Wurm time vs Real time in SP

[neofit 78]

Many timers in WO are set to very large values, in RL days/weeks/months. In WO this is not much of a problem since time ticks away even when we are not playing, but not so much in WU, in a SP game when one shuts down the PC when not playing.

In Wurm time runs 8x faster that in RL, so 1 Wurm Day = 3 RL hours. But let's take the example of one person who plays 1 hour every day, and shuts down the server and/or his or her PC in-between. In this case: 1 Wday = 24 Whours = 3 RL hours @ 1 h/day = 3 RL days. So the in-game time for such a player runs 3 times slower.

Without a way to accelerate time, or an in-game acceleration of some timers, a lot of activities in the SP game are affected.

1. Breeding. In the discussion I've tried to start here, , breeding is nearly impossible. Let's say you somehow managed to find a pair of horses that are not young, and after the number of breeding days set in the server settings (RL or Wurm days?), you get a foal/young. Horses become fertile after 25 RL days. If your server is running for only 1h a day, a horse becomes fertile after 25*24 = 243 days of playing. And depending on the size of your farm, you'll need a few dozen generations like this to get some 5-speeders. People are basically forced to GM their way through this part, even though it was rather fun in WO.

2. Planting trees. I want to make a tree farm to replace the ones I cut down. Trees take weeks to reach the proper age, oaks take months. This will be 3 times longer in a SP game.

3. Stumps. I still have the ones from the trees I cut a couple of days after release all around my deed.

4. Probably a lot more, like meditation timers.

Suggestions:

Implement a separate time multiplier setting for these activities, like it was done for crop growth and breeding.

Add the abilty to run the game at an accelerated rate to make up for lost time. For instance, if the server has been down for more than a real life hour for instance, say I stopped playing at 23:00 and restart it at 22:00 the next day, the server will ask me if I want to simulate the missing 23 hours of lost time. I don't mind waiting a couple of minutes while it is doing so.

[BadLuckBurt 51]

And there I was, hoping it would be possible to increase the timescale to get longer days but reading your post, that doesn't seem like a good idea anymore.

 

Speeding up time should technically be possible so I hope they give us that option at some point, not everybody can keep their server running 24/7 after all.

[Webba 257]

This may in fact be possible by modding, prayer and meditation skill timers are reset on restart so no need to worry about them, meditation questions would be easy if they are not based on real time, breeding should also not be too dificult to achieve. Crops, decay and animal ageing are a little harder as they are random event which could occur any time while the server  is up and not a specific time but this could be modeled with Poisson statistics.

[neofit 78]

And there I was, hoping it would be possible to increase the timescale to get longer days but reading your post, that doesn't seem like a good idea anymore.

If just longer daytime is enough for you, and I'd like that too, this should be doable while keeping the 8x Wurm time ratio. I am wlling to bet that the code has some hardcoded values (again) stating that the sun should set at X and rise at Y o'clock. But some activities depend on whether its night or day too, like archery skillups (better at night iirc). This game is too rich with too many things going on at once, touch one and break something else .

[yarnevk 257]

see my mod request here

 

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/133193-day-cycle/

 

 

It does not impact farming because that already has a harvest interval in server config.  Set it to 24 if using a dedicated server, set it to 1 if you play an hour a day and farming schedule will be the same as WO.  Just remember to offline your server when set to 1 or you will lose your crops!

 

I thought there was a server config for husbandry as well?  But you have posted more issues that has me thinking this is more of a server issue than a mod request since the game is basically broken for offline serving.

 

Tilting the day cycle is more of a complex mod, ideally would further vary the ratio with seasons.

Edited November 2, 2015 by yarnevk

[BadLuckBurt 51]

There's a TimeConstants class in the server.jar, I don't have a Java IDE installed atm so I only looked at the compiled version but there appear to be constants there for seconds, minutes, hours etc. When I have some more time later this week I'll crack it open and see what it is exactly but I think that's the right spot.

[neofit 78]

I'd be scared to install a mod that changes the flow of time in-game. Certainly not with the current state of affairs, with no modding support per se, if for instance such a mod changes 10 .class files, then an official forced patch changes 8 of them, nobody know how it will end up.

 

I'd rather have this being handled in a simpler manner. The devs have already figured the problem and created server settings for crop growth (like +1 stage per RL hour) and breeding (have to see what it does yet, all my animals are young). I think there will be less chance to screw things up if the devs proceed in stages, issue by issue: change creature aging timers; change tree growth timers (+stumps); meditation timers, etc.

[yarnevk 257]

The problem with the specific timers is that it is hard to manage and is not actually simpler.  Suppose you play 1hr a day on weekdays, and 8hrs a day on weekends.   That means you get one harvest during the week, but three harvests on the weekend (if you remember to do them rather than thinking you have a week to next harvest).  And it is easy to forget to turn off your server because the client logout does not do it for you nor does it popup the server logout screen to remind you.  Already lost my crops because it got left on overnite.

 

Tying the server up/downtime to real time clock is the right way to manage it so that all of the timers goes away and things are just a multiple of the real time.  When the server is down you optionally catch up time on boot, to enable vacation days off mode for when you don't want to catchup.  That way if you want to every few hour harvests or every week it is consistent regardless of your server uptime.

 

Also solves the lack of seasons and darkness I discussed in my other thread.

 

The complexity of doing it right in a mod is why I think it is really a client/server issue CC needs to fix, it is a major omission to not account for offline server experiences.

Edited November 2, 2015 by yarnevk

[neofit 78]

Tying the server up/downtime to real time clock is the right way to manage it so that all of the timers goes away and things are just a multiple of the real time.  When the server is down you optionally catch up time on boot, to enable vacation days off mode for when you don't want to catchup.  That way if you want to every few hour harvests or every week it is consistent regardless of your server uptime.

Oh, you mean like "Add the abilty to run the game at an accelerated rate to make up for lost time" upon login that I mentioned in the first post? Sure, whatever is easier to code.

[yarnevk 257]

As long as it is optional on server start - sometimes I do want the harvest week to go by, other times I want time to be frozen.  Better to do that catchup at start rather than shutdown since I am not sure when I will play again at shutdown.

 

It is more about easier to use that you are adjusting wurm/earth time than having to adjust all the other timers.  Just make those other timers dependent on the wurm/earth time so that there is one server start control.

Edited November 2, 2015 by yarnevk