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How to make day/night cycle work through time dialation and abstraction

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eaglechopper

Sergeant
Jan 14, 2014
52
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Reading the comments and looking at the stream there seems to be a design problem with adding a day/night cycl because of how time is sped up. Games like CIM a day night cycle based on the clock is more viable because the game is on a more micro scale so time can flow slower. Currently if a cycle was added on the current clock in the bottom left corner a day night cycle would. Happen every few seconds but there is a way to over come this and that's by having some level of absyraction on the game. We can already see some abstraction because the citizens take more than a day to get to work and come home. So to have a day/night cycle work you would have to dialate the time so it does not follow the clock, but rather a second hidden clock that the citizens follow. It's like having a micro and a macro clock. The citizens are the micro, but the city is the
macro

Please ignore my bd grammer and of spelling. It is very late and I'm trying to type of a small phone screen :D
 
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I don´t have any idea what exactly you mean. Maybe you should write it all again?
The night in CiM looks like crap, if it would look like that they can save their troubles anyway. However, I have a feeling that because of the weird time flow in this game my chance of a proper night is about zero.
If the citizens are not ensync with the time flow of the game anyway I don´t see the point in having it in the first place.

...still waiting on any word about that "modding tools" that were announced... months ago... just saying!
 
I don't think it was so unclear that he needs write it again. It seems to be somewhat fathomable to most. A simplification might be that the dark/light cycle cannot follow the day-cycle since the days are so fast (just a few seconds), but it should rather follow the work/transport cycle of the citizens (assuming the citizens are synchronized with each other.) If citizens are synchronized with each other, that should hopefully also create periods of rush traffic, etc.

So that way you have two timescales. One that follows the calendar, and dictates how quickly buildings are built, when taxrevenue comes in and upkeep must be payed. And the second timescale follows the citizenz work cycle and might dictate how much the car traffic affects the economy of workplaces and industries and movement of goods.
 
I get what you're saying. I don't see the day/night cycle working any way other than to follow the CIMs routine as oppose to the actual game speed clock. Even if we just had a toggle to turn it on and off as we pleased would be good seeing as it would just be a visual component. I'd love to see it as apart of the routine though, seeing little cims out doing night time activities would be cool.
 
How do the citizens go to work and come home from work if there was no sense of time? Day/night?

How do they advance and grow up from primary school to high school to college to work if there was no calendar year?

the you tube video i watched made it seem more like a problem of having to do twice the amount of 3d models. Basically they would need night time versions.

It would be weird if there was no day night cycle. Itd be like we lived on another planet.
 
uebs said:
How do the citizens go to work and come home from work if there was no sense of time? Day/night?

How do they advance and grow up from primary school to high school to college to work if there was no calendar year?

the you tube video i watched made it seem more like a problem of having to do twice the amount of 3d models. Basically they would need night time versions.

It would be weird if there was no day night cycle. Itd be like we lived on another planet.
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If it's any consolation.. the cars all have their headlights on during the day :\ derp
 
How does it work in SC4, is it using 2 different models as well? Sounds like a pain for modders, pretty sure it would deter many of them from even trying. I guess I'd rather have no day/night in that case.
 
If it gets either seasons/weather or day/night cycle, then It´ll be fine by ne.
 
I think day / night should be abstracted like the OP says. A simple approach would be each month of game time would also simulate one day/night cycle. Maybe day 1 of the month would be 6am. I would also advocate a 14-16 hour day. So basically the first 19 days of each month would be daytime and days 20+ would be night. I know that 14+ hours of day time does not quite match reality but it would allow for a consistent cycle and the ability to see rush hour traffic jams etc as the rush hour would be over a 2 day period each month. Not knowing exactly how fast cars move the cycle could be put over a quarter (3 months) instead of 1 month so that rush hour lasts longer.
 
floripa said:
Personal opinion, but day/night was one of the first things I always disabled in SC4. I hope they make it optional if they ever implement this.
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+1
 
Lys91 said:
In some European countries car have their light on during the day, that probably explains it ;).
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Yepp. In Norway it's illegal to drive without headlight turned on, so to my eyes, it's always weird to see cars in games without lights :p
 
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