Wesnoth calendar?

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Celtic_Minstrel
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Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Has anyone else thought about what the Wesnoth calendar might be like? It would be cool to come up with something detailed enough to be used in the timelines and such.

As far as I know, the only thing that has been definitely settled as a de-facto standard is the epochs of the pre-Fall era - "BW" means years "before the founding of wesnoth" and counts backwards (like real-life BCE); "YW" means "year of wesnoth" and counts forward from the founding. For after the fall, I'm not sure if there's a standard yet, but I'd suggest "AF" for "after the fall", and possibly "BF" for "before the fall", since a lot of records were lost in the fall and the exact date under the old system was probably forgotten.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Eagle_11 »

Assuming Wesnoth calender follows the sun like irl one does, it would be wise to assume after the fall era calender would be an extension of the default wesnoth calender adding cycles of the extra suns. Hereby the question arises on exact nature of those extra suns, are they cycling around wesnoth like a moon or is Irdya following an weird gravitational rotation inbetween those stellar objects.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Samonella »

Eagle_11 wrote:Assuming Wesnoth calender follows the sun like irl one does, it would be wise to assume after the fall era calender would be an extension of the default wesnoth calender adding cycles of the extra suns. Hereby the question arises on exact nature of those extra suns, are they cycling around wesnoth like a moon or is Irdya following an weird gravitational rotation inbetween those stellar objects.
I would guess that the Irdya rotates around one (the original sun) and the second one is much smaller and closer, rotating around Irdya?
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I haven't actually played Under the Burning Suns, so I could be wrong, but my impression was that the extra sun is in orbit around Irdya, like a moon. I don't know if the original creators of the campaign truly worked out how that would affect the day-night cycle, though.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Iris »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote:For after the fall, I'm not sure if there's a standard yet, but I'd suggest "AF" for "after the fall", and possibly "BF" for "before the fall", since a lot of records were lost in the fall and the exact date under the old system was probably forgotten.
I advise against making a standard for post-Fall campaigns that is based on the Fall event, because it’d require specifying the exact amount of time since the Fall and considerably reduce the amount of leeway add-on authors targeting that epoch have for writing their stories (and probably cause more than a few unnecessary debates on biology, ecology, physics and sociology).

For my campaigns, there is a specific event around which I developed a timeline and year notation, but it never comes up in them and it’s only used in the wiki.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

There was a debate in #wesnoth-dev about that a couple of weeks ago. I kinda agree that basing it on the event of the fall doesn't make much sense, and "Before the Fall" makes even less sense (they'd be using the YW calendar at that time!). Defender1031 in particular was in favour of adding BF.

I do like the name AF, "After the Fall", for referring to the post-fall epoch. I don't know how much sense that makes if it's not actually counting from the fall, though, and I'd be open to an alternative such as that described in the wiki page you linked. I can't figure out what DE stands for, though? Unless it's "Dark Era", but that seems too cliche... >_>
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Iris »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote:I can't figure out what DE stands for, though? Unless it's "Dark Era", but that seems too cliche... >_>
I don’t remember.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Eagle_11 »

shadowm wrote:
Celtic_Minstrel wrote:I can't figure out what DE stands for, though? Unless it's "Dark Era", but that seems too cliche... >_>
I don’t remember.
"Darkness End" ?

If After the Fall used any datekeeping, it had to be vastly different than what humans used anyways. Elves, being around for far longer than humans probably would have an complexer system of time recording.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Why would it have to be vastly different than before the fall? The basic cycle of the old night and day can still be seen in the two-suns schedule, as Irdya still rotates around the same sun in roughly the same period. It may not be as easily recognizable as before, with the second "sun" in there confusing thing, but any method of datekeeping would still be intrinsically linked in some respect to that cycle. It would be totally possible to use the same concept of a day as before the fall. I could also see a system where a "day" after the fall is equivalent to two days from before the fall, if the relationship between the suns formed a joint cycle of that length, but there's no particular need for that. The datekeeping after the fall could easily be identical to before the fall; all they really need is a new reference point for counting years.

Sure, it could be drastically different. But it doesn't have to be.



