal up and build a little during day" so it's probably more night than day time. Both night and day will be 4 mins, but first day will be longer. If players will start in center of map, they got enough times to reach border place for base.
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