Day and night Cycle

[Areoss 4]

NOTE:

I am aware of the coding difficulties behind this idea and it would cause issues with loot spawning and such and that its not that easy to impliment

I personally think increasing the day/night cycle would be an enjoyable experience.

Just an example, im not saying this should be it:

Say that it was day time for every 2h30m, and then 30m of night time... but increase the spawn rate and hearing of the zombies outside at night time. So you have to take shelter, rest up and hide for the night.

I think it would be good to hide out in a barn at night and ride it out until morning with a camp fire.

This may be for more of a role playing side of it, but it also adds to the simulation I think.

It would also leave risk for reward scenarios for those who were brave too.

There would be less people looking out for loot at night time, so that means you have better odds of getting better loot at night. But you also have a higher chance of being detected by the zombies :)

This is by no means any form of "this is the way to go" kind of suggestion, it is more of an idea to see what peoples opinions on the matter is.

Please try to keep yourself from replying "NO STUPID IDEA" or anything of that sort. Keep the discussion at a mature and logical level.

Edited July 19, 2012 by Areoss

[savini 587]

The cycle is built into arma itself. I don't believe the speed can be modified at all.

[Psychobob 155]

Nah. I like the scale of 1:1. I play on a server where the time is the same as in real life. I do different things during the daytime, I'm able to fit my different types of gameplay perfectly into my schedule, for instance I just went to a big city to find items and it was full of PvP combat but because it was dark I was able to completely avoid it all. I NEVER go to the cities during the daytime for this exact reason.

I don't want the length of either to change. I also enjoy the high level of realism in the game and making the day/night cycle faster would really ruin that.

[Jenga22 22]

Also The idea that the time is based on real time so when its night here its night in game so no, i know where your coming from because you want to play at day and night in a few hours cause i do sometime when in a group just wanna sit round our campfire and sing songs ;)

[KyleAlexander 4]

LOL, this post made me realise watches are useless.... Heheheh

[Jenga22 22]

watches are useless anyway, i joined the same server a few times and its was always 8:00am in the morning on the watch even when i was playing for 4 hours and the watch said 8 when i started so they fail :D

[hatfieldcw 184]

I dabbled a little bit in the mission editor for ArmaII, and I seem to recall some tools for influencing time of day. I don't know whether pure time dilation is possible, but I know you can have changes to time triggered.

I'm not a fan of this idea, though. 2:30 is not enough daytime when you can spend an hour or more just meeting up with a buddy who died, and players who prefer the daytime will be hopping servers or logging out during the short nights you propose.

Furthermore, making nighttime more zombie-intensive goes against the current night dynamic, which I enjoy very much. Knowing that I can get past zombies in the dark and raid high-value areas in relative safety is good, especially when balanced against the risk of players spotting my light sources or tracking me with NVG while I do it.

Some of my most rewarding and costly experiences have happened right at dawn and dusk, as the shift in available light changes the game dynamics considerably. I think I could get behind a double-time server, or even triple-time, but no faster than that.