Also, I really don't see why being around longer would lead to a more complex calendar.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Eagle_11 »

Elves live for long, they may have an different perception of timeflow, affecting their conception of what a day is.
Ok, they surely would able to measure an cycle of Irdya rotating around its sun using science or whatever, and thus able to understand human conception of an calender. Yet this does not mean they cant have an conception of their own that goes beyond that fact.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I don't think they'd have a different idea of what a day is - that's a pretty objective thing, really. They may have a different perception of time flow, sure, and the importance they attach to a single day may be different from humans.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Ephraim »

shadowm wrote:
Celtic_Minstrel wrote:I can't figure out what DE stands for, though? Unless it's "Dark Era", but that seems too cliche... >_>
I don’t remember.
DE means "During the Empire".

I like astrology, so I like this theme. There can be two options:
First, we should know that every body attracts another body in proportion to its mass. But, all the mass of the body has a center that we know as the Mass Center, so is wrong to say that the moon orbits around the Earth. The correct sentance can be: The moon orbits around the Mass Center of the Earth that, due to the spherical shape of the Earth, is at its center.
So, the Earth neither orbits around the Sun: the Earth orbits around the Mass Center of the Sun that, due to the spherical shape of the Sun, is at its center. Also, we should know that the Earth spins over itself, or better said: over its Mass Centre. Well, the Sun also do it. It spins over itself and, curiously, over the Mass Centre of the planetary System that also is its Mass Centre.

Knowing that, I can explain The dual stars, and the First option of this theory:
Also known as binary stars, the planet system that orbits around the Mass Centre of just one Star, isn't doing that. Those planets orbit around the Mass Centre of the two stars at the same time (if I'm not wrong). If there is only one star in the system, it will rotate on itself and on the Mass Center of the planetary system, which is its own Mass Center, so it will not move from its place and will simply spin on itself.
But if there are two stars, everything changes.
If there are two stars, both must rotate on their own Mass Center and also on the Mass Center of the Planetary System, which is: the difference between the two Mass Centers.
Therefore, on the basis of Naia, the second Wesnoth sun was created in Irdya and therefore is smaller than Sela, the original Sun, the Center of Masses will be slightly offset outside the original star, Sela, and there will be two stars spinning like planets around an invisible center point, and all the other planets spinning on that same spot. Then, when the humans tried to rise Gaia, the third sun, the binary system of the stars could become unstable, rejecting Gaia back to the Earth and finally falling over Weldyn.

Second option: as you said before, Naia couldn't be as big as Sela because it was created on Irdya, but then, why those stars are too similar? Because Naia is at the same distance to Irdya than the Moon, and Sela is further away, so they look similar in Irdya.
Then, when the humans tried to rise Gaia, there weren't as powerful mages as before and the ritual failed, causing Gaia fell over Weldyn. :eng:


Also, I want to say that Irdya should be very similar to the Earth, beacuse in mainline campaigns the pass of the time and the months are identical to the Earth's ones.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by skeptical_troll »

Ephraim wrote:I like astrology, so I like this theme. [...] The moon orbits around the Mass Center of the Earth that, due to the spherical shape of the Earth, is at its center.
I suppose you mean 'astronomy' :) To be pedantic, the exact sentence would be that the Moon and Earth orbit around their center of mass, but since the Earth is much more massive that's quite close to its own geometrical center. Same for the Sun and the Earth.

I must say, I've only been very confused by the after-the-fall schedule, the short dark and long dark thing and the two asymmetric cycles. I can't figure out how that cycle is possible. I know 'Wesnoth is not realistic' but did the author provide any explanation? are there theories around it? does the cycle correspond to two days or one? It's even more confusing that in the schedule's small images two suns appear in both 'sub-days'.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by Iris »

People concluded ages ago that the current post-Fall schedule doesn’t make sense from an astronomical perspective, and Fabi developed a new schedule that is buried somewhere in the Git repo history. Ultimately I didn’t adopt it for my own campaigns due to balance concerns, and I believe someone else ended up reverting it in mainline for similar reasons.

EDIT: Found the commit that originally introduced Fabi’s schedule.
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Re: Wesnoth calendar?

Post by skeptical_troll »

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for searching that link in the repository.

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