Random start time/date?

[CarlGustaffa 4]

the date is relatively irrelevant.

Not at all irrelevant! It determines:

1) Tides (due moon), not that I've played missions where it is important, but it could happen.

2) Available light for lenghty missions. Day is shorter in winter than in summer, but also affected by island latitude.

3) Moonlight for night missions. For "old school missions" (i.e. without NVGs), having moonlight is of extreme importance. For NVG missions, it is something you may try to avoid.

4) Sunrise and sunset speeds. Middle autumn and spring have the fastest. Summer and winter have the slowest, creating fairly long periods of "harsh lighting conditions".

5) For Takistan, it is possible to achieve several days worth of moonlight. In Chernarus we're not so lucky; moonrise and moonset during some available light, is just not possible. So mission spanning days (especially without NVGs) is a nightmare without cheating.

Choosing the date is something I spend a considerable amount of time with, especially for low light missions.

[Bon 12]

if you really want to have it random in means of not having any control of what date and time the mission will take place (like setting a mission parameter), open the mission.sqm in a text editor (like notepad), and search for the lines where date and time is defined. Could look like this:

month=6;
day=24;
hour=8;
minute=0;

and is located somewhere at the top of the file.

Then change them to this:

month=__EVAL([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12] select round random 11);
day=__EVAL([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30] select round random 29);
hour=__EVAL([0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23] select round random 23);
minute=__EVAL([0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55] select round random 11);

There's no further scripting required, that's just it. Your mission now will take place on a random day at a random daytime every time you initially load it.

EDIT:

I don't know the behaviour in Multiplayer, probably all machines will generate an own date and time setup, what, of course, is pretty ugly.

But for Singleplayer, I think this way is as neat as radical :p

Edited September 22, 2010 by Bon

[kylania 568]

Maybe use Bon's code on the server and public variable it to everyone?

[ladlon 10]

I did a random start time mission on my random mission scenario I put together myself long ago... and it started me at night, which was a refreshing change!

Bad thing was, we were practically in the middle of a field (behind a few bushes), and had a truck, some soldiers and TWO HOWITZERS that we had to destroy... and none of us had anything other than our rifles and grenades!

That's when the beauty of the Arma2 modules kicked in, and the tell-tale sound of an A-10 could be heard coming in from behind us, and we watched as it unloaded rounds into the enemy. I must say, it's pretty cool to watch an A-10 unload on ground target in the dark! BZZZZZZZZ! KA-BOOM! hehehe...

We didn't fire a single shot... Just watched the fireworks.

Three cheers for random ambient combat!

[callihn 10]

if you really want to have it random in means of not having any control of what date and time the mission will take place (like setting a mission parameter), open the mission.sqm in a text editor (like notepad), and search for the lines where date and time is defined. Could look like this:

month=6;
day=24;
hour=8;
minute=0;

and is located somewhere at the top of the file.

Then change them to this:

month=__EVAL([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12] select round random 11);
day=__EVAL([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30] select round random 29);
hour=__EVAL([0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23] select round random 23);
minute=__EVAL([0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55] select round random 11);

There's no further scripting required, that's just it. Your mission now will take place on a random day at a random daytime every time you initially load it.

EDIT:

I don't know the behaviour in Multiplayer, probably all machines will generate an own date and time setup, what, of course, is pretty ugly.

But for Singleplayer, I think this way is as neat as radical :p

Damn this game!

No wait, I do not want to wish that on the poor people in hell.

The MP/JIP thing is always lurking, I don't pretend to understand it and I certainly hate it because of it.

So how do we sync it with everyone?

And can we do it with weather too?

[AZCoder 922]

Not at all irrelevant! It determines:

1) Tides (due moon), not that I've played missions where it is important, but it could happen.

Funny you should say that, Carl. In a mission that I recently built, there's a place where the player needs to cross from a tiny island to mainland (Chernarus), and everything was great until I changed it from Winter to Summer, and found out that the tides were too high to walk across. Fortunately I found the low tide periods and changed the intended hour of the mission to accommodate. So yeah it sure matters :p

[callihn 10]

There's that question again, does anyone know where we can find out for example what dates a full moon is on and the tides?

Still wondering about MP and JIP too.

I think BIS sould pay me per question, intseed it seems like I paid and now have nothing but question, most of which will never get answered.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

No, don't know. But seriously it doesn't take a lot of effort to find a good date, especially if phase is all you're worried about. Tides I really don't know about, but I'm guessing when moon is at its highest and 12 hours from then, and lowest ±6 hours from then.

[callihn 10]

No, don't know. But seriously it doesn't take a lot of effort to find a good date, especially if phase is all you're worried about. Tides I really don't know about, but I'm guessing when moon is at its highest and 12 hours from then, and lowest ±6 hours from then.

