Compressed day/night cycle?

[strange99 0]

The day/night cycle ruins the game - like many people, I get to log in at the same time most days, the evening. Which means a choice of playing in pitch black every time on a local server, or connecting to a laggy server on the other side of the world so I can actually see.

Yes, some people like the night, but some like the day. Sticking to this cycle will kill the game, which is a shame as it has huge potential.

strange.

[Flipbed 0]

Sounds good with about 4h day cyckles. Realism is great, but its a game still and it should be fun to play first and realistic second :)

[RealSourLemonade 1]

Or they could just make you spawn with a torch. :D

[WitchZero 0]

The biggest issue I see most working adults play at night, even on the weekends if you have kids. I would love for the servers to have shorter day/night cycles (odd number, like 3 or 5 hours) or change their server times so it wouldn't get dark until midnight.

[xytaglyph 7]

People! :facepalm:

SEARCH before you post please. There are already AT LEAST TWO threads in Suggestions about this. And yours didn't add anything new.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=18&highlight=day+night

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1418&highlight=day+night

If you bothered to read them' date=' you would see Adam mention there are currently no plans for changing the 12/12 cycle.

[/quote']

Thank the nonexistent gods!

I love the realism of the 24 hour cycle and if they were to change it i would be disappointed.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

Arma run in realtime, it can't run any other way i believe, excepted in singleplayer, but then everything else goes fast, movements included.

[Virfortis 111]

one solution: have servers that are still on the 24 hour clock' date=' but have those servers set for day time at night and vice versa...

[/quote']

This...THIS

FREAKING THIS! We'll call it a Time-Inverse server, where 9PM server time is 9AM game time. This is what we need RIGHT here.

[Villar 1]

Day cycles of 8 hours would be ideal.

[bondono 1]

Please, oh please, oh please COMPRESS night. Leave day as it is. Just don't make me have to leave my favorite server for 6 hours until I can actually play the game.

OR make night less unbearable. One or the other. I refuse to play at night the way the game currently is. After the initial novelty wore off it quickly became a miserable to play in the dark.

[beeman 1]

I don't think you can compress just night. There /are/ a million and nine maps that feature fast-time.

Some even feature options to set it specifically, like one second is one minute or ten seconds is one minute or so on. But fast-time is definitely possible.

Looks weird if you do like a half hour day cycle, though. The sun ticks across the sky every second like crazy. Then the stars do as well at night. Also the clouds.

I say allow servers to choose between two, four, six and twenty-four hour day cycles. Or maybe just two, six and twenty-four. That way some servers could have quicker cycles for a more dynamic and changing experience but then other servers can run the full cycle for all their roleplaying shenanigans.

I personally would like a two or four hour cycle. I like the nights, but when they're several hours long, it's just annoying and not fun.

[FragMonkey 1]

Please have a compressed day/night cycle.

This way, less people will be forced to play in non-locale servers to avoid nighttime, and more people would want to play through the night (which is a whole experience on its own)

[pengs 8]

Good god no, don't compress the night.

The problem is that someone could go from a day server to a day server to a day server to a day server ect. without ever having to survive at night and then come into a dark server and have a severe advantage on people who are playing night and day.

A very few inverse servers may cure the problem while forcing people to play at night also if people are impatient but it would still be a flooding nightmare for the day servers.

Compression is the last thing this mod needs. GTA4 may suit your needs if that's what you want.

[ssential 0]

Good god no' date=' don't compress the night.

The problem is that someone could go from a day server to a day server to a day server to a day server ect. without ever having to survive at night and then come into a dark server and have a severe advantage on people who are playing night and day.

[/quote']

Soooo, you can't do that right now, no? Oh wait...............

I've already posted this in another thread but it's probably more fitting here.

I love how dark and scary the night is, especially since in 99% of other games the night is only a bluer day which is super lame since you don't have to adapt.

In dayZ you have to adapt, change your playstyle and that's pretty cool. BUT, if it's always dark when you play, like in my case, it's no longer a gameplay element. It's always dark, and you always play the same way. If a day in DayZ was only about 6 hours, you could actually prepare for the night without playing ~12h a day, and the day/night cycle gets much much more important and scary, as now you could actually defend your safehouse and wait for the dawn, and be "relieved". This gameplay is missing at the moment, at least for the guys that don't play 12h straight.

[Jasper (DayZ) 4]

The way I avoid the day/night system is by playing a server where it is day. So I basically never play at night.

This system is therefore flawed. I would play just as much night as day if the UK servers had a faster day/night cycle. Maybe 24 hours = 6 hours or something.

[boxman80 964]

I do like the real time system at present but I must admit it has it’s draw backs that affect my enjoyment of the game and also dictate if I will actually play it or not. I’m in a similar position as the OP and I can only really game in the evening meaning I get a short period of day light and must play the rest in total darkness. If I’m early stages of a character I tend not to play at all as it’s just not worth it as I can’t find anything I need.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not crying, moaning or whining, just putting my observations forward and offering a couple of things to consider.

I think there needs to be better balance in the over-all approach of the game. As some already said the present water/food requirements are unrealistic if the game is played real-time as you shouldn’t need to eat/drink as much as is required.

Also think of it in terms of map size - it isn’t actually really that a map, meter for meter this entire region with several “cities” within it is actually smaller than the town I live in.

