Time in the Game World
Time is not a line, but a series of now points.
- Taisen Deshimaru
Time is a tricky problem in a multiplayer online game. Because characters can enter and leave as they will, time must be linear, without interruptions. If time is linear, however, how does that affect the characters of the player that is logged out? Does his character age along with the world?
Time also must be compressed to some degree. The game exists to entertain, and so long periods of time when the character is doing something mundane like travelling a great distance would detract from the game experience.
Another thing that is yet to be decided is if and how time affects player characters differently than NPCs.
— Ged The Greys Hain - 26 May 2001
I've actually just come up with an interesting way to define "now" in metamathematics. I don't know if it'll help with the time problem in FaerieMUD, but it's quite interesting.
Scotus
— Scotus - 16 Mar 2002
Problem - stories, to be interesting, must necessarily have different time frames. Fx: the story of a kindom and its line of heirs has a time span of thousands of years with actions that may take years by themselves, whereas the story of the competition between two warriors may last a single month with actions being as short as "bullet time" actions. these many stories, however, must exist in parallel in the world of FaerieMUD (well, 'may exist' right now). so what does the kingdom story do while the two warriors compete? wait. the fate of the kingdom may well rest in the outcome of a single battle between two warriors, or it may not - that can't be known until the battle has been played out. (some guesses can be made, but not in every situation) to prevent too much waiting, areas of the world would be 'sectioned off' for players using a certain time frame only. this is bullet time arena - everything here happens in the most contracted time frame possible. this is mud-land, where time moves at the same speed as a typical mud. No good.
i don't have any good solutions for this, either.
How's this: a cyclic universe. continually going through cycles. characters existing in parallel, layering stories on top of each other. or maybe the characters wouldn't necessarily exist in parallel, but the game objects (cultural, physical, etc.) they created would. what happens if a character is playing in a time frame that leaves him behind the others?
here's another: so a character, already a week ahead of the other characters playing, is going to a city, and it's going to take a few days of traveling. normalling, this journey would be a single action for the character, as hir story is about the person ze is gonig to meet, not about the adventure of the journey. however, in that city, there are characters that need to do things during both the week the main character has already experienced, as well as the days that ze will be traveling. now, the computer recognizes the problem when the main character says "go to <city>", and realizes that the time frame in that city is different from that of the main character, so begins to institute time-sync operations. there are probably lots of little things that a character can do really at any time - dreams, skill advancement, bandits attacking, whose frequency of occurance can be increased or decreased as needed.
— Stillflame - 17 Mar 2002
Note that this final solution turns out to be the one which Ged has been assuming. So, basically all of us have come to that same conclusion, even though time is still listed as one of the hard problems.
— Scotus - 06 Apr 2002
I'd like to throw up a couple of extra possibilities. The first I call ApocalypseTime?, and have nicked from David Eddings. In the Belgariad and Mallorean, an ancient event caused an instability in the universe. Since then, every few hundred years, a confrontation between representatives determines who has the upper hand in the next Age. These periods get closer and closer together, until a singularity is reached where the confrontations are made within a single representative's life. At this point, the universe is mended, one way or the other. This seems to fit with SimKingdom? rather neatly - the entities of the time clash until the result is conceded, then time fast forwards according to plans the players make until it's time for the next confrontation, this time between smaller entities. In myth, generally the first battle is between the creators, then the creators children, then kingdoms, epic heroes and finally anti-hero Joe reluctants. I see no reason why the confrontations must be binary, and no reason why only one can happen at once. Although, of course, time can only go on speed once all parties have finished all their confrontations.
The Celtic view of time is cyclical. Each new soul which enters the world inevitably accrues debts or unresolved relationships during its first life, and during its second it encounters the characters from these events who are having their next life. Those disputes which are still unresolved, and any new ones which occur, are carried into the next life. And so on. Thus the stories these characters take part in only have events within each life. To me, this suggests a mode of play where character lives are relatively short, and the 'aim of the game' is to tie up all one's stories without picking up new ones - a bit like cards. The immortal soul develops and reincarnates according to the progress of the stories the soul has joined. This would require an aggressive story-maker, where every debt, wrong and injustice is picked up. Naturally, the soul has no way to know what stories ze is in, no way to recognise other reincarnated souls, &c. See Playability.
— Alexis Li? - 10 Apr 2002
See: Sim Culture
— Stillflame - 08 Jun 2002
