How to create a custom calendar?

[Joe]

Originally Posted by 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.

I just want to clarify here that my statement was just my own view on the matter, which may not be entirely accurate. I wrote 0% of the calendar codebase, and designed 0% of it's UI. Personally, I don't know the functionality very well at all, as I've been focused on other things.

In general, I am conservative in my estimations. I'm not generally willing to make statements like "It's just a GUI problem" until I actually review all the functionality in detail and can say so with certainty. The fact remains that there is a chance that we discover that something fundamental or structural needs to change. If that happens, it will be far easier and less time consuming to revise if there's minimal impact on live user data.

[Zaphod Beebledoc]

Originally Posted by kbs666

...3 September 1752 through 13 September 1752...

Ah yes, the Eleven Day Empire, province of some rogue Timelords...

[Ladyofdragons]

Dates are in general held within databases in some sort of floating decimal format. That number is the difference from a base date. I believe in Oracle it's some date in 1970. Once you map what that base date value is, then it's a matter of converting it to what that means in whatever calendar for the display. And the GUI has to make sure that what you create follows logical rule and doesn't crash the application.

Sadly we just can't do that whole Doctor Who time travel thing (or perhaps Hermione's time turner) to give them extra hours to implement a solution.

[kbs666]

Originally Posted by Ladyofdragons

Dates are in general held within databases in some sort of floating decimal format. That number is the difference from a base date. I believe in Oracle it's some date in 1970. Once you map what that base date value is, then it's a matter of converting it to what that means in whatever calendar for the display. And the GUI has to make sure that what you create follows logical rule and doesn't crash the application.

It's much more complicated than that. You can certainly put down some point in time as the starting point for calculations That's reasonably easy.

The problem comes in defining calendars that are not standard day/week/month/year type and handling conversion between calendars that do not stay in sync. Just here on Earth we have the Gregorian calendar we are all familiar with and many less familiar calendars, usually lunar based, which do not sync with it. That is why Easter and Passover are not at the same time every year, and why they are not together every year, and why Ramadan moves around year to year. Add in the really weird calendars like the Mayans and you add in an entire additional level of complication.

A lot of RW is third party components customized to do the job. That makes sense for a small company doing this sort of project. Custom calendars is a domain that literally has to be done from scratch. I'm not saying it can't be done but that no one should expect it quickly.

[Viking2054]

If I were a highly ambitious GM, like I used to be when it came to world design anyway, I wouldn't want my fictional worlds calendar's linked to a 'Real Earth' calendar system.

Now I would like to be able to attach a note that says when we played and it covered this part of the fictional worlds calendar. But I don't want it to link up day for day. I'd even like to be able to attach journal entries to calendar dates for the fictional calendar.

Although I think the week/month system could be scrapped and changed for something else say seasons, migration patterns or whatever. I don't see the day or year really being changed since they are based on rotation of the planet and the travel of the planet around its star.

I suppose if you want to throw in realistic time, we would have to agree on a minimum time scale. In which case you might define that based on the combat round time for the game system your using... 3 seconds, 5 seconds, 6 seconds, 1 minute or whatever. I suppose with that you could have blow by blow logs of combat in your journal or calendar. But personally I'd probably never use anything less then the 'day' time period inside Realm Works, at least for the calendar system.

Some things, I'd just make a note on how the world works. Say the day is 30 hours instead of 24 hours in my fantasy world. I'd put that in my world information and just share it with the players. I wouldn't actually build that into the calendar.

Anyway, I guess I don't see calendars in Realm Works being used like appointment calendars where you have a line for every 15 minutes of the normal business day.

I can see adding things like phases of the moon(s), season changes, equinox(s), solstice(s) or other interesting events that happen on a regular basis.

Anyway, I'd like to see some basics for Calendars implemented sooner rather then later. Being able to define and rename the day/week/month/year scales for a purely fantasy world should be easy. I can wait for the really nice things to be added down the road like phases of the moon, summer solstice, spring equinox, etc. I can wait even longer for things that are conditional like say Easter or Passover. And if I happen to design multiple calendar's for the same world then I should be able to set a specific link as to when all the different calendars link up. But I rarely do multiple calendars for a fictional world any more.

