Real 24 hour clock or..?

Well, during some activities it could feel strange if time was compressed by a considerable factor: you probably wouldn’t want to be able to travel a distance of say 4 to 5 in-game kilometers on foot in a real-time frame of 2 or 3 minutes (resulting from a compression factor of 30x…20x), even if this equalled a game-time duration of 1 hour (about the duration it might take a reasonably trained adult male in three-quarters plate armour in medium terrain in real life to regularly cover this distance). Seen from 1st or even 3rd person perspective the surroundings/landscape would be rushing past you. A compression factor of 3x to 2x would be much more appropriate here, to be able to stroll or walk around instead of unwillingly having to run everywhere you merely want to go - but then again, you shouldn’t have to idle for three to four real-time hours to get the equivalent of a good night’s sleep in game time, obviously. :wink: So of course, game time will pass in a non-linear way, depending on your activities and influencing your character’s simulated day-cycle.

This reminds me… I hope you can’t just run forever.

Lol sorry to post such a debated topic. and i only asked it cause i hear/see “realistic RPG” so natural to wonder, just how “realistic” are we talking here. Will i have to eat 3 meals a day? sleep every night? Do stretches before i engage in physical activities? Haha these are jokes, but you get my point… i hope :stuck_out_tongue:

You DO have to eat and sleep regularly.

I wonder how long seasons in game will run for. Every month in real life = change of season in game.

I think, time’s progress is linked to the story. So, if you’re just strolling through the countryside and do your own thing, you will only experience day and night cycles, not a change of season. Because it would be unrealistic if after doing the first quest you would let three years pass by and then do the second mission which would still be in 1403. This would be ridiculous. :smiley:

Meh why not, it’d be hillarious.

NPC: “Uh what? You brought my chickens back home?”

You: “Yes of course ma’am, here they are.” player hands over 3 year dead chickens

NPC: “Ugh. What the hell? Hey wait a second…you’re that guy that wandered off into the woods 3 years ago and disappeared. Ain’t you dead?”

Player: blinks

NPC: “Oh man, if only you’d been here. We could’ve still won the war. Now Lord Evilfeller is in charge.”

Player: “Damn my adhd wandering.”

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My personal preference is 6x real-time (1:6):

10 mins real time = 1 hour in game
4 hours real time = 24 hours in game

Works perfectly for me in Skyrim and Fallout NV.

(if you play at a slow/realistic pace fast timescales are real immersion killers IMO)

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This is a tricky question, for me at least.

On one hand, realism is something that this game is striving for, so it might make sense for the developers to lengthen the ratio of in game time to real time. The length of travel is close to realistic (a far away place is far away, not within spitting distance. Looking at you TES) so why not have the tie shift be longer than most other games?

What I think should be considered is an adjustable slider, like those before have mentioned, and the ability to change the time (equal to waiting in Skyrim and adjusting the clock in Xenoblade.)

But that’s just my take on it.

I had that before, 1:6 (10min=1h), but I deleted it because it’s too slow.
You have to keep in mind that the story, quests and so on have to be in a good pace, not too fast, not too slow.
Somewhere on the forum it was mentioned if they should base the time scale on travel distance or something, but I think this is irrelevant because it would be unrealistic anyway and also it would interfere with the story’s pace. So, my conclusion would be, just synch time to the desired story pace. Therefore 1:12 (see above) should fit pretty good, I think.

Well, I have over 500 hours in FalloutNV and Skyrim at this setting (500+ for each game), so for me it’s perfect.

I actually agree with the guy who said it should be customisable (it breaks nothing in those games from being so, but in KCD it shouldn’t be via a console command, but fully supported).

If you play ‘Dead is Dead’ (or as though that were the case) you take things much slower. Also playing ‘realistically’ and not running everywhere slows the game down dramatically (no fast travel etc.). A fast timescale doesn’t even let you enjoy the beauty of dawn and dusk as they whizz round so quickly; it feels unnatural to me. Maybe 1:12 wouldn’t be sooo bad, but it certainly wouldn’t be my ideal. I think Skyrim’s default was 1:30 and if I recall correctly Warhorse had suggested 1:20 for KCD, not sure on that though.

