Day/Night Time & Advice

I have a clock in game that always runs, and depending on the time will get night or day (tint screens make it darker e.c.t)

I will be having certain quests and such based on if its day or not (an forest village only is active during night)

How quick do you think a day of the game should be
For instance, 30 mins in real life is 1 day game time

I want to get the optimal experience without hindering people and making them wait round too long, but also put a small punishment for missing your window

Well, that would depend on how much you can do in day/night. If you have quests that require a long time to finish, but can only be done during a certain part of the day, then you might want to make the transition longer. If you don't have much to do between day and night, then you could make it faster.

Hmm true, guess I will see how long certain quests and such pan out then!
 

You could also make some sort of inn or player house where the player can sleeps(to make it day) or rest(to make it night). So the player gets more controll and dont have to wait too long for finishing his quests.

I think it really depends on how long you want the player to sit playing your game before they save their gaming progress and take a break....but then this is just my own opinion.

The shortest I have ever played (without using the in-game capability to fast forward the day/night progression) is 10 minutes real/1 day game. The longest  I have ever seen is....err.... unlimited time real/1 day game? (I am talking about Persona 3 and Persona 4 here.)

Depends on what your goal is.


If it's a life simulation game, where every day life is important to improve relationships (where NPCs have their own lives and schedules), grow crops, or even forage to survive - then a long day and night cycle would benefit the user for getting everything done for the day. Examples would be Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing and Minecraft.


If it's more action and quest based, such as when certain monsters spawn at night or a quest has to be turned in by the end of the day, but other than that the day and night cycle has no other purpose besides a few quests/monsters - then a fast day and night cycle would fit more. Examples would be The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon (well, Pokemon Gold/Silver at least).


It seems you want to go for a speedy day and night cycle since it's based on quests, so I would suggest having a 10 to 15 minute day cycle - and adjust your quests accordingly (if the player cannot make it from Town A to Town B to return in a quest by the end of the day, give him 3 days to complete it).

I think it's important to have some player ability to change day to night and night to day, so the player isn't waiting idly for the right time.

When I did day/night cycles in one of my games, I had 1 second = 1 minute.  But, every step in the World Map, I had advance the game clock by 1 hour (say a world map tile square is 3 miles, it's reasonable).   That made it fairly easy to choose day or night in-game, but while in a location, the game clock wouldn't advance too quickly.

Since each day/night cycle was 12 hours, that made it take 12 minutes to go from day to night, if not using the World Map.  But, as Celianna notes, if you are trying to do a lot of interaction and activity during a day, that is probably far too short a time.

I used the day/night cycle for certain quests and NPCs and once the PCs became vampires, they had obvious problems with daylight...so that portion of the game mainly takes place underground.

Trying to decide exactly how many real life minutes = 1 game day is difficult.

Trying to create a reasonable limited time frame for players to complete certain quests/objectives is even harder.

You would definitely need testers of varying abilities to assist you in gauging the 'perfect' time limit to set.

I think you can provide player with the ability to choose an easy/hard mode for adjusted time contraints, or you can set a tier reward system.

Eg. if you complete your objective in 'x' days, you will get a special item. If you take longer than that, you only get 'x' gold.

Edit: one other thing I forgot to mention :

Maybe create a 'rest spot' for the player - a room or house where the passage of time does not move.

As several people have said, it's completely dependent on the type of game you are making and the speed at which gameplay happens.

In general (especially for standard RPG, action, and slice-of-life games) I'd shoot for somewhere between 4 and 30 minutes for an in-game day.  There are times you'd want to break that, such as a simulation (like SimCity, where months pass within a few minutes of real time) or a game where in-game time is tied to your computer's real-world time (like Pokemon or WoW).

Also consider changing the time-of-day based on doing in-game events (like Recettear or Persona 3) rather than the actual passage of real time, or even give your player a level of control over the passage of time, if you think that would create a finer experience.

Some really great ideas! (its why I always come to yous :) )

I am going to use Inns (as its a fantasy RPG) so it cycles 8 hours whenever you rest (so you have player control ability there)

The time still rooms are another brilliant idea especially for shops, so people dont think they cant blacksmith / synth / tailor and such.

Even thinking of possibly implementing a 'stop watch' so to speak so you can speed it up by 1.5x or down by 50%

so this gives hard core players the option to farm night only forests / places, and the casuals longer to explore and come to terms with stuff!

As for a rest room, 

I am trying to find an airship tileset that I can use as a summon (for a player hub) where time wont continue until you leave

Again thanks everyone for the input