I am working on a game in which you run a factory and at certain intervals, products get picked up. I would really like to use a time system where e.g. 5 minutes real time equal one day. It would blend in much nicer in terms of story, e.g. a certain pick up on mondays, a marketing campaing that runs for a month etc.
There are two problems though:
Some time blocks can become so small, the player might get confused if I’m still talking about the fictional or real time, e.g. when it says the production of something takes 20 minutes, it sounds like actual 20 minutes.
I actually want to show the players some real times, as it is much easier to grasp. E.g. a production of something takes 2 minutes, so the player has a much better feel for it. There will be timers running down constantly so it should be pretty obvious that this is real time.
My approach would be to split things in 2 categories, real time and fictional time, and make sure that items only stay in one. E.g. anything regarding money will be in the day category, like the cost of running a machine, marketing per day, salaries, and pick ups (which is where the money comes from).
Any thoughts on this? Too confusing, are there better ideas?
Too confusing.
Consider running things at real time but give time-scale speed controls. So if it takes twenty minutes to make a thing, hit time scale to x10 and it’s done in no time. This gives player control to pace things how they want and also keeps time as a simple linear thing. No need to bounce brain back and forth between two systems.
WIth a setup like that, you need auto-reminders to pause at important parts. Like in the dialogue box where player might say, “okay, make 10 of these things.” they can also click a box that says “pause time when these are finished getting made”. Or pausing time can be a global setting player can adjust how they see fit in the options menu. Like, “always pause when production completes for items in the following categories: etc, etc.”
Just one idea. You see this pretty often in RTS games or builder/management games.
If you wanted to stick with a fictional time that is always sped up, I’d just keep it really simple. Like a minute is a second. Player doesn’t want to do math – with a bit of experience they can simply learn by feel how long certain things take to produce. Like, making a bundle of screws only takes a few seconds. Making 100 prefabricated houses takes like a full minute. I wouldn’t think too hard about if it makes perfect sense realistically. Only if it feels good and keeps gameplay moving at the optimal pace. YOu can only determine that through playtesting.
Main thing I try to keep in mind: Where is player making decisions? How much time does it take them to make decisions? Are the decisions interesting to make? Will I tire player out if they have to make x decision too often?
I was just playing a game that does the two time systems thing. @BIGTIMEMASTER is very correct that it is too confusing. I get kicked out of the flow of the game having to stop and wonder, “Wait, is that one in-game hour or one real-world hour?” Please don’t do that to your players.
I would quote all times in text as real time, but include visual elements showing the passage of in game time. As for the latter, showing a day/night cycle, people coming to work for different shifts, maybe work stops for lunch breaks, etc.
Thanks guys! I am definitely going with real time, simple as that. I was thinking about some similar games, and if I remember correctly, the anno series and the settler series use cycles without really telling you how much it takes, but that’s fine because consumption is also shown in cycles. On top of that production chains are simplified, e.g. 2 hemp fields supply exactly one rope maker etc. That way the user can grasp it quickly.
Time is something humans invented to help understand how much of the day or year something would take/took.
The numbers we invented are irrelevant for your game because the time is not realtime.
There’s no point saying “this thing takes 12 hours” when it actually only takes 2.5 minutes.
You’re better off saying how long something takes in terms of percentage of a day.
For example, you could show a pie to show how much of the day a task takes.
If something takes a full day, it’ll be a full circle.
If something takes multiple days you could show multiple pies above it.
Half a day would be a half circle etc etc.
Another counter example is the various Paradox games, such as Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV, etc. They use in game time exclusively for everything, and the player can speed up or slow down the game at any time. Typically in game time is measured in days which tick by every couple seconds, with the in game date always displayed to the player. So when something takes 30 days the player can quickly understand how much real time that takes, which again depends on the speed they are running the game at (often during peace time the player will speed up the game, but when a war hits slow it down, especially when they are the weaker combatant, etc, etc).
