Mendicant wrote:

I wouldn't mind if CoT borrowed something from Civ IV, the in-game clock and alarm. You could set up a notification to remind you that you've been playing for 6 hours and you do have to go to work in the morning...

Yes, this, please. When I'm gaming I often spend far, far longer than I intended to (often to my detriment) because I don't have many ways of reminding myself of how long I've been playing. An alarm feature would be even better.

I have to say that I'd rather the devs spend their time on a feature that's not readily available on myriad other devices or even other apps on the same device. Even integrating an existing clock app would take development and testing time that could be better spent on features that don't already exist outside the game. Note that most clock apps, phones, and even clocks have their own alarms.

However, a basic clock-function shouldn't be hard to run off the computer's own clock.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Cinnder wrote:

I have to say that I'd rather the devs spend their time on a feature that's not readily available on myriad other devices or even other apps on the same device. Even integrating an existing clock app would take development and testing time that could be better spent on features that don't already exist outside the game. Note that most clock apps, phones, and even clocks have their own alarms.

So instead of just glancing over at a specific place on screen (minimap border most common in my experience) you want us to get our phones/tablets out or alt tab to see the system clock?

Putting a routine in that checks the system time and updates a number in a specific "window" on a 1-second timer, or even tying it to a system event that fires when the minute changes, is such a small development effort that it is well worth the QoL improvement it brings. Alarms timers and such should probably be left to plugins, at least for launch.

Cinnder wrote:

Yep, you've summarised my thoughts perfectly.

On one hand there are so many alternate ways to gain the functional benefits of "an alarm clock" while you're playing a computer game that I can sort of agree with you from the general point of view that the Devs should not be wasting their time on things that aren't absolutely necessary to get CoT launched.

On the other hand the actual "development effort" involved to produce an alarm clock GUI for a game like this is likely to be so absolutely trivial that I'd be willing to make an exception in this case. I'm sure it wouldn't take more than a few minutes to google code/script (or even a YouTube vid tutorial) for installing a simple system clock app into their GUI. Heck the UE4 tools probably already provide for that kind of thing as a simple built-in class library call or some such. We're not talking about a Manhattan Project sized suggestion here.

I've started digging into Unity Engine. It's pretty trivial to put up a changing number on the UI Attaching it to a system clock is a few lines of code. Going from scratch to working clock is probably a 10 minute procedure, including research. Or as KA points out they can buy a module from the store. By all means add it.

I could see where in a big development team this is something that would take longer because you'd have to pass changes through management and assign people and test. In a small adhoc team early in development it shouldn't take long.

I refuse to acknowledge the argument that Item B takes time away time from Item A. It's always going to be like that. And you can make the argument for any two items. I don't want them wasting time on missions because it takes away from costumes. They shouldn't build TFs because it takes away from zone building. It's a ridiculous argument at it's core.

This is a suggestion thread. Suggestions are made. It's up to the devs to decide which items they feel are worth their time. In this case it seems like time is important enough to include some sort of display in the game for a majority of people.

To be honest I'm more interested in how we can have an 'in-game clock' in the sense of a tower with a clock face on it (what time should it show?).

Rigel wrote:

That would be cool if there was a clock tower in game that had working hands. I don't know if it should show the local time (so you could guestimate when the next day/night cycle would occur ... supposing that some missions might require you do do something at night) or the real time (EST because that's what time zone Titan City is in).

If you tried to have an in-game clock tower keep track of the in-game time of day you'd have the weird side effect of seeing that clock spinning like 20x faster than a normal real world clock because the day-night cycle in the game is so much quicker than in real life. I'm not saying it would be impossible to have such a clock, I'm just saying it would look very strange if you watched it for more than a few real life seconds.

Now on the other hand if you allowed such an in-game clock to be hardwired to real world New England time or even to your own computer's system clock then it might be relatively useful to players but it would still look weird compared to what the in-game day-night cycle was doing. In that case the clock would only move say 20 minutes (real time) but you'd see the game transition from day to night and back again. The clock would never really reflect what the in-game sky was doing.

Either way a "working" in-game clock would look weird one way or the other.

Grimfox wrote:

Choosing between the two I'd go with the real world time. It's much less disconcerting to see a classic clock face with a more or less static face than one that is spinning around like a time travel montage. Even if that clock is showing 8pm when the lighting indicates noon. I don't think many people would be terribly concerned. If they didn't say anything and just put the clock in there you'd get a lot more comments about it wildly spinning around than if it just didn't match the game cycle time.

Yeah considering the alternatives I would think hardwiring an in-game clock tower type clock to your computer's system time would be the most useful compromise. It would give the player his/her own real world time (always a plus) and it would make the clock hands move around in a natural way as you played so that it wasn't permanently frozen still. Sure the time might not be "right" relative to the game but at least the clock hands would move as you'd expect a real clock to move throughout the day.

Mendicant wrote:

That would be cool from an immersion perspective, but for the convenience of being able to tell what time it is at a glance, having a clock as a part of the UI would be preferable. After all, even if the clock tower is showing the correct local time of the player, you'd still have to go find the clock tower to look at it. (Not to say doing both wouldn't work out just fine.)

I never said you couldn't have both. The thread simply evolved past the clock GUI question and started talking about an in-game clock tower idea. I kind of assumed the clock GUI idea was settled and would be a no-brainer. ;)