Actually it does, since everynight is not a full moon.

BTW, using the Farmer's Almanac doesn't help, so I wonder, just where did BIS get this "real world data", from another world maybe?

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Probably. Doesn't matter if it's real as long as it's there (which it is not for a certain other game). But no, it doesn't take a lot of effort. Create a repeating radio trigger with skipTime 24, and click it until you can read the date on the watch.

Or use stra_debug and just type in the skipTime or setDate commands. Use your imagination :p If all fails it's still just a matter of trying an empty mission and previewing different dates.

[callihn 10]

I think you have too much time on your hands man, but since you do and like to waste it it looks like they could use a moon phase chart.

[Bon 12]

check out 07/05/2012 plus minus a day - there you have full moon and its quite shiny at night...

Then for half moon add or subtract about 7 days, and for a all dark night, add or subtract about 14 days (since a moon phase is 28 days long isn't it?)

[CarlGustaffa 4]

I think you have too much time on your hands man, but since you do and like to waste it it looks like they could use a moon phase chart.

Ouch! What?

[ladlon 10]

Wow... Does Arma2 really deal with things like tides and moon phases? I didn't even think they had a real star map!

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Also island latitude (and longitude, but I've never messed with that). So if you move the island north of the polar circle, you can expect days in winter with no sunup, and summer nights where the sun never sets. Move the island to Australia, and learn to read the stars of the southern hemisphere. Arma was how I learned to navigate using the southern sky :)

But it's not 100% accurate. Moon phases are still only a selection of a few textures, meaning that you can have a couple of days with full moon and that 100% full moon reflectance model don't exist in the game (100% full moon is a lot brighter than the 99% full moon iirc). If it did, it would just be wicked sick :D

So as a realism based sim, I love the attention to the small details. Not many games quite like it. OFP even had a mission that forced you to navigate by the stars :)

[callihn 10]

check out 07/05/2012 plus minus a day - there you have full moon and its quite shiny at night...

Then for half moon add or subtract about 7 days, and for a all dark night, add or subtract about 14 days (since a moon phase is 28 days long isn't it?)

That's all good and well, but what do we do when me decide we want to move it to early spring, then we have to start the search for that full moon night again, the simple fact is that while we are doing all this chasing the moon we could be writting code instead if we had something to go by it wouldn't have to be yet another time wasting experiment.

[Bon 12]

That's all good and well, but what do we do when me decide we want to move it to early spring, then we have to start the search for that full moon night again, the simple fact is that while we are doing all this chasing the moon we could be writting code instead if we had something to go by it wouldn't have to be yet another time wasting experiment.

It really is no work. The moon phase is 28 days long. So you chose a time setup, and whether you can see approx half of the moon, none at all or whatever you add regarding number of days to your date setup, which is then about 7 days, 14 days aso.

Then you try it again and adjust. All in all it comes down to 2, at most 4 quick steps, each consisting of about 5 mouse clicks.

When that's still too much work for you, I wonder how you could manage to register for this forum :p

And writing code that detects that for you, imao is not worth the work at all.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

@callihn:

1. Save, then clear mission.

2. Set approximate date but midnight, and preview.

3. Moon ok? Exit and note the date to use in mission.

4. Moon not ok? Increase date by 7-14 days depending on what phase it already was.

5. Goto 2.

It takes me 15 seconds to find the moon phase I'm looking for, for a night mission. If BIS made a proper moon calendar now, it would possibly break half the missions out there that we already play. See Sumas answer about this issue on the CIT. No, you're gonna have to search for yourself - if you have time ;)

If you're that interested, you can make your own function for it. Here is BIS' own code if you want to have a go. Myself, I have no problems spending less than half a minute figuring out a good date.

[callihn 10]

Ahhh, yes that information certainly makes it easier, again I tried the Farmer's Almanac and Historical data and obviously this is an area where real data was not used.

When I was talking about a calender I didn't mean changing anything in game, I meant a simple table outside of the game, it's not really a matter of how easy it is or is not, it's a matter of spending time on it when you have other things to do for your mission, that time spent going in and checking the moon and changing the date and checking the moon could have been spent testing something else. ;)

Also if you can get this game to even load in 15 seconds perhaps you should share your secrets with the rest of us, I run in Windowed mode at 1024x768 with an in the cloud AV solution and minimal services running and it doesn't even load that fast.

Edited October 14, 2010 by callihn

[CarlGustaffa 4]

-noWorld -skipIntro (in latest beta) might help speeding things up a little. I've found that if I add a flying C130, mission can take like you say 15 seconds to start. Put it on the ground and it's pretty much instant.