Day / Night Cycles
 

Having day and night cycles can add a whole new dimension to a server if they're done right; different quests can be made accessible for better pacing, vampire mobs can walk the streets, different shops can be opened for alternative produce or pricing, unique species of Pokemon can be caught, the list goes on. The problem is though, no server has really utilized the concept well, and the effects of "night" have always seemed annoying. Some servers use cycles where days are over in the matter of minutes, while some seem to be in constant darkness, and I've set to see a happy medium come forward.

I'm just wondering what kind of cycle you think would be appropriate on a server. I'm finding it hard to pitch one that would allow the majority of players to play during a day setting, with night being a less common occurrence, especially since most people play in different timezones.

Something I have always wanted to do with a server is create a very nice day/night cycle. The way I would make it is so the day/night follows the day/night time of EST time in the US, which is where a lot of players are.

I like the idea of a full 24 hour day/night cycle per day for a server.

I'm with Tig here.

However, the problem that will come with that is if you have 'night only' quests on a true EST 24-hour cycle. Seeing how a large part of the Graalian population will probably have a bedtime when school season comes back around, a lot of people would miss out...or be really sneaky. ;)

Maybe you could set it up like Pokemon Silver/Gold does, make it so you adjust your own time but it would suck for multiplayer quests or someone trying to help you out.

Right now on Era Dev, the time is displaying roughly the EST time (it's off by a few minutes, thanks to timevar2 being hopelessly inaccurate), but I don't really know how that can be worked in well to the gameplay. 99percent of players have disabled the day/night system anyway, to the point it may not be worth even adding one.

Quests don't exactly fit into Era well, and I don't plan to have HP quests like we do now, or at least similar to how they are now. Time can't really be worked in if on a real life time schedule because, like Neim said, some people can only play during certain hours.

What would be cool is having a weather system. Zodiac use to have 1, but it was way to laggy and got removed

Weather systems just get disabled. GK has a very nice one, but unfortunately, no one uses it (from what I can tell).

They tend to just annoy people. The same goes for day/night systems.

day/night system's always seem like much more of a hassle, though i think it's cool to have; the hassle being that having a system where it doesn't affect anything makes it pointless and most will just turn it off, while having the system affect things makes it annoying if not implemented correctly

if you are going to try it out, i'd make it so that a day/night happens twice to maybe three times a day. this way if you happen to miss out on something that can only happen at day/night, you can at least have another chance at it on the same day. a 24 hour one would be cool, but then the timing for quest-related events would be tougher on the crowd of people who can only sign on at certain times of day, and most of them would always just be on at night

I turn mine off, because to be honest, when I am playing such a server like Maloira or Zodiac I am mostly fighting and on the move. When it is dark out it is hard for me to see and it really gets annoying. So I like being in the day most of the time because it makes everything easy.

Bump. Especially for Zodiac and Unholy Nation, this would be interesting.

The only problem with this is that the server would basically don't give a **** about the European players.
I live in Sweden and I would not like to play on a server who would have this day/night cycle. Everytime I would log on that server it would be night. :/

I would push for maybe a 12 hour cycle instead, you'll still have plenty of time to add the different events and it would probably work better considering the ranging timezones.

I always figured if I were to implement a day/night cycle, it'd be a global one, but one that would be very short-lived, like G2k1's. Basically, 1 RL second = 1 minute or so in the game. This would be fair to all players, as there would be many cycles of day/night in a single day, giving everyone an equal chance to participate in scripted events.

Even outside of online gaming, I'm not particularly fond of games that use real clocks. I mean... in some ways they have their perks, like Pokemon and Animal Crossing, but at the same time... I don't like having to go out of my way to participate in unique events, especially when I end up missing them and sometimes having to wait a whole year, or otherwise 'cheat'.

The downside is that the actual visual effects can be distracting, and effect gameplay in a negative and positive way. I hate walking in the dark, and to some it can be very taxing on their graphics cards and thusly lag them. On the otherhand, I'm on the fence about being able to disable/enable it. It's very easy to portray day and night without blacking the whole screen, via house windows and such... but I always find it odd that one player's screen can have darkness disabled and the other players screen not, thus a huge difference in what they're experiencing. So if one player's effects are disabled, the other player will most likely disable it to balance things out, then the next... and so on. It's a huge downward spiral that I think almost everyone does.

I agree 24 hours would not be a good idea, as some players would always be in the same time if they play for the same periods (such as a couple of hours each weekday after school/work and weekends)

I think a 7 day system can be maintained, because then perhaps more exciting things could happen at a weekend, such as a discount on prices perhaps - a little something nothing too significant, to add to the excitement of a weekend.

However, hours wise a 12 hour system essentially has a similar issue as a 24 hour one, and all the advantages discussed of triggering events, quests and shops etc would still be lost.

I think you'd need a number that does not divide into 24, such as a 7 hour cycle, so that each time you log on it is different or so. Would be no problems with a single day having multiple day/night cycles (3.x) or so!

Seriously speaking this is just ridiculous. Graal should be running smooth on even the lowest end computers, there's no excuse for how incompatible and "demanding" this game is in comparison to it's graphics.