Timeline/Calendar

[RunningRyan]

Hi all newb here!

So I've seen this before a few times but I was just curious if anyone's had any follow up/luck with the Timeline and Calendar system for RW. Personally this is kinda a huge roadblock for me because I'm using RW in the "create an entire world" perspective. As worlds are prone to do, they move in the continuum of time and cities/empires/nations rise and fall with the flow of time. Honestly I was hoping to integrate different Era's (My worlds terminology for Millennium's,) and Age's (again, terminology for Centuries) with the rise and fall of cities, places, forests, mountains and such.

Honestly my question is whether someone has implemented this and if so how?

I basically was wondering if it's possible to click on a certain time within the timeline and see the regions change within my world i.e. some cities no longer there due to collapse or forests being chopped down etc...

[AEIOU]

The type of functionality you describe in your final paragraph has not been mentioned either in the forums or by LWD over the last three years. I would not expect timelines that change what you can see in RW in the near future.

Timelines and calendars work fine if you have a world that uses a Gregorian-like calendar. Everything is in place to define eras and ages and whatnot already. Broad sweeps of time are easy. The macro tracking of time doesn't require much more than the ability to create entries and then group them into chunks of time.

What has not been implemented are customized calendars which will allow for custom day, week, month, year, etc definitions. Tracking time at the micro level is more difficult if you are not using traditional days/weeks/months. Lunar tracking of multiple solar bodies may be implemented. Weather and tides have not been confirmed so not likely in the near term.

I use Excel to track events using date systems from four different societies but I do so only at the year level so I have worked around calendar customization. I'm more interested in the flow of history rather than who was born when -- movements and patterns are much more interesting to me than celebrity trivia. I add date snippets to entries for birth, death, marriage or event. I'd say 95% of my date entries are events. If the event spanned or involved multiple entries (like a city, a forest and a king) I will copy the entry to each pertinent entry.

[Cornelius]

As AEIOU says calendars were not implemented yet.

One of the options you have is to give each topic a tag with the proper era and/or age. That way you can use the filter to have only those topics visible about a certain age or era.

[Greebo]

Since the information for any given city may change drastically from era to era, I am not even sure whether your idea is feasible.

I decided to create one realm for every major era / epoch of my gameworld. Currently this is rather cumbersome, but with calendars and the content market this will work more smoothly. I hope.

[AEIOU]

Just create multiple entries for the city and add a suffix of the date it is based upon. Make as many entries as makes sense.

New York City (1200 AD)
New York City (1600 AD)
New York City (1700 AD)
New York City (1850 AD)
New York City (1900 AD)
New York City (1950 AD)
New York City (PRESENT)

Since multiple time periods are important to you, make a new tag of Era (or whatever). Then put in all of the Eras. Then for the city, add a custom snippet of Era which has the tag of Era. Select the appropriate Era for the city from this list. Rinse and repeat. Now you can filter on that tag and see all of your cities that existed during that Era. If something existed in multiple Eras, just add each of the appropriate Eras when you are making your selection.

I use the above method for identifying regions and source material. This way I can sort on the Duchy of the Rampart to get all material associated with the Duchy -- cities, people, events, dungeons, adventures, etc.

Once you have things sorted, create custom views for each Era so you can quickly change from one to another.

[AEIOU]

As for separate realms for each Era, nothing will change to make that more workable with the Marketplace except that you could merge them. But if you plan to merge, why not create them all at the same time anyways???

If a category or tag or snippet doesn't exist, you can usually create your own.

[RunningRyan]

Wow that was a fantasic reply, thank you all so much! I've honestly been neglecting Realm Works, which I've had for years now, because of the massiveness of it all.
Thanks a whole bunch all and I'll be back on to throw some questions in the fray...

quick side question do we have any idea when they may implement customization for calendars? I do have my own variation that I would like, though it's not life or death here, to implement.
-Ryan

[RunningRyan]

So since I'm also new to this whole dealy, especially tags and such, would you suggest making a domain for the Era's Tag? Like Timeline or something?

[AEIOU]

Go to Manage
Choose Tags
Click + at top left
Give it a name - for your purposes I'd use Period
Click + for Add Tag
Add each of your time periods, Era's and Age's
Save
Done

Go to Manage
Choose Categories
Choose Location-Community
Click hammer-and-wrench next to 1. Overview
Choose Add Snippet Type
Give it a name - for your purposes I'd use Period
Choose Tags from pull-down
Select Tag of Period
If desired, select a default Tag selection
Make sure that Shown and Auto Add are both checked
Save
Done

Now add communities to your realm and use your custom tags.

[AEIOU]

As far as when calendars will be released, Rob promised unequivocally they will definitely for sure without a doubt be out by Christmas; however, he did not specifically state which Age or Era for said holiday. Nor did he identify which multiverses this event will happen in.