Time acceleration in scenarios

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

Hi guys,

A small question for you.

Do you like time acceleration in MP scenarios? For instance, if you are on for 2 hours, would you like only 2 ingame hours to have passed, or have played a day/night cycle during your session?

Thank you.

[soulis6 24]

Personally I use 2x acceleration during all of my groups missions. I never figured that everything was meant to be 1:1 analagous with real life time or scale, and it gives a nicer sense of time passing throughout the mission.

[das attorney 858]

I would leave it as a server option, so admin can decide.

[radical1976 10]

Depends on the mission type itself i think.

There're various MP Mission types:

short COOP mission > real time, as it's defined by mission briefing for example

CTI-like missions > faster day/night cycles would give scenarios with long playtime more variety (but should be optional for those who don't like night missions :))

DayZ/Altis Life-like (persistent) missions > most people could just play at same time frames (due to real life), so here it could be useful to give this mission type also more variety

radical1976

[bad benson 1733]

I would leave it as a server option, so admin can decide.

agreed and it also depends on the mission type.

but from a personal taste persepctive i prefer accelerated time simply because it adds more factors to consider to a mission. and to me more factors equals more fun.

not to mention that you will see more lighting conditions which makes for simply more color patterns to be witnessed thus making the visual side more interesting too. infact i have noticed that much like arma 2 (but way less than it) there are some lighting conditions that look really weak in arma 3. fast time can avoid being stuck on those.

and on the other hand there are way too many missions that use "default settings" which means never touching the editor time and weather settings which leads to fewer missions having their own atmosphere and in addition, since default setting is mid day and sunny, makes a lot of mission seem way too bright and friendly almost holiday island like to me.

time acceleration is a good automated way to "fix" all that.

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

For large scale JIP scenarios similar to Insurgency/I&A/Domination it's not that big a deal but in more serious 'clan' play I can't stand it.

[alexcroox 29]

I find it very useful, but I've heard reports that fast time acceleration can really hurt client performance, any official comment on this to dispel any rumours?

[dmarkwick 261]

Depends on implementation. Permanent servers with 1:1 time suffer when people around the world access it, a sizable amount of people will always be in the dark each time they log on at their gaming time each day. For permanent servers I guess a 3:1 cycle would give people a reasonable spread of lighting conditions.

[samatra 85]

It all depends on mission designer and their vision, if it fits and aids the idea and gameplay mechanics then I don't care if it is real time or accelerated time.

[AndrewsRG 22]

We've been using the skip time feature to give the illusion of day/night cycles. Having the option to increase the time between day/night could create some nice immersive cycles.

Relatively speaking, time seems to go quicker in game for me. 3hrs in an intense op can seem like 1hr. Could be a good way to experiment.

[benargee 20]

I find it very useful, but I've heard reports that fast time acceleration can really hurt client performance, any official comment on this to dispel any rumours?

Well, back in the days when time acceleration wasnt capped to 120x (1 Arma day == 12 real minutes) I could crank it up to ludicrous speeds that would cause performance issues.

At one point I was trying values like 1440x for 1 day per minute and 86000x for 1 day per second. My computer would stutter 4 times per day during the major weather/ sky transitions during day to night cycles.

As for the OP's question, if this has any effect on design decisions, keep 1:1 time acceleration as default. That being said, I enjoy using the multiplier to get a more varied environment during some missions. Maybe it's also a good Idea to include a new parameter in the mission editor under advanced intel where time and weather parameters are set, in addition to the scripting commands.

[moosemilker 11]

I'd leave it to the server admins, yes, this is a great feature to expose.