It definitely shouldn’t. This again (as point of view) is part of game design. In this game you have need of sleep, eat and drink and food can spoil. If you change this you change also game difficulty. And there could be even more things it affects.[quote=“RGS, post:46, topic:10510”]
Skyrim’s default was 1:30 and if I recall correctly Warhorse had suggested 1:20 for KCD, not sure on that though.
[/quote]
Dan said that day will last 1,5 hours. Thats 1:16 if my calculations are correct.

I like the concept… but Skyrim’s distance scale is far from realistic. You can run right across the whole country in less than an hour.

@Matthew1J - Thanks for the clarification as to the timescale from Dan, as said, I wasn’t sure (I hadn’t heard the 1.5 hours thing, but thought that I recalled 1:20. Must watch the videos again!).

As to the need to eat/drink/sleep etc. I ran Fallout NV in hardcore mode and am playing Skyrim with Frostfall and Realistic Needs and Diseases. There are no problems adjusting the timescale and that way everyone from the nerdy ‘immersion/realism’ junkie player like myself to a fairly casual gamer can be satisfied.

@TheLoreSeeker - OK, and KCD will be have a much smaller world than Skyrim. I don’t think that increasing the timescale will make it feel any bigger.

Sure, you can run across the world in an hour and think ‘that was quick.’ Alternatively if taking your time clearing out a dungeon or infiltrating a bandit camp it feels at odds to watch the time fly by unrealistically - 'Sheesh, I only had breakfast 5 minutes ago and now I’m hungry again!" or ‘You need to sleep’ - “What, already! I only woke up 30 minutes ago, are you serious!?!”

It’s all a balancing act of course and different people have very different preferences. I’m just saying what works for me and backing that up with an awful lot of game time (as opposed to ‘I think this would be cool/work well)’.

(some mods for Skyrim allow for a real-time or reduced timescale for interiors and a faster timescale for exterior locations, i.e. a ‘dynamic’ setup, though I don’t personally use them as for me it’s inconsistent).

I believe he said it in some czech interview.

Oh no no… sorry misinterpretation.

What I meant was, I can’t imagine playing Skyrim on a slow time scale because of how unrealistic Skyrim’s map is sized. On a longer timescale you’d be able to walk between cities in a few in game hours…and you’d make it across the entire map in a day.

Although… I wouldn’t mind slowing it down a little bit.

But yeah… I prefer a slower more realistic timescale for KCD

I read the summarized version of this thread so I’ll apologize if I am repeating anyone else’s idea.

The notion of time passing within the world is a good thing. People going about different things depending on the time of day makes it a living game environment. Requiring sleep I’m fine with too.

I agree with what a few have mentioned about a compressed day/night cycle; with an hour in game taking place in minutes of real time. I would add a concept from the Witcher games where you have the option as a player to let a few hours go by with a few clicks of the mouse. That way if you are waiting for nightfall to complete a certain quest or to go about some thievery it isn’t a hassle. Similarly, if you need to get to daylight to catch up with the local blacksmith you can go to your home and rest up a few hours with the click of a mouse.

I did this in Far Cry 2.

Set the time, go to bed, watch the sun change its position
and stand up at 22;00.
The time when it’s getting dark. :slight_smile:
Then it’s time for some dart rifle and MP5SD action. :smiley:

Sometimes I did this as soon as it was getting light.
Sleeping all day.

I would be perfectly happy for movement, combat, and other ‘in the world’ activities to last their actual durations at 1:1 time. (Especially as the map is approximately the correct scale). I’d not really want to cover 5km in 5 minutes walking on foot for example, but rather that it would take around 45-50 minutes (from my own capability IRL).

For ‘mini-games’ like armour/weapon crafting, I would be happy for 2-3 minutes to ‘take’ a few hours of game time, and to be able to ‘sit and wait’, ‘read’, ‘sleep’, ‘converse’, ‘eat and drink’ using realistic game time periods, and truncated ‘play-time’.

@TobiTobsen @Hellboy has this been confirmed anywhere?

How do you guys plan to implement this? 10 minutes real time = 1 hour in game?