REQUEST TO DEVELOPERS> Fix Game Date Format!

[alphaprior]

I have said before game's date format is wrong! When you want to load a game you see the date and instead of dd/mm/yyyy you see mm/dd/yyyy which is very confusing to me.
I've never seen that in a game or any kind of program all use system default setting or region defined format.
It should be fixed, and use system's default setting whatever the user has.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

YYYY-MM-DD makes the most sense. Most significant-middle significant-least significant.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

YYYY-MM-DD makes the most sense. Most significant-middle significant-least significant.

Yes. Number go highest through lowest. Thems the rules.

There is even an international standard for this already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

There is even an international standard for this already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

I have tried to make co-workers understand that for years, sadly with little to show for it.

https://xkcd.com/1179/

 

[alphaprior]

I disagree, because the first number you want to see is the day, you remember the month and the year and you start from small and go to bigger hence day/month/year not the opposite!
And surely not month/day/year this is so.... ugh...
Why the year or the month are more significant than the day? There is no logic in this... as said everyone remembers the month and the year so when we want to check what day is it today we don't care about month or year...

BUT we don't talk about our preferences here, it's about the game which must use user's system date format.
And it's something so simple to fix but probably they don't care much about it....

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

I disagree, because the first number you want to see is the day, you remember the month and the year and you start from small and go to bigger hence day/month/year not the opposite!
And surely not month/day/year this is so.... ugh...
Why the year or the month are more significant than the day? There is no logic in this... as said everyone remembers the month and the year so when we want to check what day is it today we don't care about month or year...

Your initial post is asking for the game to abide by the system settings on your computer. I agree with that. Anyone making any program using the date/time in any way should default to the user's preference as dictated by the system settings.

M/D/Y makes little sense. I agree with that, and D/M/Y makes more sense than that.

The year is the most significant. There have been around 540 days in my life that started with 1. Likewise for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on (a few less after 28 thanks to February). And they are spread out over 45 years. There has only been one year "2016". That clearly makes the year the most significant.

I have saved games and other files that go back a long way. I don't want to sort by:
1 Jan
1 Feb
1 Mar
1 Apr
...
1 Dec
2 Jan
2 Feb
2 Mar

and so on. For anything.

BUT we don't talk about our preferences here, it's about the game which must use user's system date format.
And it's something so simple to fix but probably they don't care much about it....

We don't?

I have said before game's date format is wrong! When you want to load a game you see the date and instead of dd/mm/yyyy you see mm/dd/yyyy which is very confusing to me.

That sounds suspiciously like your preference. YYYY-MM-DD is mine. As much as I think MM/DD/YY is crazy, many people prefer it. You don't. dd/mm/yyyy is your preference.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

I disagree, because the first number you want to see is the day, you remember the month and the year and you start from small and go to bigger hence day/month/year not the opposite!
And surely not month/day/year this is so.... ugh...
Why the year or the month are more significant than the day? There is no logic in this... as said everyone remembers the month and the year so when we want to check what day is it today we don't care about month or year...

BUT we don't talk about our preferences here, it's about the game which must use user's system date format.
And it's something so simple to fix but probably they don't care much about it....

Oh gosh, we're not doing preferences. We're doing numbers.

Numbers have an order. Biggest first, smallest last. Its been that way since the Arabs taught the Romans a thing or two.

So the number "Two Hundred and Thirty Four" is written big-middle-small. 234.
Not small-middle-big as 432.
And most assuredly not middle-small-big 324. Why would you even do that to yourself?

Dates are numbers. yyyy-mm-dd is the only logical format.

 

[alphaprior]

Numbers have an order, right we start counting 1,2,3... not the opposite but all this is nonsense there is no right or wrong. My opinion and preference is dd/mm/yyy. Most important number is the day the others are less significant because you remember the month and the year.
But as I said everyone has his opinion here, so let's stop arguing about which format we prefer and stay in topic it's not about what we like but the game must change the format and use user's choice, whatever his system setting has.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

stay in topic

Agreed. All software should obey system settings for date/time. That is the whole point of those settings in the first place.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

Oh no. All dates should obey numerical logic and ISO 8601. That is the whole point of numerical logic and ISO 8601.

mm/dd/yy is wrong. Its just wrong on so many levels that its almost incomprehensible, but some people actually use it as their system settings. They need saving from themselves. Lets start the salvation here and now.

dd/mm/yy is wrong also. But it least it is less wrong.

And because someone will ask why it is wrong, just try putting the digits in order of highest (a), through lowest (f). (You know, like we do when we write any other number).

yy-mm-dd = abcdef (oh, that looks nice)
dd-mm-yy = efcdab (eh? where is the logic in that?)
I won't even bother with mm-dd-yy. That is just silly by inspection.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

OMG! I just noticed the avatar join dates on this forum! They burn my eyes!

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Off the rails again we go! (Sounds like Yoda.)

They need saving from themselves.

Well, while you are at it, you need to get them to give up on the nonsense that is the Imperial system of measurement, not to mention the craziness of a 12 hour clock to keep track of time in a 24 hour day. There's two of every time! What lunacy that is!

I always used YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS. I have my system set to that. I tried using it where I used to work, but they had custom software for all of our reports/inventory/logs/etc. I found out that not only did it not respect ISO 8601, it absolutely failed to function properly if the system setting was anything other MM-DD-YY. So as much as I loathed to, I had to set it that way. (It also didn't work if you were using a firewall on your system as well, but that is another story. I asked technical about exceptions in the firewall, but they said no it must be off. And yes it was connected to the wild west that is the internet. *sigh*)

yy-mm-dd = abcdef (oh, that looks nice)

No... no it does not. Heathen! Year *must* be YYYY.
Otherise you get this incomprehensible gibberish:
10-12-11

When is it? No way to know what format is being used. Could be:
2010 DEC 11
2011 DEC 10
2011 OCT 12

OMG! I just noticed the avatar join dates on this forum! They burn my eyes!

