a year

[Bedgar 13]

This is more of a balancing issue but I thought I would just post it anyway. Since this is a fantasy world there really is no reason that the planet needs to make 365 revolutions per cycle around its star. Maybe around 200 would be more interesting.

[ancientpower 32]

I think a fictional month system like in DF would be pretty neat. Maybe 10/8 months with 2.5/2 month seasons?

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

Belongs in the tiny tweaks metathread

[ancientpower 32]

Belongs in the tiny tweaks metathread

It's a significant change to the game.

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

It's a significant change to the game.

It's changing the rate at which seasons pass by about 57%

define 'significant'

[ancientpower 32]

Changing the rate of time forces players to modify their play styles to accommodate the change. Changing the color of grass is a tiny tweak that has no bearing on anything.

[nwaters 4]

How would changing something by 57% not be significant it over halving something that seems pretty big to me

[Bedgar 13]

Well for one if we start chopping off months then the fruit trees would need to be rebalanced (not saying chopping off months is a bad idea). Also almost halving the length of each year would have pretty big repercussion especially with the agriculture overhaul and the weather/environment system, both dependant on the calendar. As it is now a year in tfc is about 120 hours irl, thats about 30 hours per seasons. i find this way to much to give the player a reason to manage his time, to give him a sence that a few waisted days could screw him over for winter or cost him his crops

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

How would changing something by 57% not be significant it over halving something that seems pretty big to me

I think you're mistaking 'changing it by 57%' with 'adding/subtracting 57%'. The first case is multiplicative, and has a smaller bearing on the actual values.

Also, nothing has to be re-balanced. It's not like you have to grow and shrink each individual value one at a time to re-do the entire TFC code - you're just shrinking every aspect by a predetermined amount all at once.

'Make things go a bit quicker' is not a new mechanic for the game. It is a tweak.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

If you guys were wondering, if we DO change the length of a year, animals will not mature any faster, as this is determined by a "day" amount

[Bedgar 13]

Ya that wasn’t really the point. Sorry if I didn’t elaborate enough. How fast the planet moves around the star wouldn’t change how fast a tree grows it would change how fast the seasons/ months come and go. it would change how often an tree is ready to be picked and for how long. It might also change the reproduction cycle of some animals if they can only mate at a certain interval.

And yes i guess this qualifies as tweaking or balancing.

[bsb23 303]

Ya I agree here a faster year, don't speed things up just make it so the cycles happen more frequently.

[MDub 68]

Agreed, The progression of the years just seems painfully slow. It allows for a lot of wasted time on the part of the player. When fall hits you still have an enormous amount of time to prepare food for the winter. Seems like setting up a farm, and only really using it on an 'as needed' basis until nearly a hundred hours of gameplay is met seems a little less 'believeable' than TFC typically offers.

[GCountach 39]

I would certainly enjoy a quicker year. I've been playing non-stop it feels like for a week and I think I'm still in spring. Heard that fruit is delicious though..

If possible, I believe a multiplier in the config would be ideal, instead of changing it to 200 days for SSP and SMP. In a 24/7 SMP server, 30 hours a season seems short, but in SSP you could play for over a month before you see a full year... probably more.

The only issue I could see coming from this is that it would mess up the calender. One possible solution I can think of is to remove the exact date from the calender menu and just leave the "early/mid/late <season>" there. Once it gets into late fall, you know you best get everything you need done before winter. The exact date seems like unnecessary information at that point, and will not tie you to the 365 day calender.

[The Shadow 8]

Here's my thought: Tie months to the moon, at least in SSP. (There's realism for you! ) One month is eight days. Then just keep the 12 month year. Bam. (Animal growth times would have to be jiggered to match, of course.)

I realize the game is being balanced for SMP, but a simple switch in the config file to throw everything in the game to "Single Player time rate" wouldn't be too horrible, would it?

It does seem pretty silly to have such a very long year, but having trees and crops still grow so fast. I suppose Bioxx might be planning to do something about those eventually, but I don't know.

[Bedgar 13]

I don’t know about 8 days/month, 12months/year that’s a pretty big jump. 2 lunar cycles per month would also be an option it is 192 days per year.

Being able to somewhat tell what day it is using the moon would help if Steve where to somehow lose his calendar not saying he should but it does seem like the calendar is a temporary thing to me.

As for the SSP and SMP thing, ya that’s true I didn’t think about that. Since everyday is the same as the others in minecraft it didn’t matter that 2 months have passed between your logins but it’s going to be a disaster when your whole crop is wasted because you weren’t there to harvest it.

Here are a few stats:

Player A plays 1hour/day.

Player B plays 2hours/day.

Assume the length of a year is unchanged:

If Player A plays on SSP it takes him 122(365 MC_days *20 RL_min/MC_day / 60 RL_min/RL_ hour / 1 RL_hour/RL_day ) rl days to go through a month.

If he player on a SMP server instead it would need to go at 8760 (365 days / (1 hour / 24 hours)) days a year for him to have the same pace.

Player B goes through a minecraft year in 61 days

He needs a server going at 4380 days a year for him to have the same pace.

Assume the length of a year is 200 days a year:

If Player A plays on SSP it takes him 67 rl days to go through a month.

If he player on a SMP server instead it would need to go at 4800 days a year for him to have the same pace.

Player B goes through a minecraft year in 33 days

he needs a server going at 2400 days a year for him to have the same pace.