[Agyess]

for a fantasy setting what Vicking says is true enough, but it get really complicated in a scifi setting where you have to be able to sync different planets that do have different day/year lengths. Check out the appendices of On Basilisk Station the author go to great length to describe the issues.

[AEIOU]

Or planar travel where time may be inconsistent. Or dreams. Or alternate dimensions.

Or heck, just simply our own Earth. The length of a day varies based on gravitational pull, ocean levels, magnetic poles, etc. The variation for us is miniscule but over centuries or epochs it's quite significant.

Here's a fun article: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-earth-a...tic-field.html

[Viking2054]

How many gaming groups play the same characters for centuries, millennium, or epochs? In dreams, does anyone really worry about time or calendars?

As far as space travel goes... if you can devise each planet's year in length of days, then you should be able to link as many different solar system calendars as you wish. You just need to decide on a link and maybe the controlling calendar. Again, I'm skipping things like leap days, leap minutes. But if you have a master calendar that all others are linked to, as far as calculations go then it should simply be a matter of counting days from the link.

Again, why not the basics sometime relatively soon but add the more complex stuff as time goes on. Heck, what I want wouldn't be that complicated and I could probably run a space opera game with a basic calendar system that only dealt with days and years.

In my opinion, if your trying to time how long it takes a planet to rotate around its sun/star down to the nanosecond and account for gravitational or magnetic changes in the star and planets of the system then you deserve the days and days of headaches your going to have from trying to manage such a beast.

This is mostly for an RPG and not Real Life after all. Even earth based games may follow a real world calendar, but are actually only arbitrarily connected to such a device.

[Vargr]

Generally people's (GMs') use of calendars or indeed need for one varies widely.

I have played in campaigns where no dates where ever mentioned and it worked - after a fashion.

I have played in campaigns where the dates where known and adhered to and it worked.

For myself as a GM my campaign spans epochs and millennia, the characters themselves might not live that long, but the history and plot does. All good stories have extensive background stories and information (whether obvious for the reader or not) and besides, it enables me to run several campaigns in the same world, set at different times.

So what I am saying is, why limit ourselves with making a tool that only gets us so far? Do you only need an approximation of day and time, do that. If you need more detail, do that - the tools will accommodate you (I assume).

Technically wise, I believe it will be very difficult to produce a rudimentary system and then later expand on that to make a more complex system. I would assume it would have to be made all in one go so as not to risk having to throw all the calendars made with the rudimentary system out when the complex one arrives.

[Viking2054]

If we can agree on a minimum time scale, I don't see why it would have to be that hard.

For the sake of argument, lets say we agree that the minimum time scale is 1 second. I design my calendar... Say it's a 328 day year, no months in the calendar just 4 seasons Summer and Winter are both 100 days long while Spring and Fall are only 64 days. Further lets say a day on this planet is 23 hours. Let's also say the weeks are 8 days long for 41 weeks in the year. Once you set your starting point for the calendar, each day would advance 82,800 seconds.

your base structure would be defined by a multiple of 1 second. So a day is 82,800 seconds long. If you need to break your fictional calendar into smaller units sometime in the future then you insert cells based on a lesser number of seconds. So if you need to have the calendar split into 1 hour increments you would add cells that advanced the calendar by 3,600 seconds (unless you redefine an hour as something other then 60 minutes each of 60 seconds). But still the day would only change when a multiple of 82,800 was reached.

I personally don't ever see the need for anyone to use a time scale less then one second in a calendar. I can see an argument outside the calendar for cyberpunk style games where hacking may be involved, or maybe superhero games for characters with super-speed... but I wouldn't apply that to a calendar system. If you want to rename your second to something else, that's fine but that would just be a name change and not a change in scale of time.

After all that it is down to defining the calendar structure and setting a starting date for a so called zero hour. Other calendar systems would have to link to the initial (starter) calendar for the system... But I think that is more of a pointer between the two calendars.

One last thought, just for ease we may need to agree upon the so called zero day or start of the entire calendar system. Personally I'd set it as the first day of spring (say 12:00:01 am of that day), of whatever year the creator of the calendar wants to call it. The calendar can then work forwards or backwards from that zero point.