Axial Tilt of Wesnoth

[Glowing Fish]

On a related note, I have often wondered what type of axial tilt the planet that Wesnoth is on has. At no point (AFAIK) is there a mainline scenario where the seasonal change gives more daylight or nighttime. A polar campaign with solid daylight or solid nighttime would be interesting.

[turin]

On a related note, I have often wondered what type of axial tilt the planet that Wesnoth is on has. At no point (AFAIK) is there a mainline scenario where the seasonal change gives more daylight or nighttime. A polar campaign with solid daylight or solid nighttime would be interesting.

An idea have you given me.

[turin]

Anyway, something like this would probably be reasonable for campaign use, and it wouldn't be that hard to re-balance the scenarios accordingly, I'd guess:

Spring: Dawn-Morning-Afternoon-Dusk-FW-SW
Summer: Dawn-Morning-Noon-Afternoon-Dusk-Midnight
Fall: Dawn-Morning-Afternoon-Dusk-FW-SW
Winter: Dawn-Noon-Dusk-FW-Midnight-SW

The Noon and Midnight TODs aren't strictly necessary (could just use Morning and FW), but they would be nice...

[Glowing Fish]

It looks like I actually asked about Wesnoth's axial tilt like 16 months or so ago...and the idea seems to be lost, canonless.

[thespaceinvader]

Trouble is, putting in axial tilt to make nights longer in winter and shorter in summer in the northern hemisphere and vice versa is just more trouble than it's worth. We can assume that there is an axial tilt, and either the Great Continent is not far enough from the equator for it to make much difference, or that it's small enough to make little difference to the length of the nights, but large enough to cause the seasons. Alternatively, there could be no axial tilt at all, and the seasons could be caused by an elliptical orbit, making for two summers and two winters a year...

[faring]

Then your opinion of the human race was far too high and needed lowering. All human beings, without exception, are stupid. Admittedly, some are quite a bit more so than others, but still...

What's with all the pessimism? the glass in not half empty it is just twice as large as it needs to be
buy smaller glasses..

anyway how do we know that a day is 6 turns? maybe each turn is a day and 1/6th making it take less time for the cycle and probably ruining a bunch of campaigns

[Dave]

As usual, the main question is whether it would actually add interesting and fun gameplay. If someone designing a campaign thinks it would, then sure. But just doing it to be cool or random or cute or show how smart we are because we know about the Earth's axial tilt and how seasons work probably isn't a great idea.

Anyhow, an easy justification is that you need to go a decent distance from the equator before the day:night ratio gets really far from 1, even at the solstice. The turns in Wesnoth are not at fine grained enough granularity to make the change. How many places are there where night is three times as long as day during winter, anyhow? Also, do dusk and dawn really take up 1/6th of the day?

David

[Glowing Fish]

How many places are there where night is three times as long as day during winter, anyhow? Also, do dusk and dawn really take up 1/6th of the day?

David

In Portland, Oregon, on the 45th parallel, in December, daylight only lasts from about 9 AM to 5 PM. So that is actually about a 2:1 ratio of night to day, and the day tends to be very dark and gray. And Oregon is north of most of the US, but is on the same level as Venice, Italy.

But of course, the main point that it shouldn't be added in "just because" it is (somewhat) realistic is true. Especially because the entire chaotic/lawful alignment and how it boasts damage is never explained "realistically" (I believe that each unit represents a military squad or platoon, and it is scoring more damage because it is getting more hits, but that is my own interpretation). And, if orcs see better in the dark, do they see better on an overcast day? Its no fun to think about it just to think about it.

But I actually thought it would be interesting to have a scenario where a group of loyalist units were in the far north, trapped in the snow during days when there was very little light, surrounded by hordes of orcs...

[thespaceinvader]

Yeah, you don't have to go that far up (or down) before the nights get very long compared to the days - and we (I, certainly) assume, I think, that dawn and dusk aren't literally the few minutes when the sun crosses the horizon, rather the 6 hours of day up til dawn and the 6 hours of night up til sunset...

It's certainly possible, glowing fish, to design your own day/night cycle. There are images available (somewhere...) to extend it out to 24 hours, let alone to move dawn and dusk around, and the rest is WML...

[Noy]

Silly people, Everybody knows Wesnoth is Flat.

[JW]

Silly people, Everybody knows Wesnoth is Flat.

WIF. I think we have a new acronym.

[Glowing Fish]

Silly people, Everybody knows Wesnoth is Flat.

It wouldn't be the first time that a fantasy world played with our ideas of normal spatial orientation:

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?nod ... on+a+Torus

[HomerJ]

Silly people, Everybody knows Wesnoth is Flat.

Of course! Otherwise it couldn't be composed of hexes!


Greetz
HomerJ

[Nebiros]

Alternatively, there could be no axial tilt at all, and the seasons could be caused by an elliptical orbit, making for two summers and two winters a year...

An elliptical orbit doesn't actually make for two summers and two winters a year. The sun would be at one of the foci of the ellipse, not the center, so summer would be at one end of the ellipse and winter at the other.

Because of the equal area law, winter would be quite a bit longer than summer.

In any case, I think for most content it makes sense to assume that it is at a low enough latitude that seasons don't affect a ToD system as coarse-grained as the one we have. If you want to make a polar campaign you certainly could (perhaps using the changing seasons as a way of ramping up difficulty during the campaign), but there's no need to introduce it systematically IMO.

[thespaceinvader]

... i should really have thought of that. My orbital mechanics aren't THAT rusty...

I should add, by the way, that if anyone DOES want to code this for their UMC or whatever, the image for the 24-hour wesnoth ToD schedule is found here, in /data/core/images/misc, and you can prune as many or as few images out of it as you desire, then apply the relevant WML.

=)