As wrong as the order may be, at least by utilizing a four digit year and spelling 3 characters of the month, you cannot interpret it incorrectly.

You should have made your username "ISO8601".

 

[C4st1gator]

I like the suggestion to make date formats make sense.
Also, why did Colossal Order choose the MM-DD-YYYY format in the first place?
The only places, that use that format are the US and maybe the Philippines.
The most common format is the DD-MM-YYYY format, that can at least be described as inverse ISO8601 or "from smallest to largest unit of time".

When you think about it, the international standard makes a good amount of sense.
Actually, any of the two makes more sense than MM-DD-YYYY. Please fix.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

Well, while you are at it, you need to get them to give up on the nonsense that is the Imperial system of measurement, not to mention the craziness of a 12 hour clock to keep track of time in a 24 hour day. There's two of every time! What lunacy that is!

Oh god yes. Now we are onto it.

We (everyone expect Liberia, Myanmar and the USA) have metricised everything, for the simple expedient of it being better. Except time. We need to metricize time.

Unfortunately, years, months and days are all based on physical phenomenon specific to earth. And as we as a species are still specific to earth, I guess we'd best not bother messing around with those. But less than a day we currently divide by 24 for an hour (wtf 24, that's a rubbish number) and then below that by 60 for minutes and again for seconds. Serious humanity, that was made up by the Babylonians. Lets improve a little bit people. 86400 seconds in a day. How is 86400 good for anything.

Our day obviously should be divided into ten decidays (incidentally, a single deciday is idea length for watching a good movie).
These would be divided into centidays (just right for afternoon tea) and millidays which would be the practical unit of measure for many things ("I'll see you in five millidays")
Sadly, the microday would take a little getting used to. But on the up side... imagine the excitement when humans finally crack the 100 microday 100metres. Four minute mile? Phooey.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

No... no it does not. Heathen! Year *must* be YYYY.
Otherise you get this incomprehensible gibberish:
10-12-11

When is it? No way to know what format is being used. Could be:
2010 DEC 11
2011 DEC 10
2011 OCT 12

Of course you are correct. I apologize.

Though we should really have a more appropriate start day for the beginning of time than an approximate (well, incorrect, if we were to be pedants about it), birthday of a Levantine carpenter's son. We should really use the beginning of time for the beginning of time. So use the yyyyyyyyyyy-mm-dd format.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

We need to metricize time.

Epochs and Eras are hardly metric either. Don't get me going on ages!

Though we should really have a more appropriate start day for the beginning of time

Would you prefer "Juche 105" for 2016? Personally I would prefer to stick with the current system.

Or perhaps "stardate"?

ZB: Captain's journal; Star date... uh...
K: April 13th.
ZB: April 13th... point two.

 

[State Machine]

Oh no. All dates should obey numerical logic and ISO 8601. That is the whole point of numerical logic and ISO 8601.

mm/dd/yy is wrong. Its just wrong on so many levels that its almost incomprehensible, but some people actually use it as their system settings. They need saving from themselves. Lets start the salvation here and now.

dd/mm/yy is wrong also. But it least it is less wrong.

And because someone will ask why it is wrong, just try putting the digits in order of highest (a), through lowest (f). (You know, like we do when we write any other number).

yy-mm-dd = abcdef (oh, that looks nice)
dd-mm-yy = efcdab (eh? where is the logic in that?)
I won't even bother with mm-dd-yy. That is just silly by inspection.

I agree with you that YYYY-MM-DD is correct, but on the secondary issue MM-DD-YYYY is vastly superior to DD-MM-YYYY. The hierarchy is clearly Y, then M, then D. If I exclude YYYY, what is the best sort sequence within a month? MM-DD or DD-MM? DD-MM favours the day of the month, so sequences in sort order might be 01-June, 03-October, 05-March, etc. - which is nonsense compared to March-05, June-01, October-03...

edit: I might add that my limited experience with the game is that the date is given as DD-MM-YYYY contradicting the OP (I'm in the USA where MM-DD-YYYY is the norm)...

 

[Lord Canterbury]

I agree with you that YYYY-MM-DD is correct, but on the secondary issue MM-DD-YYYY is vastly superior to DD-MM-YYYY. The hierarchy is clearly Y, then M, then D. If I exclude YYYY, what is the best sort sequence within a month? MM-DD or DD-MM? DD-MM favours the day of the month, so sequences in sort order might be 01-June, 03-October, 05-March, etc. - which is nonsense - compared to March-05, June-01, October-03...

So what you are saying is that MM-DD-YYYY is best, so long as you exclude the part of it that is worst?
Kind of like 1,000 is less that 999 so long as you exclude the 1's?

 

[State Machine]

So what you are saying is that MM-DD-YYYY is best, so long as you exclude the part of it that is worst?
Kind of like 1,000 is less that 999 so long as you exclude the 1's?

Not at all - I've edited my post a few times, so I don't know what you've read - YYYY-MM-DD is the only good standard, as you have said before. My quibble is that DD-MM is vastly inferior to MM-DD.

 

[C4st1gator]

Not at all - I've edited my post a few times, so I don't know what you've read - YYYY-MM-DD is the only good standard, as you have said before. My quibble is that DD-MM is vastly inferior to MM-DD.

You mean superior.