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Adjust day-night cycle speed.

Started by mad_genius, March 29, 2012, 11:13:13 AM

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mad_genius

This is a question and request at the same time since I'm not sure if this is already implemented in the game.

I'm currently playing the latest stable version of simutrans and I've noticed that when we fast forward the game, the day night cycle also fast forwards which turns the computer screen into some sort of an "intermitent flashlight".

As I understand, currently the speed of the day-night cycle is directly proportional to the game speed showned on the bottom right side of the game's screen. So when you use the +/- keys to increase/decrease the game speed, naturally the day-night cycle increases/decreases it's frequency.

The problem is that the fast forward works by greatly increasing this same value, which causes the effect I described in the beggining of this post and makes the screen unconfortable for the eyes.

I believe the game would benefit from having the day-night cycle directly proportional to the game speed only up to a maximum value. From that value upwards, the day-night frequency would remain static until the game speed comes under the maximum value again.
It's just  a matter of usability and visual confort.

And it maybe something that other players may not feel the same as I do since, in Simutrans, I like to create a huge map with ridiculously small population cities (most of them generaly have only the town hall building), only some industry chains and starting from 1930 with the timeline and just play from there you know.
I like to see the cities increasing and buildings being built as I slowly start to "power up" some power plants and get some basic chains started to deliver some products to end consumers in cities (usually aiming at small chains like the milk from the cattle yard to the diary in pak128 or the wood to the sawmill and then the planks to a materials wholesaler).

Since this means spending a lot of time waiting for:

       
  • money to start roling in;
  • new vehicles getting available;
  • cities growing enough to support some pax/mail transportation;
  • new industries being founded as cities grow, etc.
it means that I tend to use the fast forward option a lot during several days/weeks while playing.
Probably that's why I tend to feel a lot the disconfort from the "itermitent flashlight" effect.

Anyway, it would greatly help my eyes if this detail was implemented.

Fabio

Disabling day/night change on fastforward seems very reasonable and it might even improve fps IMHO.

As a workaround, I suggest you to disable day/night change in display options.

prissi

Fast forwards is not really influenced by day night changes. But disabling all graphical stuff on fast forwards is not a bad idea.

Fabio

Quote from: prissi on March 29, 2012, 12:50:53 PM
But disabling all graphical stuff on fast forwards is not a bad idea.

You mean e.g. animations? This is very sensible.

prissi

No animations are done with every screen update. That I cannot really switch off easily.

mad_genius

Quote from: fabio on March 29, 2012, 11:36:47 AM
Disabling day/night change on fastforward seems very reasonable and it might even improve fps IMHO.

As a workaround, I suggest you to disable day/night change in display options.

Well, I wasn't exactly thinking about disabling the day/night (I like the eye candy stuff in games).
But it is indeed a workaround. Thanks for the sugestion fabio.

Is there a keyboard shortcut to enable/disable the day/night? I tend to use shortcuts to speed certain tasks (show grid, hide trees, etc.).

Fabio

To toggle on/off, I don't think so, but it could be easily added in your configuration or even officially in one or more paksets.

There are shortcuts (ATM + and - in Pak128) to manually change the daylight level.

@prissi: so, what can be disabled? the non-glitchy tiles drawing, like when zoomed out?

prissi