How to create a custom calendar?

[Viking2054]

So, now your telling us it's not just a GUI problem?

[AEIOU]

Good lordy. If you think that creating the cosmic Whovian extraplanar time traveling time bending time less calendar nonsense floating around in our minds is only going to require a few check boxes and a pull-down list.... The simple answer is that it's a GUI issue. But the real answer is that there's probably a lot that needs to get hooked to that GUI that isn't in place yet.

If we want Aztec and Incan and Chinese and Martian AND we want them to all synch up with one another, it's going to take some coding magic to tie things together. The more complex the UI, the more data that will be created and the more interesting the results.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by Viking2054

So, now your telling us it's not just a GUI problem?

Personally I'm not certain. I haven't been focused on calendars much. I'd rather not find out the hard way.

[Viking2054]

@AEIOU: If I remember correctly, Rob said way back when, that the underlying functionality was there to support a wide variety of calendars... it was the GUI that they felt was lacking and were not happy with. I believe they also mentioned needing someone that was good with designing the GUI.

Also, aren't there already web applications that will convert between any two, three or more real world calendar systems like you already mention? If so, then the math for that is at the least already established. The main argument I can see is the minimum time scale we can all agree on for a calendar system. If you want to be arbitrary about that, then make that scale either the minute, hour, or day. If you don't want to be arbitrary then use something like the vibrations of a cesium atom, or whatever atom is used for the current atomic clocks. Once the standard is set and clearly stated then for Real World calendars, the conversion should be straight forward. For fictional calendar systems, the linking would require the GM to establish an initial link date and then the framework for the different calendar systems.

I agree it's probably not simple. But my recollection is that this wasn't the problem but it was specifically the GUI... those check boxes, spinning dials, radio buttons and what have you.

[Viking2054]

On another note... how many GM's are going to create Calendars where the year is something odd, or specific, like 287 days 13 hours 27 minutes 2 seconds and 37 nanoseconds?

If your going to create a length of year like that to base your gaming world calendar(s) on, then I think you may be overthinking RPG details a little too much... for the calendar anyway.

[Vargr]

@Vinking2054
I contemplate doing that - not down to the second, but close.
Looking at the real world we see some really weird things (such as the Gregorian calendar - that one must have involved at least three illegal substances).

Whether it is "just the GUI" or "The GUI and something else" is not that important. Apparently it is not easy to solve in a satisfactory manner, otherwise I am pretty sure they would have done so - if for no other reason than to get the vocal "Calendars now!" pressure group off their backs.

Apart from all that: Yes, we really want the calendars! And we want them now! - But we also want them working right - and so we wait.

[Viking2054]

My question is more about miscommunication. In my opinion we were led to believe that it was a GUI problem and not a capability or structure problem. If it is only a GUI problem and the code is functional but disabled inside the code base... then why not let us decide if we want to work with an inferior GUI or not? I'm sure there are a small minority of users that might brave the lacking GUI while others would scrap it after a while.

Real Life calendars based on a planets orbit, rotation and lunar orbit can't be helped. But in my opinion, anyone who designs a calendar and game system like that deserves the headache he gets. I can understand an occasional leap day or reverse leap day... but I wouldn't want to deal with leap minutes or leap seconds or whatever in my RPG worlds. I will basically force my worlds into nice clean orbits that for the most part have a static number of days in the year thereby foregoing any problems created by the principles of real life orbits around a star.

[Teresa]

@Viking2054

The problem might be the real Earth calendar: it does not have a nice clean orbit.

I have at least two calendars:
1) a very simple 360 days calendar plus whatever leap days to get to the next spring equinox (priests check it on the spot every year, though);
2) a simple moon calendar (12 new moons = year) that is part of a a big year (the next new moon at the spring equinox);

I'm starting to use the Julian days in order to keep Gregorian and Julian calendars in tandem, but I have to use proleptic ones as my calendar starts about 10,000 BCE.

In short, I hope RW makes use of Julian days or at least the Julian/Gregorian Calendars so I can keep track of real (or as close as possible) astronomical events of importance (I have Starry Night software to find and keep track of them.) I can't possible expect it to be able to factor in equinox dates... can I?

[Vargr]

A few old threads that might answer some questions (and possible raise new ones):

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthrea...dar#post163326

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthrea...dar#post130202

http://forums.wolflair.com/showthrea...ht=time&page=2

And one rather interesting thread that eludes me at the moment...

[kbs666]

Originally Posted by Viking2054

Real Life calendars based on a planets orbit, rotation and lunar orbit can't be helped. But in my opinion, anyone who designs a calendar and game system like that deserves the headache he gets. I can understand an occasional leap day or reverse leap day... but I wouldn't want to deal with leap minutes or leap seconds or whatever in my RPG worlds. I will basically force my worlds into nice clean orbits that for the most part have a static number of days in the year thereby foregoing any problems created by the principles of real life orbits around a star.

Even avoiding leap seconds and the like, what about festivals that fall outside months, a common feature of some calendars?

I would think that the calendar system should be able to handle Gregorian, Julian, several different lunar systems (both Asian and ME), including seamless date conversions between the systems and the major fantasy calendars. The problem is I know of no publicly available widget that can handle even the real world parts of that. Having done some work in this field back in college I can point out just one of the bizarre issues that makes this so hard, dates that didn't happen in different parts of the world. For instance in the UK and most British dominions except Scotland the dates 3 September 1752 through 13 September 1752 never happened. The calendar was advanced to match the rest of Europe which had switched to the Gregorian calendar much earlier.