So some elements such as food/water requirements and map size are clearly geared for representation where as day/night cycles and time are real-time. This seems like it's causing unbalance with players getting the worst of both scenarios instead of a balance, which I beelvie teh mod is meant to be about.

To me it makes better sense to take the same representational approach as the developers of the GTA series did with San Andreas; the “state” was scaled down better by having a sense of perspective, partly done by having shorter day/night cycle. It felt bigger as the it took “longer” to get from one side of the map to the other and that added a sense of realisim to the game. It wasn’t meant to be taken literally in my opinion, just a form representation.

If DayZ adopted this approach it would make the map feel bigger and also makes eating/drink cycles a bit shorter or actually matches in with what the game already requires and therefore actually add a better sense of realism to the game. I don’t think drastic action would be needed, maybe just having 2:1 ratio for time.

Again this isn’t a criticism and I love the approach Rocket is heading with this game and think he has a built a fantastic mod around a truly unique inception of a game!

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

I don't think you can compress just night. There /are/ a million and nine maps that feature fast-time.

Some even feature options to set it specifically' date=' like one second is one minute or ten seconds is one minute or so on. But fast-time is definitely possible.

Looks weird if you do like a half hour day cycle, though. The sun ticks across the sky every second like crazy. Then the stars do as well at night. Also the clouds.

I say allow servers to choose between two, four, six and twenty-four hour day cycles. Or maybe just two, six and twenty-four. That way some servers could have quicker cycles for a more dynamic and changing experience but then other servers can run the full cycle for all their roleplaying shenanigans.

I personally would like a two or four hour cycle. I like the nights, but when they're several hours long, it's just annoying and not fun.

[/quote']

Right, i forgot about that trick, i rather have full day length than having the sun skip around tho.

[daedrick 90]

The only way a 24 hour cycle is realistic is if you're playing for 24 hours a day. Since I'm not playing the game all day' date=' the fact that my character only persists during a certain time is silly and completely breaks immersion when I'm unable to experience a proper day/night cycle. It feels a little weird that my character will never see morning, noon, or midnight. A 24 hour cycle simply does not match up with normal play time of a few hours.

I suggest an offset 10 hour cycle. A system of 5 hours of daylight and 5 hours of night fits long play times and assures that logging in at the same time every day will offer variety. This way players get to experience the effects of time and it'll feel like the days are actually moving along instead of it always being, say, Monday afternoon.

[/quote']

Exactly, even If I hate playing at night in this game, this argument is completly true and make absolute sense. It would once again promote different gameplay and I would finaly carry light source instead of filling my bag with an ak47 or some other useless weapon.

[quake 1]

Ping really doesnt do anything in ARMA (unless 300+). If you are from US, you can easily play EU servers with about 150-220ms ping and vice versa. My friends and I simply just switch to servers on the opposite continent if we want to play in the opposite time of day, with no effect on how we should play or how well we take out bandits.

I personally would NOT like shorter days/nights. It ruins the feel of the game and would just make people angry since they would have to switch servers that many times more.

[goawaii@gmail.com 0]

We usually play on US servers, even though we live in EU due to this problem - everyone works 9am-6pm, and playtime gets pushed in after nightfall.

[Goldenkrow 0]

I think this would kind of suck. Instead why not just have some 180 servers, that is just the opposite time of your region. So if it's night your time in RL, it's day in game

[Lisento 0]

We successfully never play at night by using different servers. In fact, I would only play at night if the day/night cycle were shorter. Why? Because in real life I wouldn't go into a zombie infested town if it was pitch black out. ESPECIALLY if the zombies run like maniacs. I would hole up for the night. So what do we do? Since we actually want to PLAY the game, we avoid night time because there's nothing to do at night since you can't see.

Maybe if we were able to see at night or if the day/night cycle were shorter we would bother with it.

I foresee more servers running inverse time schedule to bypass night for people who don't want to play at night. I'm surprised there aren't any inverse servers in Chicago or Dallas yet.

[darkseed79 0]

I think this would kind of suck. Instead why not just have some 180 servers' date=' that is just the opposite time of your region. So if it's night your time in RL, it's day in game

[/quote']

That would solve absolutely nothing. What most of us want isn't to always play in the day, we want to play BOTH day and night without having to switch between servers. Actually being able to hold up during the night and wait for morning would create a ton of immersion. The concept of switching between servers is highly flawed and breaks immersion.

[Sgt.Spam 42]

+1 to OP.

I reposted in the suggestion subforum about this to get one of the older thread bumped.

[oxysplatter 0]

Find a server with good moonlight.

Theres plenty in EU and US.

Ive played on servers where the moonlight was almost as bright as day

[Goldenkrow 0]

I think this would kind of suck. Instead why not just have some 180 servers' date=' that is just the opposite time of your region. So if it's night your time in RL, it's day in game

[/quote']

That would solve absolutely nothing. What most of us want isn't to always play in the day, we want to play BOTH day and night without having to switch between servers. Actually being able to hold up during the night and wait for morning would create a ton of immersion. The concept of switching between servers is highly flawed and breaks immersion.

I see.. Well I personally dont like it, but im not gonna stop you from playing on those servers if you wanna :P