Day/Night Cycle over the course of a year

[Tyrannischgott]

Question about HoI IV's day/night cycle.

I played HoI 2 a lot. I mean..... a lot. I probably logged 500 hours and played as every great power. I also played HoI III quite a bit, but I didn't quite get into it as much.

One thing I noticed with both games is that the yearly day-night cycle is not executed correctly. Essentially, the games have a day/night upside-down parabola - days are shorter in the north and longer in the south. As the year wears on, the days get uniformly longer across the whole planet.

Of course, that's not the way it should work. It should be an upside-down parabola during 22 Sept - 20 March and then a right-side-up parabola from 20 March - 22 Sept, with the parabola being the same distance across the equator throughout the whole year, and the longer or shorter days being the result of the "arms" of the parabola tilting back and forth.

Here's a video (obviously they look at it from a fixed time of day)

Any plans to make it more accurate for HoI IV?

Thanks!

 

[AchedTeacher]

Too complicated I think

 

[podcat]

AFAIK the HOI4 night/day is correct (barring map projection issues) and will change during the year.

 

[Zer00]

AFAIK the HOI4 night/day is correct (barring map projection issues) and will change during the year.

Oh that's a really cool detail. Glad it's in.

 

[Rudawitz]

AFAIK the HOI4 night/day is correct (barring map projection issues) and will change during the year.

I love that these games are so intricate that not even the developers are sure how things work. Ok, so podcat probably has other areas of responsibility, but I think it's still true for some phenomena in HoI III for example.

 

[Victor Cortez]

I love that these games are so intricate that not even the developers are sure how things work. Ok, so podcat probably has other areas of responsibility, but I think it's still true for some phenomena in HoI III for example.

I thought all he did was just whipping the minions and shouting "more coffee, less facebook and more coding!"
On the good days he sits there on a old looking sofa, smoking a pipe and just looking very serious.

 

[Axe99]

AFAIK the HOI4 night/day is correct (barring map projection issues) and will change during the year.

Love the attention to detail, great work .

 

[henzington]

Pretty cool I was not expecting it to change based on the time of the year.

 

[safe-keeper]

That is a cool detail! Glad that's in, will make it far more interesting to fight up in the sub-arctic north.

I thought all he did was just whipping the minions and shouting "more coffee, less facebook and more coding!"
On the good days he sits there on a old looking sofa, smoking a pipe and just looking very serious.

And bellowing "IT WAS AN ORDER!" whenever some feature can't be realised.

 

[Elryck]

Cool. It's good idea for artic war or finland winter war. ^^

 

[makinistfanlari]

Would be good but...lag bomb.

 

[Modestus]

I don’t get this Day\Night cycle animation and before anyone points out that knowing the time of day is important yes I do understand that but Generals do not look up at the sky and wonder if its bright enough to launch an attack they look at their watches.


Any major offensive using a battle plan will have instructions for Divisions to attack at a certain time and once combat begins they will not take a break during the night and start again in the morning.


The only possible use of actually seeing on the map whether its day or night is if the player wants to select a unit or units and attack at that moment but the benefit of seeing this on the map is minuscule compared to the cost of having the map textures altered once every day for 8 hours.


Seeing whether its day or night for air combat is perhaps even of less value to the player because there is no earthly way a player will give instructions to their air wings based on what an animation is doing and instead will obviously be able to give instructions to air wings to attack during the day at night or both and retire accordingly to refuel and rearm.


As I pointed out before unless someone is surprised by the fact that night will follow day the animation is irrelevant has almost no benefit to the player and can be turned off without a single impact on game play.

 

[Elryck]

I think combat in day or night are important for plane attack or strategic bomber or new offensive. Then perhaps each unit or each combat are bonus/malus important if night or day.

 

[Modestus]

I think combat in day or night are important for plane attack or strategic bomber or new offensive. Then perhaps each unit or each combat are bonus/malus important if night or day.

Of course day and night are somewhat important but will you be ready with your hand on the trigger to execute your battle plan plan when a shadow passes over your Divisions or use the much more sensible option of ordering all your Divisions to attack based on when the games internal clock knows its dawn.


Your not going to launch a night bombing raid on Berlin based on trying to estimate when a shadow will be over Berlin that is just preposterous, there will obviously be an interface that allows you to order a night attack and those bombers will automatically take off and be over Berlin when its night.


As I said the only value of the animation is to prevent the player from ordering a few Divisions to attack immediately and making a mistake and attacking in the middle of the night but even then in a couple of hours it wont matter.


A completely useless graphical gimmick that most people will turn off, of course if someone could explain to me otherwise I would be open to change my mind.

 

[Hans_Schnitzel]

I find it makes it even clearer how long your battles and operations take. You can quite literally see the days pass by while you are trying to assault someone's borders.

 

[Modestus]

I find it makes it even clearer how long your battles and operations take. You can quite literally see the days pass by while you are trying to assault someone's borders.

Keeping the spirit of good old Hollywood Cowboy films alive and well is it, how many moons have passed since we launched Barbarossa?

 

[Philadelphus]

AFAIK the HOI4 night/day is correct (barring map projection issues) and will change during the year.

Oh, that is awesome. As an astronomer, I've been wondering about that ever since I first saw the map with the shadowline projected on it. Wonderful! Can't wait to see it actually in action over the course of an in-game year.

 

[bwc153]

I don’t get this Day\Night cycle animation and before anyone points out that knowing the time of day is important yes I do understand that but Generals do not look up at the sky and wonder if its bright enough to launch an attack they look at their watches.

That would be dandy and would work great if the game didn't use one centralized time, so 15:00 in Europe is day, but 15:00 in the pacific would be night. Having the map show you information that was already shown in a different part of the UI in HoI3 (Day/night cycle) seems to me a lot easier than programming in individual time zones.

 

[JamesJameson]

I as well can't wait to see a full year cycle.

 

[Modestus]

That would be dandy and would work great if the game didn't use one centralized time, so 15:00 in Europe is day, but 15:00 in the pacific would be night. Having the map show you information that was already shown in a different part of the UI in HoI3 (Day/night cycle) seems to me a lot easier than programming in individual time zones.

I presume that if you order your air force to attack Tokyo at night and Berlin at night the game wont bomb Berlin during the day, the game must know when its night and day everywhere otherwise it cannot apply any modifiers.