Finally assume we go with Shadow’s suggestion (96 days a year)

If Player A plays on SSP it takes him 32 rl days to go through a month.

If he player on a SMP server instead it would need to go at 2304 days a year for him to have the same pace.

Player B goes through a minecraft year in 16 days

he needs a server going at 1152 days a year for him to have the same pace.

[elustran 23]

Here's my thought: Tie months to the moon, at least in SSP. (There's realism for you! ) One month is eight days. Then just keep the 12 month year. Bam. (Animal growth times would have to be jiggered to match, of course.)

I realize the game is being balanced for SMP, but a simple switch in the config file to throw everything in the game to "Single Player time rate" wouldn't be too horrible, would it?

It does seem pretty silly to have such a very long year, but having trees and crops still grow so fast. I suppose Bioxx might be planning to do something about those eventually, but I don't know.

This is actually a really good idea, especially since it maps to a natural Minecraft 'moonth' and gives a bit of verisimilitude in that sense. Having a year be 32 hours of gameplay seems quite reasonable. It's really disappointing to only be able to play a few hours a week and feel like you're getting nowhere - I think it's important to distinguish between challenging gameplay and tedious gameplay.

[The Shadow 8]

I wouldn't even mind making it shorter - two months to a season, for example. 8 months of 8 days each, 64 days total.

Actually, I once did some calculations and found that the Minecraft world in many cases seems to scale at a factor of 4 where the real world scales by 10. That accounts for the short month, it makes many distances make more sense, and so on. (Still working on whether it helps explain how much Steve can carry!) By that scale, the year "should" have about 4.5 months. One month per season, even?

EDIT: Even if the longer year is retained, I'd suggest rounding it to 360 days for simplicity's sake. Make all the months the same.

[TheBlindPeople 31]

I'm sorta siding with a config option for various timescales, with an option to have the growth rates of animals/plants acale according to whatever timescale you set.

Primarily because I would love to work through this mod in the Harvest Moon timescale of four months a year, which was tedious enough in that game.

[Bedgar 13]

Actually, I once did some calculations and found that the Minecraft world in many cases seems to scale at a factor of 4 where the real world scales by 10.

its not about the factors of 4 its about the powers of 2 . in fact your also using them.

8 months of 8 days each, 64 days total.

Now back on topic. Elustran said that 32 rl hours per year dident seam that bad but im not so sure about that.

First of all i forgot to mention an asumption that i made when i did my calculations. I assumed that you wouldent skip the night. Thats a pretty safe assumption when your on a SMP server but on a SSP world that all depends on the player. so if your the type to skip the night a year goes by faster(obviously).

Now 32 rl hours per year thats 160 rl minutes(2.66 rl hours) per minecraft month. That might seem ok as the mod is right now but when the argiculture overhaul comes that might be a problem. Of course im not a dev and I dont know how its going to be like but im guessing its going to be a bit like the fruit trees. Plant croop x at month y and harvest z months later. Maybe some crops would have multiple harvests in one month (kinda like harvest moon). That means in 160 minutes you might need to harvest your crops find the seeds for your next rotation and you probably want to go mining and all that stuff. then again maybe im just trying to find faults in everything and 160 minutes is fine .

Final point. I just realised that it would also mean winter yould be 24 days long. Now i know that the time to prepare for winter yould also decrease but that seams like an awfuly short winter for us to fuss about (when we should be fussing about it i might add)

But I’m glad we could all agree that 122 rl hours for one minecraft year seems too long. And the config, it would be awesome if it can be done.

[Biodigious 211]

its not about the factors of 4 its about the powers of 2 file:///C:%5CUsers%5Cjohn%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_image002.gif. in fact your also using them.

Now back on topic. Elustran said that 32 rl hours per year dident seam that bad but im not so sure about that.

First of all i forgot to mention an asumption that i made when i did my calculations. I assumed that you wouldent skip the night. Thats a pretty safe assumption when your on a SMP server but on a SSP world that all depends on the player. so if your the type to skip the night a year goes by faster(obviously).

Now 32 rl hours per year thats 160 rl minutes(2.66 rl hours) per minecraft month. That might seem ok as the mod is right now but when the argiculture overhaul comes that might be a problem. Of course im not a dev and I dont know how its going to be like but im guessing its going to be a bit like the fruit trees. Plant croop x at month y and harvest z months later. Maybe some crops would have multiple harvests in one month (kinda like harvest moon). That means in 160 minutes you might need to harvest your crops find the seeds for your next rotation and you probably want to go mining and all that stuff. then again maybe im just trying to find faults in everything and 160 minutes is fine .

Final point. I just realised that it would also mean winter yould be 24 days long. Now i know that the time to prepare for winter yould also decrease but that seams like an awfuly short winter for us to fuss about (when we should be fussing about it i might add)

But I’m glad we could all agree that 122 rl hours for one minecraft year seems too long. And the config, it would be awesome if it can be done.

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[The Shadow 8]

its not about the factors of 4 its about the powers of 2 file:///C:%5CUsers%5Cjohn%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_image002.gif.

Not so. I know precisely what I meant, and that isn't it.

[mrpwase 66]

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I was about to take the piss out of you for this before I realised you, too, were taking the piss.

[Wybourne 2]

Yes, This would help balance breeding and fruit trees waiting for a cow to give birth for 6 months is not worth it judging from the drop rate of 0-3 steaks per cow and as for the fruit trees they would need to accelerate in the growth process.

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

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...*twitch* ...